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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Just don’t seek
from another or you’ll be far
estranged from the Way.
I now go on alone
Meeting it everywhere
It now is just what I am
I now am one with it.
You must comprehend
in this way to merge
with thusness.
we are all wanderers in the unknown
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?
fertilizing my bamboo grove with horse manure
Give up religiosity
and knowledge, and the people
will benefit a hundredfold. Discard morality
and righteousness, and the people will return
to natural love. Abandon shrewdness
and profiteering, and there
won’t be any robbers
or thieves.
These are external
matters, however. What is most
important is what happens within:
look to what is pure; hold to what
is simple; let go of self-interest;
temper your desires.
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Sattva, the activity that always results in good, is the controlled activity, when we have a rein over it. This is the most difficult to attain, and needs the work and effort of a whole lifetime. All the saints and sages have had to journey through these grades and learn from experience, and they understand how difficult it is to attain control over our activity in life.
There are two ways in which we may attain control over our activity. The first is confidence in the power of our own will; to know that if we have failed today, tomorrow we will not do so. The second is to have our eyes wide open, and to watch keenly our activity in all aspects of life. It is in the dark that we fall, but in the light we can see where we are going.
