Sublime

73

Speak little Hold to your own nature A strong wind does not blow all morning A cloudburst does not last all day The wind and rain are from Heaven and Earth and even these do not last long How much less so the efforts of man?

WANG P’ANG says, “The natural endowment of all beings is complete in itself. Poverty does not reduce it. Wealth does not enlarge it. But fools abandon this treasure to chase trash. Those who know contentment pay the world no heed. This is true wealth. Mencius said, ‘The ten thousand things are all within us’ (Mencius: 7A.4). How could we not be wea

Throughout the Tao Te Ching he ridicules such lofty human ideals as benevolence, piety, loyalty, and morality, condemning as wholesale artifice all social conventions and scoffing at the notion that people can be ruled by ideology. He points out that the very need for rule by law and threat of punishment indicates that society has already reached a

Thus, both the teaching of Zen and the use of Gunabhadra’s translation of the Lankavatara in its transmission began in the Loyang area in the first half of the sixth century.

Lao-tzu, on the other hand, believed that we are naturally pure; it is the belief systems and social indoctrination of the world that give us a gross character and warp our pure nature. As a result, we need to get back to the raw, intrinsically human, elements of our being.

Society can be improved only by self-sacrifice. Heaven and earth are eternal. They are eternal because they do not exist for themselves. In the same way, a truly holy person does not live for himself, and therefore he can become eternal, and can achieve anything. —LAO-TZU

sages thus seek what no one else seeks they don’t prize hard-to-get goods they study what no one else studies they turn to what others pass by to help all things remain natural they dare not act