The Great Way: Is the only way.

[melanie]

The Great Way (by Sengcan)Seng Ts’an was the 3rd Chinese Patriarch of Chan (Zen) who died in 606.

The Great Way is not difficult for those who have no preferences.

When love and hate are both absent everything becomes clear and undisguised.
Make the smallest distinction, however, and heaven and earth are set infinitely apart.

If you wish to see the truth then hold no opinions for or against anything.
To set up what you like against what you dislike is the disease of the mind.
When the deep meaning of things is not understood,
the mind’s essential peace is disturbed to no avail.

The Way is perfect like vast space where nothing is lacking and nothing in excess.
Indeed, it is due to our choosing to accept or reject that we do not see the true nature of things.

Live neither in the entanglements of outer things, nor in inner feelings of emptiness.
Be serene in the oneness of things and such erroneous views will disappear by themselves.

When you try to stop activity by passivity your very effort fills you with activity.
As long as you remain in one extreme or the other you will never know Oneness.

Those who do not live in the single Way fail in both activity and passivity, assertion and denial.
To deny the reality of things is to miss their reality; To assert the emptiness of things is to miss their reality.

The more you talk and think about it, the further astray you wander from the truth.
Stop talking and thinking, and there is nothing you will not be able to know.
To return to the root is to find meaning, but to pursue appearances is to miss the source.

At the moment of inner enlightenment there is a going beyond appearance and emptiness.
The changes that appear to occur in the empty world we call real only because of our ignorance.

Do not search for the truth; only cease to cherish opinions.
do not remain in the dualistic state.
Avoid such pursuits carefully.
If there is even a trace of this and that, of right and wrong,
the mind-essence will be lost in confusion.


Although all dualities come from the One, do not be attached even to this One.
When the mind exists undisturbed in the Way, nothing in the world can offend.
And when a thing can no longer offend, it ceases to exist in the old way.

When no discriminating thoughts arise, the old mind ceases to exist.
When thought objects vanish, the thinking-subject vanishes:
As when the mind vanishes, objects vanish.

Things are objects because of the subject (mind): the mind (subject) is such because of things (object).
Understand the relativity of these two and the basic reality: the unity of emptiness.

In this Emptiness the two are indistinguishable and each contains in itself the whole world.
If you do not discriminate between coarse and fine you will not be tempted to prejudice and opinion.

To live in the Great Way is neither easy nor difficult.
But those with limited views are fearful and irresolute:
the faster they hurry, the slower they go.
And clinging (attachment) cannot be limited:
Even to be attached to the idea of enlightenment
is to go astray.

Just let things be in their own way and there will be neither coming not going. Obey the nature of things (your own nature) and you will walk freely and undisturbed.

When the thought is in bondage the truth is hidden for everything is murky and unclear.
And the burdensome practice of judging brings annoyance and weariness.
What benefit can be derived from distinctions and separations?

If you wish to move in the One Way do not dislike even the world of senses and ideas.
Indeed, to accept them fully is identical with enlightenment.

The wise man strives to no goals but the foolish man fetters himself.
There is one Dharma, not many.
Distinctions arise from the clinging needs of the ignorant.
To seek Mind with the (discriminating) mind is the greatest of all mistakes.
Rest and unrest derive from illusion;
with enlightenment there is no liking and disliking.

All dualities come from ignorant inference.
They are like dreams or flowers in air - foolish to try to grasp them.
Gain and loss, right and wrong, such thoughts must
finally be abolished at once.

If the eye never sleeps, all dreams will naturally cease.
If the mind makes no discriminations, the ten thousand things are as they are, of single essence.
To understand the mystery of this One-essence is to be released from all entanglements.

When all things are seen equally the timeless Self-essence is reached,
No comparisons or analogies are possible in this causeless, relation-less state.

Consider movement stationary and the stationary in motion, both movement and rest disappear.
When such dualities cease to exist Oneness itself cannot exist.
To this ultimate finality no law or description applies.

For the unified mind in accord with the way all self-centered striving ceases.
Doubts and irresolutions vanish and life in true faith is possible.
With a single stroke we are freed from bondage:
Nothing clings to us and we hold to nothing.

All is empty, clear, self-illuminating, with no exertion of the mind’s power.
Here thought, feeling, knowledge and imagination are of no value.
In this world of such-ness there is neither self nor other-than-self.
To come directly into harmony with this reality just say when doubt rises "not two".

In this "not two" nothing is separate, nothing is excluded.
No matter when or where, enlightenment means entering this truth.
And this truth is beyond extension or diminution in time and space:
In it a single thought is ten thousand years.

Emptiness here, emptiness there, but the infinite universe stands always before your eyes.
Infinitely large and infinitely small;
no difference, for definitions have vanished and no boundaries are seen.
So too with Being and non-Being.

Don’t waste time in doubts and arguments that have nothing to do with this.
One thing, all things, move among and intermingle without distinction.
To live in this realization is to be without anxiety about non-perfection.

To live in this faith is the road to non-duality, because the non-dual is one with the trusting mind.

Words!
The Way is beyond language,
for in it there is
no yesterday
no tomorrow
no today.

[MJA]

Life without measure is truly equal, is truly One.

=
MJA

[MikeInfinity]

You cant read the Tao and say "This is the truth and this is how I choose to live" because by doing so you you activate 'action' and 'desire'. Only by the opened minded relentless pursuit of desire, can one arrive at non-desire. In other words one must follow desire knowing that desire is one's own enemy. Combat desire by accepting its invitation to participate in folly. How can one truly know wisdom except by first being a fool. Experientialy speaking,when a child touches fire and say,"well I'm not doing that again". So follow desire until you have your own personal reason to say "well I'm not doing that again.'

Arrival at non-action is the same as- Doing nothing just not leaving anything undone.

[melanie]

Good replies MikeInfinity and MJA thanks.

We all want boundless happiness, boundless love, boundless peace, boundless freedom, boundless knowledge...

Strangely enough, boundaries are that what define us...

'I am this and that, I am such and so' is synonymous with "boundedness"...


That is the eternal apparent paradox.

[melanie]

“All that is existent in our universe is in motion
an intricate, interwoven web of vibrating energy,
rising from the sub-quantum, high frequency levels
to don the fabric of spacetime and wear the persona of matter.

Whatever the mask, it remains energy,
a vibration in dynamic motion, veering off in non-linear, fractal, holographic trajectories that remain un-plotted by our finest minds.
Here, each of us exists as a vibratory field connected to the One Field in which we dwell permanently.

We are awakening to the simple fact that we exist as One Being with an infinite sensory perception and intelligence,
and yet, we remain sovereign and unique within this meshwork of personalities.

Thoughts, feelings, words, actions, and emanations of a more subtle kind, are each vibratory in their true nature.
They flow in and around each of us, and it is this vibratory field that activates, co-creates,
and transforms our world at its core reality, which then cascades outward to our local universe.
If these emanations are coherent, they become powerful.

All material things are like wave forms with crests and valleys.
Our human instrument is not a stable field that holds a position.
We are dynamic and we are always moving with the life energy that animates us,
and these movements, in spacetime, intermingle with higher and lower frequencies.
They shift and fluctuate.

There is a rhythm in the modulation, and when we are in the midst of the lower frequencies,
we know it will soon change to the higher, and vice versa.
These rhythms are fractal or harmonic in nature in both space and time.

The field of vibration that emanates from your Spiritual Center is not subject to the waveform encoding of our material domains.

Its experience is pure intelligence unfettered by modulations in duality.
This Presence is reaching out as you reach in, and through this process a new realization is born.”

[MikeInfinity]

Energy, what is energy apart from the material....

The awakened and knowing say: Body I am entirely, and nothing else. And the soul is only a word for something about the body. -- Friedrich Nietzsche, Thus Spoke Zarathustra

Did this One Being draft out the 'triangle'- the father of all planes? Or was the triangle a product of the potential? For this same triangle gave birth to the ‘tetrahedron'- the mother of all volumes. And these volumes all unite to form an abundance of possibilities. For if something is potential it is self-existent and eternal. Surly the potential had within itself a place for we as humans. That would make Humans an actualization of possibilities- eternal in nature. Humans would not need a Creator just an Assembler. For our existence pre dates time, space, and even matter.

Time is a succession of instances...

Space is a system of associated points...

Matter is space actualized...

Energy is a by-product of two eternals striving for supremacy...

The Actual and the Potential.

[austintorn@aol.com]

The Potential, shown to be an indeterminate disorder of chaos by science, with no hidden variables within, matches what we would also realize through thought: that it can't be a system, a mind, a design or a designer in itself, for there is no prior time for the eternal causeless itself to have been designed as there is neither anything before it nor any more fundamental parts to make it of nor anything or any way to design it, especially all the more for the ultimate complexity of the One Being. Complexity is found at higher scales, not at the original tiny scale. Look up and to the future, not down and to the past.

So, no Being.

[melanie]

Energy, what is energy apart from the material....



Did this One Being draft out the 'triangle'- the father of all planes? Or was the triangle a product of the potential? For this same triangle gave birth to the ‘tetrahedron'- the mother of all volumes. And these volumes all unite to form an abundance of possibilities. For if something is potential it is self-existent and eternal. Surly the potential had within itself a place for we as humans. That would make Humans an actualization of possibilities- eternal in nature. Humans would not need a Creator just an Assembler. For our existence pre dates time, space, and even matter.

I agree with your thoughts here MikeInfinity thanks for posting them.

The creator is it's created, although the artist is not in the picture, the picture was in the artist.

So, we can say, that what was there at the beginning is also there at the end,
creator/assembler both meaningless words/concepts in and by themselves, perhaps we could best describe this as an eternal 'sentient intelligence' of awareness presence.

There is a self-subsisting life-force that pervades every realm of existence, every kingdom, known and unknown, in each and every universe, through-out the Cosmos.

It is a wonderous sight to behold how Mother Nature manifests That Principle in such a variety of truly amazing, beautiful, and magnificent waves,
Anything that reacts in an environment can be said to have awareness.

All things, interplanetary, planatery, or sub-atomic, react in an environment of Nothing.

Relative consciousness arises as three by-product of Potential (Latent)Awareness knowing Nature.
Father, Mother, Son. Spirit, Soul, Matter/Man.
The Soul of Man (non-gender specific) comes into existence at the moment of conception.

One moves the other,the other is moved by the One.

It appears to me that If, The Meta-physical didn't exist, the Physicist could not occupy time.

[melanie]

So, no Being.

Without doubt 'we' are part of 'the world'

But this 'world' of which 'we are a part' has no separate being, no substance nor extension,except in 'idea' only,
except as this form and meaning known- all 'things' known as One- forever unchanged.

An infinitesimal facet of this 'known world' is made instantly apparent through association with sensations-
colours, odours, flavours, sounds, feelings- formed into patterns that accord with the ideas known.

So, no being.

It is called 'illusion' simply because it appears to be some 'thing' when it is really no 'thing' at all.
It is simply sensations sensed and idea known, it cannot be touched or passed through.

This appearance is simply perceived as it is perceived.

The illusion is not separate from this eternal seeing hearing feeling tasting smelling knowing power-which is One.

[melanie]

Complexity is found at higher scales, not at the original tiny scale.
Look up and to the future, not down and to the past.

This conception is wholly complete forever unchanged.

It contains complexity and simplicity both, is past present and future now.