you are taking sides as you practice

gregory colbert

Mindfulness is not just

watching things coming and going.

As the Buddha said, when mindfulness becomes a

governing principle in the mind, it sees things that are unskillful

and it works toward getting rid of them. It sees things that are

skillful and works toward giving rise to them. It actively

gets involved in making things arise and

making things pass away.

So you are taking sides

as you practice. Hopefully, you’re taking sides

with the right side – right view and all the way down

to right concentration – because it really

does make a difference.

Thanissaro Bhikkhu

set an example of self-improvement

the way of non-differentiation

rick spitzer

When the level of concentration

on the void is gradually attained, one will feel

that he is free from delusion. Although he keeps himself

pure and rejects the impure, his mind is not yet

completely pure — it is as a sword that

has cut through mud and

remains uncleaned.

…When one reaches jen-wei, or

the level of absolute freedom, he is truly free.

His mind and body are non-attached to anything.

There is absolutely no gain and no loss. This mystery

is the way of non-differentiation. If one tried

to say even one word about it, he

would miss the point.

Ch’ing-chü Hao-sheng

original teachings of ch’an

concentrate without pause

i ching / hexagram 40

Once

you’ve begun

to understand the Way,

concentrate upon it without

pause. This is the sunlight

that matures the fruit of

your realization.

Maintaining

your insight through

whatever comes, you make

a Oneness of the world, and

conditions such as “good”

and “bad” drop

away.

Wei wu Wei Ching, Chapter 40

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you must be most attentive

2012-tawny-eagle-0

right where you stand

The essential thing in studying the Way is to make the roots deep and the stem strong. Be aware of where you really are twenty-four hours a day. You must be most attentive. When nothing at all gets on your mind, it all merges harmoniously, without boundaries — the whole thing is empty and still, and there is no more doubt or hesitation in anything you do. This is called the fundamental matter appearing ready-made.

As soon as you give rise to the slightest bit of dualistic perception or arbitrary understanding and you want to take charge of this fundamental matter and act the master, then you immediately fall into the realm of the clusters of form, sensation, conception, value synthesis, and consciousness. You are entrapped by seeing, hearing, feeling, and knowing, by gain and loss and right and wrong. You are half drunk and half sober and unable to clean all this up.

Frankly speaking, you simply must manage to keep concentrating even in the midst of clamor and tumult, acting as though there were not a single thing happening, penetrating all the way through from the heights to the depths. You must become perfectly complete, without any shapes or forms at all, without wasting effort, yet not inhibited from acting. Whether you speak or stay silent, whether you get up or lie down, it is never anyone else.

If you become aware of getting at all stuck or blocked, this is all false thought at work. Make yourself completely untrammeled, like empty space, like a clear mirror on its stand, like the rising sun lighting up the sky. Moving or still, going or coming, it doesn’t come from the outside. Let go and make yourself independent and free, not being bound by things and not seeking to escape from things. From beginning to end, fuse everything into one whole. Where has there ever been any separate worldly phenomenon apart from the buddhadharma, or any separate buddhadharma apart from worldly phenomena?

Yuanwu

zen letters