To Look at Any Thing
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#2483 - Sunday, May 28, 2006 - Editor: Gloria Lee
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In
order to learn the nature of the myriad things, you must know
that although they may look round or square, the other features
of oceans and mountains are infinite in variety; whole worlds are
there. It is so not only around you, but also directly beneath
your feet, or in a drop of water.
--Genjo Koan
From "Teachings of the Buddha," edited by Jack
Kornfield, 1993
To Look
at Any Thing
To look at
any thing,
If you would know that thing,
You must look at it long:
To look at this green and say,
"I have seen spring in these
Woods," will not do - you must
Be the thing you see:
You must be the dark snakes of
Stems and ferny plumes of leaves,
You must enter in
To the small silences between
The leaves,
You must take your time
And touch the very peace
They issue from. ~ John Moffitt ~ (Teaching With Fire,
edited by S. M. Intrator and M. Scribner)
Web version: www.panhala.net/Archive/To_Look.html
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When we trust with our open heart, whatever occurs, at the
very moment that it occurs, can be perceived as fresh and
unstained by the clouds of hope and fear. Chgyam Trungpa Rinpoche
used the phrase "first thought, best thought" to refer
to the first moment of fresh perception, before the colorful and
coloring clouds of judgement and personal interpretation take
over.
"First thought" is "best thought" because it
has not yet got covered over by all our opinions and
interpretations, our hopes and fears, our likes and dislikes. It
is direct perception of the world as it is. Sometimes we discover
"first thought, best thought" by relaxing into the
present in a very simple way.
--Jeremy Hayward, in Tricycle: The Buddhist Review, Vol.
IV, #3
My
Chan teacher, who I met in southern China in 1978 was named Yen
Why Shih. He was a Dharma heir of the Venerable Hsu Yun who
died in 1959 at 119 years of age. Yen Why Shih was 84 in
1978.
Here is a wonderful Chan/Zen practice teaching from Hsu Yun:
"It is the unremitting turning of the light inwards on
oneself, instant after instant and exclusive of all other
things."
At another time he said : "it is the turning of the light inward
on that which is not born and does not die."
I would add: that the light that we turn inward to perceive
with, is also that light as seen within...
--Jax posted to
Dzogchen Practice
Surrender is the
simple but profound wisdom of yielding to rather than opposing
the flow of life. The only place where you can experience the
flow of life is the
Now, so to surrender is to accept the present moment
unconditionally and without
reservation. It is to relinquish inner resistance to what is.
--Eckhart Tolle
Everything is
dependent on everything else, everything is connected, nothing is
separate. Therefore everything is going in the only way it can
go. If people were
different everything would be different. They are what they are,
so everything is
as it is. --G.I. Gurdjieff
Mahamudra is beyond
all words and symbols.
But for you, Naropa, earnest and loyal, must this be said.
The void needs no reliance; Mahamudra rests on naught. Not making
any effort,
but remaining loose and natural, one breaks the yoke thus gaining
liberation.
--Tilopa
posted to Conscious Oneness