Your inner power
makes influence possible.
There is danger in ambition and
agenda-making. The truly beneficial
influence is that which flows
naturally from your
attention to what
is correct.
from The I Ching, or Book of Changes
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Stabilization is the final stage of escape from the profane, the foundation of attaining the Way, the accomplishment of cultivated stillness, the consummation of maintaining calm.
When the body is like a withered tree, the mind like dead ashes, without reactivity, without seeking anything, this is the epitome of tranquility. There is no mindfulness of stabilization, yet there is stability. Thus it is called tranquil stabilization.
Chuang-tzu said, “One whose capacity is tranquilly stabilized radiates natural light.” Capacity refers to the mind, natural light is active insight. The mind is a capacitor of the Way; when it is as uncluttered and quiet as can be, then the Way stays there and insight emerges.
Insight comes from original nature; one does not just come to have it now. That is why it is called natural light. It is just because of the muddling confusion caused by craving that it comes to be obscure. Clean it, make it flexible, rectify it, and restore it to purity and calm, and the original real conscious spirit will gradually become clear of itself; this does not mean that you are just now producing that insight.
Once insight has emerged, treasure it and do not compromise stability by too many concerns.
Treatise on Sitting Forgetting
Patch-robed monks
practice thoroughly without carrying
a single thread. Open-mindedly sparkling and pure,
they are like a mirror reflecting a mirror, with
nothing regarded as outside, without
capacity for accumulating
dust.
All obstructions
of defilements and karmas of worry
and trouble, are in origin, empty. All causes and
effects are dreams and illusions. The great Way is empty
and vast. It is beyond thought and deliberation.
You, at this instant, have this dharma
and are without lack.
Thirty spokes
meet at a hollowed-out hub;
the wheel won’t work without its hole.
A vessel is moulded from solid clay; its inner
emptiness makes it useful. To make a room, you
have to cut doors and windows; without
openings, a place isn’t livable.
To make use of what is here,
you must make use of
what is not.
from The Tao te Ching of Lao Tzu,
ebooks & apps of the Tao the Ching, I Ching,
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