Don’t seek fame or fortune,
Glory or prosperity.
Just pass this life as is,
According to circumstances.
When the breath is gone,
Who is in charge?
After the death of the body,
There is only an empty name.
When your clothes are worn,
Repair them over and over;
When you have no food,
Work to provide.
How long can a phantom-like
Body last?
Would you increase your ignorance
For the sake of its idle concerns?
- Tung-shan
Empty yet aware, the original light shines spontaneously;
tranquil yet responsive, the great function manifests.
A wooden horse neighing in the wind does not walk the steps of the present moment;
a clay ox emerging from the sea plows the springtime of the eon of emptiness.
Understand?
Where a jade man beckons, even greater marvel is on the way back.
- Hung-chih
@rookie54 saidLol.
Don’t seek fame or fortune,
Glory or prosperity.
Just pass this life as is,
According to circumstances.
When the breath is gone,
Who is in charge?
After the death of the body,
There is only an empty name.
When your clothes are worn,
Repair them over and over;
When you have no food,
Work to provide.
How long can a phantom-like
Body last?
Would you increase your ignorance
For the sake of its idle concerns?
- Tung-shan
This one's more direct. Still I'm afraid not enough will be offended by its content
In dark night live those for whom
The world without alone is real;
In night darker still, for who
The world within alone is real.
The first leads to a life of action,
The second to a life of meditation.
But those who combine action with
Meditation cross the sea of death
Through action and enter into
Immortality through the practice of
Meditation.
So we have heard from the wise.
- Isha Upanishad
It has been asked, “If one wants to practice the path now, what technique should one perform to attain liberation?”
People who see buddhahood immediately realize the mind source without performing techniques. When you clearly see Buddha nature, this very mind is Buddha, because it is neither illusory or real.
A scripture says, “Directly abandoning expedients, just expound the unsurpassed way.”
- Hui-chung
Don’t seek a Buddha, don’t seek a teaching, don’t seek a community. Don’t seek virtue, knowledge, intellectual understanding, and so on.
When feelings of defilement and purity are ended, still don’t hold to this non-seeking and consider it right.
Don’t dwell at the point of ending, and don’t long for heavens or fear hells. When you are unhindered by bondage or freedom, then this is called liberation of mind and body in all places.
- Pai-chang (720-814)
@rookie54 said"Patience is a virtue" why? Because it leads to all other virtues🙂
Don’t seek a Buddha, don’t seek a teaching, don’t seek a community. Don’t seek virtue, knowledge, intellectual understanding, and so on.
When feelings of defilement and purity are ended, still don’t hold to this non-seeking and consider it right.
Don’t dwell at the point of ending, and don’t long for heavens or fear hells. When you are unhindered by bondage or freedom, then this is called liberation of mind and body in all places.
- Pai-chang (720-814)
@rookie54 saidAnd it prolly like being damned if you do,damned if you dont.
Thus the Diamond Cutter Scripture says,
“Do not grasp truth, do not grasp untruth, and do not grasp that which is not untrue.”
It also says, “The truth that the buddhas find has no reality or unreality.”
- Pai-chang (720-814)
Either way you're blessed if you dream
If there were any object, any doctrine, that could be given to you to hold on to or understand, it would reduce you to bewilderment and externalism. It’s just a spiritual openness, with nothing that can be grasped; it is pure everywhere, its light clearly penetrating, outwardly and inwardly luminous through and through.
- Te-shan (d. 867)
