Tao Stories.pdf

"Where Zen and Buddhism will say the truth, enlightenment, and so on can be reached through dedicated meditation and practice, a Tao master may sip some wine, fart, and go to sleep."

The person of Tao The 'real' person, the person of Tao - truly a Tao master - Is someone you have met and had no idea of their views, wants, needs, likes or dislikes. Religion never came up in conversation, they were good to you but never made out they were being good. They were calm and collected but never felt the need to tell you how easy going they were. They fitted in and blended with the crowd without any loss of individuality. They were good at all things that came their way, did there best and had no bashfulness over their poor performance or ego over their greater achievements. They shone with an inner brightness and radiated a deep seated warmth but wore no label, no jewels, no robe, no dog collar, no stripes on their arms, no marks of distinction. Fitting in and getting along they were solid and dependable - you could miss them for a day or a year and be greeted the same on meeting again. Always fit for a good laugh and a joke, they could be told your inner woes and neither give you advice or break your trust. If you asked for advice on life they'd tell you something about death, if you asked for advice on colours they'd play you a song, if you wanted fine food they'd make you some tea. On every occasion meeting your needs in the most simplistic, unassuming yet well chosen responses. They appeared in your life without you noticing them, and disappeared softly without a trace. They were your greatest masters and never asked for thanks. You probably owe them your heartfelt gratitude but their reward is that you treated them like a completely normal person.

As you'll get from the intro to most books on the Tao, the word was a bit of a fluff, an "ah, bugger it". The idea being that you can't name this " ". As you'll get from reading further into the intro or from chapter 2, labels delimit and form apparent separation and opposition. It reminds you that these seeming separations are only in language and the true reality has no separation.

Not old, no beginning, as there is no true point of reference to base those ideas from. Just Thus. And for the meditative, take note, nature is alive, always in flow. You may have been searching for an inner stillness, trying to kill the rampant mind, and the universe is ultimately at rest, but your efforts to realize inner calm have a greater goal and that is to truly comprehend the real action.

I was playing with the idea of the infinite today while staring into the middle distance, over some trees and into the sky and was reminded of a point made well in the Hua Hu Ching 'the tiny parts are not tiny and the vast universe not vast' - this same situation where it is our mini mind breaking things into manageable bits and then being convinced that they have reality.

As when you have either stilled OR you have embraced the vastness (opposite routes to the same place) then you have removed the fake point of reference and just left the whole action.

The core error being that you see your self as real, so from this perspective the universe is vast and the bits tiny - but this separation is fallacy.

The seeing and the seen are not separate AT ALL. This a-seeing is the universe and - you're it.

Scientists have "nasty infinity" they have an infinity they can handle, but then a nasty infinity they can't - dualistic infinities, funny. We'll skip getting into that pointless mind game and go with infinity being the same thing no matter which direction you look, small or big, we can do this as we have read the Hua Hu Ching recently, meditated, farted, and reminded ourselves, unlike the scientists, that this dual big/small is based of a fake reference point. So there is the infinite, 'a-happening'. It is not infinitely big as in vast beyond measure, and it is not made of infinitely small bits. no no no, it is an infinite a-happening. The trees budding, coming forth, the wind blowing, my beating heart and metabolizing cells are this infinite a-happening.

When you have stepped back from 'all things based from this viewpoint', then you are left apperseeing that you are this.

The wave who wanted to be the ocean

My dogs best jacket

The big wave who wanted to be as vast as the ocean - eventually gave up trying to get bigger and bigger - it dropped down, forgot itself and became.

I asked my dog what she'd like to do for her birthday and she said she had nothing to wear and no money but wanted to have a nice run by the river and chew a stick or two. Only an ego searches for enlightenment as an ego is the only thing that is not enlightened. The only fake in reality is this idea of self.

I thought this was a great idea.

When ego finds what it selfishly seeks it finds the absence of ego. Realizing itself as nothing but an idea, it renders itself Extinguished.

I asked my friend and she said her boyfriend had exams, they had just moved house, work was stressful and she may not get home in time to even have a rest before her birthday was out.

What reality finds when it is rid of ego is that ..

I thought "and you, human, are the smart one?"

You can not become what you already are.

1, 2, 365, grab life by the balls and live it.

I saw a sad old woman today.

After 3,650 days a new born baby is a 10 year old child. 10 years! 3,000 is hardly a big number and days as a kid fly by. After 36,500 you're a 100 years old. Or more likely you're dust. 30,000 is not a big number! What did you do today?

Reality views the world through a trillion pairs of eyes and no matter how good bad or mediocre the view, the being therein morns the thought of its own death. It is the same Tao looking through every pair of eyes and so can not die as was never born. But it still 'feels' attached to each of its bodies as if it were the last, only or most important. Missing from its narrowed off view that it is the I behind every set of eyes!

Harmonious tapestry

Nothing is

Reality in time is a flamboyant exploration of an eternal timeless moment. It could be seen in one but is wiggled out by a trillion I that each follow a unique path. You believe "I am unawakened" because you believe in "I". This I is just seeing what it is like to be this I. The only way to know each unique perspective is to live it out. To see any one I as better or worse is to fall in love with a flower so much that you chop of its ugly root to save it.

Time, formed by the mind, as. The mind can not see all of space, it carves. Bit by bit, looks at a section, stores, moves on. That is time.

You think you have a choice, a say in this or that? It may be fun to pretend you do but to believe you do, you will suffer.

Like a bird and its jerky head, catches a frame, fills its perception, moves on. Sequentially mapping the void in bits it can manage.

As screaming left right or stop on a roller-coaster is ineffective on the speed and destination.

Were you able to see the whole void of space in one, there would be no need for time, no time - only complete understanding.

Behind every thing is the true canvas of reality, behind every act it is ever present. A tapestry telling a tale is a thread. A screen showing the movie is still glass. A ripple on a lake will pass.

In bits the picture is incomplete and leads to misinterpretation. The worst bit is the point of reference, the ego. Only the ego can seek, suffer. Only an ego can be spoken of, laughed at. Only an ego can care. When you step back. That's it. All there. Is.

tick and a tock

Nothing to negate No meditator No meditation No where to meditate Nothing to meditate on No one who could meditate No thing to be meditated No thing to meditate it No seeing, no source, no seen, no end; a cycle of no linear nature and no dual nature. No Om. No ommer, no omming, no noer, no knower, no known and no.

It is really the speed we take information that forms our complete understanding and happiness or our loss of way and suffering.

A note from self to ego

Original face

So you think you are analytical - I think you are staring at the wall.

Drop the desire for enlightenment and then you are "not-I" and you regain your original face.

So you think you are spiritual - I think you speak mumbo-jumbo. So you think you are religious - I think you have a closed off mind.

Anyone seeking enlightenment is of course not enlightened. Nor could anyone ever be enlightened, as on enlightenment, there is no I.

So you think you are happy - I say stop thinking and you will be.

"I seeking enlightenment" is bound.

So you think I have it all worked out - I know for sure you can't.

"Enlightened" is no-I, free.

And this is why I exist in bliss, knowing the only certainty, is this.

So drop the idea you could ever achieve, as that achiever is not even possibly real. Drop the idea of an achieving entity so there is no longer a desirer; and then you reach the non-I, and there is enlightenment...

What to do in killing I?

Fixing the self

It is not to remove this "I"

As long as you work on the self you are working on an illusion, an idea.

It is not to work on the "I" It is to recognize the true reality and that is absent of any "I"

To work on the "I", to improve, or fix, To aim to remove the "I" or prove it unreal, are to re-enforce the "I" which is to enforce an illusion. To recognize the true nature of reality will kill any idea of "I" Job done.

The self has no reality so all work on the self is trying to clean your reflection from a mirror. The more you try, the more you re-enforce the very illusion you are out to drop.

The opposite enlightenment

Don't hold back

Enlightenment is just so, not dual, and so has no opposite.

It's all just one flowing thing, if you get hung up on any aspect you are trying to grab a tree branch to stop your raft. You may slow it, you may fall, but more importantly you will miss what is coming. And almost without fail, good follows bad. Hanging on to the bad amplifies it, yet the coming good washes it away with no effort.

"Clearly factually false" says the thinker. "The opposite of enlightenment is un-enlightenment" No. Enlightenment has no opposite as it contains no opposites, or even notions. It is, just. This is why it hmmmmm it is not even hmmmmm omm . . . Here we sit with not one idea, no-thought and your life are one kind; The solid reality that you can touch, is one with the ungraspable mind.

Inside and outside of happiness

What we call not knowing is true knowing What we call not knowing is true knowing, the empty thought is not attached to any one thing so has it all. Draw a concept, focus at all and you miss so much. The "vastness" of space and time and the 10,000 things are, like us, the mind - and our knowing that is emptiness. Our term emptiness is further example that English is not a language suited to spiritual truth. But when it is seen, it is truly grasped. Named, it is not. Empty mind is whole mind.

Happiness and sadness are felt inside. People look for it outside. Look within and you can never be without.

What time is it where you are?

Know it all

NOW!

Think you know the universe and it will give you something to prove you don't. Talk of knowing and it will trip you up. Admit you don't know and you bathe in bliss. Say you know nothing and you know it all.

Now, it is always now, here is now, there is now, now is now...

Lost in ideas

I is just an idea

We are always in touch with the ultimate reality - we have to be.

Imagine a radar that emitted from the core of your brain, it would say;

We touch it in meditation but we are never free from it ever - how? In normal conciousness we are in ultimate reality but we make a concept or idea of it.

I Skull Objects Walls

We then attach to the idea not the ultimate. then it may rescan and hit more detail Ooops! In the ultimate reality there is no 'happy' 'sad' they are ideas, silly ideas.

I (who is thirsty) Tea cup Computer Monitor Keyboard Wall Painting ..and on, picking up all the detail around you and always begining with I As the first point of recognition is this "I" it is given lots of validity, it seems always present. But I is an idea. Your name was the first lie you were ever told, and probably that was by your trusted parents, it separated you. Society and life reaffirm the idea of I all the time and one is seen as quite odd for looking into this phenomenon or questioning it. But where is I?

My cells are working alone, I have no say over my beating heart, nothing much of me is me. I even say "my body" as if body were something I had, so where is the I that has that body? We say 'mmmn, maybe there, somewhere in here in my head or chest or I don't know. I don't know'. I should know! as it is it being asked and if you ask where a TV is, well it is there. Ask where I am to another person and they'll point at your body (or call the men in white to take you away) - but ask yourself where I is and you'll have to say it is the body or some vague area inside your body. Taking away all that is automated and trying to find an I in there, you won't. I is an idea. You are infinite, you can't remove the air, you can't remove Earth, the galaxy or your head, they are all bits of you.

The Master who was still learning The first student entered the room of the master and sat. The master said to him; "You may clean all of the dust from your head but you will still be left with a broom." The student thought he had understood the teaching, stood, bowed and left. The second student entered the room of the master and sat. The master said; "You may clean all the dust from your mirror but what about the dirty cloth?" The student said; "There is no cloth." The master said; "Then what of the mirror?" The student replied; "That is your mirror not mine." He stood up and left. At this the master became truly enlightened.

I is an idea and that feeling of I as separate to the world is 1) entirely required for sane living and 2) the basis of all suffering (and pleasure) - don't get me wrong, I'm not saying this is a bad thing but beware when bad stuff happens and you get all "oh I this, I that" that I does not even exist. Idea.

[For those confused by this story see the cloth or brush as the 'method'. So once the work is done the method still remains. It takes a true master to have neither dust or broom]

Here Now We are never not Here Now. We are absolutely always from birth, through every action, to death, Here Now. We are never in the past or the future, they are unreal, just ideas, but our minds insist in wandering off into the unreal. We choose to avoid reality, this here now and go off to a side step, a distraction, thinking a thought that takes a past or future idea, plays with it; a false thought based on a false notion - and choose to deliberately avoid the very thing we seek. And the seeking itself is like stepping forward to achieve standing still, an impossible method. Crazy as it seems we are the barrier to finding ourself. There is no one who can be awakened, no one to be enlightened. When "One" is found then by definition there is no other, especially no you. No seeker. A method to finding now is to look out from your solar plexus or heart. Don't use eyes or ears as they are filtered by the mini mind that is trained and has the nature to form time and analyse. It does this as it is too weak to comprehend the "Now", the "One" so it splits, measures, analyses and gets lost in its own fallacies. "The eyes do not look, they absorb. The mind is responsible for looking; its failure here is the splitting of one of the sensory inputs into values, good and bad. These only exist due to the mind itself – here is the illusion."

instead ... "Your empty mind, is your full life; The impenetrable solid reality, is the ungraspable mind." Our mind is useless, our language contaminated with rules that split the mind. Drop it all and then you are left with "Aaaaaaaa!" Here Now! it was there all along, Bliss!

Stream of Wisdom

Cartwheels You are essential. You exist in your role, because you are part of the whole; And so exist forever.

There has been a stream of wisdom passing down the ages and at every turn man has attempted to collect the water into a container so that he can wrap his mind around it. Those containers don't flow, they stagnate, the flow continues in the stream. Let go of your stagnation and let it back into the stream to flow.

It is outside of knowing, and is simply right there; so obvious it is, too simple to bear.

Where there is nothing in mind, the greatest power is there to see; Where we find nothing we are truly at one, one and nothing have equality.

Know by not knowing, Wu know, See by not seeing, Wu see; Only in admitting knowing is dual, can you be without trying to be.

Like a ripe fruit decays, to continue new life; We see a seed is not birth, and no one ever really dies.

It is all that is and is not, no concept or attempt to be got; We can only grasp nothing is there, as a clock can not tick on a tock.

Here we sit with not one idea, no-thought and your life are one kind; The solid reality that you can touch, is one with the ungraspable mind.

Right there when you are within, unapparent when you try to hold on; Do not let another attempt to explain, their moving lips is admission its gone.

Nothing has to go, just give everything up; Bound to nothing, you have a full cup.

Though we are part of Tao, we can act as the worst kind of fake; Seeing your breath does not help the wind, let a swamp in your mind be a lake.

To have destination, makes the journey too tough; Be going nowhere, here is more than enough.

Our viewpoints are relative see? Tao has no intention just play; Extremes in our mind are waves on the lake, and just our nature sway.

Free people require no leader, and Tao has nothing to lose; A leader makes fear to interfere with here, people you know what to choose.

Should you be high or low, you will always remain in Tao; There is no need to hold on either way, as if going up hill and not down.

Now just simplify your mind and self, that's all there is so just sit; Be balance and unknowing flow, Natures truth is here that's it.

Photo Credits:

killing I fixing self http://supermimbles360.deviantart.com/

Ocean is by http://faestock.deviantart.com/

don't hold http://misstock.deviantart.com/

dog stick image http://taking-st0ck.deviantart.com/

within http://tspstock.deviantart.com/

life balls (water) http://jonathan2478resource.deviantart.com/

knowing http://inki-stock.deviantart.com/

sad old http://cozycomfycouchstock.deviantart.com/

now http://stock-by-kai.deviantart.com/

ripple http://digitalarticulation.deviantart.com/

don't know http://photodream-stock.deviantart.com/

nothing http://actionjack52.deviantart.com/

ideas http://enchantedgal-stock.deviantart.com/

tick http://olgg.deviantart.com/

master http://vw1956stock.deviantart.com/

negate http://jesuisautre.deviantart.com/

wood (real person) http://kittonstock.deviantart.com/

a note http://kylee29.deviantart.com/

stream http://mjranum-stock.deviantart.com/

original face http://mysticrainbowstock.deviantart.com/

cartwheels http://mattford.deviantart.com/