| Lao Tzu said: Those who let go
to the Way and trust in intelligence are in peril, those who
neglect calculation in favor of talent are thwarted. So keep to
your lot and follow reason, and you won't be grieved by loss or
overjoyed by gain.
Success is not
something you have contrived, gain is not something you have
sought. What comes in is accepted with out taking it, what
goes out is given without bestowing it.
When life is granted as it
is by springtime, and life is taken away as it is by autumn, so
that those who are granted life are not grateful and those who are
killed are not resentful, this is near the Way. |
GI Ching #42:
Good people better themselves when
they see a chance and correct whatever faults they
have.
|
| Anger
The look of utter despair and
silent pleading for me not to get angry etched into my daughter
Naushon's 11 year old face as I am gettin gout of the care at her
friends' house early one Sunday morning does penetrate my
awareness, but not completely enough to rein in the annoyance and
anger which she sees rising to me, and which she fears will make a
scene and embarrass her. I am feeling too much momentum in
this moment to stop completely, although later I would wish I had.
I wished that I had let her look stop me in that moment, touch me,
turn me toward seeing what was really important - namely that she
feels she can depend on me and trust me rather than fear that I
will betray her or mortify her emerging social
sensitivity. But I am too upset in this moment about being
manipulated by her friend, who was supposed to be ready at a
certain time and isn't, to fully appreciate my daughter's problem
here.
I am caught up in an
eddy of self righteous indignation. My "I" does
not want to be kept waiting, to be taken advantage of. I
reassure her that I will not make a scene, but that I also want to
communicate about it right now because I am feeling
used. I make early morning inquiries, tinged with
annoyance, of her sleepy mother; then wait, inwardly fuming, for
what turns out to be a remarkably short time.
And so the matter
dissolved. But not in my memory, which still carries, and I hope
always will, that look on my daughter's face that I was unable to
read quickly enough to be fully present for. Had I been able to,
the anger would have died then and there.
There is a price we
pay for being attached to a narrow view of being 'right'. My
passing mood state is far less important to me than her
trust. But in hat moment, her trust got trampled all the
same. Without care and awareness, small minded feeling
states can dominate the moment. It happens all the
time. The collective pain we cause others and ourselves
bleeds out souls. hard as it is for us to admit, especially
about ourselves, self tinged anger may be something we indulge in
and surrender to far too often.
~~ Jon Katat-Zinn in
Wherever You Go, There You Are. |
As the previous Buddhas,
like a divine skillful wise horse, a great elephant, did what had
to be done, accomplished all tasks, overcame all the burdens of
the five aggregates controlled by delusion and dharma, fulfilled
all their aspirations by relinquishing their attachments, by
speaking immaculately divine words and liberating the minds of all
from the bondage of subtle delusions' impression, and how possess
great liberated transcendental wisdom, for the sake of all that
lives, in order to benefit all, in order to prevent famine, in order
to prevent mental and physical sicknesses, in order for living
beings to complete a Buddha's 37 realizations, and to receive the
stage of fully completed buddhahood... I ... shall take the eight Mahayana
precepts...
~~ "One Day Mahayana
Vow Ritual"
Perfect Wisdom spreads her
radiance... and is worthy of worship. Spotless, the whole world
cannot stain her... In her we may find refuge; her works are most
excellent; she brings us safety under the sheltering wings of
enlightenment. She brings light to the blind, that till
fears and calamities may be dispelled... and she scatters the
gloom and darkness of delusion. She leads those who have
gone astray to the right path. She is omniscience; without
beginning or end is Perfect Wisdom, who has emptiness as her
characteristic mark; she is mother of the bodhisattvas... She
cannot be struck down, the protector of the unprotected, the
Perfect Wisdom of the Buddhas, she turns the Wheel of the
Law.
~~ Astasahasrika from the
Prajnaparamita Sutra, translated by WM Theodore DeBary. |
