Post by Kivawolfspeaker on Jul 3, 2006 17:50:11 GMT -5
Card 1: The Issue: 8 of Rainbows: Ordinariness
Sometimes it happens that you become one, in some rare moment. Watch the ocean, the tremendous wildness of ir - and suddenly you forget your split, your schizophrenia, you relax. Or, moving in the Himalayas, seeing the virgin snow on the Himalayan peaks, suddenly a coolness surrounds you and you need not be false because there is no other human being to be false to. You fall together. Or, listening to beautiful music, you fall together. Whenever, in whatsoever situation, you become one, a peace, a happiness, a bliss, surrounds you, arises you. You feel fulfilled. There is no need to wait for these for moments - these moments can become your natural life. These extraordinary moments can become ordinary moments - That is the whole effort of Zen. You can live an extrordinary life in a very ordinary life: cutting wll, you can be trmendously ar ease with yourself. Cleaning the floor, cooking food, washing the clothes, you can be perfectly at ease - because the whole question is of you doing your action totally, enjoying, delighting in it.
Card 2: Clarifying the issue: Awareness
Mind can never be intelligent - only no-mind is intelligent. Only no-mind is orginal and radical. Only no-mind is revolutionary - revolution is action. This mind gives you a sort of stupor. Burdened by the memories of the past, burdened by the projection of the futurem you go on living - at the minimum. You don't live at the mazimum. Your flame reamins very dim. Once you start dropping your thoughts, the dust that you have collected in the past, the flame arises - clean, clear, alive, young. Your whole life becomes a flame, and a flame without any smoke. That is what awareness is.
Card 3: Unconscious Influences: Queen of Water: Receptivity
Listening is one of the basic secrets of entering into the temple of God. Listening means passivity. Listening means forgetting yourself completely - only then can you listen. When you listen attentively to some body, your forgot yourself. If you cannot forget yourself, you never listen. If you are too self-conscious about yourself, you simply pretend that you are listening - you don't listen. You may nod your head; you may sometimes say yes and no - no but you are not listening. When yuou listen you become just a passage, a passivity, a receptivity, a womb, you become feminine. And to arrive one has to become feminine. You cannot reach God as aggressive invaders, conquerors. You can reach God only . . . or it will be better to say God can reach you only when you are receptive, a feminine receptivity. When you become, yin, a receptivity, the door is open. And you wait. Listening is the art for becoming passive.
Card 4: Conscious Influences: Existence
You are not accidental. Existence need you. Without you something will be missing in existence and nobody can replace it. That's what give you dignity, that the whole existance will miss you. The stars and sun and moon, the trees and birds and earth - everything in the universe will feel a small place is vacant which cannot be filled by anybody excpet you. this gives you a tremendous joy, a fulfillment that you are related to existence, and existence cares for you. Once you are clean and clear, you can see tremendous love falling on you from all dimensions.
Card 5: Old Ways: Transformation
A master of Zen is not simply a teacher. In all the religions there are only teachers. They teach you about subjects which you don't know, and they ask you to believe, because there is no way to bring those expereince into objhective reality. Neither has the teacher known them - he has believed them; he transfers this belief to somebody else. Zen is not a believer's world. It is not for the faithful ones; it is for those daring souls who can drop all belief, unbelief, doubt, reason, mind, and simply enter into their pure existence without boundaries. But it brings a tremendous transformation. Hence, let me say that while others are involved in philosophies, Zen is involved in metamorphosis, in a transformation. It is authetic alchemy: it changes you from base metal into gold. But its language has to be understand, not with your reasoning and intellectual mind but with your loving heart. Or even just listening, not bothering whether it is true or not. And a moment comes suddenly that you see it, which has been eluding you your whole life. Suddenly, what Gautam Buddha called 'eighty-four thousand doors' open.
Card 6: Moving into the New: Page of Water: Understanding
You are out of jail, out of the cage; you can open your wings and the whole sky is yours. All the stars and the moon and the sun belong to you. You can disappear into the blueness of the beyond . . . just drop clinging to this cage, move out of the cage and the whole sky is yours. Open your wings and fly across the sun like an eagle. In the inner sky, in the inner world, freedom is the highest value - everything else is secondary, even blissfulness, ecstasy. There are thousands of flowers, uncountable, but they all become possible in the climate of freedom.
Card 7: The Self: 6 of Clouds: The Burden
When we carry a load of shoulds and shouldsn't imposed on us by others we become like this ragged, struggling figure trying to make his way uphill. "Go faster, try harder, reach the top!" shouts the follist tyrant he carries on his shoulder, while the tyrant himself is crowned with an imperious rooster. If life these days feels like just a struggle from the cradle to the grave, it could be time to shrug your shoulders and see what it feels like to walk without these characters on your back. you have your own mountains to conquet, your own dreams to fulfill, but you will never have the energy to pursue them until you release yourself from all the expectations you've gathered from others but now think are your own. Chances are they exist only in your own mind, but that doesn't mean they can't weigh you down. it's time to lighten up, and send them on their way.
Card 8: What others think of you: 3 of Fire: Experiecning
You just look around, look into the eyes of a child, or into the eyes of you beloeved, your mother, your friend - or just feel a tree. have you ever hugged a tree? Hug a tree, and one day you will come to know that it is not only that you have hugged the tree but that the tree also responds, the tree also hugs you. then for the first time you will be able to know that the tree is not just the form, it is not just a certain species the botanists talk about, it is an unknown God - so green in your courtyard, so full of flowers in your courtyard, so close to you, beckoning you, calling you again and again.
Card 9: Desires: The Lovers
What we call love is really a whole spectrum of relating reaching from the earth to the sky. At the most earthly level, love is sexual attraction. Many of us remain stuck there, because our conditioning has burderned our sexuality with all kinds of expectations and repressions. Actually the biggest ' problem' with sexual love is that it never lasts. Only if we accept this fact can we then really celelbrate it for what it is - welcome its happening and say good-bye with gratitude when it's not. Then as we mature, we can begin to experience the love thatexists beyond seuality and honors that unique individuality of the other. We begin to undrstand that our partner often functions as a mirror, reflecting unseen sapects of our deeper self and supporting us to become whole. This love is based in freedom, not epectation or need. its wings take us higher and higher towards that universal love that experiences all as one.
Card 10: Key: 5 of Rainbows: The Outsider
So you are feeling yourself an outsider. This is good. This is the transitory period. Now you have to be alert not to fill yourself with pain and misery. Now that God is no longer there, who is going to console you? You don't need any consolation. Humanity has come of age. Be a man, be a woman, and stand on you own feet. . . The only way to be connected with exisntence is to go inwards, because there at the centeryou are still connected. You have been disconnected physically from your mother. That disconnection was absolutely necessary to make you an individual in you own right. But you are not disconnected from the universe. Your connection with the universe is of consciousness. You cannot see it, so you have to gp deep down with great awareness, watchfullness, witnessing, and you will find the connection. The buddha is the connection!
Sometimes it happens that you become one, in some rare moment. Watch the ocean, the tremendous wildness of ir - and suddenly you forget your split, your schizophrenia, you relax. Or, moving in the Himalayas, seeing the virgin snow on the Himalayan peaks, suddenly a coolness surrounds you and you need not be false because there is no other human being to be false to. You fall together. Or, listening to beautiful music, you fall together. Whenever, in whatsoever situation, you become one, a peace, a happiness, a bliss, surrounds you, arises you. You feel fulfilled. There is no need to wait for these for moments - these moments can become your natural life. These extraordinary moments can become ordinary moments - That is the whole effort of Zen. You can live an extrordinary life in a very ordinary life: cutting wll, you can be trmendously ar ease with yourself. Cleaning the floor, cooking food, washing the clothes, you can be perfectly at ease - because the whole question is of you doing your action totally, enjoying, delighting in it.
Card 2: Clarifying the issue: Awareness
Mind can never be intelligent - only no-mind is intelligent. Only no-mind is orginal and radical. Only no-mind is revolutionary - revolution is action. This mind gives you a sort of stupor. Burdened by the memories of the past, burdened by the projection of the futurem you go on living - at the minimum. You don't live at the mazimum. Your flame reamins very dim. Once you start dropping your thoughts, the dust that you have collected in the past, the flame arises - clean, clear, alive, young. Your whole life becomes a flame, and a flame without any smoke. That is what awareness is.
Card 3: Unconscious Influences: Queen of Water: Receptivity
Listening is one of the basic secrets of entering into the temple of God. Listening means passivity. Listening means forgetting yourself completely - only then can you listen. When you listen attentively to some body, your forgot yourself. If you cannot forget yourself, you never listen. If you are too self-conscious about yourself, you simply pretend that you are listening - you don't listen. You may nod your head; you may sometimes say yes and no - no but you are not listening. When yuou listen you become just a passage, a passivity, a receptivity, a womb, you become feminine. And to arrive one has to become feminine. You cannot reach God as aggressive invaders, conquerors. You can reach God only . . . or it will be better to say God can reach you only when you are receptive, a feminine receptivity. When you become, yin, a receptivity, the door is open. And you wait. Listening is the art for becoming passive.
Card 4: Conscious Influences: Existence
You are not accidental. Existence need you. Without you something will be missing in existence and nobody can replace it. That's what give you dignity, that the whole existance will miss you. The stars and sun and moon, the trees and birds and earth - everything in the universe will feel a small place is vacant which cannot be filled by anybody excpet you. this gives you a tremendous joy, a fulfillment that you are related to existence, and existence cares for you. Once you are clean and clear, you can see tremendous love falling on you from all dimensions.
Card 5: Old Ways: Transformation
A master of Zen is not simply a teacher. In all the religions there are only teachers. They teach you about subjects which you don't know, and they ask you to believe, because there is no way to bring those expereince into objhective reality. Neither has the teacher known them - he has believed them; he transfers this belief to somebody else. Zen is not a believer's world. It is not for the faithful ones; it is for those daring souls who can drop all belief, unbelief, doubt, reason, mind, and simply enter into their pure existence without boundaries. But it brings a tremendous transformation. Hence, let me say that while others are involved in philosophies, Zen is involved in metamorphosis, in a transformation. It is authetic alchemy: it changes you from base metal into gold. But its language has to be understand, not with your reasoning and intellectual mind but with your loving heart. Or even just listening, not bothering whether it is true or not. And a moment comes suddenly that you see it, which has been eluding you your whole life. Suddenly, what Gautam Buddha called 'eighty-four thousand doors' open.
Card 6: Moving into the New: Page of Water: Understanding
You are out of jail, out of the cage; you can open your wings and the whole sky is yours. All the stars and the moon and the sun belong to you. You can disappear into the blueness of the beyond . . . just drop clinging to this cage, move out of the cage and the whole sky is yours. Open your wings and fly across the sun like an eagle. In the inner sky, in the inner world, freedom is the highest value - everything else is secondary, even blissfulness, ecstasy. There are thousands of flowers, uncountable, but they all become possible in the climate of freedom.
Card 7: The Self: 6 of Clouds: The Burden
When we carry a load of shoulds and shouldsn't imposed on us by others we become like this ragged, struggling figure trying to make his way uphill. "Go faster, try harder, reach the top!" shouts the follist tyrant he carries on his shoulder, while the tyrant himself is crowned with an imperious rooster. If life these days feels like just a struggle from the cradle to the grave, it could be time to shrug your shoulders and see what it feels like to walk without these characters on your back. you have your own mountains to conquet, your own dreams to fulfill, but you will never have the energy to pursue them until you release yourself from all the expectations you've gathered from others but now think are your own. Chances are they exist only in your own mind, but that doesn't mean they can't weigh you down. it's time to lighten up, and send them on their way.
Card 8: What others think of you: 3 of Fire: Experiecning
You just look around, look into the eyes of a child, or into the eyes of you beloeved, your mother, your friend - or just feel a tree. have you ever hugged a tree? Hug a tree, and one day you will come to know that it is not only that you have hugged the tree but that the tree also responds, the tree also hugs you. then for the first time you will be able to know that the tree is not just the form, it is not just a certain species the botanists talk about, it is an unknown God - so green in your courtyard, so full of flowers in your courtyard, so close to you, beckoning you, calling you again and again.
Card 9: Desires: The Lovers
What we call love is really a whole spectrum of relating reaching from the earth to the sky. At the most earthly level, love is sexual attraction. Many of us remain stuck there, because our conditioning has burderned our sexuality with all kinds of expectations and repressions. Actually the biggest ' problem' with sexual love is that it never lasts. Only if we accept this fact can we then really celelbrate it for what it is - welcome its happening and say good-bye with gratitude when it's not. Then as we mature, we can begin to experience the love thatexists beyond seuality and honors that unique individuality of the other. We begin to undrstand that our partner often functions as a mirror, reflecting unseen sapects of our deeper self and supporting us to become whole. This love is based in freedom, not epectation or need. its wings take us higher and higher towards that universal love that experiences all as one.
Card 10: Key: 5 of Rainbows: The Outsider
So you are feeling yourself an outsider. This is good. This is the transitory period. Now you have to be alert not to fill yourself with pain and misery. Now that God is no longer there, who is going to console you? You don't need any consolation. Humanity has come of age. Be a man, be a woman, and stand on you own feet. . . The only way to be connected with exisntence is to go inwards, because there at the centeryou are still connected. You have been disconnected physically from your mother. That disconnection was absolutely necessary to make you an individual in you own right. But you are not disconnected from the universe. Your connection with the universe is of consciousness. You cannot see it, so you have to gp deep down with great awareness, watchfullness, witnessing, and you will find the connection. The buddha is the connection!