enlightenment is not a disappearance


 

Enlightenment

is not an asexual, dispassionate,

head-in-the-clouds, nails-in-the-palms

disappearance from the game of life. It’s a

volcanic, kick-ass, erotic commitment

to love in action, coupled with

hard-headed practical

grist.

 

Elissa Giles

 
 

QUESTION.

Everyone has a secret agenda.

What’s yours?

 
ANSWER.

To show what a moral vision

would look like if it were rooted in the quest

for beauty, truth, love, pleasure, and liberation

instead of order, control, politeness,

fear, and self-denial.

 

Rob Brezsny

 

the practice of true reality

yanik chauvin

 
The practice of true reality is simply to sit serenely in silent introspection. When you have fathomed this you cannot be turned around by external causes and conditions. This empty, wide open mind is subtlety and correctly illuminating. Spacious and content, without confusion from inner thoughts or grasping, effectively overcome habitual behavior and realize the self that is not possessed by emotions.

You must be broad-minded, whole without relying on others. Such upright independent spirit can begin not to pursue degrading situations. Here you can rest and become clean, pure, and lucid. Bright and penetrating, you can immediately return, accord, and respond to deal with events.

Everything is unhindered; clouds gracefully floating up to the peaks, the moonlight glitteringly flowing down mountain streams. The entire place is brightly illumined and spiritually transformed, totally unobstructed and clearly manifesting responsive interaction like box and lid or arrow points meeting.

Continuing, cultivate and nourish yourself to enact maturity and achieve stability. If you accord everywhere with thorough clarity and cut off sharp corners without dependence on doctrines, like the white bull or wildcat helping to arouse wonder, you can be called a complete person.

So we hear that this is how one of the way of non-mind acts, but before realizing non-mind we still have great hardship.

 

Hongzhi Zhenjue

 

eventually we have to taste to know

grow a pistachio tree

 

Bahauddin’s notebook,

and Rumi’s poetry, are reminders of experience,

larger and deeper ways we readers and listeners might live.

The words describe a taste of grandeur and love, and as they keep

telling us, you cannot do that: it’s impossible to describe such

wonders. The great winetasters may come as close as one

can get. But try to tell me, really, about a pistachio,

or something you have never tasted. Say what

you want, eventually we have

to taste to know.

 

Coleman Barks

commentary on The Drowned Book

 

you are the buddha now

here is what a buddha is

 

Do you find 

your spiritual practice 

pitiful and wanting? If buddha 

were before you, would you 

be ashamed, afraid, 

shy, small?

 

Wake up! 

The truth too large 

for words is that the buddha 

is closer to you than that: 

you are the buddha

now. 

 

This entire world is

just for you. All the teaching in this

world is only for you. Accept this without 

further thought of whether you are good or bad

and be responsible to it. This is the spirit you

must  bring to everything that you do.

Be the buddha now.

 

Wei wu Wei Ching, Chapter 4

i ching / hexagram 4  ☯️  mêng / youthful folly

 

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