How
amazing it is
that all people have this but
cannot polish it into bright clarity.
In darkness unawakened, they
make foolishness cover
their wisdom.
Posts Tagged → brian browne walker
beginner’s mind, beginner’s heart
To achieve
what the zen buddhists
call “beginner’s mind,” you dispense
with all preconceptions and enter
each situation as if seeing it
for the first time.
“In the
beginner’s mind there
are many possibilities,” wrote
Shunryu Suzuki in his book Zen Mind,
Beginner’s Mind, “but in the
expert’s there are few.”
As much
as I love beginner’s
mind, though, I advocate an
additional discipline: cultivating a
beginner’s heart. That means approaching
every encounter imbued with a freshly
invoked wave of love that is as pure
as if you’re feeling it for
the first time.
light inside and dark outside
People’s intellect and knowledge are like the light of a lamp. If that light is mistakenly used outside, in a contentious and aggressive manner, aiming for name and gain, scheming and conniving day and night, thinking a thousand thoughts, imagining ten thousand imaginings, chasing artificial objects and losing the original source, light on the outside but dark inside, this will go on until the body is injured and life is lost.
If people give up artificiality and return to the real, dismiss intellectuality and cleverness, consider essential life the one matter of importance, practice inner awareness, refine the self and master the mind, observe all things with detachment so all that exists is empty of absoluteness, are not moved by external things and are not influenced by sensory experiences, being light inside and dark outside, they can thereby aspire to wisdom and become enlightened.
Light that does not dazzle progresses to lofty illumination; therefore a classic says, “The great sage appears ignorant, the great adept seems inept.”
you are already realized
it is not handed on by written words
You are
already realized.
It is critical to understand this.
Enlightenment is less a matter of charging
forward to achieve something, and more
one of doing non-doing — of leaning
slightly back and silently
accepting its constant
presence.
Once you have
done this, go on practicing.
Without straining, continually pour the
emptiness of your being into the
emptiness of existence, and
drink what comes back:
emptiness.
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rises and falls serve a sacred purpose
Consider the Mahatma, the great soul. One Mahatma is busy struggling with himself and struggling with conditions before him and around him. This struggle is not for naught, for it is a conflict with the self, it is a conflict with others, it is a conflict with conditions – conflicts that come from all around, till every bit of that Mahatma is tested and tried, till every bit of his patience is exhausted and his ego is ground. A hard rock is turned into a soft paste – then appears the personality of a Mahatma. This process of effacement, the real meaning of crucifixion is to crucify the false self, that the true self may rise. As long as the false self is not crucified, the true self is not realized.
The path of attainment means embracing this struggle. The man who fails in the world will fail to attain spiritual bliss. Yet, difficulties rise over the head of him who looks at them with awe. But the same difficulties fall at the feet of him who takes no notice of them. Ultimately, verily, independence and indifference are the two wings which enable the soul to fly. This indifference is not a lack of feeling but a mastery, for man without feeling is without life. It is the strength to pour out floods of love, yet keeping your garment of detachment from being wet.
Thus, the rises and falls, the joys and sorrows, the struggles and surrenders, all serve a sacred purpose. Joy and sorrow are the light and shade of life; without light and shade no picture is clear. In the end, love develops into harmony, and of harmony is born beauty. For love is living and therefore growing, love is growing and therefore expanding, there is no limit to the expansion of love, for its source is divine and thus its expansion is perfect. This is the ultimate rise.