Sometimes it is better, when we we feel groundless and uncertain, to resist the drive to make a situation right or wrong, and instead to trust in an underlying flow.
Once the whole is divided, the parts need names.
There are already enough names.
One must know when to stop.
Knowing when to stop averts trouble.
All things end in the Tao, like a river flowing home to the sea.
Lao Tzu, Tao te Ching, 32
A monk once asked Joshu, ‘Who is my teacher?’
Joshu said, ‘Clouds rising out of the mountains, streams entering the valley without a sound.’
The monk said, ‘I wasn’t asking about them.’
Joshu said, ‘Though they are your teachers, you don’t recognize them.‘
from Henry Shukman, One Blade of Grass: Finding the Old Road of the Heart
Zen is the opposite of withdrawal from the world. It’s a radical acceptance of life, the pain and suffering no less than the beauty of the dawn skies, of the sea in rain, the mountain dark under morning clouds, and the shopping list. Unless a path leads us back into the world — reincarnates us, as it were — it’s not a complete path. For Zen, this life, this world, is the very absolute. Making a cup of tea, fetching milk from the fridge, standing outside on the front step, watching the remains of a storm drift across the dawn sky, and hearing the drip-drip of rainwater into a puddle from a roof are miracles. The miraculous, in the end, is the fact of anything existing at all.
Henry Shukman, One Blade of Grass: Finding the Old Road of the Heart, a Zen Memoir
When you are upset, your window is blurred. And…you’re going to straighten out all the buildings just because your window is blurred with the rain?
Could we clean our windows first?
We see people not as they are, but as we are. And it’s amazing how in the beginning we saw people as rude; then when we change, we see frightened people. They are so scared that they’re driven to hostility. Then you are understanding, you are compassionate, whereas before you’d react with anger, with hate.
Anthony De Mello, sj.
Tomorrow’s joy is possible only if today’s makes way for it;
…..each wave owes the beauty of its line only to the withdrawal of the preceding one.
Andre Gide
9th century Zen master, Tozan Ryokai, attained enlightenment many times. Once when he was crossing a river he saw himself reflected in the water and composed a verse, “Don’t try to figure out who you are. If you figure out who you are, what you understand will be far away from you. You will have just an image of yourself.”
Actually, you are in the river. You may say that is just a shadow or a reflection of yourself, but if you look carefully with warm-hearted feeling, that is you. You may think you are very warm-hearted, but when you try to understand how warm, you cannot actually measure. Yet when you see yourself with a warm feeling in the mirror or the water, that is actually you.
And whatever you do, you are there.
from the great Suzuki Roshi, Not Always So: Practicing the True Spirit of Zen
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