So high you
cannot climb or get close to it;
raindrops scatter in the flying wind.
The gate is barred with green moss. Suddenly
forgetting thought, without attainment,
only then will you be sure
the gate has been open
all along.
the calm light from the spirit
The best effort
one can make is the
gentlest effort: wei wu wei.
Quietly, persistently direct the
mind toward emptiness. When
all thoughts and ideas have
dissipated, then make no
further effort. Just
breathe.
This is the only
practice required of a
human, the best one, the one
that perfectly purifies
our lives.
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Don’t seek fame or Just pass this life as is, according to circumstances. When the breath is gone, who is in charge? After the death of the body, there is only an empty name. When your clothes are worn, repair them over and over; when you have no food, work to provide. How long can a phantom-like body last? Would you increase your ignorance for the sake of its idle concerns? A sage is subtle, intuitive, penetrating, profound. His depths are mysterious and unfathomable. The best one can do is describe his appearance: the sage is alert as a person crossing a winter stream; as circumspect as a person with neighbors on all four sides; as respectful as a thoughtful guest; as yielding as melting ice; as simple as uncarved wood; as open as a valley; as chaotic as a muddy torrent. Why “chaotic as a muddy torrent”? Because clarity is learned by being patient in the heart of chaos. Tolerating disarray, remaining at rest, gradually one learns to allow muddy water to settle and proper responses to reveal themselves. Those who aspire to tao don’t long for fulfillment. They selflessly allow tao to use and deplete them; they calmly allow tao to renew and complete them. These days, Obama spends a lot of time talking with younger people. With them, he is an elder refuting the notion that things have never been worse. “I say, ‘No, you know what? Civil War—really bad. Jim Crow—tough. You know, our parents, our grandparents, our great-grandparents went through stuff that was profoundly tougher than what we’re going through,’ ” the former President said. “And I say that not to pull rank on them but, rather, to pull them out of any kind of hopelessness about the situation.” Since they already have great faculties and great capacity from the past, they know that this level exists, and they transcend birth and death and move beyond holy and ordinary. This is the indestructible true essence that all the enlightened ones of all times witness, the wondrous mind that alone the generations of enlightened teachers have communicated. To tread this unique path, to be a fragrant elephant or a giant, golden-winged bird, it is necessary to charge past the millions of categories and types and fly above them, to cut off the flow and brush against the heavens. How could the enlightened willingly be petty creatures, confined within distinctions of high and low and victory and defeat, trying futilely to make comparative judgments of instantaneous experience, and being utterly turned around by gain and loss? For this reason, in olden times the people of great enlightenment did not pay attention to trivial matters and did not aspire to the shallow and easily accessible. They aroused their determination to transcend the buddhas and patriarchs. They wanted to bear the heavy responsibility that no one can fully take up, to rescue all living beings, to remove suffering and bring peace, to smash the ignorance and blindness that obstructs the Way. They wanted to break the poisonous arrows of ignorant folly and extract the thorns of arbitrary views from the eye of reality. They wanted to make the scenery of the fundamental ground clear and reveal the original face before the empty aeon. You should train your mind and value actual practice wholeheartedly, exerting all your power, not shrinking from the cold or the heat. Go to the spot where you meditate and kill your mental monkey and slay your intellectual horse. Make yourself like a dead tree, like a withered stump. Suddenly you penetrate through — how could it be attained from anyone else? You discover the hidden treasure, you light the lamp in the dark room, you launch the boat across the center of the ford. You experience great liberation, and without producing a single thought, you immediately attain true awakening. Having passed through the gate into the inner truth, you ascend to the site of universal light. Then you sit in the impeccably pure supreme seat of the emptiness of all things.
how long can a phantom-like body last?
patience in the heart of chaos
transcend the buddhas and patriarchs
Brave-spirited wearers of the patched robe possess an outstanding, extraordinary aspect. With great determination they give up conventional society. They look upon worldly status and evanescent fame as dust in the wind, as clouds floating by, as echoes in a valley.
