The ten directions converging,
Each learning to do nothing,
This is the hall of Buddha’s training;
The mind is empty, all is finished.
P’ang Yün (Layman Pang) 740-808
Summary of all teaching
Tag: Life
Be still
Why scurry about looking for the truth?
It vibrates in every thing and every not-thing, right off the tip of your nose.
Can you be still and see it in the mountain? the pine tree? yourself?
Don’t imagine that you’ll discover it by accumulating more knowledge.
Knowledge creates doubt, and doubt makes you ravenous for more knowledge.
The wise person dines on something more subtle:
He finds this subtle truth inside his own self,
and becomes completely content.
So who can be still and watch the chess game of the world?
The foolish are always making impulsive moves,
but the wise know that victory and defeat are decided by something more subtle.
They see that something perfect exists before any move is made.
Remain quiet. Discover the harmony in your own being.
Embrace it.
If you can do this, you will gain everything,
and the world will become healthy again.
If you can’t, you will be lost in the shadows forever.
The Huahujing, traditionally attributed to Lao Tzu, translation Brian Walker
As things are
Tathata, which means “suchness” or “like-this-ness,” is used in Buddhism to mean “reality,” or the way things really are. This poem by Dongshan (807-869) reminds us to work with things as they are in our lives, rather than our thoughts as to how our life should be.
The teaching of thusness has been intimately communicated by buddhas and ancestors.
Now you have it, so keep it well.
Filling a silver bowl with snow,
hiding a heron in the moonlight —
Taken as similar they’re not the same;
when you mix them, you know where they are.
Sunday Quote: Not demanding more
Nor with impatience from the season asked
More than its timely produce; rather loved
The hours for what they are.
Wordsworth, The Prelude, Book 5
You are the medicine
Cure yourself with the light of the sun and the rays of the moon.
With the sound of the river and the waterfall.
With the swaying of the sea and the fluttering of birds.
Put love in tea instead of sugar, and take it looking at the stars. Heal yourself with the kisses that the wind gives you and the hugs of the rain .Get strong with bare feet on the ground and with everything that is born from it.
Get smarter every day by listening to your intuition, looking at the world with the eye of your forehead. Jump, dance, sing, so that you live happier.
Heal yourself, with beautiful love, and always remember: you are the medicine.
María Sabina Magdalena García, 1894 – 1985, Mexican shaman and poet.
Not the conditions
The mind exists in a state of “not enough” and so is always greedy for more. Boredom means the mind is hungry for more stimulus, more food for thought, and its hunger is not being satisfied. If you can stay bored and restless and observe what it feels like to be bored and restless, you bring awareness to the feeling and there is suddenly some space and stillness around it. So even boredom can teach you who you are and who you are not. You discover that a “bored person” is not who you are.
Boredom is simply a conditioned energy movement within you. Neither are you an angry, sad, or fearful person. Boredom, anger, sadness, or fear are not “yours”, not personal. They are conditions of the human mind. They come and go. Nothing that comes and goes is you. “I am bored.” Who knows this? “I am angry, sad, afraid.” Who knows this? You are the knowing, not the condition that is known.
Mindfulbalance 