The best way to find yourself is to lose yourself in the service of others.

the bourgeois model is unethical because unsustainable

beware willful blindness

all love is love of god
all spirit is holy spirit

Meditation is often a struggle. The mind is clouded, the heart heavy and the back tired. But we continue because we know it's our only hope. And then suddenly, out of the blue, a clearing opens and everything lightens and eases.

Devotion to Truth is the sole justification for our existence.

truth is not something you can be told
it becomes revealed only when you quieten the mind

technology is in lieu of spirit

heart: connexion compassion love care concern

The secret of life? Do everything with enthusiasm. And remember that enthusiasm literally means possessed by a god, a spirit.

The deepest principle in human nature is the craving to be appreciated.

belly: composure patience contentment sangfroid detachment tolerance equanimity

if you must think then first step out the box

thinking to oneself comes at a terrible cost : it blinkers the mind and weighs on the heart

meditation attempts to relieve this burden

The student must struggle through years of external work before they can even contemplate commencing internal work. Think of Milarepa, repeatedly building then dismantling the stone temple for 12 years before he was ready to meditate.

Life is a long lesson in humility.

imagine a bunch of energy filaments exiting the mingmen
grab them and draw them around to your dantien
this is one version of our first warm-up exercise

plumb the depths

tip of the tongue on the roof of the mouth allows the jaw to relax without drooling

Knowledge and opinion amount to the same thing: tension that prevents us from releasing into who we really are.

It would hardly be an exaggeration to say that everything in Chan (Zen) revolves around the patriarchal lineage.

spirit is a spark that wakes us from the slumber of self-absorption

feel your weight as a fullness that rises from the ground

the patience of a nature lover

It is not the teacher's job to please the student but to wake them up – draw them out of their complacent slumber. So the last thing the teacher wants are smiles and nods of agreement, but looks of shock and discomfort if not outright terror.

Nature is first a pageant to us, and then a process; until at last we perceive it to be, in Goethe’s words, the “garment of God” — and withal, the enveloping mantle of man.

the measure of softness is in the touch
the ease and grace with which we slip through the air

responding to touch

quiet & quick

Head is overactive because heart is underactive. (Worry is never an expression of love.) Heart, more than anything, trusts. Head hedges (its bets). Heart is the site of unconditionality. Head qualifies everything.

I am everything because I am only the stream of life, free of accident. I am immortal because all deaths converge in me, from that of the fish to that of Zeus; gathered in me they once again become life, not individual and particular but belonging to nature and thus free.

all the teacher wants is students keen enough to study (practice)

the ravenous ego

compassion roundens
aggression straightens

At school, back in the early seventies, we got a new science teacher. In his first lesson he gave us a little introduction, to himself and to the subject. I remember him stressing that scientists think they are investigating reality whereas in actual fact they are merely investigating models of reality, and never touch reality itself.

Hubris against the essential divine order of nature would be followed by its appropriate nemesis.

like a sun: held together by gravity (integrity, discipline, concentration) yet endlessly beaming life-giving energy

before images form
before words arise

without forgiveness we never let go

The fundamental tension we are trying to release is the self. A thick cloying shell enclosing a kernal of true enlightened self, maintained and reinforced by the constant chatter in the head.

Our method of release is to simultaneously relax & concentrate. Focus the conscious mind onto a point (lower dantien) and release outwards from that point. Centripetal / centrifugal.

The catastrophic event that gave rise to modernity is the loss of the soul of the world.

meditation: stripped to simple heartbeat, counted breath; overwhelmed by being

unstill as a flame

if it's not difficult to the point of impossible then it's probably not worth doing

INERTIA (Latin iners idle or sluggish): a natural resistance to change.
This is the world of matter, the world of things, the static stagnation that spirit exists to overcome.

removing a stone
to alter the melody
of a mountain burn
I listen
then place
it back again

meditation: still as a stone in situ yet full of resonance

suffer for your art

thinking to yourself amounts to thinking about yourself

Prayer addresses something outside the self. That is its power. It very simply opens a channel between the heart and the beyond.

Whereof one cannot speak
Thereof one must be silent

a listening bristling with spirit

burdened by ego

a good life is one spent in the service of spirit

I remember hearing an interview with Richard Hadlee on his retirement from cricket. The interviewer asked him why he was retiring and he replied: I'm tired of waking up each morning in pain. The accumulation of little niggling injuries, but more the pain and exhaustion associated with daily physical training, something all athletes have to get used to. And it's the same with internal work. If I'm working softly, quietening the mind, really feeling each movement or each breath, then afterwards, after the serene glow has dispersed, I know that I'll feel strung out, fragile, emotionally tender and possibly bad-tempered. We take this as a positive indication that effective work has been done.

The supreme end is the freedom of the spirit.

we grow up when we slough off selfhood

willing to leave it all behind

What is soul but a feeling for softness?

Yielding isn't merely a specialised response to aggression, it's a way of life – a viable means to happiness. When you learn to yield, everything suits you.

God is always working through you. The important thing is to become conscious and co-operate.

attend the particulars
it's amazing how many details most people miss

get wired

root is an unfurling coccyx reaching into earth