Reflection for August 28, 2007

A Master saw a disciple who was very zealous in meditation. The Master said: “Virtuous one, what is your aim in practicing Zazen (meditation)?”

The disciple said: “My aim is to become a Buddha.”

 

Then the Master picked up a tile and began to polish it on a stone in front of the hermitage.

 

The disciple said: “What is the Master doing?”

The Master said: “I am polishing this tile to make it a mirror.”

 

The disciple said: “How can you make a mirror by polishing a tile?”

The Master replied: “How can you make a Buddha by practic­ing Zazen

 

Prayer for August 24, 2007

Peace and Universal Love is the essence
of the Gospel preached by all
Enlightened Ones.
The Lord has preached that equanimity
is the dharma
Forgive do I creatures all,
and let all creatures forgive me.
Unto all have I amity, and unto none enmity.
Know that violence is the root cause of
all miseries in the world.
Violence, in fact, is the knot of bondage.
“Do not injure any living being.”
This is the eternal, perrinial, and unalterable
way of spiritual life.
A weapon, howsoever powerful it may be,
can always be superseded by a superior one;
but no weapon can, however,

–Jain Prayer

 

reflection for August 23, 2007: This is It

And Moses said to his page: “I will not give up until I reach the meeting of the two seas, though I go on for many years.”

 

–Quran 18:60

 

 

Now, generally speaking, a modem person is a person who investigates and experiments and is not satisfied with the spiri­tual message of theistic religions. Let me give you the example of a scientist whom I met in the US. In the beginning of our meetings she told me that she refused to see any common grounds between Bud­dhism and modern science. She had a very negative attitude. Then our discussion started and we didn’t talk about God or soul. We talked about particles and emotions. As we were progressing in the dialogue the American scientist was becoming more and more enthusiastic. At the end of our discussion she accepted that there could be a common ground between Buddhism and modern science. Maybe it had to do with the fact that Buddhism does not have the concept of soul and God as in the theistic religions. That is to say, some modem people who believe in reason want also to rely on faith. This includes some modern scientists who get some benefit from the Buddhist explana­tions about the mind or about the emotions. More and more scientists begin to realize that emotions are very important for our health. When Buddhism talks about emotions it is not only concerned with salvation and life after death but with having better health, a happier family and a happier society. Nowadays Westerners show interest in Buddhist explanations of life not only because they are said by Buddhists but because they are scientific.

 

Of course, I think there are two types of Westerners who are in­terested in Buddhism. The first category is people who are not serious and who follow the fashion. Today they are interested in Buddhism; tomorrow they are interested in Hinduism and the day after they become Sufis. The second category concerns people who are more critical and more cautious in the beginning, but who study more deeply Buddhism and who find some substance in their experience of Buddhism. These people show a genuine interest in Buddhism. I think the interest comes also from the fact that Buddhism is an open  ­minded religion because it does not believe in the concept of a central authority. Even Jainism believes in the concept ofAtma (soul) though Jains have no concept of a God as a Creator.

 

I would just like to add that I think all religions without exception talk about love, compassion and self-discipline. So you find a lot of similarities among religions. But since there have been many wars in human history in the name of religion, some people think that religion and compassion are two different things. Because of the religious wars in history many people have told me that it is better to have one universal religion instead of having many different religions. I think such an opinion is due to a lack of knowledge concerning different traditions of thought and positive values like tolerance and compas­sion that they have perpetrated. I have a Muslim friend who believes in Allah and who says that because he believes in God he loves not only other human beings but also other creatures because God cre­ated them all. The Buddhist concept of love is the same. You find the same concept in Christianity and in Judaism. What makes problems in the minds of modern people is the memory of religious wars and violence which happened in the West. But fortunately Buddhism was quite far from the West.

 

–His Holiness the 14^th Dalai Lama

 

 

 

There is only One World, and this is It. What we look on as the sensible world, the finite world of time and space, is nothing but a conglomeration of veils which hide the Real World

 

–Shaykh Ahmad al-‘Alawi

 

reflection for August 22, 2007: marriage of east and west

Gather up the fragments that remain, that nothing be lost.’

-John 6:12

 

But if by ^“God^“ we mean a reality far surpassing our own fullness of being we must envisage the divine as total realization, abundance of life and actuality, energy unfailing, of which our mode of being is a pale reflection, and at best a symbol. Yet people persist in asking whether or not God exists. As Dostoyevsky pointed out, their question never finds an answer, because it is wrongly put. Its proper context is the experience of active loving, but it is confined within the narrow limits of a notion of existence which is as irrelevant to life as it is unreal and reductionist. The concept of God as a remote entity which does nothing served as a postulate for some philosophers of the eighteenth century, but it is foreign to all the great religious traditions of humankind. For these the question-and it is a burning question-is not of God^‘s existence but of his presence, and this implies his power or energy. Yet even today deism is not dead. The reductionist notion of God, which was formerly the preserve of academics, is uncritically accepted by ordinary people in our society, who on the whole do not reject belief that God exists but have little sense of the divine presence and of communion with him. This reductionist point of view is in direct opposition to the religious instinct and mystical impulse, which suffers widespread atrophy in our times.

In spite of all this, the human heart senses that ^“God” is not a mono­syllabic blob but the Ever-present One. How are we to understand, and live, this sense? Christianity is sometimes seen as nothing but a collec­tion of moral duties and soothing reassurances about salvation, rather than as a summons to the deification of the human person.

St. Athanasius of Alexandria, a pillar of orthodoxy during the fourth century, insisted upon the divine being’s exuberance. The divine being, ineffably more alive that we are, cannot be self-contained and barren but has to be Father, forever bringing forth his son from the womb of his

own substance. This continual begetting is a movement of being which is essentially fruitful. Our human experience of parenting is only an analogy for the perfect generation in the divine being, where there is no before and after, no differentiation into male and female, and where the one brought forth is not inferior to the parent. This vision of God continually pouring forth his very being would inspire Meister Eckhart a millennium later to speak of God in terms of molten metal which is always boiling over. The son^‘s coming forth from the Father is a non-stop act of both begetting and giving birth.

Thus for the Christian tradition the divine reality is essentially per­sonal. The three are not merely aspects of some impersonal substrate, nor are they separate individuals. The doctrine of the Trinity states that ultimate reality is a communion of persons, each dwelling in the others. Here relationship is of the essence. And this communion of persons is the truth and exemplar of all being. In particular it is the hope to which we human beings aspire. We come alive when our eyes meet those of the one who loves us, for we then find our center outside ourselves in the other, and in so doing we touch the mystery of transcendence. By falling in love we leave behind our own isolation and break away from our old, limited way of life, which is now revealed as loneliness and incompletion. And, even more, in the unromantic daily struggle of active loving, in relationship, we find out who we really are. That is the context in which we can ask about God for it is then that we most resemble God. The Trinity goes beyond both solitude and the mutual opposition of Dual­ism, for God, as St. John says, is love.

 

–father symeon burholt

 

Jim. What kind of audience do you see for this marriage of East and West?

Bede. Whether I come to America or Europe, I’ve recently been to Australia, everywhere I find people, lay people, deeply interested in a more living kind of prayer. You see, many Catholics today no longer go to Mass. In Europe 10% is considered normal, even in Spain where I was recently. It isn’t that they don’t want the Masses. They want a more living liturgy, and we feel that the liturgy we are developing in India has a life in it, a vitality and a beauty in it which could revive the liturgy in the West, you know. So we are trying now to see how people in the West could live a contemplative life, not so much in monasteries, as in ashram. An ashram is different from a monastery. It is a place where there is a guru, normally, a teacher who has disciples who gather around him, and share his knowledge of God, his knowledge of the world and of the spiritual life. So it is much more free and open. You have both men and women, you can have married people. You can even have non-Christians, so you are open in a way that monasteries normally are not, and at the same time it has to be firmly rooted in the Christian Catholic tradition with Mass at the center, you see, so that is really what we are working for.

Jim. You spoke of the tension in Fr. Le Saux’s life between advaita and Trinity. Do you think that as people begin to embrace these two contemplative paths they are experiencing the same tension?

Bede. Well, I think not. Personally I have not had the same tension. The crux of the matter is advaita, you see, nonduality, and Fr. Monchanin once said the aim of our life is advaita and the Trinity. And I believe that advaita is not one, and it’s not two. It is really relationship, and the Trinity to me is the perfect example of nondual relationship. See, the Father is not the Son, the Father and Son are not the Holy Spirit. It’s not one. Neither are they two. The Father is not simply separate from the Son. The Father is in the Son, the Son in the Father, the Father and the Son in the Holy Spirit, so it’s a nondual relationship which for me is a model of all nonduality. The whole of creation, actually, is this interweaving of beings in relationship, in communion.

You know, Western science, today, says that the whole universe is a field of energies where everything is interrelated and interdependent, and so this kind of relationship is not simply dualistic dividing everything, nor simply monistic, making everything simply one, but all things, and all human beings, are all interrelated, interdependent and woven together, as it were, as a whole, and the Trinity is the model and the principle of the whole. To me nonduality understood in a Christian sense is the answer to theology today. That’s how I would see it. We’re only gradually coming to it.

Jim. In your recent book, A New Vision of Reality, you talked about the difference between a Christian mysticism based on love, and a Hindu or Buddhist mysticism based on a transformation of consciousness. Can you comment on that?

Bede. It’s a very interesting point. In the Hindu tradition the name for the godhead as far as it can have a name is sat-chit-ananda, being, consciousness, and bliss, and the Hindu aims at reaching that state where you become one with the supreme being through reality in pure consciousness, and that produces a state of absolute bliss, transcendence, but it is not exactly love, so there is no relationship in it. I feel the danger of Hindu mysticism is to retire into an inner reality of infinite riches and beauty and so on, but it doesn’t relate you to others, and the danger of the sannyasi in India is he is not really concerned with other people. That’s why you can meet people dying in the streets of Calcutta and not worry much about it. It’s part of karma, it’s part of samsari, the way of the world, and you believe that eventually these people will come to a better state, but you are concerned with this union with the supreme in the depths of your being. It’s a wonderful experience, but it’s not love, you see. I think they teach us much about the inner life of the spirit, and so on, but I think we also can bring this principle that it’s not simply a communion with God in wisdom, in understanding, in knowledge, in jnana, as they say, it’s also a communion in love, and a love which goes in and through God, through Christ, to the whole creation, to all humanity. If you do not love your brother who you see, how can you love God whom you have not seen? So I think that is something the Christian tradition can bring. Though mind you, I do feel that they have a depth of God realization which very few Christians in the West have today.

–Interview with Bede Griffith

http://www.innerexplorations.com/catew/5.htm

 

 

The primary mystery is the birth of God in man (who includes the world in
himself and the birth of man in god. In our imperfect language this means
that there is in God a need for a responsive creative act on the part of man.
Man is not merely a sinner; the consciousness of sin is but an experience
which moves him as he treads his path; man is also a creator. The human
tragedy from which there is no escape, the dialectic of freedom, necessity,
and grace, finds its solution within the orbit of the divine Mystery, within
the Deity, which lies deeper than the drama between Creator and creature,
deeper than representations of heaven and hell.

Here the human tongue keeps silence. The eschatological outlook is not
limited to the prospect of an indefinable end of the world;
it embraces in its view every moment of life.
At each moment of one’s living, what is needed is to put an end to the old
world and to begin the new. In that is the breath of the Spirit.’

-Nicholas Berdyaev

 

 

Reflection for August 21, 2007: what you must renounce

The real voyage of discovery consists not in seeking new landscapes but in having new eyes.

–Marcel Proust

 

“Say unto them: Renounce murmuring, that ye may be worthy of the mysteries of the Light and be saved from the fire of the dog-faced [one].

“Say unto them: Renounce eavesdropping [?], that ye may [be worthy of the mysteries of the Light] and be saved from the judgments of the dog-faced [one].

“Say unto them: Renounce litigiousness [?], that ye may be worthy of the mysteries of the Light and be saved from the chastisements of Ariēl.

“Say unto them: Renounce false slander, that ye may be worthy of the mysteries of the Light and be saved from the fire-rivers of the dog-faced [one].

“Say unto them: Renounce false witness, that ye may be worthy of the mysteries of the Light and that ye may escape and be saved from the fire-rivers of the dog-faced [one].

“Say unto them: Renounce pride and haughtiness, that ye may be worthy of the mysteries of the Light and be saved from the fire-pits of Ariēl.

“Say unto them: Renounce belly-love, that ye may be worthy of the mysteries of the Light and be saved from the judgments of Amente.

“Say unto them: Renounce babbling, that ye may be worthy of the mysteries of the Light and be saved from the fires of Amente.

“Say unto them:. Renounce craftiness, that ye may be worthy of the mysteries of the Light and be saved from the chastisements which are in Amente.

“Say unto them: Renounce avarice, that ye may be worthy of the mysteries of the Light and be saved from the fire-rivers of the dog-faced [one].

“Say unto them: Renounce love of the world, that ye may be worthy of the mysteries of the Light and be saved from the pitch- and fire-coats of the dog-faced [one].

“Say unto them: Renounce pillage, that ye may be worthy of the mysteries of the Light and be saved from the fire-rivers of Ariēl.

“Say unto them: Renounce evil conversation, that ye may be worthy of the mysteries of the Light and be saved from the chastisements of the fire-rivers . . . .

“Say unto them: Renounce wickedness, that ye may be worthy of the mysteries of the Light and be saved from the fire-seas of Ariēl.

“Say unto them: Renounce pitilessness, that ye may be worthy of the mysteries of the Light and be saved from the judgments of the dragon-faced [ones].

“Say unto them: Renounce wrath, that ye may be worthy of the mysteries of the Light and be saved from the fire-rivers of the dragon-faced [ones.]

“Say unto them: Renounce cursing, that ye may be worthy of the mysteries of the Light and be saved from the fire-seas of the dragon-faced [ones].

“Say unto them: Renounce thieving, that ye may be worthy of the mysteries of the Light and be saved from the bubbling seas of the dragon-faced [ones].

“Say unto them: Renounce robbery, that ye may be worthy of the mysteries of the Light and be saved from Yaldabaōth.

“Say unto them: Renounce slandering, that ye may be worthy of the mysteries of the Light and be saved from the fire-rivers of the lion-faced [one].

“Say unto them: Renounce fighting and strife, that ye may be worthy of the mysteries of the Light and be saved from the seething rivers of Yaldabaōth.

“Say unto them: Renounce all unknowing, that ye may be worthy of the mysteries of the Light and be saved from the servitors of Yaldabaōth and the fire-seas.

“Say unto them: Renounce evil doing, that ye may be worthy of the mysteries of the Light and be saved from all the demons of Yaldabaōth and all his judgments.

“Say unto them: Renounce sloth, that ye may be worthy of the mysteries of the Light and be saved from the seething pitch-seas of Yaldabaōth.

“Say unto them: Renounce adultery, that ye may be worthy of the mysteries of the Light-kingdom and be saved from the sulphur- and pitch-seas of the lion-faced [one].

“Say unto them: Renounce murder, that ye may be worthy of the mysteries of the Light and be saved from the crocodile-faced ruler,–this one who is in the cold,  is the first chamber of the outer darkness.

“Say unto them: Renounce pitilessness and impiety, that ye may be worthy of the mysteries of the Light and be saved from the rulers of the outer darkness.

“Say unto them: Renounce atheism, that ye may be worthy of the mysteries of the Light and be saved from the howling and grinding of teeth.

“Say unto them: Renounce [magic] potions, that ye may be worthy of the mysteries of the Light and be saved from the great cold and the hail of the outer darkness.

“Say unto them: Renounce blasphemy, that ye may be worthy of the mysteries of the Light and be saved from the great dragon of the outer darkness.

“Say unto them: Renounce the doctrines of error, that ye may be worthy of the mysteries of the Light and be saved from all the chastisements of the great dragon of the outer darkness.

“Say unto those who teach the doctrines of error and to every one who is instructed by them: Woe unto you, for, if ye do not repent and abandon your error, ye will go into the chastisements of the great dragon and of the outer darkness, which is exceedingly evil, and never will ye be cast [up] into the world, but will be non-existent until the end.

“Say unto those who abandon the doctrines of truth of the First Mystery: Woe unto you, for your chastisement is sad compared with [that of] all men. For ye will abide in the great cold and ice and hail in the midst of the dragon and of the outer darkness, and ye will never from this hour on be cast [up] into the world, but ye shall be frozen up [?] in that region and at the dissolution of the universe ye will perish and become non-existent eternally.

The boundaries of the ways of the worthy.“Say rather to the men of the world: Be calm, that ye may receive the mysteries of the Light and go on high into the Light-kingdom.

“Say unto them: Be ye loving-unto-men, that ye may be worthy of the mysteries of the Light and go on high into the Light-kingdom.

“Say unto them: Be ye gentle, that ye may receive the mysteries of the Light and go on high into the Light-kingdom.

“Say unto them: Be ye peaceful, that ye may receive the mysteries of the Light and go on high into the Light-kingdom.

“Say unto them: Be ye merciful, that ye may receive the mysteries of the Light and go on high into the Light-kingdom.

“Say unto them: Give ye alms, that ye may receive the mysteries of the Light and go on high into the Light-kingdom.

“Say unto them: Minister unto the poor and the sick and distressed, that ye may receive the mysteries of the Light and go on high into the Light-kingdom.

“Say unto them: Be ye loving-unto-God, that ye may receive the mysteries of the Light and go on high into the Light-kingdom.

“Say unto them: Be ye righteous, that ye may receive the mysteries [of the Light] and go on high into the Light-kingdom.

“Say unto them: Be good, that ye may receive the mysteries [of the Light] and go on high into the Light-kingdom.

“Say unto them: Renounce all, that ye may receive the mysteries of the Light and go on high into the Light-kingdom.

“These are all the boundaries of the ways for those who are worthy of the mysteries of the Light.

–Pistis Sophia book 3

 

reflection for August 20, 2007: pointing fingers at the catholic church

I drink tea

and forget the world’s noises

–zen proverb
The following are my thoughts from a group discussion, unless it is signified or made obvious otherwise. You may not agree with them, Please be warned you may find some of this upsetting, so please do not read if you may:

There are great many ills in the world

while it is very true the catholic church has done a great many wrongs…it has also produced many good things.

The baptist church in USA arguably has more sexual misconduct within itself than the catholic church. But you don’t focus on that.

Child protection agencies have been rife all over the world with sexual misconduct, yet you don’t mention that

thousands of women are raped every year in USA, you fail to let us know about that

Women are forced to be raped by soldiers in Dafur and watch their children shot before them. No mention of that from you is forth coming.

With the help of an international net work, the CIA is able to fly and deport prisoners wherever they like. Countries all over the world are complicit in allowing their air space and air ports to be used by the CIA. The CIA are literally able, and now legally able (thank you military commissions act) to transport prisoners and torture them to death.

Iraqi prisoners face force feeding through tubes, watching their families shot before them, near drowning which can lead to death often. They spend 23 hours a day or more confined in small rooms(being forced to have extremely loud music pumped into their cells, so they cant sleep properly).

One Canadian man who was eventually found to be wrongly accused, spend several years in a cell the size of a large coffin, buried underground. The US government has refused to fully apologise, the Canadians have fully compensated and attempted to make amends. You do not say anything about these things.

etc.

You see there are great many ills in this world…yet you insist on only focusing on one. Shouldn’t you focus on them all?

Or are you like George Bush? He focuses on the “war on terrorism.” But does nothing to help other problems in this world, you may argue otherwise, but he IS complicit with other countries in their injustices.

So if we focus on one thing we are selling ourselves short. If we focus on everything when will it end?

Like bush trying to end terrorism, where will it end? It is a false crusade, a journey of a moron…the more we act, the less we actually do , bush has created terrorists…his actions have really changed nothing.

By writhing against the ills of the world what do we accomplish? In the end there is no end to our writhing and focus on negativity….

Instead of this there is another way, a Gnostic way. I use the term Gnostic in this instance as related to this group and in the Sufi meaning, which is “contemplative” or “seeker.” What does the Gnostic do when faced with such things?

The Gnostic knows it is foolish to give in to the ego.
Foolish to break the inner calm.

Foolish to constantly shout like a twit and solve nothing.

The Gnostic knows if they give in to such things all too soon they become of them. They give the Demi urge LIFE, when before it had NONE.

If the journey of the destroyer of injustice is never ending, how can one truly separate the crusader who seeks to do good, from the perceived evil they are attempting to destroy? Is not the painting inseparable from the artist, is not art an expression of the artist?

So what does the Gnostic do?

The Gnostic becomes love.

The Gnostic combats fear and injustice not by being angry and giving in to the injustice, the Gnostic sends love.

The Gnostic does not make themselves God and try to tell others how to think.

The Gnostic prays for those that do not see the correct way; the Gnostic prays for those in darkness to come into the light. The Gnostic prays that those in pain will become free from attachment.

The Gnostic way is not death.

The Gnostic way is life.

In the name of the living Gods,
I purify my hands in righteousness and my lips in faith.
Let them utter the speech of Light and make my ablutions
effective by thoughts of light.

Amen

“DETACHMENT from things does not mean setting up a contradiction between “things” and “God” as if God were another “thing” and as if His creatures were His rivals. We do not detach ourselves from things in order to attach ourselves to God, but rather we become de-tached from ourselves in order to see and use all things in and for God. This is an entirely new perspective which many sincerely moral and ascetic minds fail utterly to see. There is no evil in anything created by God, nor can anything of His become an obstacle to our union with Him. The obstacle is in our “self,” that is to say in the tenacious need to maintain our separate, external, egotistical will. It is when we refer all things to this outward and false “self” that we alienate ourselves from reality and from God. It is then the false self that is our god, and we love everything for the sake of this self. We use all things, so to speak, for the worship of this idol which is our imaginary self. In so doing we pervert and corrupt things, or rather we turn our relationship to them into a corrupt and sinful relationship. We do not thereby make them evil, but we use them to increase our attachment to our illusory self.

Those who try to escape from this situation by treating the good things of God as if they were evils are only confirming themselves in a terrible illusion. They are like Adam blaming Eve and Eve blaming the serpent in Eden. “Woman has tempted me. Wine has tempted me. Food has tempted me. Woman is pernicious, wine is poison, food is death. I must hate and revile them. By hating them I will please God. . .” These are the thoughts and attitudes of a baby, of a savage and of an idolater who seeks by magic incantations and spells to protect his egotistical self and placate the insatiable little god in his own heart. To take such an idol for God is the worst kind of self-deception. It turns a man into a fanatic, no longer capable of sustained contact with the truth, no longer capable of genuine love.
In trying to believe in their ego as something “holy” these fanatics look upon everything else as unholy.”

Thomas Merton, Seeds of Contemplation, Everything That Is, Is Holy

 

Prayer for August 18, 2007

May all be blessed, peaceful and happy,

 

May all be free of pain, resentment and fear.

 

May we have infinite gratitude, patience and compassion for all above, equal, and below us.

 

May we be the doctor, medicine and nurse, for all the confused, sick and sad. May all the virtue acquired by us, flow freely to all need.

 

 May everyone find the Path to Peace,

 

 May everyone become pure and perfect,

 

 May everyone find the Treasury of Life!

 

May Kushta bless you and keep you . . . Amin

 [All place palms together and Bow to all others]

 

Good is the Good to the good, and They set their nature upon those who love their name.

 

We will seek and find, and will pray and be heard.

 

We have sought and found, we prayed and were heard in thy presence,

my Lord Yeshu and Maryam d-Hiya, Lords of Healings.

 

Amen

 

 

the moon in my door

Stripped of reason my mind is blank
Emptied of being my nature is bare
At night my windows often breathe white
The moon and stream come right to the door.

– Shih-wu (1272-1352)

 

In the night the bells of the mountain temple
Are swung by the wind from the pines.
From my bed of stone by the wintry lamp
I can hear the flowering rain of Buddha.

– Wang Wen-lu (16th century)

 

reflection for august 17, 2007: born into color

In a grove of tall bamboos
Beside an ancient temple
Steam rolls from the brazier
In fragrant white clouds.
I’ll show you the path of Sages
Beyond this floating world,
But will you understand
The lasting taste of spring?

– Baisao (1675-1763)

 

 

************************ 

Inside this new love, die.
Your way begins on the other side.
Become the sky.
Take an axe to the prison wall.
Escape.
Walk out like someone suddenly born into color.
Do it now.
You’re covered with thick clouds.
Slide out the side. Die,
and be quiet. Quietness is the surest sign
that you’ve died.
Your old life was a frantic running
from silence. The speechless full moon
comes out now.

–Rumi (quietness)

********************************** 

“When you have lifted up the Son of Man,

you will know who I am. You will also know

that I dona’t do anything on my own. I say

only what my Father taught me. The one

who sent me is with me. I always do what

pleases him, and he will never leave me.”

–john 8:28-30

 

reflection for August 16, 2007: the Ox mountain Parable

Master Meng said: There was once a fine forest on the Ox Mountain,

Near the capital of a populous country.

The men came out with axes and cut down the trees. Was it still a fine forest?

 

 

Yet, resting in the alternation of days and nights, moistened by dew,

The stumps sprouted, the trees began to grow again.

Then out came goats and cattle to browse on the young shoots. The Ox Mountain was stripped utterly bare.

And the people, seeing it stripped utterly bare,

Think the Ox Mountain never had any woods on it at all.

 

 

Our mind too, stripped bare, like the mountain, Still cannot be without some basic tendency to love. But just as men with axes, cutting down the trees every

morning,

Destroy the beauty of the forest,

So we, by our daily actions, destroy our right mind.

 

Day follows night, giving rest to the murdered forest, The moisture of the dawn spirit Awakens in us the right loves, the right aversions.

 

With the actions of one morning we cut down this love, And destroy it again. At last the night spirit Is no longer able to revive our right mind.

 

Where, then, do our likes and dislikes differ from those of animals?

In nothing much.

Men see us, and say we never had in us anything but evil. Is

this man’s nature?

Whatever is cultivated rightly, will surely grow. Whatever is not cultivated rightly must surely perish. Master Kung (Confucius) said:

 

 

Grasp it firmly and you will keep it.

Grasp it loosely, and it will vanish out of your hand. Its comings and goings have no fixed times: No one knows its country!

Of man’s right mind, of this only does he speak!