|
Main Index
|
| |
| |
|
| |
what Lao Tzu says. HOLD FIRM TO THE BASIS OF QUIETUDE. If you are passive by and by you will become aware of the center within you. You have carried it all along, it has always been there, only you don't know it, you are not alert. Once you become alert about it the whole of life becomes different. You can remain in the world and out of it because you are always in touch with your center. You can move in an earthquake and be unperturbed because nothing touches you.
In Zen they have a saying that a Zen master who has attained to his inner center can pass through a stream, but the water never touches his feet. It is beautiful. It is not to say that the water never touches his feet -- the water will touch them -- it is to say something about the world within, the beyond within. Nothing touches it, everything remains outside on the periphery, and the center remains untouched, pure, innocent, virgin.
THE MYRIAD THINGS TAKE SHAPE AND RISE TO ACTIVITY, BUT I WATCH THEM FALL BACK TO THEIR REPOSE.
Lao Tzu says: I watch, I observe life, and see what is happening.
LIKE VEGETATION THAT LUXURIANTLY GROWS BUT RETURNS TO THE ROOT (SOIL) FROM WHICH IT SPRINGS.
Everything goes back to the origin. A new seed sprouts, then comes spring and it is so luxuriantly alive. Then one day it returns back -- the circle complete, it disappears into the soil again.
Man is not an exception. Nothing can be an exception. As animals go back, trees fall back, rivers move back, so does man.
TO RETURN TO THE ROOT IS REPOSE.
Life is an activity, action; death is passivity. TO RETURN TO THE ROOT IS REPOSE. It is beautiful. Whenever a man who has lived rightly and understood rightly, dies, you will see that on his face will be repose, not agony, ecstasy, not agony. You can see his whole life written on his face -- he lived well, he loved well, he understood well, he has come back home. There is no complaint, there is no grudge, but there is gratitude and there is thankfulness. The circle is complete, there is repose.
Whenever a man who has not lived well, who has lived half-heartedly, dies, there is agony on the face. The face becomes ugly.
Death
|
|
|
|
| |