Chapter 56
One who knows the Creative
Harmony
does not waste to much time
talking about what can only
be experienced.
One who engages with great
relish
in continual theorizing
and speculation
is not rooted in experience.
[1]
Turn your senses inward
and close the door.
Let your intellectual cleverness
loose
its sharp edge.
Untie the sinuous tangles
of endless speculation.
Dissipate your focus that
causes your
attention to leap from interest
to another.
Thus, look upon all things
with equanimity.
Entering true nature;
one is neither close to
nor distant from things,
does not derive benefit
from nor harms things. [2]
Is not uplifted by fame
nor cast down by humiliation;
such is the exalted position
of the mastercraftsman.
footnotes
[1] It is a mistake for a sculptor or a painter to speak or write very often about his job. It releases tention needed for his work. By trying to express his aims with rounded-off logical exactness, he can easily become a theorist whose actual work is only a caged-in exposition of conceptions evolved in terms of logic and words.
But through the non-logical, instinctive, subconscious part of the mind must play its part in his work, he also has a conscious mind which is not inactive. The artist works with a concentration of his whole personality, and the conscious part of it resolves conflicts, organizes memories, and prevents him from trying to walk in two directions at the same time.
Henery Moore from; Notes on Sculpture
All this talk and turmoil and
noise and movement and desire is outside the veil; inside is silence and
calm and peace.
Abu Yazid al-Bistami
[2] The mind of a Zen Master
is perfectly straightforward. He is neither front nor back and is without
deceit or delusion. Every hour of the day, what he hears and sees are ordinary
sights and sounds, but nothing is distorted. He is perfectly unattached
to things, and thus does not need to shut his eyes and ears. Because he
has eliminated delusion, perverted views, and bad thinking habits, he is
as clear and tranquil as an autmn stream. Someone who is like this is called
a Master of Zen, a man who has freed himself from all attachment.
Kuei-shan (771-853)