Posts Tagged → stillness

contact with good and bad

the most authentic master I ever encountered

 
Something in prolonged contact with rouge eventually becomes red, something in prolonged contact with soot eventually becomes black. What I realize as I observe this is the tao of habituation to good and bad.
 
When you live with good people, what you always hear are good words and what you always see are good actions. Hearing and seeing good words and actions over a long period of time plants good seeds in your mind, so that you spontanteously become accustomed to goodness.
 
When you live with bad people, what you always hear are bad words and what you always see are bad actions. Hearing and seeing bad words and bad actions over a long period of time plants bad seeds in your mind, so that you naturally become accustomed to badness.
 
Good and bad people are said to be so by nature, but most become so through habit. Therefore wise people choose their associates carefully.
 

Liu I-Ming

awakening to the tao

hard copy

 

whenever something happens

the way of heaven

 

Can what happened to you

stop you from being fair, high-minded,

moderate, conscientious, unhasty, honest, moral,

self-reliant, and so on — from possessing all the qualities that,

when present, enable a man’s nature to be fulfilled? So then,

whenever something happens that might cause you

distress, remember to rely on this principle:

this is not bad luck, but bearing it

valiantly is good luck.

 

Marcus Aurelius

the annotated marcus

 

spend your days silencing your mind

silent and still

 

Once you

merge your tracks

into the stream of zen,

you spend your days silencing

your mind and studying with your

whole being. You realize that this Great Cause

is not obtained from anyone else but is just a matter

of taking up the task boldly and strongly, and making constant

progress. Day by day you shed your delusions, and day by day you

enhance your clarity of mind. Your potential for enlightened perception

is like fine gold that is to be refined hundreds and thousands of times.

What is essential for getting out of the dusts, what is basic for

helping living creatures, is that you must penetrate

through freely in all directions and arrive at

peace and security free from doubt and

attain the stage of great

potential and great

function.

 

This work

is located precisely in

your own inner actions. It is just

a matter of being in the midst of the interplay

of the myriad causal conditions every day, in the confusion

of the red dusts, amid favorable and adverse circumstances and

gain and loss, appearing and disappearing in their midst,

without being affected and turned around by

them, but on the contrary, being able

to transform them and turn

them around.

 

…When you

go on grinding and polishing

like this for a long time, you are liberated

right in the midst of birth and death, and you look upon

the world’s useless reputation and ruinous projects as mere dust

in the wind, as a dream, as a magical apparition, as an

optical illusion. Set free, you pass through the

world. Isn’t this what it means to be a

great saint who has emerged from

the dusts of sensory

attachments?

 

Yuanwu

zen letters

the source of light and darkness

ian bird, cape fear

 

One learns to understand

that there is a world in one’s self,

that in one’s mind there is a source of

happiness and unhappiness, the source of

health and illness, the source of light and darkness,

and that it can be awakened, either mechanically or at will,

if only one knew how to do it. Then one does not blame his

ill fortune nor complain of his fellow man. He becomes

more tolerant, more joyful, and more loving toward

his neighbor, because he knows the cause of

every thought and action, and he sees

it all as the effect of a

certain cause.

 

…Therefore, the work

of the mystic is to be able to read

the language of the mind. As the clerk

in the telegraph office reads letters from the

ticks, so the Sufi gets behind every word spoken to

him and discovers what has prompted the word to come out.

He therefore reads the lines which are behind man’s thought,

speech, and action. He also understands that every kind of

longing and craving in life, good or bad, has its source

in deep impression. By knowing this root of the

disease he is easily able to find out its cure.

No impression is such that it

cannot be erased.

 

Hazrat Inayat Khan

wahiduddin’s web