maintain humility and equanimity

A goal may be reached

but only if one’s character is fully aligned

with proper principles. It is always more important

to maintain humility and equanimity than

to satisfy an ambition.

second changing line

The I Ching, or Book of Changes

Hexagram 46, Sheng / Pushing Upward

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spend your days silencing your mind

make an offering of stillness

Once you

merge your tracks

into the stream of zen,

you spend your days silencing

your mind and studying with your

whole being. You realize that this Great Cause

is not obtained from anyone else but is just a matter

of taking up the task boldly and strongly, and making constant

progress. Day by day you shed your delusions, and day by day you

enhance your clarity of mind. Your potential for enlightened perception

is like fine gold that is to be refined hundreds and thousands of times.

What is essential for getting out of the dusts, what is basic for

helping living creatures, is that you must penetrate

through freely in all directions and arrive at

peace and security free from doubt and

attain the stage of great

potential and great

function.

This work

is located precisely in

your own inner actions. It is just

a matter of being in the midst of the interplay

of the myriad causal conditions every day, in the confusion

of the red dusts, amid favorable and adverse circumstances and

gain and loss, appearing and disappearing in their midst,

without being affected and turned around by

them, but on the contrary, being able

to transform them and turn

them around.

…When you

go on grinding and polishing

like this for a long time, you are liberated

right in the midst of birth and death, and you look upon

the world’s useless reputation and ruinous projects as mere dust

in the wind, as a dream, as a magical apparition, as an

optical illusion. Set free, you pass through the

world. Isn’t this what it means to be a

great saint who has emerged from

the dusts of sensory

attachments?

Yuanwu

zen letters

melt and let go and rest

mady morrison

All the myriad things are neither opposed to nor contrary to your true self. Directly pass through to freedom and they make one whole. It has been this way from time without beginning.

The only problem is when people put themselves in opposition to it and spurn it and impose orientations of grasping or rejecting, creating a concern where there is none. This is precisely why they are not joyfully alive.

If you can cut off outward clinging to objects and inwardly forget your false ideas of self, things themselves are the true self, and the true self itself is things: things and true self are one suchness, opening through to infinity…

Time and again I see longtime Zen students who have been freezing their spirits and letting their perception settle out and clarify for a long time. Though they have entered the Way, they immediately accepted a single device or a single state, and now they rigidly hold to it and won’t allow it to be stripped away. This is truly a serious disease.

To succeed it is necessary to melt and let go and spontaneously attain a state of great rest.

Yuanwu

zen letters

🪷

chosen limits empower growth

go on alone meeting it everywhere

Voluntarily chosen limits
empower your growth.

The practice of economies is a valuable notion everywhere in life. In your financial dealings, a reasonable thrift practiced today assures you of opportunity tomorrow. In your emotional life, the practice of balance and equanimity allows steady spiritual progress. The hexagram Chieh comes as an encouragement to set practical limits throughout your life.

Life lived without guidelines is confusing and troubling. In order to make genuine progress in any direction, we must first give some definition to our path. However, limits that are overstrenuous are not helpful; having too many rules causes rebellion in the one on whom they are imposed, whether one’s self or another. Therefore there must be limits even on one’s limits.

To yourself, the setting of limits means defining your purpose and responsibilities so that you have a clear idea of where your energies are to be aimed. Your limits should be determined by yourself, not another or the culture in which you live. Avoid harshness and impatience with yourself; true progress is made in gradual steps. Allow yourself pleasure, but avoid careless self-indulgence.

With others, place limits both on your own actions and the indulgences you offer them. To encourage another’s inferior qualities is to invite misfortune. Allow your interactions with others to take place within the limits of gentleness, tolerance, and innocence. If you will define and observe reasonable limits in all things, you will be assured of steady progress.

from The I Ching, or Book of Changes

Hexagram 60, Chieh / Limitation