No mud, no
lotus.
Posts Tagged → mud
remain free and uninvolved
At all times just remain free and uninvolved. Never make any displays of clever tricks — be like a stolid simpleton in a village of three families. Then the gods will have no road on which to offer you flowers, and demons and outsiders will not be able to spy on you.
Be undefinable, and do not reveal any conspicuous signs of your special attainment. It should be as if you are there among myriad precious goods locked up securely and deeply hidden in a treasure house. With your face smeared with mud and ashes, join in the work of the common laborers, neither speaking out nor thinking.
Live your whole life so that no one can figure you out, while your spirit and mind are at peace. Isn’t this what it is to be imbued with the Way without any contrived or forced actions, a genuinely unconcerned person?
Among the enlightened adepts, being able to speak the Truth has nothing to do with the tongue, and being able to talk about the Dharma is not a matter of words.
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washing dirt in mud
By even speaking a phrase to you,
I have already doused you with dirty water.
It would be even worse for me to put a twinkle in my eye
and raise my eyebrow to you, or rap on the meditation seat
or hold up a whisk, or demand, “What is this?”
As for shouting and hitting, it’s obvious
that this is just a pile of bones
on level ground.
There are also the type
who don’t know good from bad and
ask questions about Buddha and Dharma and Zen
and the Tao. They ask to be helped, they beg to be received,
they seek knowledge and sayings and theories relating to
the Buddhist teaching and to transcending the world
and to accommodating the world. This is washing
dirt in mud and washing mud in dirt —
when will they ever manage
to clear it away?
Forget the words and
embody the meaning.