Those who wear the
patched robe of a zen wayfarer
should be completely serious about
taking death and birth as
their business.
Don’t
covet name and fame.
Step back and turn to reality, until
your practical understanding
and virtue are fully
actualized.
Tao is beyond words
and beyond understanding.
Words may be used to speak of
it, but they cannot
contain it.
Tao existed before
words and names, before heaven and earth,
before the ten thousand things. It is the unlimited
father and mother of all limited things. Therefore, to see
beyond all boundaries to the subtle heart of things,
dispense with names, with concepts,
with expectations and ambitions
and differences.
Tao and its many manifestations
arise from the same source: subtle wonder
within mysterious darkness. This
is the beginning of all
understanding.
🦋
This reality
cannot be covered by the skies
or held up by the earth. Space cannot contain it.
It abides within all sentient beings and is the support
on which all of them rest. It has always been
clean and naked. There is nowhere
it does not pervade.
🐞
Buddhism
advises you not to implant
feelings that you don’t really have or avoid
feelings that you do have. If you are miserable you
are miserable; that is the reality, that is what is happening,
so confront that. Look it square in the eye without flinching.
When you are having a bad time, examine that experience,
observe it mindfully, study the phenomenon and learn
its mechanics. The way out of a trap is to study the
trap itself, learn how it is built. You do this by
taking the thing apart piece by piece.
The trap can’t trap you if it has
been taken to pieces.
The result is
freedom.
the shock of unsettling events
In order to
be a proper teacher to
oneself, one must be part midwife,
part executioner: sometimes rebirthing oneself,
sometimes annihilating and leaving useless bits by the
wayside, until the self soars free and clear of
attachment, obstruction, and delusion
and joins all buddhas past,
present, and
future.
Then one
can stop fracturing
reality with names and ideas
of self, other, buddha,
enlightenment,
and so on.
There,
beyond definitions
and beyond mind, reality
flows like pure
water.
You
can now buy
Wei wu Wei Ching as part of a
five-app bundle of Taoist classics
for iPhone or iPad for less than
the cost of one hardcover
book.
In the
practice of the Way,
nothing is forced. Remaining
at home in quiet concentration,
you merge the outside
and inside into
one.
At peace
with everything,
unlearned, unworried,
untouched by phenomena,
you enter into reality
as an ordinary
person.
You
can now buy
Wei wu Wei Ching as part of a
five-app bundle of Taoist classics
for iPhone or iPad for less than
the cost of one hardcover
book.
