Post by Kivawolfspeaker on Jul 2, 2006 12:16:19 GMT -5
Card 1: The Issue: 6 of Water: The Dream
Some enchanted evening you're going to meet your soulmate, the perfect person who will meet all your needs and fullfill all your dreams. Right? Wrong! This fantasy that songwriters and poets are so fond of perpetuating has its roots in memories of the womb, where were were so secure and 'at one' with our mothers; it's no wonder we have hankered to return to that place all our lives. But, to put it quite brutally, it is a childish dream. And it's amazing we hang on to it so stunnornly in the face of reality. Nobody, whether it's your current mate or dreamed of partner in the future, has any obligation to deliver your happiness on a platter - nor could they even if they wanted to. Real love comes not from trying to solve our neediness by depending on another, but by developing our own inner richness and maturity. Then we have so much love to give that we naturally draw lovers towards us.
Card 2: Dimishing/Enhancing or Clarifying/obscuring the issue: Queen of Rainbows: Flowering
Zen wants you livinvg, living in abundance, living in totality, living intensely - not at the minimum as Christianity wants you, but at the maximum, over-flowing. Your life should reach to others. Your blissfulness, your benediction, your ecstasy should not be contained within you like a seed. It should open like a flower and spread its fragrance to all and sundry - not only to the friends but to the strangers too. This is real compassion, this is real love: sharing your dance of the beyond.
Card 3: Unconscious Influences: 10 of Clouds: Rebirth
In Zen you are coming from nowhere and you are going to nowhere. You are just now, here, neither coming nor going. Everything passes by you, your consciousness reflects it but it does not get identified. When a lion roars in front of a mirror, do ou think the mirror roars? Or when the lion is gone and a child comes dancing, the mirror completely forgets about the lion and starts dancing with the child - do you think the mirror dances with the child? The mirror does nothing, it simply reflects. Your consciousness is only a mirror Neither do you come, nor do you go. Things come and go. You became young, you became old, you are alive, you are dead. All these states are simply reflections in an eternal pool of consciousness
Card 4: Conscious Influences: 8 of Clouds: Guilt
This moment! . . . this herenow . . . is forgotten when you start thinking in terms of achieving something. When the achieving mind arises, you lose contact with the paradise you are in. This is one of the most liberating approaces: it liberates you right now! Forget all about sin and forget all about saintliness; both are stupid. Both togetherhave destroyed all the joys of humanity. The sinner is feeling quilty, hence his joy is lost. How can you enjoy life if you are continuously feeling guilty? If you are continuously going to the church to confess that you have done this wrong and that wrong? And wrong and wrong and wrong . . . your whole life seems to be made of sins. How can you live joyously? It becomes impossible to delight in life. you become heavy, loaded. Guilt sits on your chest like a rock, it crushes you, it does not allow you to dance. How can you dance? How can guilt dance? how can guilt sing? how can guilt love? How can guilt live? So the one who thinks he is doing something wrong is guilty, burdened, dead before death, has already enterd into the grave.
Card 5: Old ways: 10 of Water: Harmony
Listen to your heart, move according to your heart, whatsoever the stake: A condition of complete simplicity costing not less than everything. To be simple is arduous, because to be simple costs everything that you have. You have to lose all to be simple. That's why people have chosen to be complex and they have forgotten how to be simple. But only a simple heart throbs on God, hand in hand. Only a simple heart sings with God in deep harmony. To reach to that point you will have to find your heart, your own throb, your own beat.
Card 6: Moving into the New: 5 of Clouds: Comparision
Comparision brings inferiority, superiority. When you don't compare, all inferiority, all superiority, disappear. Then you are, you are simply there. A small bush or a big high tree - it doesn't matter; you are yourself. You are needed. A grass leaf is needed as much as the biggest star. Without the grass leaf God will be less than he is. This sound of the cuckoo is needed as much as any Buddha; the world will be less, will be less rich if this cuckoo disappears. Just look around. All is needed and everything fits together. It is an organic unity; nobody is higher and nobody lower, nobody superior, nobody inferior. Everybody is inomparably unique.
Card 7: The Self: Beyond Illusion
This is the only distinction between the dream and the real: reality allows you to doubt, and the dream does not allow you to doubt . . . To me, the capacity to doubt is one of the greatest blessings to humanity. The religions have been enemies because they have been cutting the very roots of doubt, and there is a reason why they have been doing that: because want people to believe in certain illusions that they have been preaching. . . Why have the people like: Gautam Buddha been so insistent that the whole existence - except your witnessing self, except your awareness - is just ephemeral, made of the same stuff as dreams are made of? They are not saying that these trees are not there. They are not saying that these pillars are not there. Don't misunderstand because of the word 'illusion' . . . It has been translated as illusion, but illusion is not the right word. Illusion does not exist. Reality exists. Maya is just in between - it almost exists. As far as day-to-day activities are concerned, it can be taken as reality. Only in the ultimate sense, from the peak of your illumination, it becomes unreal, illusory.
I will post the other cards when I have the time.
Some enchanted evening you're going to meet your soulmate, the perfect person who will meet all your needs and fullfill all your dreams. Right? Wrong! This fantasy that songwriters and poets are so fond of perpetuating has its roots in memories of the womb, where were were so secure and 'at one' with our mothers; it's no wonder we have hankered to return to that place all our lives. But, to put it quite brutally, it is a childish dream. And it's amazing we hang on to it so stunnornly in the face of reality. Nobody, whether it's your current mate or dreamed of partner in the future, has any obligation to deliver your happiness on a platter - nor could they even if they wanted to. Real love comes not from trying to solve our neediness by depending on another, but by developing our own inner richness and maturity. Then we have so much love to give that we naturally draw lovers towards us.
Card 2: Dimishing/Enhancing or Clarifying/obscuring the issue: Queen of Rainbows: Flowering
Zen wants you livinvg, living in abundance, living in totality, living intensely - not at the minimum as Christianity wants you, but at the maximum, over-flowing. Your life should reach to others. Your blissfulness, your benediction, your ecstasy should not be contained within you like a seed. It should open like a flower and spread its fragrance to all and sundry - not only to the friends but to the strangers too. This is real compassion, this is real love: sharing your dance of the beyond.
Card 3: Unconscious Influences: 10 of Clouds: Rebirth
In Zen you are coming from nowhere and you are going to nowhere. You are just now, here, neither coming nor going. Everything passes by you, your consciousness reflects it but it does not get identified. When a lion roars in front of a mirror, do ou think the mirror roars? Or when the lion is gone and a child comes dancing, the mirror completely forgets about the lion and starts dancing with the child - do you think the mirror dances with the child? The mirror does nothing, it simply reflects. Your consciousness is only a mirror Neither do you come, nor do you go. Things come and go. You became young, you became old, you are alive, you are dead. All these states are simply reflections in an eternal pool of consciousness
Card 4: Conscious Influences: 8 of Clouds: Guilt
This moment! . . . this herenow . . . is forgotten when you start thinking in terms of achieving something. When the achieving mind arises, you lose contact with the paradise you are in. This is one of the most liberating approaces: it liberates you right now! Forget all about sin and forget all about saintliness; both are stupid. Both togetherhave destroyed all the joys of humanity. The sinner is feeling quilty, hence his joy is lost. How can you enjoy life if you are continuously feeling guilty? If you are continuously going to the church to confess that you have done this wrong and that wrong? And wrong and wrong and wrong . . . your whole life seems to be made of sins. How can you live joyously? It becomes impossible to delight in life. you become heavy, loaded. Guilt sits on your chest like a rock, it crushes you, it does not allow you to dance. How can you dance? How can guilt dance? how can guilt sing? how can guilt love? How can guilt live? So the one who thinks he is doing something wrong is guilty, burdened, dead before death, has already enterd into the grave.
Card 5: Old ways: 10 of Water: Harmony
Listen to your heart, move according to your heart, whatsoever the stake: A condition of complete simplicity costing not less than everything. To be simple is arduous, because to be simple costs everything that you have. You have to lose all to be simple. That's why people have chosen to be complex and they have forgotten how to be simple. But only a simple heart throbs on God, hand in hand. Only a simple heart sings with God in deep harmony. To reach to that point you will have to find your heart, your own throb, your own beat.
Card 6: Moving into the New: 5 of Clouds: Comparision
Comparision brings inferiority, superiority. When you don't compare, all inferiority, all superiority, disappear. Then you are, you are simply there. A small bush or a big high tree - it doesn't matter; you are yourself. You are needed. A grass leaf is needed as much as the biggest star. Without the grass leaf God will be less than he is. This sound of the cuckoo is needed as much as any Buddha; the world will be less, will be less rich if this cuckoo disappears. Just look around. All is needed and everything fits together. It is an organic unity; nobody is higher and nobody lower, nobody superior, nobody inferior. Everybody is inomparably unique.
Card 7: The Self: Beyond Illusion
This is the only distinction between the dream and the real: reality allows you to doubt, and the dream does not allow you to doubt . . . To me, the capacity to doubt is one of the greatest blessings to humanity. The religions have been enemies because they have been cutting the very roots of doubt, and there is a reason why they have been doing that: because want people to believe in certain illusions that they have been preaching. . . Why have the people like: Gautam Buddha been so insistent that the whole existence - except your witnessing self, except your awareness - is just ephemeral, made of the same stuff as dreams are made of? They are not saying that these trees are not there. They are not saying that these pillars are not there. Don't misunderstand because of the word 'illusion' . . . It has been translated as illusion, but illusion is not the right word. Illusion does not exist. Reality exists. Maya is just in between - it almost exists. As far as day-to-day activities are concerned, it can be taken as reality. Only in the ultimate sense, from the peak of your illumination, it becomes unreal, illusory.
I will post the other cards when I have the time.