Calming
your mind, following
your breath, simplifying your life,
you reduce agitation and worry
with each passing
month.
When
genuine stillness
pervades your existence,
the subtle universe appears.
Then you can go anywhere you
like and give yourself
just what you
need.
You
can now buy
Wei wu Wei Ching as part of a
five-app bundle of Taoist classics
for iPhone or iPad for less than
the cost of one hardcover
book.
Try
to praise
the mutilated world.
Remember June’s long days,
and wild strawberries, drops of rosé wine.
The nettles that methodically overgrow
the abandoned homesteads
of exiles.
You
must praise
the mutilated world.
You watched the stylish yachts
and ships; one of them had a long trip
ahead of it, while salty oblivion awaited others.
You’ve seen the refugees going nowhere,
you’ve heard the executioners
sing joyfully.
You
should praise
the mutilated world.
Remember the moments when
we were together in a white room and
the curtain fluttered. Return in thought to
the concert where music flared. You
gathered acorns in the park in
autumn and leaves eddied
over the earth’s
scars.
Praise
the mutilated world
and the gray feather a thrush lost,
and the gentle light that strays
and vanishes and
returns.
Today,
like every other day,
we wake up empty and frightened.
Don’t open the door to the study and begin reading.
Take down a musical instrument. Let the beauty
we love be what we do. There are hundreds
of ways to kneel and kiss
the ground.
The unenlightened person
does not understand his own true nature,
does not realize the Pure Land in his own body,
and thus petitions all over. The enlightened person
never differs no matter where he is. For this reason
the Buddha says, “Wherever I may be I am always
in comfort and bliss…If only your mind is pure,
your own nature is itself the Pure
Land of the West.”
Being in tremendous turmoil,
the unoriented do not know that their own
mind is Buddha. They search about, outside of themselves,
spending the whole day contemplating the Buddha and paying
homage. But where is the Buddha? Do not entertain any
such false views. Awaken to your own mind:
outside the mind there can
be no Buddha.
