"embodying the Tao"

[Guest guest]

Hello Gloria and Friends,

 

 

"embodying the Tao"

 

Breathe.

 

 

Love,

James

 

 

 

 

 

, "Gloria Lee" <glee@c...> wrote:

>

> Dualistic thinking is a sickness.

> Religion is a distortion.

> Materialism is cruel.

> Blind spirituality is unreal.

> Chanting is no more holy than listening to the murmur of a stream,

> counting prayer beads no more sacred than simply breathing,

> religious robes no more spiritual than work clothes.

> If you wish to attain oneness with the Tao, don't get caught up in

spiritual superficialities.

> Instead, live a quiet and simple life free from ideas and concepts.

> Find contentment in the practice of undiscriminating virtue, the

only true power.

> Giving to others selflessly and anonymously, radiating light

throughout the world,

> illuminating your own darkness, your virtue becomes a sanctuary for

yourself and all beings.

> This is what is meant by embodying the Tao.

>

>

> from the Hua Hu Ching

>

> http://www.yakrider.com/the_daily_yak.htm

>

> ========

> " When we in the West speak of "basic facts of existence" we tend

> immediately to conceive these facts as reducible to certain

austere and

> foolproof propositions--logical statements that are guaranteed to

have

> meaning because they are empirically verifiable. These are what

Bertrand

> Russel called "atomic facts." Now for Zen it is inconceivable that

the basic

> facts of existence should be able to be stated in any proposition

however

> atomic. For Zen, from the moment fact is transferred to a

statement it is

> falsified. One ceases to grasp the naked reality of experience,

and one

> grasps a form of words instead.... The whole aim of Zen is not to

make

> foolproof statements about experience, but to come to direct grips

with

> reality without the mediation of logical verbalizing. "

>

> - Thomas Merton, in the introduction to John C.H. Wu's -

The Golden Age of Zen

>

> *******

>

> Tao Te Ching

>

> Can you hold fast your crescent soul and not let it wander

> can you make your breath as soft as a baby's

> can you wipe your Dark Mirror free of dust

> can you serve and govern without effort

> can you be the female at Heaven's Gate

> can you light up the world without knowledge

> beget things and keep them

> but beget without possessing

> keep without controlling

> this is Dark Virtue [10]

>

> -- as translated by Red Pine

>

> ********

>

> God is a pure no-thing

> concealed in now and here:

> the less you reach for Him

> the more He will appear.

> (Angelus Selesius)

>

> *******

>

> If you want to describe its essence,

> The best you can say is "Not-two."

> In this "Not-two" nothing is separate,

> And nothing in the world is excluded.

> The enlightened of all times and places

> Have entered into this truth.

> In it there is no gain or loss;

> One instant is ten thousand years.

> There is no here, no there;

> Infinity is right before your eyes.

>

> ~Seng T'san