You who lack
self-discipline, be inquiring!
Going straight to the root is the hallmark
of the buddha; picking up leaves and collecting branches
is no use at all. Most people don’t know the pearl
that answers all wishes.
Posts Tagged → ibooks
look for delusion and truth
Why do you
so earnestly seek the
truth in distant places?
Look for delusion and truth
in the bottom of your
own hearts.
Ryōkan
all this altar paraphernalia
Flowers,
sesame seed, bowls of fresh water,
a tuft of kusa-grass, all this altar paraphernalia
is not needed by someone who takes
the teacher’s words in and
honestly lives
them.
Full of
longing in meditation,
one sinks into a joy that is free of
any impulse to act and will
not enter a human
birth again.
learning how to be happy
One has to spend
so many years in learning how
to be happy. I am just beginning to make
some progress in the science, and I hope to disprove
Young’s theory that “as soon as we have found the key of life
it opens the gates of death.” Every year strips us of at least one vain
expectation, and teaches us to reckon some solid good in its
stead. I never will believe that our youngest days are
our happiest. What a miserable augury for the
progress of the race and the destination
of the individual if the more matured
and enlightened state is the
less happy one!
Childhood is only
the beautiful and happy time
in contemplation and retrospect:
to the child it is full of deep sorrows,
the meaning of which is unknown. Witness
colic and whooping-cough and dread of ghosts,
to say nothing of hell and Satan, and an offended Deity
in the sky, who was angry when I wanted too much plumcake.
Then the sorrows of older persons, which children see but
cannot understand, are worse than all. All this to prove
that we are happier than when we were seven years
old, and that we shall be happier when we are
forty than we are now, which I call a
comfortable doctrine, and one
worth trying to
believe!
a place of quiet refuge
Flow like pure water
through difficult situations.
The image of the hexagram K’an is that of water: water falling from the heavens, water coursing over the earth in streams, water collecting itself in pure and silent pools. This image is meant to teach us how to conduct ourselves in trying situations. If we flow through them, staying true to what is pure and innocent in ourselves, we escape danger and reach a place of quiet refuge and good fortune beyond.
K’an often appears to warn of a troubling time either drawing near or already at hand, and to counsel you not to fall into longing for an immediate and effortless solution to the trouble. When you become “emotionally ambitious” – when you cling to comfort and desire to be free of the currents of change in life – you block the Creative from resolving difficulties in your favor. What is necessary now is to accept the situation, to flow with it like water, to remain innocent and pure and sincere while the Higher Power works out a solution.
It is not that you should not act now; it is that you should not act out of frustration, anxiety, despair, or a desire to escape the situation. Instead, still yourself and look for the lesson hidden inside the difficulty. Correct your attitude until it is open, detached, and unstructured. Abandon your goals and stay on the path, where you proceed step by step, arm in arm, with the Sage.
Those whose hearts and minds are kept pure and innocent relate properly to all events, understand their cosmic meaning, and flow through them with the strength, clarity, and brilliance of pure water.
The I Ching, or Book of Changes
Hexagram 29, K’an / The Abysmal (Water)
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