we all could use a little mercy now


 

The shock of unsettling events
brings fear and trembling.
Move toward a higher
truth and all will
be well.

 The tendency of human beings is to rely on the strategies of the ego: desiring, plotting, and striving. When we exercise the ego, our spiritual development stops, and the universe must use shocking events to move us back onto the path. The appearance of the hexagram Chên indicates an immediate need for self-examination, self-correction, and a redevotion to following the path of the Sage. In Chinese, the hexagram translates to mean “thunder over thunder”: a continuing series of shocks occurs until the obstruction in our attitude is removed.
 
It is important not to react against these shocks.Instead, quiet and open your mind, accept that what is happening has come to teach you a specific and necessary lesson, and look inside to see where you are resisting the will of the Higher Power. The sooner you return to innocence and acceptance, the sooner the shocks will subside. 

Those who maintain a reverence for proper principles and an inner commitment to higher things are unperturbed by shocking events; they simply concentrate on deepening their understanding. If you find yourself feeling threatened by circumstances, withdraw into stillness and meditation. The only remedy for doubt and fear is a reconnection with higher truth.Shock is an important and beneficial teacher to those who follow the path of the Sage. Make good use of this new beginning and good fortune results.
 

from The I Ching, or Book of Changes

Hexagram 51, Chen / The Arousing (Shock)

 

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stop your search

deshan xuanjian

 
If you can refrain from producing a single thought, you’ll be forever freed from birth and death, and will not be bound up by birth and death. You go when you want to go and sit when you want to sit — what further concern is there?

Don’t go crazy; I suggest to you that it would be better to stop and not be obsessed with anything. The moment a thought flashes through your mind, you’re a minion of the devil, an immoral worldling.

Just do not stick to sound and form externally, and do not conceive of subject and object internally. In essential being there is neither ordinary nor holy — what more would you learn? Even if you learn a hundred thousand marvelous doctrines, you’re just a sore-sucking ghost; it’s all mere fascination.

I do not mean to slander him about this, but this is why Buddha spewed out so much spittle of expedient means, to teach you to be free. Don’t search outside. As long as you don’t acquiesce, you want to collect unusual sayings and store them in your chest, so you can talk cleverly, getting by on glibness, hoping to be acknowledged by people as a Chan master, wanting to obtain a position of prominence.

If you entertain such views, someday you’ll go to hell where your tongue will be pulled out.

My perception is not that way. Here I have no Buddha and no Dharma. Bodhidharma was a smelly old foreigner, the bodhisattvas of the tenth stage are dung haulers, the equally and subtly enlightened are immoral worldlings, bodhi and nirvana are donkey-tethering stakes, the twelve-part canonical teachings are ghost tablets, paper for wiping pus from sores, those who have attained the four fruitions, the three ranks of sages, and those from initial inspiration to the tenth stage are ghosts haunting ancient tombs, unable to save even themselves. Buddha was an old foreigner, a piece of crap.

Good people, don’t make the mistake of putting on a garment of sores.

Here I have no doctrine at all to give you to interpret. I don’t understand Chan myself, and I am no teacher. I don’t understand anything at all, I just consume and excrete. What else is there?

I urge you to be free from concerns, promptly stopping your search; don’t learn aberration and madness. Everybody carries around a corpse, traveling, licking up the slaver of the old baldies wherever you go. Imbibing their drivel, you immediately proclaim that you are going into samadhi, cultivating capacities, accumulating good deeds to nurture the embryos of sagehood in hopes of fulfilling the realization of Buddhahood.

 

This

radiant void

is unobstructed, free:

it is not something

you can attain by

embellishment.

 

You are people of the present time; don’t seek somewhere else. Even if Bodhidharma were to come here, he would just tell you to be without affectations; he would tell you not to be contrived. Dressing, eating, excreting, there is no more “birth and death” to be feared, and no nirvana to be attained, no enlightenment to be realized. You’re just an ordinary individual, without affectations. 

Do you want to know? It’s just a void, with nothing to attain, pure and clear everywhere, radiant with light, thoroughly translucent inside and out. There is no affectation, no dependence, nothing to dwell on. What are you concerned with?
 

Deshan Xuanjian

treasury of the eye of true teaching

 

reality flows like water

mike putnam

 

In order to

be a proper teacher to

oneself, one must be part midwife,

part executioner: sometimes rebirthing oneself,

sometimes annihilating and leaving useless bits by the

wayside, until the self soars free and clear of

attachment, obstruction, and delusion

and joins all buddhas past,

present, and

future.

 

Then one

can stop fracturing

reality with names and ideas

of self, other, buddha,

enlightenment,

and so on.

 

There,

beyond definitions

and beyond mind, reality

flows like pure

water.

 

Wei wu Wei Ching, Hexagram 29

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guide others by relying on tao

actblue

 

The

best leader is one

whose existence is barely known.

Next best is one who is loved and praised.

After that, one who is feared. Worst

of all is a leader who is

despised.

 

If you

fail to trust people,

you won’t inspire their trust.

Therefore, guide others by quietly

relying on Tao. Then, when the

work is done, the people can

say, “We did this

ourselves.”

 

Tao te Ching of Lao Tzu

Chapter 17

 

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all this teaching is just for you

the living expression

 

If

the Way

were about being

a student of something,

it wouldn’t be alive in the world.

It lives because certain people say to 

themselves, “All this teaching is

just for me. I am the living 

expression of

this.”

 

This

isn’t arrogant.

This is humbly keeping the

buddhasLao Tzu, Lalla, Rumi, Suzuki,

BahauddinYuanwu, all of them, alive in the

world. Only you can accomplish this. 

You are the only

one.

 

Wei wu Wei Ching, Chapter 13

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