Author: A Single Thread

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The Go-Getter

Welcome to a View of You.

Dear Friends,

Below you will find a link titled, The GO ONE. When you are ready, click the link and a PDF will show up. Feel free to print it out. I recommend printing it out. Begin by reading the very last page – The Koan and The Interpretation of the Koan Case 1.

I recommend reading it over and over as each teaching needs to be revealed and taken to heart by you. Don’t waste time by just a quick look…that will not be helpful, useful or skillful.

The pages are 8 1/2 x 11…standard letter size. I encourage you to write down your own thoughts and experience and download and print the booklet.

NOTE: Keep in mind discrimination in this piece refers to splitting and separating in the material realm of the world not the transcendent knowledge. The higher understanding of discrimination is a realization that all this is unreal, ephemeral, impermanent and when you know that, you know the ONE source of our existence.

See link below.

The GO ONE

 

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Generosity and Unselfishness

 

When asked about generosity in terms of “would you like me to pay for whatever is the sense of owing something to someone is not really generosity in a transcendent practice. It is a quid pro quo…in other words, the lowest form of giving a “one hand washes the other.”

 

 

One hand washing the other is materialistic – you go to the store and pay for the goods. Buddhism, and I’d say all spiritual practices need to go beyond the mercantile exchange of goods and services. The mercantile exchange is not to be forgotten – but it is not generosity, and it is also not unselfishness.

Generosity is interior for the giver and arises without any selfish expectation or payback of ‘one hand washing the other.’ It is part of meeting the Buddha on the road and killing him. This teaching was given in the ninth century by Linji…and it comes in handy when giving comes up for any one of us. We first must kill the Buddha – meaning if we think we are doing good, if we believe we become more and more Buddha by giving then we are far away from the Truth. For thinking and believing something about our ego-selfish self is polishing the ego. And when the ego is involved, it measures the giving and concludes the debt is paid and we are now even. Again, a mercantile, materialist exchange.

Generosity, fearlessness, and the death of the ego selfish self-construction is a triad. We give without reward, without a quid pro quo – we remain fearless because we have no concern for ourselves and this generosity does not get tallied on and by the ego, e.g., I gave and now I owe no one. What a relief.

The ego must be without wanting anything in return. Christmas giving is in general a mercantile exchange of gifts.

We need to give without expectation of paying a debt or being a good person. No credit. Just giving. It is rare to find someone who gives without self-regard. Our tendency is to choose for self and not for the unborn, undying, immutable Self called by many names.

We do not ask for so and so or this or that. We, however, encourage each of us to contemplate ‘generosity, fearlessness, and selflessness. It is akin to: THOU will be done…not by me, not for me, not because of me…more along the lines of to open to generosity and see within what generosity, fearlessness and no-self responds to life. The work is within. The clarity is there.

Fashi Lao Yue

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Singing and Building Our Song of the Grass Roof Hermitage PART FOUR

   

We will crave privacy, a space of our own around which we can create a ring of fire or a moat.

Ming Zhen Shakya

Thank you, Em for this reminder to focus on our spiritual practice and Newton’s understanding of actions!

For every action there is an equal and opposite reaction.

These days and days, we hear more and more the song of the great barons of science rather than listening and singing our song of our own grass roof hermitage. This is when I say, “God help us, God help us all.”

Indeed! Perhaps it requires a scream!

As in all things, science has gone wild with power in thinking and believing like that old TV show “Father knows best!” But say, that was a TV show – a created fiction based on? I do not know. Male domination? A cultural rule. A good time? Putting everyone in their place – whatever that may be?

What jumps to mind is the incredulous goings on behind closed research doors. Here is just one headline – one link.

THE REBEL PATIENT™

Help End the Horror of LIVE Birth, Late-Term Human Newborns Procured for Organ Harvesting at Pittsburgh University

SO…the best we can do is as you wrote Em…

We will crave privacy, a space of our own around which we can create a ring of fire or a moat.

Here’s the “how” of fulfilling this craving for privacy. Follow carefully. Study it and sing the song of The Grass Roof Hermitage.

Don’t hang out where those saturated in ignorance live and love.

Remember, this song is about building something where there is “nothing of value.” It is a reminder of the reality of impermanence.

Live calmly wherever you are. 

This requires constancy of letting go and remembering all this is a passing show.

All that is, is here!

It isn’t anywhere else.

When you let go of the ego, you gain the ability to illuminate forms and the nature of forms. Brighteyes!

No matter what you have or where you are, let go of the ego and see for yourself.

Firm steadiness is unsurpassable. 

Get it. Nothing goes beyond  ‘nothing in it for me.’

Cover your head.  It is not a matter of conceiving anything.

Don’t go after intellectual understanding.

You are already free.

When you live where there is nothing of value you no longer work to get free.

Stop all enticements.

Study your self. Study the old teachings again and again.

Relax completely right where you are.

Get free of mental and physical obstructions.

You are the undying being when in the place of nothing of value.

Drop the cash value model of all things.

Be there, here and now.

Fashi Lao Yue