Posts Tagged → tao te ching

subtle wonder within mysterious darkness

eddie o’bryan

 

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. 

 

Tao te Ching of Lao Tzu,

Chapter 1

 

🦋

 

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.

 

Yuanwu

 

🐞

 

tunneling into secret depths

the singular victo ngai

 
With greatest respect and reverence, I encourage all you superior seekers in the secret depths to devote yourselves to penetrating and clarifying the self as earnestly as you would put out a fire on the top of your head. I urge you to keep boring your way through as assiduously as you would seek a lost article of incalculable worth.

I enjoin you to regard the teachings left by the Buddha-patriarchs with the same spirit of hostility you would show toward a person who had murdered both your parents. Anyone who belongs to the school of Zen and does not engage in the doubting and introspection of koan must be considered a deadbeat rascal of the lowest kind, someone who would throw aside his greatest asset. As a teacher of the past said, “At the bottom of great doubt lies great enlightenment … From a full measure of doubt comes a full measure of enlightenment.”

Don’t think the commitments and pressing duties of secular life leave you no time to go about forming a ball of doubt. Don’t think your mind is so crowded with confused thoughts you are incapable of devoting yourself singlemindedly to Zen practice. Suppose a man was in a busy market place, pushing his way through the dense crowd, and some gold coins dropped out of his pocket into the dirt. Do you think he would just leave them there forget about them and continue on his way because of where he was?

Do you think someone would leave the gold pieces behind because he was in a crowded place or because the coins were lying in the dirt? Of course not. He would be down there frantically pushing and shoving with tears in his eyes trying to find them. His mind wouldn’t rest until he had recovered them. Yet what are a few pieces of gold when set against that priceless jewel found in the headdresses of kings — the way of inconceivable being that exists within your own mind? Could a jewel of such worth be attained easily, without effort?
 

Hakuin Ekaku

mas hakuin

 

light inside and dark outside

liu i-ming

 
People’s intellect and knowledge are like the light of a lamp. If that light is mistakenly used outside, in a contentious and aggressive manner, aiming for name and gain, scheming and conniving day and night, thinking a thousand thoughts, imagining ten thousand imaginings, chasing artificial objects and losing the original source, light on the outside but dark inside, this will go on until the body is injured and life is lost.

If people give up artificiality and return to the real, dismiss intellectuality and cleverness, consider essential life the one matter of importance, practice inner awareness, refine the self and master the mind, observe all things with detachment so all that exists is empty of absoluteness, are not moved by external things and are not influenced by sensory experiences, being light inside and dark outside, they can thereby aspire to wisdom and become enlightened.

Light that does not dazzle progresses to lofty illumination; therefore a classic says, “The great sage appears ignorant, the great adept seems inept.”
 

Liu I-Ming

awakening to the tao

hard copy