Posts Tagged → quiet

a place of quiet refuge

pham huy trung

 

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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meet the source on all sides

quiet, still, at home

 

Those who are determined to practice the Way practice self-awareness and self-understanding twenty-four hours a day. They think of this and focus on this. They know that the one Great Cause is there right where they stand, that it is in sages without being augmented and in ordinary people without being diminished. They know that it stands alone free of senses and sense objects, and that it far transcends material things.

Wayfarers don’t set up fixed locations in anything they do. They are clear and tranquil, with solid concentration, and the myriad transformations never disturb them. They appear in response to conditions and go into action as they encounter events, leaving nothing incomplete.

You should just be empty and quiet, transcending everything. Once the main basis is clear, all obscurities are illuminated. “Ten thousand years — a single thought. A single thought — ten thousand years.” Passing through from the heights to the depths, the great function of the whole potential is in operation. It is like when a strong man flexes his arm: he doesn’t depend on anyone else’s strength. Then the illusory blinders of birth and death vanish forever, and the true essence indestructible as a diamond is all that shows. Once realized, it is realized forever — there is no interruption.

All that the enlightened teachers, ancient and modern, have said and done — the scriptural teachings, the enlightenment stories, the meditation stories, the question-and-answer sessions, all their teaching functions — all of this illuminates this true essence alone.

If you can be free and clear in actual practice for a long time, naturally you will come to meet the Source on all sides and become unified and whole.

Haven’t you seen Fadeng’s verse?

 

Going into a wild field, not choosing,

Picking up whatever plant comes to hand,

Rootless but finding life,

Apart from the ground but not falling.

 

Right before your eyes, it has always been there. Facing the situation, why don’t you speak? If you don’t know it in your daily life, where then will you look for it? Better find out.

 

Yuanwu

zen letters

🪷