Posts Tagged → good

contact with good and bad

the most authentic master I ever encountered

 
Something in prolonged contact with rouge eventually becomes red, something in prolonged contact with soot eventually becomes black. What I realize as I observe this is the tao of habituation to good and bad.
 
When you live with good people, what you always hear are good words and what you always see are good actions. Hearing and seeing good words and actions over a long period of time plants good seeds in your mind, so that you spontanteously become accustomed to goodness.
 
When you live with bad people, what you always hear are bad words and what you always see are bad actions. Hearing and seeing bad words and bad actions over a long period of time plants bad seeds in your mind, so that you naturally become accustomed to badness.
 
Good and bad people are said to be so by nature, but most become so through habit. Therefore wise people choose their associates carefully.
 

Liu I-Ming

awakening to the tao

☯️

 

the source of light and darkness

ian bird, cape fear

 

One learns to understand

that there is a world in one’s self,

that in one’s mind there is a source of

happiness and unhappiness, the source of

health and illness, the source of light and darkness,

and that it can be awakened, either mechanically or at will,

if only one knew how to do it. Then one does not blame his

ill fortune nor complain of his fellow man. He becomes

more tolerant, more joyful, and more loving toward

his neighbor, because he knows the cause of

every thought and action, and he sees

it all as the effect of a

certain cause.

 

…Therefore, the work

of the mystic is to be able to read

the language of the mind. As the clerk

in the telegraph office reads letters from the

ticks, so the Sufi gets behind every word spoken to

him and discovers what has prompted the word to come out.

He therefore reads the lines which are behind man’s thought,

speech, and action. He also understands that every kind of

longing and craving in life, good or bad, has its source

in deep impression. By knowing this root of the

disease he is easily able to find out its cure.

No impression is such that it

cannot be erased.

 

Hazrat Inayat Khan

wahiduddin’s web

 

washing dirt in mud

diamonds

 

By even speaking a phrase to you,

I have already doused you with dirty water.

It would be even worse for me to put a twinkle in my eye

and raise my eyebrow to you, or rap on the meditation seat

or hold up a whisk, or demand, “What is this?”

As for shouting and hitting, it’s obvious

that this is just a pile of bones

on level ground.

 

There are also the type

who don’t know good from bad and

ask questions about Buddha and Dharma and Zen

and the Tao. They ask to be helped, they beg to be received,

they seek knowledge and sayings and theories relating to

the Buddhist teaching and to transcending the world

and to accommodating the world. This is washing

dirt in mud and washing mud in dirt —

when will they ever manage

to clear it away?

 

Forget the words and 

embody the meaning.

 

Yuanwu

zen letters

 

watch keenly all aspects of life

hamid sardar-afkhami

 
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.
 

Hazrat Inayat Khan

 

the guardian spirit lodged within

rannveig aamodt

 

If you find anything

better in human life than justice,

honesty, moderation and courage — if,

to put it generally, you find anything better

than the self-sufficiency of your mind on those

occasions that your actions are compatible with

right reason, as well as when something is allotted

to you by fate without your having chosen it —

if, I say, you’re aware of anything better

than this, turn to it with all your heart

and enjoy the supreme good

you’ve discovered.

 

But if you find

nothing better than the

guardian spirit lodged within you,

which has brought all your particular

impulses under its control, which scrutinizes

your thoughts, which, as Socrates used to say, has

withdrawn itself from sensations, which has put itself

in the gods’ hands, and which cared providentially for

other people — if everything else turns out to be

trivial and worthless by comparison,

then make room for

nothing else.

 

Marcus Aurelius

the annotated marcus