All we have to do is
be ourselves, fully and authentically.
We don’t have to run after anything. We already
contain the whole cosmos. We simply return to ourselves
through mindfulness, and touch the peace and joy
that are already present within us
and all around us.
I have arrived.
I am already home.
There is nothing to do.
Aimlessness, nonattainment,
is a wonderful practice.
As with the classical
Chinese teachers of the Tang dynasty,
Shuho maintained that awakening was central to
Buddhist practice. In a document called Daito’s Testament, he
reminded his students, “You have come here not for food or clothing
but for religion. As long as you have a mouth, you will have food;
as long as you have a body, you will have clothes. Don’t concern
yourself with these. Be mindful throughout your waking
hours; time flies like an arrow, don’t waste it with
concern over worldly matters.”
He went on to tell his disciples
that even if they were to become the abbots
of wealthy monasteries and received the respect of
the laity and nobility, even if they were rigorous in their practice
of meditation and ritual activities, but they lacked awakening, they were
no more than members of the “tribe of evil spirits.” Conversely, if they
were poverty stricken, lived in a ramshackle hermitage, and ate
only what wild food they gathered in the forests and
yet they were awakened, then they would be
“one who meets me face to face
and repays my kindness.”
years of hunger beneath gojo bridge
In times past
there was a monk who asked
an old adept, “The world is so hot, I don’t know
where to escape.” The old adept said, “Escape into a
boiling cauldron, into the coals of a furnace.
The multitude of sufferings cannot
reach there.”
This is my
own prescription for
getting results.
Devotion to truth
enables a revolution.
The hexagram Ko announces the arrival of a time of revolution. A set of conditions, internal or external or both, is ready to pass away in favor of a more beneficial situation. What enables this transformation is your conscious and vigorous adherence to correct thought and behavior.
No revolution in outer things is possible without a prior revolution in one’s inner way of being. Whatever change you aspire to in your affairs must be preceded by a change in heart, and active deepening and strengthening of your resolve to meet every event with equanimity, detachment, and innocent goodwill. When this spiritual poise is achieved within, magnificent things are possible without.
The revolutions of others are enabled also when we refine the fire of goodness and truth inside ourselves. Sincere commitment to higher things travels outward in powerful waves from the superior person, and all those around are affected by this. Indisputably, to lead one’s inner self to truth and peace is to lead the outer world to truth and peace. A beneficial revolution is assured to one who takes this path now.
The I Ching, or Book of Changes
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If you can really
get to see your original Mind,
you must regard it as if you were raising
an infant. In whatever you do such as walking, standing,
sitting, lying down, be aware of Mind so that everything is illuminated
by it, so that nothing of the seven consciousnesses (vijnana) soils it.
If you can keep him [the new born Mind] clear and distinct,
it is like an infant growing up becoming
equal with the father.