You
have to decide
right now to be free
once and for all. Everyone who
has found freedom in this lifetime has
had to make this decision. Now is the time
to have a direct introduction to this moment.
This moment is free of time, of mind, of any notions.
When one abides as the Self, some divine power
takes charge of one’s life. All actions then take
place spontaneously, and are performed
very efficiently, without any
mental effort or
activity.
Without thought,
without mind, without self,
there is only freedom. The direct,
reliable, and perfect means of
achieving this is to become
wholly absorbed in
the breath.
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At all times just remain free and uninvolved. Never make any displays of clever tricks — be like a stolid simpleton in a village of three families. Then the gods will have no road on which to offer you flowers, and demons and outsiders will not be able to spy on you.
Be undefinable, and do not reveal any conspicuous signs of your special attainment. It should be as if you are there among myriad precious goods locked up securely and deeply hidden in a treasure house. With your face smeared with mud and ashes, join in the work of the common laborers, neither speaking out nor thinking.
Live your whole life so that no one can figure you out, while your spirit and mind are at peace. Isn’t this what it is to be imbued with the Way without any contrived or forced actions, a genuinely unconcerned person?
Among the enlightened adepts, being able to speak the Truth has nothing to do with the tongue, and being able to talk about the Dharma is not a matter of words.
🪷
We
have lost the
power even of imagining what
the ancient idealization of poverty could
have meant: the liberation from material attachments,
the unbribed soul, the manlier indifference, the paying our way
by what we are or do and not by what we have, the right to
fling away our life at any moment irresponsibly—
the more athletic trim, in short,
the moral fighting
shape.
Once you
merge your tracks
into the stream of zen,
you spend your days silencing
your mind and studying with your
whole being. You realize that this Great Cause
is not obtained from anyone else but is just a matter
of taking up the task boldly and strongly, and making constant
progress. Day by day you shed your delusions, and day by day you
enhance your clarity of mind. Your potential for enlightened perception
is like fine gold that is to be refined hundreds and thousands of times.
What is essential for getting out of the dusts, what is basic for
helping living creatures, is that you must penetrate
through freely in all directions and arrive at
peace and security free from doubt and
attain the stage of great
potential and great
function.
This work
is located precisely in
your own inner actions. It is just
a matter of being in the midst of the interplay
of the myriad causal conditions every day, in the confusion
of the red dusts, amid favorable and adverse circumstances and
gain and loss, appearing and disappearing in their midst,
without being affected and turned around by
them, but on the contrary, being able
to transform them and turn
them around.
…When you
go on grinding and polishing
like this for a long time, you are liberated
right in the midst of birth and death, and you look upon
the world’s useless reputation and ruinous projects as mere dust
in the wind, as a dream, as a magical apparition, as an
optical illusion. Set free, you pass through the
world. Isn’t this what it means to be a
great saint who has emerged from
the dusts of sensory
attachments?
