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Inward journey
In the middle of everything
nothingness is found.
In the middle of nothingness
everything is realized.
bernard
During the Qing dynasty,
Zhao I wrote the folowing Poem:
“I had difficulty writing poetry.
When I was young,
I thought
it was becouse I was unrefined
and had not yet perfected my skill.
I was wery old
beafore I finally realized
that this can not be accomplished
by hard work alone.
Three tenth of it depends
upon man’s effort
but
the rest is up to Heaven.”
Stillness Mind
To become one with the subtle universal truth,
Or to be a shien, an immortal being,
Newly achived and born in heaven,
There is one, only one requirement:
Keep a consistently calm mind.
Keep it peaceful, transparent and
Still as the water of a clear, quiet lake,
And you will enjoy the subtlety of great bliss.
When dealing with minor problems or major disasters,
Stay calm and still as a holy mountain.
Whean dealing with pleasurable,
Maintain strict discipline.
In this way, when the unpleasant presents itself,
Your mind will not be disturbed.
Those who would embellish rites and rituals,
Succeed only in trying to impress others.
There is no power to be gained.
Nor is self-cultivation a tool
For exacting respect from your community,
It must show it's effectiveness on all occasions,
Especially in times of great difficulty.
Every day, in ordinary situations,
You can realize the benefit of self-cultivation.
No special time is reserved for this.
The calm power derived from your daily practice
Can transform what seems to be a disaster
Into a blessing.
Quietude can change misfortune into a good fortune,
Understand the elusive quality of your body and mind.
It is easy to keep the mind calm and emotions
Peaceful in ordinary situations,
But how difficult it is when problems come!
Learn this and you will be qualified
To sit in the seat of the Lotus,
To look deep within yourself.
Be a person of iron,
With a firm and unshakable mind,
And you will become a child
In the family of whole beings.
From:
I Ching(Hua ChingNi)
True heart
Where there is ego, the true heart cannot emerge. It is only in stillness and the absence of craving that original nature can be cultivated. Those who seek the Dao must begin with knowing the difference between true and untrue feeling, true and untrue intention. If you know the difference, then you will know the true heart. Intention and feeling can be known by observing the behavior in your daily life. If your actions are not sincere, then true feeling is absent. If your words are false, then true intention is absent. If you want to cultivate the Dao you must eradicate attachments that lead true intention and true feeling astray. Let original nature rather than your ego guide your actions. Do not waver in your pursuit of goodness. Then, your true heart, true feeling, and true intention will emerge and you will not be far from the Dao. These are the teachings of the real truth.
Lu Tung Pin
Outside ideas of right doing and wrong doing
there is a field.
I'll meet you there.
Rumi
The Great Way is not difficult
for those who have no preferences.
When love and hate are both absent
everything becomes clear and undisguised.
Make the smallest distinction, however,
and heaven and earth are set infinitely apart.
If you wish to see the truth
then hold no opinions for or against anything.
To set up what you like against what you dislike
is the disease of the mind.
When the deep meaning of things is not understood
the mind's essential peace is disturbed to no avail.
The Way is perfect like vast space
where nothing is lacking and nothing is in excess.
Indeed, it is due to our choosing to accept or reject
that we do not see the true nature of things.
Be serene in the oneness of things
and such erroneous views will disappear by themselves.
When you try to stop activity to achieve passivity
your very effort fills you with activity.
As long as you remain in one extreme or the other,
you will never know Oneness.
Those who do not live in the single Way
fail in both activity and passivity,
assertion and denial.
To deny the reality of things is to miss their reality;
to assert the emptiness of things
is to miss their reality.
The more you talk and think about it,
the further astray you wander from the truth.
Stop talking and thinking
and there is nothing you will not be able to know.
To return to the root is to find the meaning,
but to pursue appearances is to miss the source.
At the moment of inner enlightenment,
there is a going beyond appearance and emptiness.
The changes that appear to occur in the empty world
we call real only because of our ignorance.
Do not search for the truth;
only cease to cherish opinions.
Do not remain in the dualistic state;
avoid such pursuits carefully.
If there is even a trace
of this and that, of right and wrong,
the Mind-essence will be lost in confusion.
Although all dualities come from the One,
do not be attached even to this One.
When the mind exists undisturbed in the Way,
nothing in the world can offend,
and when a thing can no longer offend,
it ceases to exist in the old way.
When no discriminating thoughts arise,
the old mind ceases to exist.
When thought objects vanish,
the thinking-subject vanishes,
and when the mind vanishes, objects vanish.
Things are objects because there is a subject or mind;
and the mind is a subject because there are objects.
Understand the relativity of these two
and the basic reality: the unity of emptiness.
In this Emptiness the two are indistinguishable
and each contains in itself the whole world.
If you do not discriminate between coarse and fine
you will not be tempted to prejudice and opinion.
To live in the Great Way
is neither easy nor difficult.
But those with limited views
are fearful and irresolute;
the faster they hurry, the slower they go.
Clinging cannot be limited;
even to be attached to the idea of enlightenment
is to go astray.
Just let things be in their own way
and there will be neither coming nor going.
Obey the nature of things
and you will walk freely and undisturbed.
When thought is in bondage the truth is hidden,
for everything is murky and unclear.
The burdensome practice of judging
brings annoyance and weariness.
What benefit can be derived
from distinctions and separations?
If you wish to move in the One Way
do not dislike even the world of senses and ideas.
Indeed, to accept them fully
is identical with true Enlightenment.
The wise man strives to no goals
but the foolish man fetters himself.
There is one Dharma, not many;
distinctions arise from the clinging needs of the ignorant.
To seek Mind with discriminating mind
is the greatest of all mistakes.
Rest and unrest derive from illusion;
with enlightenment there is no liking and disliking.
All dualities come from ignorant inference.
They are like dreams of flowers in air:
foolish to try to grasp them.
Gain and loss, right and wrong;
such thoughts must finally be abolished at once.
If the eye never sleeps,
all dreams will naturally cease.
If the mind makes no discriminations,
the ten thousand things
are as they are, of single essence.
To understand the mystery of this One-essence
is to be released from all entanglements.
When all things are seen equally
the timeless Self-essence is reached.
No comparisons or analogies are possible
in this causeless, relationless state.
Consider motion in stillness
and stillness in motion;
both movement and stillness disappear.
When such dualities cease to exist
Oneness itself cannot exist.
To this ultimate finality
no law or description applies.
For the unified mind in accord with the Way
all self-centered striving ceases.
Doubts and irresolutions vanish
and life in true faith is possible.
With a single stroke we are freed from bondage;
nothing clings to us and we hold to nothing.
All is empty, clear, self-illuminating,
with no exertion of the mind's power.
Here thought, feeling, knowledge, and imagination are of no value.
In this world of Suchness
there is neither self nor other-than-self.
To come directly into harmony with this reality
just simply say when doubt arises, "Not two."
In this "not two" nothing is separate,
nothing is excluded.
No matter when or where,
enlightenment means entering this truth.
And this truth is beyond extension or diminution in time or space;
in it a single thought is ten thousand years.
Emptiness here, Emptiness there,
but the infinite universe stands always before your eyes.
Infinitely large and infinitely small;
no difference, for definitions have vanished
and no boundaries are seen.
So too with Being and non-Being.
Waste no time in doubts and arguments
that have nothing to do with this.
One thing, all things;
move among and intermingle,
without distinction.
To live in this realization
is to be without anxiety about nonperfection.
To live in this faith is the road to nonduality,
because the nondual is one with the trusting mind.
Words!
The Way is beyond language,
for in it there is
no yesterday
no tomorrow
no today.
Verses on the Faith Mind
by chien-chih Seng-ts'an
Third Zen Patriarch [606AD]
When man approaches his end,
he begins to love his body.
After the crime has been committed he thinks about converting himself to be a good person.
Only after sickness has come he
strives towards obtaining the remedy for it.
Once the Heavenly net
(of retribution)
has been (widely) cast
there is no use to regret.
The virtous man and the superior scholars therefore
treasures the life that is not endangered yet.
They dread what is not yet a calamity
and they heal what is not yet a sickness.
from book of immortality
With a well-ordered mind within you,
well-ordered words issue forth from your mouth,
and well-ordered tasks are imposed upon others.
Then all under the Heavens will be well ordered.
When One word is grasped,
all under the Heaven will submit.
When One word is fixed,
all under the Heaven will listen.
It is this word “WAY” to which the saying refers.
Nei - Yeh
Contemplate the place
where things can be influenced and touched.
By doing so
you can see what moves the hearts
of Heaven, Earth and Myriad Beings.
I ching
Using Change to accord with the time,
either great or small,
and stay in contact with the Way
allows you to accomulate TE,(virtue)
the power to realise yourself to become
who you are meant to be,
thus fulfilling your innate destiny.
This power and virtue have a profound
yet indirect effect on everything around you.
Stephen Karcher
In My End is My Beginning;
But he who obeys Nature returns through Form and
Formless to the Living,
And in the Living
Joins the unbegun Beginnning. ...
Zhuang Zi
If you stop dividing with your mind,
you can be ONE.
Krishnamurti
Keeping the One
is a creative process
in the freeing of one's energies
from the concepts.
Those who master this
are the masters of space and time
Divine Immortals.
Kristofer Schipper
If you can be aligned and tranquil,
you will mirror things with great purity
and perceive things with great clarity.
This is colled "Inward Attainment."
Nei - Yeh
The reason sages don't speak or act
is so
that they can bestow their blessing in secret
and so that people can live their lives in peace.
And when their work succeeds and their lives go well,
People think that is just the way it is supposed to be.
They don't realize it was made possible
by those on high.
Wu Zheng
Two or three years of hardship,
tenthousand years of bliss...
Huang Yuan Qi
Dao is not what people expect.
De Jing
To make tools is to lose sight of the Way.
Zhang Dao Ling
Outside of Dao there are no things,
outside of things there is no Dao.
Zheng Xuan Ying
Among the arts we cultivate,
the most subtle of all is honesty,
which is the beginning and end of cultivation.
Huang Yuan Qi
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