You
don’t have to
straighten anything out
in your mind. You only have
to set it down if it
isn’t good.
Your
enlightenment is
fully present at every moment
of your life. If you perceive something
between you and that, nothing more
need be done other than
to let go of it upon
observing
it.
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Surrounded by obstructions,
one must first retreat, then
seek the direction of
the Sage.
There is an old saying which fits this hexagram: “You are caught between a rock and a hard place.” In other words, you are surrounded by obstructions. As much as you may want to blame others for the difficulty, in all likelihood the true obstruction is in your own thinking. What is called for now is a retreat into self-examination and self-correction.
Emotions of desire, fear, or anger may tempt you to take action now, but do not be seduced. The presence of these strong feelings is proof that your are off balance and need to steady yourself. As long as you try to forcibly achieve results—rather than carefully following higher truth step by step—you will be obstructed from making personal progress.
Whenever we indulge in judgements about others, we obstruct our own peace of mind and progress. We should choose instead to see the best in others, allow them to come and go as they will, and turn our energies inward, toward self-improvement.
Often the faults in our own thinking are revealed only with the aid of others. You would be wise now to seek the advice of a qualified counselor or truth-minded friend. Retreat, self-examination, and self-correction will remove the obstructions that block your path now.
from The I Ching, or Book of Changes
Hexagram 39, Chien / Obstruction
FIRST LINE
Do not resist difficulties
or advance against them. By retreating
and observing, you learn an important lesson.
Then moving forward becomes easy.
FIFTH LINE
The obstructions can only be
overcome by the strength of proper principles.
Through perseverance and correctness you
obtain the aid you need
to succeed.
Want
to study with
an enlightened teacher?
Just stop giving rise to thoughts
and divisions and distinctions. When
self and other, good and bad, right
and wrong are replaced with
emptiness, you are your
own master.
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With greatest respect and reverence, I encourage all you superior seekers in the secret depths to devote yourselves to penetrating and clarifying the self as earnestly as you would put out a fire on the top of your head. I urge you to keep boring your way through as assiduously as you would seek a lost article of incalculable worth.
I enjoin you to regard the teachings left by the Buddha-patriarchs with the same spirit of hostility you would show toward a person who had murdered both your parents. Anyone who belongs to the school of Zen and does not engage in the doubting and introspection of koan must be considered a deadbeat rascal of the lowest kind, someone who would throw aside his greatest asset. As a teacher of the past said, “At the bottom of great doubt lies great enlightenment … From a full measure of doubt comes a full measure of enlightenment.”
Don’t think the commitments and pressing duties of secular life leave you no time to go about forming a ball of doubt. Don’t think your mind is so crowded with confused thoughts you are incapable of devoting yourself singlemindedly to Zen practice. Suppose a man was in a busy market place, pushing his way through the dense crowd, and some gold coins dropped out of his pocket into the dirt. Do you think he would just leave them there forget about them and continue on his way because of where he was?
Do you think someone would leave the gold pieces behind because he was in a crowded place or because the coins were lying in the dirt? Of course not. He would be down there frantically pushing and shoving with tears in his eyes trying to find them. His mind wouldn’t rest until he had recovered them. Yet what are a few pieces of gold when set against that priceless jewel found in the headdresses of kings — the way of inconceivable being that exists within your own mind? Could a jewel of such worth be attained easily, without effort?
How
amazing it is
that all people have this but
cannot polish it into bright clarity.
In darkness unawakened, they
make foolishness cover
their wisdom.
To achieve
what the zen buddhists
call “beginner’s mind,” you dispense
with all preconceptions and enter
each situation as if seeing it
for the first time.
“In the
beginner’s mind there
are many possibilities,” wrote
Shunryu Suzuki in his book Zen Mind,
Beginner’s Mind, “but in the
expert’s there are few.”
As much
as I love beginner’s
mind, though, I advocate an
additional discipline: cultivating a
beginner’s heart. That means approaching
every encounter imbued with a freshly
invoked wave of love that is as pure
as if you’re feeling it for
the first time.
