Yibo

Freedom is alone. It must not depend. It must not grasp. It is the mind without a ground, therefore it does not know. Knowing requires an anchor, and anchor is what is called home. But home is attachment, and when mind is attached, it is not free.

She was very tender in her voice, and her small body emanated a sense of vulnerability and fear, the fear of being attacked. She said that other’s opinions of her are very important, and most of her life was built around those opinions. So, her life is sometimes pain, the pain of being degraded, criticized, and that is the source of hurt. Yet, there is also the pleasure of being praised, and that motivates her to a great extent.

With a light that cannot be put out by anything, fear is gone. The avoidance and escape is no longer a psychological condition, and that light is the passion for all things.

To watch the leaves, one’s thoughts, the noise that seems unpleasant, or the distant humming of machines, there commonly arises resistance. Resistance to this is the desire for that. The desire for that gives birth to the resistance to this. That desire or resistance divides life, therefore delivering an energy not whole, but fighting among fragments of itself, entangled, dissipating life force, and all the conflicts and wars are the natural consequence.

Thought is confusion. Clarity is seeing without thought. Thought is the thread that continues in time. A thread tangles. Such is its nature. The detangling is still the thread’s work, so entanglement is the inevitable consequence.

Thought is the conditioned response to newness. That newness then is translated by thought into the past. Emergence is then put on the clothing of memory, so that it could be recognized. 

The heart resting on the mind is instability. The mind resting on the heart is effortless living.

The substance of the heart is formless, yet the heart might be deceived by the forms of the mind to be a particular form. This identification results in misery.

The heart is the I Am, the Being without being anything.

Dishonesty is a pretense, a performance, a mask, and in its shadow and hidden recesses, is born ignorance.

Wisdom is light. It shines on darkness without repelling it, but rather transforming ignorance into clarity. Yet, if one continues to pretend, to try and become someone, something, some image stipulated by a holy book or social convention, darkness shall haunt the mind and blind the heart.

Do you know that sense of movement in the heart, of something sacred and tidal that might break down all defenses of the mind? Like a dam which can no longer hold the vast river finally breaks, the catharsis, finally free, without bound, flowing to the expanse of the unknown, charting new lands, flourishing new grounds.

One intriguing quality of emptiness is the impossibility of negativity. What is called negative only arises through comparison of two, or more, of what is positive. Positivity is the precondition for existence. This seems incredibly straightforward when seen simply. A cup exists, and it is positive, because it exists. Thought is the culprit that establishes negativity as a seeming fact, because it can invent the concept of negativity and then call something negative in turn. That is the arrogance of thought.

The sense of lack is accompanied by every desire. The desires to achieve, to acquire riches, to avoid death and destruction, or to transcend the material world are all bondage. The sense of lack requires something from what is, from experience and consciousness. That requirement makes living sticky, literally stuck to what’s arising. What’s arising is, however, impermanent. To require anything from impermanence produces the pleasure of finding and the pain of losing.

What is happening? This is the first question of existence. There is a recognition, a knowing of what’s happening. A flower is blooming. A sun is rising. The train is leaving. These are descriptions of what’s happening. Yet, what’s happening doesn’t need to be described. It is utterly simple when descriptions are dropped, and descriptions are also simply seen as what’s happening. The convolutions, complications, complexities of life, the travails, the struggles, the assertions and opinions and the battles for what’s right, the longing for some clarity of life, are all the consequence of naming, recognizing, and giving importance to what’s happening. Without giving it any importance, which means giving nothing, absolutely nothing, any importance, what’s happening is simple, serene, free.