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Tuesday, April 12, 2011

The Conduct of the Moon and Clouds(from Hongzhi Zhengjue)

Lead me from dreaming to waking.
Lead me from opacity to clarity. Lead me from the complicated to the simple. Lead me from the obscure to the obvious. Lead me from intention to attention. Lead me from what I'm told I am to what I see I am. Lead me from confrontation to wide openness
. Lead me to the place I never left, Where there is peace, and peace - The Upanishads
*note* about Hongzhi Zhengjue quote"Hongzhi Zhengjue (Chinese: 宏智正覺, Pinyin: Hóngzhì Zhēngjué, Japanese: Wanshi Zenji, 1091–1157) was a Chinese Chán Buddhist monk who authored or compiled several influential Buddhist texts...According to the account given in Dan Leighton's Cultivating the Empty Field, Hongzhi was born to a family named Li in Xizhou, present-day Shangxi province. He left home at the age of 11 to become a monk, studying under Caodong master Kumu Faqeng, among others, including Yuanwu Keqin, author of the famous koan collection, the Blue Cliff Record.

In 1129, Hongzhi began teaching at the Jingde monastery on Mount Tiantong, where he remained for nearly thirty years, until shortly before his death in 1157, when he ventured down the mountain to bid farewell to his supporters.Hongzhi is the author or compiler of several texts important to the development of Chán Buddhism. One of these is the kōan collection known in English as The Book of Equanimity, The Book of Serenity, or The Book of Composure (Chinese: 從容録; Wade–Giles: Ts'ung-jung lu), or Shōyōroku (従容録?) in Japanese"..you may read the famous Shoyoroku collection here..Book of Serenity
I quote only one marvelous one here...Shoyoroku - Case 52: Sozan's "Dharma-body"
Sozan asked Elder Toku,
"'The true Dharma-body of Buddha is like the empty sky. It manifests its
form corresponding to things -- just like the moon on the water.'
How do you explain the principle of this corresponding?"
Toku said,
"It is like a donkey looking into a well."
Sozan said,
"You put it in a nice way, but you were able to say only eighty percent."
Toku said,
"How about you, Master?"
Sozan said,
"It is like a well looking at a donkey."
-added by danny-
........
Cultivating the Empty Field; The Silent Illumination of Zen Master Hongzhi


Translated by Taigen Daniel Leighton and Yi Wu


The Amazing Living Beings


Our house is a single field, clean, vast, and lustrous, clearly self-illuminated. When the spirit is vacant without conditions, when awareness is serene without cogitation, then buddhas and ancestors appear and disappear transforming the world. Amid living beings is the original place of nirvana. How amazing it is that all people have this but cannot polish it into bright clarity. In darkness unawakened, they make foolishness cover their wisdom.


One remembrance of illumination can break through and leap out of the dust of kalpas. Radiant and clear white, the single field cannot be diverted or altered. Solitary glory is deeply preserved, enduring throughout ancient and present times, as the merging of sameness and difference becomes the entire creation's mother.


This realm manifests the energy of the many thousands of beings, all appearances merely this field’s shadows. Truly embody this reality.

*note* about the video above...the owner says..quote"the tokens are not will never be the creator of our african rythm never..this is a south african song a zulu song called mbube (lion)...it has been sung for centuries in south africa and firstly recorded by linda solomon...we talk about a lion sleeping but it just deeper than you guy think when a king dies we say in africa that he sleeps and when shacka died they sang it to tell the people that the lion is sleeping ..i yu m'bube =you are the lion...chacka you can't die you certainly sleeping..they stole it and don't have the honesty to say where they took it..damn it"..added by danny..and never forget you ARE the lion sleeping..wake up,my beautiful lion from heaven,and KNOW you are not a chicken..kisses from the mahayogi,and be well..grasshoppers from heaven:)
The Conduct of the Moon and Clouds

The consistent conduct of people of the Way is like the flowing clouds with no grasping mind, like the full moon reflecting universally, not confined anywhere, glistening within each of the ten thousand forms.

Dignified and upright, emerge and make contact with the variety of phenomena, unstained and unconfused. Function the same toward all others since all have the same substance as you. Language cannot transmit this, speculation cannot reach it. Leaping beyond the infinite and cutting off the dependent, be obliging without looking for merit.

This marvel cannot be measured with consciousness or emotion. On the journey accept your function, in your house please sustain it. Comprehending birth and death, leaving causes and conditions, genuinely realize that from the outset your spirit is not halted. So we have been told that the mind that embraces all the ten directions does not stop anywhere.

-- Hongzhi Zhengjue (1091-1157)
To nourish the vital energy, keep watch in silence;
In order to subdue the mind, act with non-action.
Of movement and stillness, be aware of their origin;
There is no work to do, much less someone to seek.
The true and constant must respond to phenomena;
Responding to phenomena, you must be unconfused.
When unconfused, the nature will stabilize by itself;
When the nature stabilizes, energy returns by itself.
When energy returns, the elixir crystallizes by itself;
Within the pot, the trigrams of heaven and earth are joined.
Yīn and yáng arise, alternating over and over again;
Every transformation comes like a clap of thunder.
White clouds form and come to assemble at the peak;
The sweet nectar sprinkles down Mount Sumeru.
Swallow for yourself this wine of immortality;
You wander so freely—who is able to know you?
Sit and listen to the tune played without strings;
Clearly understand the mechanism of creation.
It comes entirely from these twenty lines;
A true ladder going straight to Heaven.-Daoist text -
To us all towns are one, all men our kin. Life's good comes not from others' gift, nor ill. Man's pains and pains' relief are from within. Thus have we seen in visions of the wise !." - Tamil Poem-