Keep practicing even when
there seems no hope
of success.
Posts Tagged → realization
accomplish your ends by yielding
A great country is like
a low-lying land into which many
streams flow. It draws powerful energies
to it as a receptive woman draws
an eager man.
The feminine can always
conquer the masculine by yielding
and taking the lower position. In this way
she becomes as low-lying land:
in time, everything comes
her way.
Therefore a great country
can win over a small country by practicing
humility. A small country can also win over
a great country by practicing
humility.
One wins by
willingly taking the lower
position. The other wins by
willingly acknowledging
its lower position.
The great country
wants to embrace and nourish
more people.The small country wants
to ably serve its benefactor. Both
accomplish their ends
by yielding.
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revise the story you tell yourself
Revise the story
you tell yourself about failure.
Consider yourself an apprentice in the world.
Learn all you can. Gain experience.
Keep moving.
don’t long for heavens or fear hells
Don’t
seek a Buddha,
don’t seek a teaching,
don’t seek a community.
Don’t seek virtue, knowledge,
intellectual understanding, and
so on. When feelings of defilement
and purity are ended, still don’t hold
to this non-seeking and consider it right.
Don’t dwell at the point of ending, and
don’t long for heavens or fear hells.
When you are unhindered by
bondage or freedom, then
this is called liberation
of mind and body in
all places.
beautiful things grow out of shit
“What would be really interesting for people to see is how beautiful things grow out of shit, because nobody ever believes that, you know. Everybody thinks that Beethoven had his string quartets completely in his head, they somehow appeared there and formed in his head, and all he had to do was write them down and they would be kind of manifest to the world.
“But what I think what’s so interesting, and what should be a lesson everybody should learn, is that things come out of nothing. Things evolve out of nothing. You know, the tiniest seed in the right situation turns into the most beautiful forest. And then the most promising seed, in the wrong situation, turns into nothing.
“And I think that this would be important for people to understand because it gives people confidence in their own lives to know that that’s how things work. If you walk around with the idea that there are some people who are so gifted, they have these wonderful things in their head, but you’re not one of them, you’re just sort of a normal person, you could never do anything like that, then you live a different kind of life, you know.
“You could have another kind of life where you can say, where you say, ‘Well, I know that things comes from nothing very much and start from unpromising beginnings, and I’m an unpromising beginning, and I could start something.'”