everything born in this world is empty

hasui kawase

 

Students,

sit earnestly in zazen,

and you will realize that everything

born in this world is ultimately empty,

including oneself and the original face of existence.

All things indeed emerge out of emptiness. This original

formlessness is “Buddha,” and all other similar terms — Buddha-

nature, Buddhahood, Buddha-mind, Awakened One, Patriarch,

God — are merely different expressions for the same

emptiness. Misunderstand this and you

will end up distracted

for eons.

 

Ikkyu

wikkyu

 

beautiful things grow out of shit

“What would be really interesting for people to see is how beautiful things grow out of shit, because nobody ever believes that, you know. Everybody thinks that Beethoven had his string quartets completely in his head, they somehow appeared there and formed in his head, and all he had to do was write them down and they would be kind of manifest to the world.

“But what I think what’s so interesting, and what should be a lesson everybody should learn, is that things come out of nothing. Things evolve out of nothing. You know, the tiniest seed in the right situation turns into the most beautiful forest. And then the most promising seed, in the wrong situation, turns into nothing.

“And I think that this would be important for people to understand because it gives people confidence in their own lives to know that that’s how things work. If you walk around with the idea that there are some people who are so gifted, they have these wonderful things in their head, but you’re not one of them, you’re just sort of a normal person, you could never do anything like that, then you live a different kind of life, you know.

“You could have another kind of life where you can say, where you say, ‘Well, I know that things comes from nothing very much and start from unpromising beginnings, and I’m an unpromising beginning, and I could start something.'”

🌍

 

tao doesn’t lord over anything

the highest good is like water

 

The great Tao

floods and flows in every direction.

Everything in existence depends on it, and it doesn’t deny them.

It accomplishes its work without naming or making claims for itself.

Everything in existence is clothed and nourished by it,

but it doesn’t strain over anything.

Aimless, ambitionless, it might

be called “small.”

 

Everything in

existence returns to it,

and still it doesn’t lord over anything.

Thus it might also be called

“great.”

 

Because it has no desire to

be great, it can achieve 

greatness.

 

Tao te Ching of Lao Tzu,

Chapter 34

 

ebooks & apps of the Tao the Ching, I Ching,

Hua hu Ching, and Art of War for

iPad, Phone, Kindle, Nook,

or Android

 

You

can now buy

Tao te Ching as part of a

five-app bundle of Taoist classics 

for iPhone or iPad for less than

the cost of one hardcover

book.

brian browne walker taoist app bundle ios ipad iphone