Posts Tagged → wei wu wei ching

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

☯️

 

the pain of being stretched

bisa butler

 

Tagore says:

‘When the string of the violin

was being tuned it felt the pain of being

stretched, but once it was tuned then it knew why it

was stretched’. So it is with the human soul. While the soul

goes through pain, torture and trouble it thinks that it would

have  been much better if it had gone through life without

it. But once it reaches the culmination of it then,

when it looks back, it begins to realize why

all this was meant: it was only meant

to tune the soul to a

certain pitch.

 

Hazrat Inayat Khan

wahiduddin’s web

 

tranquility on every level is advised

takashi nakamura

 

Restrain your speech.

An active tongue betrays a restless

mind. Tranquility on every

level is advised.
 

5th changing line, 

Hexagram 52, Ken / Mountain

from The I Ching, or Book of Changes

 

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attend to your attitude

absorbed in stillness

 

It is

an unavoidable fact

of life that inferior influences

sometimes prevail: improperly motivated

people ascend to power, there is injustice and conflict

and poverty, and spiritual life in general descends into darkness

and decay.  While these difficult times are inevitable — and the arrival

of this hexagram indicates that this is such a time — this does

not mean that we have to stagnate personally as well. 

By turning inward and realigning ourselves

with proper principles, we initiate

the return to light, truth

and progress.

 

The image

of P’i is of heaven

moving away from the earth. 

When this happens, the inferior qualities

in ourselves and in others come to the surface and

seek expression.  It is unlikely now that you can affect what

others do and say or that your activities will bear much fruit.  While

it is natural to feel anxious and disappointed about this state of

affairs, it is essential to disengage from these inferior

emotions now.  To indulge in them is to

abandon  your superior self and

plunge into a state of

disintegration.

 

What is

wise now is to accept

that external progress is unlikely. 

Turn your attention inward and examine your

own thoughts and attitudes for inferior influences

and departures from the principles of the Sage. 

By withdrawing into solitude and refining

your higher nature, you continue

to grow while all else around

you stagnates.

 

The I Ching, or Book of Changes

Hexagram 12, P’i Standstill (Stagnation)

 

ebooks & apps of the Tao the Ching, I Ching,

Hua hu Ching, and Art of War for

iPad, Phone, Kindle, Nook,

or Android

 
 

You

can now buy

the I Ching as part of a

five-app bundle of Taoist classics 

for iPhone or iPad for less than

the cost of one hardcover

book.

brian browne walker taoist app bundle ios ipad iphone

 

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