Chapter 1 - Choices

We are what we think.
All that we are arises with our thoughts.
With our thoughts we make the world.
Speak or act with an impure mind
And trouble will follow you
As the wheel follows the ox that draws the cart.
We are what we think.
All that we are arises with our thoughts.
With our thoughts we make the world.
Speak or act with a pure mind
And happiness will follow you
As your shadow, unshakable.
"Look how he abused me and hurt me,
How he threw me down and robbed me."
Live with such thoughts and you live in hate.
"Look how he abused me and hurt me,
How he threw me down and robbed me."
Abandon such thoughts, and live in love.
In this world
Hate never yet dispelled hate.
Only love dispels hate.
This is the law,
Ancient and inexhaustible.
You too shall pass away.
Knowing this, how can you quarrel?
How easily the wind overturns a frail tree.
Seek happiness in the senses,
Indulge in food and sleep,
And you too will be uprooted.
The wind cannot overturn a mountain.
Temptation cannot touch the man
Who is awake, strong and humble,
Who masters himself and minds the dharma.
If a man's thoughts are muddy,
If he is reckless and full of deceit,
How can he wear the yellow robe?
Whoever is master of his own nature,
Bright, clear and true,
He may indeed wear the yellow robe.
Mistaking the false for the true,
And the true for the false,
You overlook the heart
And fill yourself with desire.
See the false as false,
The true as true.
Look into your heart.
Follow your nature.
An unreflecting mind is a poor roof.
Passion, like the rain, floods the house.
But if the roof is strong, there is shelter.
Whoever follows impure thoughts
Suffers in this world and the next.
In both worlds he suffers
And how greatly
When he sees the wrong he has done.
But whoever follows the dharma
Is joyful here and joyful there.
In both worlds he rejoices
And how greatly
When he sees the good he has done.
For great is the harvest in this world,
And greater still in the next.
However many holy words you read,
However many you speak,
What good will they do you
If you do not act upon them?
Are you a shepherd
Who counts another man's sheep,
Never sharing the way?
Read as few words as you like,
And speak fewer.
But act upon the dharma.
Give up the old ways -
Passion, enmity, folly.
Know the truth and find peace.
Share the way.

Chaper 11 - Old Age

The world is on fire!
And you are laughing?
You are deep in the dark.
Will you not ask for a light?
For behold your body -
A painted puppet, a toy,
Jointed and sick and full of false imaginings,
A shadow that shifts and fades.
How frail it is!
Frail and pestilent,
It sickens, festers and dies.
Like every living thing
In the end it sickens and dies.
Behold these whitened bones,
The hollow shells and husks of a dying summer.
And you are laughing?
You are a house of bones,
Flesh and blood for plaster.
Pride lives in you,
And hypocrisy, decay, and death.
The glorious chariots of kings shatter.
So also the body turns to dust.
But the spirit of purity is changeless
And so the pure instruct the pure.
The ignorant man is an ox.
He grows in size, not in wisdom.
"Vainly I sought the builder of my house
Through countless lives.
I could not find him...
How hard it is to tread life after life!
"But now I see you, O builder!
And never again shall you build my house.
I have snapped the rafters,
Split the ridge-pole
And beaten out desire.
And now my mind is free."
There are no fish in the lake.
The long-legged cranes stand in the water.
Sad is the man who in his youth
Loved loosely and squandered his fortune -
Sad as a broken bow,
And sadly is he sighing
After all that has arisen and has passed away.

Chapter - 26- The true Master

Wanting nothing
With all your heart
Stop the stream.
When the world dissolves
Everything becomes clear.
Go beyond
This way or that way,
To the farther shore
Where the world dissolves
And everything becomes clear.
Beyond this shore
And the father shore,
Beyond the beyond,
Where there is no beginning,
No end.
Without fear, go.
Meditate.
Live purely.
Be quiet.
Do your work, with mastery.
By day the sun shines,
And the warrior in his armour shines.
By night the moon shines,
And the master shines in meditation.
But this day and night
The man who is awake
Shines in the radiance of the spirit.
A master gives up mischief.
He is serene.
He leaves everything behind him
He does not take offence
And he does not give it.
He never returns evil for evil.
Alas for the man
Who raises his hand against another,
And even more for him
Who returns the blow.
Resist the pleasures of life
And the desire to hurt -
Till sorrows vanish.
Never offend
By what you think or say or do.
Honour the man who is awake
And shows you the way.
Honour the fire of his sacrifice.
Matted hair or family or caste
Do not make a master
But the truth and goodness
With which he is blessed.
Your hair is tangled
And you sit on a deerskin.
What folly!
When inside you are ragged with lust.
The master's clothes are in tatters.
His veins stand out,
He is wasting away.
Alone in the forest
He sits and meditates.
A man is not born to mastery.
A master is never proud.
He does not talk down to others.
Owning nothing, he misses nothing.
He is not afraid.
He does not tremble.
Nothing binds him.
He is infinitely free.
So cut through
The strap and the thong and the rope.
Loosen the fastenings.
Unbolt the doors of sleep
And awake.
The master endures
Insults and ill treatment
Without reacting.
For his spirit is an army.
He is never angry.
He keeps his promises.
He never strays, he is determined.
This body is my last, he says!
Like water on the leaf of a lotus flower
Or a mustard seed on the point of a needle,
He does not cling.
For he has reached the end of sorrow
And has laid down his burden.
He looks deeply into things
And sees their nature.
He discriminates
And reaches the end of the way.
He does not linger
With those who have a home
Nor with those who stray.
Wanting nothing,
He travels on alone.
He hurts nothing.
He never kills.
He moves with love among the unloving,
With peace and detachment
Among the hungry and querulous.
Like a mustard seed from the point of a needle
Hatred has fallen from him,
And lust, hypocrisy and pride.
He offends no one.
Yet he speaks the truth.
His words are clear
But never harsh.
Whatever is not his
He refuses,
Good or bad, great or small.
He wants nothing from this world
And nothing from the next.
He is free.
Desiring nothing, doubting nothing,
Beyond judgement and sorrow
And the pleasures of the senses,
He had moved beyond time.
He is pure and free.
How clear he is.
He is the moon.
He is serene.
He shines.
For he has travelled
Life after life
The muddy and treacherous road of illusion.
He does not tremble
Or grasp or hesitate.
He has found peace.
Calmly
He lets go of life,
Or home and pleasure and desire.
Nothing of men can hold him.
Nothing of the gods can hold him.
Nothing in all creation can hold him.
Desire has left him,
Never to return.
Sorrow has left him,
Never to return.
He is calm.
In him the seed of renewing life
Had been consumed.
He has conquered all the inner worlds.
With dispassionate eye
He sees everywhere
The falling and the uprising.
And with great gladness
He knows that he has finished.
He has woken from his sleep.
And the way he has taken
Is hidden from men,
Even from spirits and gods,
By virtue of his purity.

In him there in no yesterday,
No tomorrow,
No today.
Possessing nothing,
Wanting nothing.
He is full of power.
Fearless, wise, exalted.
He has vanquished all things.
He sees by virtue of his purity.
He has come to the end of the way,
Over the river of his many lives,
His many deaths.
Beyond the sorrow of hell,
Beyond the great joy of heaven,
By virtue of his purity.
He has come to the end of the way.
All that he had to do, he has done.
And now he is one.

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