The fun of roaming free
is endless, hard to exhaust. When tired
I sit on a mossy bank, unaware of the cold sun falling
in my love for the cool of the breeze in the pines. Deer descend
to drink of the valley streams; monkeys arrive to pick of
the mountain fruits. What I originally valued were
freedom and quietude; why should
I require that people
know of me?
Haven’t you
read the ancient worthy’s saying?
“The white clouds are clear and still, and the rivers
flow into the blue sea. The myriad things are
originally peaceful, but people
make trouble for
themselves.”
After all,
this statement is completely
accurate and true. If you know what it means
as soon as you hear it mentioned, you can use it to pass
through birth and death to freedom and no longer be obstructed
by the psycho-physical nexus. You will be like a bird getting
out of a cage — independent and free. With a single
stroke you put a stop to all other actions and
talk, and you no longer fall into
secondary views.
Gently I weep for my mind,
caught in its illusion of ownership.
Mind, you’re not who you think you are.
You’re dancing over a pit. Soon you’ll fall through,
and these things you’ve valued and collected will
be left behind. My sweet dear, do you
understand this, and if you do,
how does your food
taste?
If you try
to grab hold of the
world and do what you want
with it, you won’t
succeed.
The world
is a vessel for spirit,
and it wasn’t made to be manipulated.
Tamper with it and you’ll spoil it.
Hold it, and you’ll
lose it.
With tao,
sometimes you move ahead
and sometimes you stay back; sometimes
you work hard and sometimes you rest; sometimes
you’re strong and sometimes you’re weak;
sometimes you’re up; sometimes
you’re down.
The sage
remains alert, avoiding
extremes, avoiding extravagance,
avoiding excess.
from The Tao te Ching of Lao Tzu,
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When the water returns
to its original oneness with the river,
it no longer has any individual feeling to
it; it resumes its own nature, and finds
composure. How very glad the
water must be to come
back to the original
river!
If this is so,
what feeling will we have
when we die? I think we are like the water
in the dipper. We will have composure then, perfect
composure. It may be too perfect for us, just now, because
we are so much attached to our own feeling, to our
individual existence. For us, just now, we have
some fear of death, but after we resume
our true original nature,
there is Nirvana.