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.
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In the
practice of the Way,
nothing is forced. Remaining
at home in quiet concentration,
you merge the outside
and inside into
one.
At peace
with everything,
unlearned, unworried,
untouched by phenomena,
you enter into reality
as an ordinary
person.
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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?
You serve
as an example to others by
sacrificing your ego and accepting
the guidance of the Higher
Power.
The hexagram
Ting concerns the nourishment
and guidance one must have in order to fully
succeed. While the culture around us often encourages
us to “take charge” and make aggressive demands on life, the
I Ching offers far wiser counsel. Here we are encouraged
to give up the incessant demands of our ego —
to deepen our humility and acceptance
and to listen carefully to the
instructions of the
Sage.
The image
of the caldron concerns
your inner thoughts: whatever you hold
in the “caldron” of your mind is your offering
to the Higher Power. The quality of assistance you can
receive from the universe is governed by the quality of your
offering. If you constantly indulge in the concerns of the ego —
fears, desires, strategies to control, harshness toward others —
you repel the Higher Power and block your own nourishment.
If, on the other hand, you consciously let go of your
resistance to life and hold quiet and correct
thoughts, you become receptive to the
Creative and your continual
nourishment is
assured.
Ting comes
to suggest that the wisest
thing that you can do now is to still
your ego and conscientiously enter into a
conversation with the Sage. To influence others, or to
achieve a proper goal, follow the same path. By cultivating
humility and acceptance, purifying your inner thoughts,
and concentrating on that which is good and innocent
and true, you summon the power of the Creative
and meet with good fortune in
the outer world.
from The I Ching, or Book of Changes
Hexagram 50, Ting / The Caldron
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As you
continue to practise,
please understand: there is
nothing to worry about. Establish
this feeling of being relaxed and unworried,
securely, in the mind. Once the mind is concentrated
and one-pointed, no mind-object will be able to penetrate
or disturb it, and you will be able to sit in the meditation
posture for as long as you want. You will also
be able to sustain concentration without
any feelings of pain and
discomfort.
Having
developed samadhi
to this level, you will be able
to enter or leave it at will. When you
leave it, it will be at your convenience.
You simply withdraw at your ease, rather
than because you are feeling lazy or tired.
You withdraw from samadhi because
it is the appropriate time to
withdraw from it, and you
come out of it at
your will.
You enter
and leave this samadhi
without any problems. The mind
and heart are at ease. If you genuinely have
samadhi like this, it means that sitting meditation
and entering samadhi for just thirty minutes or an hour
will enable you to remain cool and peaceful for many days
afterwards. Experiencing the effects of samadhi like this
for several days has a purifying effect on the mind.
Whatever you experience will become an object
for contemplation. This is where
the practice really begins. It is
the fruit which arises as
samadhi matures.
