The Slimline sage
A small collection of timeless Wisdoms from throughout history and around the world, concentrated and condensed down into bite-sized chunks for easy digestion.
THE TAO TE CHING ESSENTIALS
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From the very beginning something obscure has persisted; a nameless and unthinkable thought.
Elusive and unfathomable, it is the source of deepest trust and understanding.
Seek… though it is ever hidden.
Wait in peaceful emptiness and it reveals itself. Chase it and it escapes.
It is an unbroken thread stretching from nothing to nothing.
It escapes definite interpretation because words cannot get outside of it to explain it.
We must make sense of living by entering it directly, not by trying to understand it as a detached observer.
How can we see through a haze of intellectual restraints?
With full awareness, think without thoughts.
We must first empty of words… find thoughts not bound by the shape of words. In between thoughts bound by words are boundless thoughts free of words.
Thoughts cannot order the Universe. Every thought belongs, but life does not conform to thoughts.
From birth to death, the direction is clear.
The greatest insights describe but cannot explain. What is the way to be in this unexplained everything? Watchful and alert, like the promise of danger. Courteous, like being a guest. Yielding as melting ice. Primal as the uncarved block. Receptive as the valley.
Move with the flowing downward course of humility. Go softly in the world and honour the natural way of things. Become everything’s shape and take time to be everything’s time.
The first step is to untangle the restraints. Quietly attend to what is inside. Thought and ambition turn inward for growth, outward for conflict. Without pride, honour comes freely. Without show, respect is given. Without boasting, ability is realized. Without struggle, the way is easy.
Power is not used in the deepest sense. One permits balance to restore itself. Balance is the natural inclination of things. Virtue is not the power that wrestles from life what Self demands, but the power that is given by life to those who are selfless because they move with the way of life. Discover this hidden art of attuning to the way of things; of using with instead of against. Timing is crucial. We must learn to find the opportune opening into the within of things, then energy can move unforced and everything occurs effortlessly and harmoniously. When the timing is correct, openings occur and great things happen with simple ease. Allow everything to ripen in it’s due time.
Better to stop early than to fill too full. Sharpen too much and the edge will not hold.
Push and it is too early. Hold back and it is too late. At the right time there will be no stopping.
When thinking, think for everything. When doing, do for everything. Be the flowing river; the unhurried and slow pacing of everything. In every moment there is an opportunity for balance and harmony to restore itself. Let the Natural Order take care of things. Become everything’s way… and more.
Teaching eases the burden of ignorance with the illusion of understanding. The blind students follow the blind teacher, listening to the wisdom of the cane’s tapping. By undoing answers we undo questions. When there are no longer answers, the teacher can be honest with those who follow.
When not even the depths of Self can be understood, how can anything else be understood?
The energy of curiosity is as useful to the thinker as the energy of the body is to the dancer. Thinking creates questions… which lead to answers… which teach the movements of the dance of asking and discovering; seeking and finding; meeting and entering. Learning is a dancing art. Trust the finding but not the found, because there is nothing to know but the already known. All that can be known is here. What is next to know comes of itself.
Do not bind thinking with form or understanding with Self. Do not bind Self with thoughts. Do not confine questions with answers. In uncertainty, find security and without Self, be realized.
Deep accord arises by releasing. Trust the unknown!!! And with mind wide open, accept the mystery within the mystery. Learning is seeking and being overcome. Wisdom is yielding and being found.
Understanding is the humility of wonder. Search the subtle. Penetrate the hidden depths of everything. Be the mystery that is called Self.
Always be on the edge of this known, falling with perfect balance into the silence of the next known.
Search without anticipating and receive what arrives. Learning is like reaching… beyond tip-toe there is no balance; beyond reaching there is no grasping. Think downward… flowing always from the known toward the unknown. Energy does not wait. When it’s front point is blocked, it erupts to the sides until it is completed and shaped. When the way is blocked, the river overflows it’s banks.
Be gentle with everyone so as not to disturb their growing into themselves. The same secret is different for everyone. Let each individual find their own way. Do not be forceful with thoughts, but bring and offer them so that the seeking in everyone is not upset.
Following the way is a process of learning and unlearning. Dissolve the separateness of one from other, of effort from ease, of work from play. The world is a place for being lost in wonder.
True virtue is accepting what is. To go beyond ordinary thinking and doing, we must accept ourselves as we are. But deeper still is an invisible virtue – unrefined and unrecognised. When it is practised, everything remains whole. There is a broad balance and harmony in the world; it is complex and dynamic.
Find deep meeting and wholeness. Within the rising and falling of everything, there is something constant that does not change with the changing. Think in wholeness and let natural affections arise of themselves.
Everyone recognizes beauty as beauty; there’s the ugliness. Everyone recognizes good as good; there’s the evil. Love and expect nothing in return.
That without substance can enter where there is no room. A vessel is shaped from clay, but it’s usefulness comes from the empty space within. The empty space in a hub permits the wheel to turn.
Windows and doors are empty spaces in walls. A room can only be used because of it’s emptiness.
Beginnings occur in emptiness.
To understand the world, give up the world. All knowing begins in the mystery of silence and darkness. With full awareness… supple like a newborn child…. See clearly into Self, into the hidden heart of everything. Be the hidden source, hidden even from Self.
There is something within the heart of life that sets each thing moving on it’s way. Trust in that.
The game plays the game…The poem writes the poem…We cannot tell the dancer from the dance. No-one can explain how being found happens.
Less and less do you need to force things until finally you arrive at non-action. When nothing is done and yet, nothing is left undone. Nothing is done because the doer has wholeheartedly vanished into the deed; the fuel has been completely transformed into flame.
Close your mouth. Block off your senses. Blunt your sharpness. Untie your knots. Soften your glare. Settle your dust. This is the primal identity. At every moment, return to the source and practice Eternity.
We must regard the point of contact or the encounter as a living, becoming, changing, moving being. If we become fixated with form, the point of contact has eluded us and moved on. When trust is absent, addiction to rhythm sets in. Leave your shadow with every step.
What meaning has understanding? What reward? What is understanding to water?
Or to a stone? Understanding has no reward. It is only understanding. Be always mindful of the simplicity and complexity of it all and as effortlessly as deep breathing… deep think.
When lost, return to the beginning.
BHAGAVAD GITA ESSENTIALS
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This is the highest mystery.
The one for whom pleasure and pain are alike, that one is ready for immortality.
The one who perceives the Self as a killer, or the Self as killed, does not know.
The Self is not born, nor does it ever die.
The embodied Self casts out old bodies and takes on new like clothing.
The Self cannot be pierced nor burned nor drowned. It is eternal and fixed, unmoving from the beginning. It cannot be seen by sight nor mind. It is formless and unchanging.
Know this and mourn for nothing: That with which all this world is woven can never be destroyed.
So, discern your own Path and do not waver. And if the open door of Heaven is reached by happy accident, the warrior can take pleasure. If you do not engage you shun your Path and do harm. There can be no pain greater than the shame of this. If you are killed walking the Path you shall reach Heaven, if you triumph as you walk the Path you enjoy the earth, so stand firm in your resolve. When you have made pleasure and pain the same, also gain and loss, victory and defeat, you can engage and do no true harm.
Join to this insight and you will avoid the bonds of action which is Karma (Consequence). In this pure state no effort goes to waste, no momentum is lost. This insight is firm in nature and singular, but the insights of those who waver are endless and with many branches. Their nature is desire, with Heaven as their object. To those who cling to consumption and power, whose thoughts are stolen by this, the singular and pure insight is not given.
You must free yourself from opposites, eternally dwelling in truth, neither acquiring nor keeping; Self possessed. Your authority is in action alone and never in its fruits. Motive should never be with the fruits of action, nor should you cling to inaction. Abide only in the singularity of the Self – this is pure yoga.
Let go of clinging and let frustration and fulfilment be the same.
Join yourself to this pure yoga for it will bring ease in all action.
When your insight crosses well beyond the tangle of confusion then you become disillusioned with any revelations that are heard over and over again. When your insight is in deep focus and stands unmoved, ignoring revelations that are heard, then you will reach this pure yoga. Renouncing all desires in the mind you will be content in the Self.
Free the mind from anxiety and sorrow and greed. With rage and passion and fear gone, thoughts firm, you become the sage.
The spheres of the senses fall away from the truly embodied Self. The senses try to tear apart the mind. In pure yoga you restrain the senses and sit with me as pinnacle. Dwell in the senses and clinging is born. Desire is born from clinging and anger from desire. Confusion arises from anger. In confusion memory strays and insight falls. Then you are truly lost. When mind is led by the senses it steals wisdom like wind steals a ship on the water.
Let your thought be placid and find insight easily.
As the ocean becomes full yet is steady and unmoved as the water enters it, so the one whom desires enter in this way gains peace.
Perform action only whose end is sacrifice.
Everywhere action is performed by Nature, but the confused Self thinks “I am the doer”. The truth is only that Nature is revolving about itself. When you have entrusted all actions to me, with thoughts only on the highest Self, when you are free from desire, then you can engage with grief and fear gone. Follow this, full of trust, and be freed, even in action. One should have watchful insight into action, watchful insight into wrong action and watchful insight into non-action. The way of pure action is hard to fathom.
The one who knows this should not disturb the ones who do not. The wise one, joined fully to yoga, should cause the ignorant to delight in all action but with no intention of freeing.
Passion and hatred abide in the place between a sense and its object. You should not come under the will of these two – your enemies on the path. Desire and anger is a fire always hungry; evil; your enemy here on earth, it covers wisdom. It hides in the mind.
Rein in the senses and strike down the evil one which destroys discernment. Higher than insight is the Self sustained only by the Self.
Cleave to your own Path; all else brings you to fear and confusion.
Without desire, with thought restrained, release grasping, undertake action with the body alone – then you can do no evil. Moving beyond dualities, content with accidental gifts, free from malice – then you are no longer bound.
When clinging is gone, action becomes sacrifice and all dissolves into one.
You must see all beings – every single one – in yourself and in me. There is only one thing.
Even if you are the most evil of all evil-doers, you will cross beyond all wickedness through this wisdom of surrender. There is no purifier like pure wisdom. The one who is perfected by pure yoga finds that wisdom in the Self.
Both renunciation and the yoga of action lead to the highest bliss, but of the two, the yoga of action is the quicker path. The path of renunciation though is the more difficult path to tread.
When seeing or hearing, touching or smelling, eating or walking, sleeping or breathing, the one joined to yoga knows that he is doing nothing at all.
The embodied one gives up all actions with the mind, neither performing, nor causing action as a Lord sits contentedly. He does not link the action with the fruit, but his own nature keeps evolving. This one, pervading all, does not take in the good nor the harm done by anyone. Rebirth is conquered by the one who abides in this.
Finding something loved one should not be excited; finding something unloved one shouldn’t tremble. This one, not clinging to sensations from the outside, finds joy in the Self and through pure yoga reaches endless bliss.
Pleasures born of sensation are like wombs filled with pain; they have a beginning and an end. Do not rejoice in them. Make outside sensations truly outside and focus the eye between the eyebrows. Make equal the in-going and out-going breath.
No one becomes a practitioner of true yoga without giving up purposeful intent. Action is the method for the sage wanting to rise toward yoga; quiet is the method for the one who has risen to yoga.
Set up your firm seat in a pure place, neither too high, nor too low. When one has truly reached this place, one can think of nothing beyond it. When one is firm in it, one is not shaken even by deep pain. This dissolution of the bond to pain is called yoga and should be followed with an absence of doubt, with thoughts that are not despondent.
He who joins to yoga surpasses those of heated discipline and those who act in ritual. The one who loves and trusts me completely beyond all else travels the highest path and is fulfilled in bliss. With your mind intent on me, taking refuge in me, join to yoga without doubt. Once this is known, there is nothing left to be known here on earth.
At the end of time, remembering me, freed from the body, the one who departs goes to my state of being. Whatever state of being one remembers when one abandons the body, one goes into that state. For this reason you must remember me at all times and doubtless you shall come to me. With thought joined to the practice of yoga, by turning toward nothing else, one goes to the highest divine spirit. With a motionless mind, in devotion, make the breath enter between the eyebrows and come to me. Abide in the concentration of pure yoga. You will find your way to me easily like this and will never reach another birth. The highest being - the formless - is reachable by singular devotion. All beings stand within it, this whole world is woven through it.
It is a kingly knowledge, a kingly secret, a purifier above all, promoting The One Path – your perfect Duty, learned right before your eyes moment to moment, undying and pleasant to perform. Those who do not have trust in this moment to moment Dharma, have not reached me.
All that you do, all that you take, all that you offer, all that you give, all that you strive for in heated discipline – do that in offering to me. The one devoted to me is never lost.
I am the origin of all and all emerges from me. Focus on me, send your breath to me and the gift of insight shall be given to you. As I shall move in sympathy with you I destroy the darkness of ignorance with my light.
The physical body is made of the gross elements; the senses, awareness of ‘I’, the power of insight, pleasure and pain, desire and hatred. Recognize too that both spirit and matter are without beginning. And recognize that transformations and nature arise only from matter. Matter is the reason for the agency of cause and effect and spirit is the reason for the experience of pleasure and pain. Spirit abides in matter and partakes of nature born of matter. Clinging to nature it is the cause of its birth in wombs.
Then there are the natures: There is the light nature which binds to matter by its connection to joy and wisdom. There is the nature of passion which binds the embodied one by its connection to thirst and action. And the nature of ignorance which is confusion and binds through sleep and laziness and distraction. This last is neglect and obscures wisdom. Each nature can prevail over the other two.
Act from light and the fruit is stainless. Act from passion and the fruit is pain. Act from confusion and the fruit is ignorance. From light wisdom is born. From passion, greed. From ignorance, more confusion. The light rise up, the confused sink down and the passionate abide somewhere in the middle. When the embodied one recognizes these natures and transcends them, he comes into eternity and is ever free from sorrow and death and birth.
Without pride or confusion, the wrongs of clinging vanquished, desire turned away, free from dualities of pleasure and pain, you move to the imperishable place.
Some say that action is full of wrong and should be let go; others say that action made up of heated discipline and sacrifice should not be let go. Acts of heated discipline and sacrifice are to be carried out as they are purifiers but these actions are to be carried out after one has let go of clinging to the fruit. Do not confuse letting go of the fruit with fear. Find the yoga that does not stray, the steadiness with which one maintains actions of the senses, the vital breath and mind. Find the joy that in the beginning is like poison but once transformed is like nectar, born from clarity in insight of the Self.
Content in one’s own actions, one gains complete fulfillment when you honor by your own action the one from whom all beings come forth. Walking one’s own Path, however badly done, is a higher good than walking another’s path, however well done. If one performs action as set down by one’s own nature, one does not create fault. Do not let go of your own natural action, even if it is flawed. All beginnings are surrounded by error. Cling to nothing but allow your nature to rise. Trust is born of ones own nature. Humans are made of trust. They grow to become whatever it is they trust.
This should never be spoken of by you to one who lacks the heated discipline and who is not devoted to me, nor to one who does not want to hear what is said.
So, place your mind on me alone and let your power of insight enter me. Seek only to reach me through joining in yoga. Act only for my sake. Take refuge in my power and leave off all fruits of action. From this place, hold back the Self.
Even-minded towards desired and undesired events. Resorting to a place apart. With absence of arrogance and deceit and harm. Free from pleasure and impatience, free from fear, with no hatred and without a sense of ‘mine’, seeing pleasure and pain as the same, always content, with firm resolve, pure and impartial, anxiety gone, leaving off from all endeavors, neither rejoicing nor resenting, in neither sorrow nor lust, letting go of states both happy and unhappy, be filled with singular devotion.
ALEISTER CROWLEY ESSENTIALS
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Know nothing! All ways are lawful to innocence. Pure folly is the key to initiation. Silence breaks into rapture. Be neither man nor woman, but both in one.
The True Self is the meaning of the True Will. Know thyself through thy Way.
The tendencies of mind lie deeper than any thought, for they are the conditions and laws of thought and it is these you must bring to zero. Die daily; transmute all wholly into the image of thine own Will. Treat time and all conditions of events as servants of your Will, appointed by you to present the universe to you in the form of your own plan. Pure Will unassuaged of purpose, delivered from the lust of result is in every way perfect. Effort is no more. There is no you upon this path; you have become the Way.
Create freely; absorb joyously; divide intently; consolidate completely. Offer thyself virgin to the knowledge and conversation of thy secret inner voice – all else is a snare. The oracle of the gods is the child voice of love in thine own soul. Heed not the siren voice of the senses or the phantom voice of reason. Rest in simplicity and listen to silence.
Balance each thought against its opposite for the marriage of these is the annihilation of illusion.
Be not moved by anything without or within. Keep silence in all your ways. Follow your fortune careless of where it leads; the axle does not move.
Break down the fortress of thine own individual Self that the truth may spring free from the ruins. Achieve thou every possibility but let the illusion of the world pass over thee unheeded.
Give forth your light to all without doubt – the clouds and shadows are no matter for you. Make speech and silence, energy and stillness the twin forms of your play. Let your every act be an act of worship and love; your every act the fiat of a god. Use all thy energy to rule and burn up thy thought.
The true principle of self control is liberty; for the world is in bondage to ideals.
Those who restrain desire, do so because theirs is weak enough to be restrained and being restrained it by degrees becomes passive till it is only the shadow of desire.
Whatever horrors may afflict the soul, whatever abominations may excite the loathing of the heart, whatever terrors may assail the mind… the answer is the same at every stage: How splendid is the adventure!!!
Let love devour all things.
MISCELLANEOUS WISDOMS
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Life is impulses of energy and information in flux within a seamless matrix of infinite potential; pure, creative, conscious energy making shapes and forms with itself throughout infinity, exploring it’s own possibilities of being.
Memory… Prophecy… Fantasy… The Past, the future and the dreaming moment in between are all one country, living one immortal day. To know that is wisdom. To use it is The Art.
The past is dead; the future is as yet unborn and that only leaves us with one thing and it never asks if we are ready.
You are God’s consciousness.
Your identity is of no concern for you now. Conceptual understanding is of no use to you any longer. Trust your instinctual being from here on.
Work on your subtle energies. Stop trying to make it happen. It is.
At the boundary, life blossoms. We must penetrate as far as may be toward that secret ground where primal law feeds growth. Who would not wish to dwell at that central organ of all motion in space-time… the very heart of all creation… that part from which all functions derive their life? Who would not choose to journey into the womb of Nature; the primal ground where the secret key to all things lies hidden?
Being alive is like a wave pulsing upward from the invisible to the visible; from a region the senses cannot register to one that they can.
A living organism has the astonishing gift of concentrating a stream of order on itself and thus escaping the decay into atomic chaos. In ordinary waking consciousness your finger touches a rose and feels it as solid, but in truth, one bundle of energy - your finger – is contacting another bundle of energy – the rose. Your finger and the thing it touches are both just outcroppings of the infinite field we call the Universe.
The body is not a frozen sculpture. It is a stream of information; a flowing organism empowered by millions of years of intelligence. You can use the quantum perspective to see your body as a silent flow of intelligence; a constant bubbling up of impulses that create, control, in fact, become your physical body. The secret of life is that, at this level, anything in your body can be (and in fact is) changed from moment to moment by the power of pure intention.
We cannot imprison the mind in the brain. The mind is in every cell of our body.
Behind the visible garment of the Universe, beyond the mirage of molecules, lies a seamless matrix. This matrix silently orchestrates and compels Nature to express itself with infinite creativity and abundance into a myriad of designs and patterns and forms.
If you open yourself to insight, you are at one with insight. Open yourself to any force, you are at one with it. Concern yourself with the depths, not the surface and shape things as they come to you.
If the doors of perception were cleansed everything would appear to man as it is, infinite. For man has closed himself up, till he sees all things through narrow chinks of his cavern.
What is now proved was once only imagined.
There is timebound awareness and there is timeless awareness. In timebound awareness, our behaviour is always influenced by the past and by anticipation and fear of the future. Timebound awareness is burdened by guilt and sorrow. It is rooted in fear. It causes entropy, ageing and death. Timeless awareness is the awareness of Self. It is supremely concentrated in the present. The right response comes to every situation as it occurs. This is a state of bliss… of flow. The self is not in the realm of thought. It is in the gap between our thoughts. The cosmic psyche whispers softly to us in the gap between our thoughts.
There is no single event in your life through which God is not trying to communicate with you to wake up. Making peace with God is it. All other issues are illusions created by the mind to disguise its impotence. God is closer than you think!
True repentance empties us of all pretending. For the spiritual warrior, the act of surrender consummates a great victory and nothing important is lost.
My cross: Being spread out in life between what I am and what I am yet to be. Ultimately one loves one’s own desires and not the desired object.
Deep in the human consciousness is the pervasive need for a logical Universe that makes sense. But the real Universe is always one step beyond logic. Faith rules the mind.
All of material creation has the same origin. Nature goes to the same place to create a cluster of nebulas, a galaxy of stars, a rain forest, a dollar bill or a human body as it goes to create a thought. According to Quantum Field Theorists, all material things – whether cars, human bodies or dollar bills – are made up of atoms which are made up of sub-atomic particles which are fluctuations of energy and information in a huge void of energy and information. So the raw material of the world is non-material; the essential stuff of the Universe, non-stuff. And not only is this essential stuff non-stuff… it is thinking non-stuff. A thought is an impulse of energy and information. The only difference between the thoughts inside my head and the thoughts outside my head is that I experience the thoughts inside my head in linguistically structured terms. Before a thought becomes verbal and is expressed as language, it is just an intention. So at the pre-verbal level, all of Nature speaks the same language… the language of intention. Attention is all that counts. When your attention is in the past, you are in the past. If your attention is fragmented, you are fragmented. When your attention is whole and in the present moment, you are in the presence of God and God is present in you.
I am the world; I eat the world.
We are gateways between one thing and another. The river of existence flows through us. This flowing centre is the gateway to the world. The attention must unite with the direction of the flow.
THE OSHO ESSENTIALS
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Moment to moment, with every step, leave the past behind. Go on trusting against all experience. Deceived, you must trust again. Find a trust so pure that nobody can corrupt it. Don’t create a wall of knowledge around you. Whatsoever experience comes to you, let it happen and then go on dropping it. Die constantly to the past so you can remain present, as if just born. When the world takes advantage of you, let it. That which is truly yours cannot be stolen from you.
If you have found your truth within yourself there is nothing more in the whole of existence to find. Truth is functioning through you. When you open your eyes, truth is opening its eyes. If you can simply understand the device you don’t have to do anything; whatever you are doing is being done by truth. You are walking, it is truth; you are speaking, it is truth speaking; you are silent, it is truth that is silent. Slowly, everything settles by this simple formula and then there is no need for technique. When you are cured you can throw away the medicine. You live as truth – alive, radiant, contented, blissful.
Loneliness is the absence of other. Aloneness is the presence of oneself. Aloneness is very positive. It is an overflowing presence. You are so full of presence that you can fill the whole universe and there is no need for anybody else.
The conflict is in man. Unless it is resolved within, it cannot be resolved anywhere else. The politics is within you; it is between the two parts of mind. A very small bridge exists. If that bridge is broken – and it is very fragile – you become two. If this bridge is strengthened so much that the two minds disappear, then integration, crystallization occurs. The meeting of male and female. Of Yin and Yang. The left and right, logic and illogic.
Unless you drop your personality you will not be able to find your individuality. Individuality is given by existence; personality is imposed by society. Society cannot tolerate the individual because individuality will not follow. It walks alone like the lion.
Right now the master is fast asleep and the mind – the servant – is playing the role of master. And the servant is not even your servant ; the servant is created by the outside world. It follows the outside world and its laws. Once your awareness becomes a flame, it burns up the whole slavery that mind has created. Zen is not a believers’ world. It is not for faithful ones. It is for daring souls who can drop all belief, unbelief, doubt, reason, mind and simply enter into their pure existence without boundary. Do not involve yourself in philosophy but in transformation. Living alchemy.
You are carrying a masterpiece hidden within you, but you are standing in your way. Just move aside, then the masterpiece will be revealed. Drop the idea of becoming – you already are. You cannot be improved, you can only come to realize and the moment you realize is the moment you start seeing life as playful and all burden on your heart disappears.
You carry your wound. With your ego your whole being is a wound. Nobody wants to hurt you – everybody is engaged in safeguarding their own wound. But still it happens, because you are so ready to be wounded, just waiting on the brink for anything. But you cannot touch the man of the Tao because there is no man there to be touched. There is no wound. Move to the roots of your wound and allow it to be healed and whole. With no mind there is no wound.
You cannot reach God as an aggressive invader. You must become feminine. God can only reach you when you are receptive. When you become Yin, the door is open.
With trust something immense opens up. When the heart is innocent and the walls have disappeared you are bridged with infinity. That which can be taken away is not worth keeping; that which cannot be taken away cannot be taken away so why should you fear? You cannot lose your real treasure. Trust this.
The essence is at ease.
Watch the waves in the ocean. The higher the wave goes, the deeper is the wake that follows. One moment you are the wave, the next you are the hollow. Enjoy both – do not get addicted to one. It is not possible to ride a constant peak. It is not in the nature of things. Enjoy the peak and then enjoy the valley that follows. It is a relaxation.
There is no need for struggle or effort. All personal goals are neurotic. The essential person comes to know that there is no need to seek out a destiny of their own. Things are happening. No need to fight for anything. The essential person is not a doer. Life is a continuity. There is no final destination. Life is a going towards. It is only the journey, so there is really no need to hurry because there is nowhere to reach.
Come out of your head and go to the source. When the energy is just at the centre, when it is not moving anywhere, neither in the head nor the heart, but it is at the very source from where the heart and head takes it, pulsating at the source... this is the very meaning of Zen. Just sitting at the source, not moving anywhere, a tremendous force arises, a transformation of energy into greater life and creativity.
Turning inwards is not a turning at all. It simply means that you have been running after this desire and that and coming again and again to frustration. Realizing that desire takes you nowhere, you stop. If you make any effort to stop though, it is more running but in a subtle way; desiring desirelessness. If you make an effort to go in, you are still going out. All journeys are outward journeys. There is no inward journey – you are already there.
The tenses – past, present, future – are not the tenses of time; they are the tenses of the mind. That which is no longer before the mind becomes the past. That which is before the mind is present. And that which is going to be before the mind is the future. Clinging to any one will only create misery.
When you are lazy, it is a negative state. You simply feel you have no energy – you feel dull and sleepy and dead. When you are in a state of non-doing you are filled with energy. Overflowing, radiant, bubbling up inside. You are not sleepy, but perfectly aware. Not dead but tremendously alive. Don’t let the mind deceive you one way or the other.
A true life is putting off the lie imposed by others. Stripped naked and natural you are what you are. It is a matter of being, no becoming. The lie cannot become the truth; the personality cannot become the soul. Striving toward truth only creates more confusion. The truth cannot be achieved, it is already the case. Only the lie has to be dropped. All aims and ends and ideals and goals... religions, systems of betterment are lies. Beware of them. See the lie. Look deep into the lie of your personality. Because to see the lie is to cease to lie. The moment the lie disappears, the truth is there in all its strange beauty.
When the achieving mind arises you lose contact with the living paradise. This is one of the most liberating approaches. Forget all about sins. The idea of sin has destroyed the joy of humanity. Guilt sits on our chests like a rock. How can you dance like this? How can guilt love?
We have forgotten how to wait; it is almost like an abandoned space. An yet it is our greatest treasure, the ability to wait for the right moment. The whole of existence waits for the right moment. In silence and waiting something inside goes on growing. And one day it jumps up and becomes a new person filled with life’s eternal juices.
The Concentrated Essential Wisdoms
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