ANARCHIST LITURGY

What follows in this blog is the brief contents of an anarchist liturgy. Both terms perhaps need some explanation, not least from my perspective in even presenting such a thing. Over at least the past year I have been working on writing three books under the title There is Nothing to Stick to which, as they turned out, became the basis for what I eventually conceived of as a philosophical and spiritual form of anarchism. This was based on a conception of all of existence rather than the political circumstances on one tiny planet, our planet, although, as is the nature of the thinking that went into it, it inevitably connected one with the other intimately. Anarchism, then, is consequently my description for the state of all existence everywhere and not simply a political thing related to human activity. When I describe something as anarchist in this sense, as with the liturgy below, I am using anarchy in this sense, the widest most spiritual and philosophical sense possible. "Liturgy," on the other hand, is used in a religious sense [although in my case not at all religiously] as a form of linguistic ritual and participation in something greater. You can, I hope, already see why this might be useful given my conception of anarchy. The purpose of such liturgy, here certainly spiritual and mysterious, is to give a form of words to our participation in the great anarchy which is existence itself. 

A word about the text. The text itself is not my own words or ideas although, in a few cases, I have rewritten a prior translation for what I regarded as better clarity. The text comes from numerous ancient texts such as the Tao Te Ching, the Zhuangzi, the Dhammapada, the "six words" of Tilopa, some words ascribed to Jesus of Nazareth, and one or two other [Zen] Buddhist texts such as Faith in Mind and the Mind Inscription. Here sources are important in that where something comes from gives it a context and also not important in that things should be judged on their content and not their identity. In short, do not let their provenance in Taoism, in Zen or elsewhere disturb you. What matters, if anything, is what they say and what they mean. They express a worldview, an ethic, an attitude, a practice of life, at once spiritual, philosophical, anarchist. My practice in using them is simply to read through them, which takes a few short minutes, and to silently ponder them. But you may use them as you like. There are no rules. This is offered to readers humbly for their thought and consideration. If it is of use and stimulates further thought and meditation - good! If it does not, also good! You can read how and why I came to such ideas by clicking the link to my more fleshed out thinking above or by reading other articles from this website.

Peace to you all.

It is said that in olden times those who ruled everything under Heaven wanted nothing and the world was fulfilled; they practised non-action and the whole of life was transformed; they were immensely deep in their stillness and the many families of the world were calm.

The action of non-action is called Heaven.

The words of non-action are called Virtue.

To love all humanity and to bring success to them is called benevolence.

To unite that which is not united is called greatness. 

To go beyond barriers and boundaries is called open-handedness. 

To have a vast multitude of diverse things is called wealth. 

To have and to hold Virtue is called guidance. 

To grow in maturity in Virtue is called stability. 

To be aligned with the Tao is called completion. 

To refuse to allow anything external which distracts you is called perfection. 

The one who clearly perceives these ten things will also be magnanimous in their ventures and their actions will benefit all life.

At the great Origin there was nothing, nothing, no name. 

The Whole arose from it; there was One without form. 

In taking different forms, it brought life and became known as Virtue. 

Before any shape was given their roles were assigned, various and diverse but all linked to one another. 

This was their lot. 

The forces worked on and things were created, they grew and took distinct shapes, and these were called ‘bodies’. 

The bodies contained spirits, each distinct and mortal. 

This is what we call the innate nature. 

Train this innate nature and it will return to Virtue; Virtue at its best is identical with the Origin. 

Being of the One is to be ultimately formless and this formlessness is vast. 

This is like the opening and shutting of a bird's beak, where the opening and shutting is like Heaven and Earth united. 

This unity is chaotic and disorderly; it looks stupid or foolish. 

This is known as Mysterious Virtue, being, without knowing it, part of the great Submission. 

Let me tell you about the way: 

There is a way that leads to vision, 

A way that confuses confusion. 

At the end of this way there is no sorrow, 

This way leads away from the world, 

But it is you who must make the effort to walk this way

Because you must follow the way to become free. 

And this is that way: 

Everything is transient, 

Everything is sorrow, 

Everything is unreal: 

This is the way.

Therefore:

Don’t remember, don’t project, don’t think.              

Don’t analyse, don’t control, let go.

No past, no future, no now.

No solution, no intention, no attachment.

This is the way.

Congratulations to the person who has toiled and has found life!

Follow the way of water and not a way of your own!

If you want the way to appear,

Be neither for nor against.

For and against opposing each other - 

This is the mind’s disease.

Without recognising the mysterious principle

It is useless to practice quietude.

Do not seek the real;

Just extinguish your views.

Living and dying while forgetting desire —

This is original nature.

Life is not life

And death is not death. 

The way makes no such distinctions. 

Things are not as they appear;

Yet neither are they otherwise. 

So you should only cease to cherish your opinions. 

In the pursuit of learning, every day something is acquired.

In the pursuit of Tao, every day something is dropped.

Less and less is done 

Until actionless action is achieved.

When nothing is done, nothing is left undone.

The world is ruled by letting things take their course.

It cannot be ruled by interfering.

Practice non-action.

Work without doing.

There is nothing to stick to.

Be passersby. 

AN UNAPOLOGETICALLY PERSONAL AND SPIRITUAL EPISTLE FROM THE ANARCHIC EAST

Dear reader, grace and peace to you and thank you for reading this far into this project. This project itself began by quoting several sayings from the Chinese, Taoist text, the Tao Te Ching here. It was not remotely my intention in doing that either to promote Taoism or to make my readers Taoists. Put most simply, I am indifferent about whether that appeals to my readers or not. But I did make use of it because, when I read it, it opened up a new experience of life for me, a life that was not about rules and right and wrong and canonised directions or decisions but that was about flexibility to circumstances, flowing with life like water, simplicity, humility and a natural, dispassionate compassion for all things. I was taught not to strive and struggle and resist the things around me but to become soft and flow with them. All things pass, I came to understand, and the nature of nature is change. 

According to the earliest Taoist texts, when human nature is aligned with the rest of nature, order and harmony are the result. Taoism is, in this sense, a therapeutic understanding of existence. From this perspective, the purpose of the kind of self-cultivation the Tao Te Ching and Taoism itself recommends, something which also accords with the thoughts of many others I covered so far this project which have broadly promoted an anarchic ‘self-creation’, is to return to a mode of existence that is natural, but that has been obscured by social conditioning. This is essentially what the Cynics of the Greek world complained about too, that being less natural was bad and that being more natural was good. One Taoist remedy, repeating certain actions such as physical exercises or meditation, in such an understanding, is a way of training the body so that it is free to react in a spontaneous, natural way. It is similar to the experience of practicing one's shots in basketball and then making a key basket in the big game — the preparation through repetition makes it possible to act, at a certain moment, without thinking, in pure spontaneity. This accords well with the training aspect to this common to Taoism and to Cynicism, which acquaints one with nature, reality, in order to mimic it, just as it comes to be, and with the habitual practice of those such as Nietzsche, Cage and Goldman in There is nothing to stick to who, all in their own ways, exhorted human beings to more natural lives - and to practices and not simply beliefs.

Yet it is clearly the case that, throughout history, human beings can deviate, and have deviated, from the natural chaos of things, their natural law and order, and have gone after artificial and conventional things of their own imagining. When they do so, often they have brought destruction upon themselves and those around them. Confucian scholars, who were rivals to the Taoist scholars who wrote the Tao Te Ching, were criticized there for imposing rules and social expectations upon people. According to the Tao Te Ching, social mores, the artificiality and conventionality of human culture and threats of punishment, cause more harm than good, as they are methods of forcing appropriate behaviour rather than allowing it to occur spontaneously and naturally which is the Taoist wisdom on such things. That we naturally become the change we seek from such teaching is, in fact, the point of it. This way is to change yourself naturally - rather than to be pushed this way and that and beaten into shape artificially - which is the target in view. Authenticity here matters. It is especially the point where knowledge and knowingness is foreign and innocence is nature in its manner of operation. This is to flow with the river rather than to swim against its current because you are possessed by the idea that you know better. 

So, in this case, the only way to encourage appropriate behaviour is by modelling it. If, for example, a ruler is a person of impeccable character, those he leads will naturally follow. But how is the ruler to become the ideal role model, thus insuring harmony for his empire? As an 8th century Taoist master said to a Tang emperor, "Who governs his body, governs the country." The way forward, then, is to practice self-cultivation and to engage in self-examination. To live according to a nature which gives us nothing to stick to will not come all by itself. It will involve us forgetting a great many things. In fact, one thing common to all the thinkers and thought I have highlighted in this project is that human cultures, in their knowingness, have, in some way or to some extent, usurped a more natural mode of life we should rediscover by imposing things upon us we should forget. But this is not a matter of going back, as if it were better in the old days: it was always available to us and it still is today. It is not a matter of time or place but it is a matter of attitude, orientation and habitual practice. It is a matter of us having all we need if only we can let go of the things erroneously added.

In Taoism the central idea regarding nature and the natural is relationship. We cannot approach nature as a thing to be mastered but only as a partner in a relationship. The goal is to become a natural part of the anarchic environment. The way to discover that environment is to turn to nature in its manner of operation. For this reason early Taoist philosophers left the cities to learn from nature and primitive people living in remote mountain villages. They hoped to eventually bring human civilization into the natural chaotic state much as the Cynics did around the same time but in Greece and the Hellenistic and Roman empires instead of in China. In Taoism nature is taken to be infinitely wise, infinitely complex, and infinitely irrational. It is divine chaos or anarchy, not divine order. Yet, as chaos, it is order. One must take a personal yielding stance and abandon all intellectual preconceptions and culturally-inculcated habits. The goal is wu wei, acting without action, or non-action, doing nothing contrary to nature but existing as it exists. Nature does not need to be perfected or improved or subjected to human ideas of order. It is we who need to change; it is we who need to come into accord with it. It is we who need to attain to its naturalistic rhythms and not us who need to impose our measuring, instrumentalising mentality upon it.

Part of the Taoist aim in this is to sidestep the observed dualities of life. To this end Taoism historically rejected all dichotomies, even the most fundamental one of being versus non-being. The goal of Taoism is to attain that which precedes duality. The only way to discover this original source is to observe nature. During peak experiences in nature, the deep meets the deep. Yet the Tao, which we may think of as nature, is a divine chaos, not a random accident. It is fertile, undifferentiated, and teeming with unrealised creation. It is the mother of everything in nature as nature births itself; it is a great darkness that operates spontaneously to give birth and life to all things. Taoists, as naturalists, seek not to be saved or to win, but rather to return to the original source of ‘the Ten Thousand Things’ which is the term the Tao Te Ching uses for the superfluity of things in nature. They see creation not as a single event, but an ongoing process that has no beginning and no end. Its divine play is taking place right here and right now. The wise person becomes like an animal or a child, participating joyfully in the profoundly irrational and anarchic (dis)order. He or she learns to trust or accept the chaos. Is that not what being ‘natural’ would amount to?

Consequently, Taoists have always avoided anthropocentrism for they recognise that we are just one of many things and not a special thing, a chosen thing nor a necessary thing. Unlike other spiritualities, they have never lost their animal gods. Ancient Chinese shamans put on animal masks in order to communicate with these animal gods. Their spirit-animals were links between the worlds of people, ancestors, and gods. There was a tradition of animal frolics during which one became a particular animal, such as a crane or a bear. These rituals are still meaningful. Taoists speak of a direct knowing that resonates in the belly when one has direct contact with nature. It is not with the head but with the belly that one can participate in the sacred madness of the ancestral gods. It is only with the belly that one can appreciate the eternal flux and the underlying unity of the Ten Thousand Things. This is not to say, however, that we knowing moderns, fixated with ‘the intrinsic nature of reality’, have to take this literally and too seriously as if what can be empirically demonstrated is all that matters. How do we ‘empirically demonstrate’ a feeling or an idea or a context? Instead, we should appreciate it for its poetic, postmetaphysical resonances and for the relationship it signifies with things beyond us that are not about reified concepts of knowledge or understanding or truth. Here context is much more important and flowing with things that are all around us, rather than classifying them in a table or chart, is appropriate behaviour. If human beings are not chosen or special or necessary and if, instead, they are just beings in an environment, then that becomes the important thing.

The idea to write this particular essay came to me because I held a poll on my account on the social media service, Twitter, some time ago. In that poll I asked respondents what it was they believed in. I gave them the choices of ‘the Good’, ‘God’, however they chose to define it, ‘nature’ and ‘evil’. 73% of the responses chose ‘nature’ and yet, as I never enquired as to what those voting anonymously meant by ‘nature’, I have no idea what they think they were voting for. I suspect that not too many of them were very sure either but that the other options seemed even less appealing, as they conceive of them, than nature did. In this project I am trying to fill out some ideas about what ‘nature’ might refer to and what some of the consequences then are, including what living ‘according to nature’ might then entail. Having read the essays in this project and thought about it some more, I wonder, then, if quite as many might then still choose nature as a consequence? Then again, it may be that some who chose ‘nature’ might have thought that it entailed god, the good and evil as well although, in my view, at least two of those are ruled out specifically once we take the view that nature does not speak, has no opinions and has no canonical function at all.

Yet the third, god, is not, a priori, ruled out and I note that Taoism, my own personal impetus to begin this project, does not formally disdain the notion of gods although neither does it specifically focus on them as the point of what it is about or what it does. This, I think, is wise for we cannot rule out the notion of god even if, as I have written about in my essay Endless Impossible which I will post in the near future, the idea of gods as persons seems vaguely absurd. Yet there are other ways to understand divinity, if understanding it is what we are supposed to do with it, and I’m not sure at all that it is. One way, in fact, has been to think of it as something very like nature and Taoism, in this regard, is quite mysterious in regard to what ‘the Tao’ may refer to. That it is not a person or being seems clear but, as with the Jewish God of the Hebrew Bible, it seems we can say more about what it is not than about what it is. For we hopefully more natural, more flowing with nature, more antiepistemological folk, I would hope that we can lose any possible anxiety about that. There are things we do not need to know and things that wisdom dictates are not necessary to our existence in a harmony of all things. This, I suggest, is one such. As Richard Rorty has informed us earlier in this project, there are some vocabularies which go out of date and become useless to us for they are speaking a language which now appears inadequate in the light of our current beliefs and with what we regard as our direction of travel. 

So in what has come before in the blogs previous to this one I have taken a naturalistic spiritual tradition, Taoism, added in some antimetaphysical and hermeneutic philosophy of self-creation from Nietzsche, sprinkled in some of the artistic and aesthetic practices of the Zen Buddhist, John Cage, mixed in a dash of the anarchic politics of Emma Goldman flavoured with a little Cynicism from ancient Greece, and here baked it together with Richard Rorty’s antiepistemological pragmatism, the Cynic-flavoured Judaism of Jesus of Nazareth, some humanistic musings on our experiences of nature, and extrapolated it all back in a naturalistic, Taoist direction. In doing so I have not, I think, obligated you to become a Taoist, a Nietzschean, a Cagian musician, an anarchist, a pragmatist of especially Rortian bent, a follower of Jesus, an incurable romantic for natural vistas or engaging with the elements or, in fact, anything else. The whole point of this project, initially entitled “There is nothing to stick to”, a phrase which remains the motto at the heart of what has been going on, is exactly that there is nothing to stick to. Yes, I really mean it. I really do mean in the face of lots of potential readers who have been taught to believe and who, consequently, feel in their bellies, that there is, in fact, much to stick to that, actually, there isn’t. What we have been schooled in is a form a life but only a form of life. It is a culture but it is not nature. It is The Matrix but it is not the world outside it. Here Rorty’s hopeful, future-oriented pragmatism shines a searchlight on our future and asks us where we want to go which might, to some, seem quite a strange and, perhaps, even unasked question in a world in which, so often, things are set out before us as the conventions to follow, the guidelines inside of which we must stay put, if we do not want to be seen as weird, or strange, or idiosyncratic or even dangerous. 

Yet one message of this project is that it is one of possibility, of opportunity and of self-creation. We are, none of us, limited by what we are told we can be. We are limited only by what we can be and that may be something as yet unimagined simply because, as people of culture but not of nature, it has never occurred to us that we could be anything except that which we were told or that which human culture guided us to accept as the natural order of things. But nature is not order; nature is anarchic disorder. If we open our eyes to that and disentangle ourselves from cultural anchors which try to resist and control nature’s less interested existence, who knows what might come to be?

So please remember: there is nothing to stick to.

On another occasion I once wrote a short book for myself full of Taoist texts and other things of my own creation. At its beginning I wrote this poem which was meant to bring together a number of Taoist views in a compact way:

Something from Nothing.

Nothing from Something,

Ever Returning,

The Unending Tao.

With a Mind like the Seashore,

Devoid of Intention,

With Actionless Action,

We Flow like the Stream.

All Knowledge is Empty,

All Striving is Useless,

All Time is Deceiving,

All Separateness False.

Walk the Way of Humility,

Abide in Simplicity,

Be the child of Compassion,

Be at one with the Tao.

Reading it, we can pick out several themes:

1. That something comes from nothing and something goes back to nothing in a circular process of return.

2. That “the Tao”, which means “the way”, is the term for the whole, things being thought of as a holism.

3. That the mind is thought of as a seashore which should not cling to thoughts but let them be washed away without any concern.

4. That the natural principle of “actionless action” is maintained and upheld.

5. That imagery of a river flowing and of being “like water”, as in the Tao Te Ching, is used as a metaphor for human living.

6.That life is not a matter of either knowing or striving in the sense that it is not about either the imagined knowledge, truth or understanding gained or the effort one puts into life.

7. That time is an irrelevant invention and that events do not happen on a timeline.

8. That the separateness and objectivity of things is illusory.

9. That humility, simplicity and compassion are recommended as ways to live.

Yet, after some thought on what has already gone before in this project, we can add a few more ideas to this simple and compact list to flesh it out a little and give a fuller expression of Taoist proclivities:

1. There is a concentration on the present and a consequent de-emphasis of both past and future which dissolves any notion of the diachronic narrativisation of either the self or events.

2. There is a focus on emptiness and particularly emptying the self of thoughts, narratives and emotions. Emptiness is regarded as openness.

3. Consequently, the self is thought to be illusory, a fiction.

4. Malleability and flexibility are promoted as beneficial life traits.

5. Peace is the goal of life, both within the individual and, due to its view of all things, within the context of a harmony of all things together.

6. Life is not thought to be about possession - either of anything in particular or in general.

7. Due to its abandonment of the self and the consequent de-emphasis of the individual ego, there is a greater affirmation of everything else instead and a rebalancing and recontextualisation of things in relation to other things. In the difference of all things, a completeness is seen.

8. There is no set of rules or morals, nor any algorithm for deciding such things.

9. There is a sensibility, a kind of being, that is beyond words.

10. The existence of all things is not thought something that is yours to control.

What stands out to me about all this is how some of the key imagery of Taoism, water, the seashore, emptiness, is not exactly imagery which promotes what many, especially in the West which is my main personal frame of reference, would regard as “moral” in such places. An attitude to life which can easily be characterised as “go with the flow” does not seem too morally robust and might easily be imagined to be completely inadequate to a world of criminality, viciousness and hate. Yet here we must remember that Taoism is not primarily a morality but is, instead, a way of living and a way of understanding all things in one. It is actually an anarchic amorality, it is naturalistic and seeks to site human beings in the context of, and in relationship to, all others things. As such, in the Tao Te Ching we read the following:

"When the great Tao is forgotten, kindness and morality arise. When wisdom and intelligence are born, the great pretense begins. When there is no peace within the family, filial piety and devotion arise. When the country is confused and in chaos, loyal ministers appear." (Tao Te Ching, 18)

Here the world of which we are aware, the world of contention, arises only because the Tao has been forgotten, buried by other things. Yet it is when we forget such things as I have mentioned above as being core aspects of Taoism that we begin to need things like morality or, even worse, law. We see a similar thought made mention of in the past in the words of Dr Martin Luther King when he says:

"While it may be true that morality cannot be legislated, behavior can be regulated. It may be true that the law cannot change the heart but it can restrain the heartless."

Here it is law which cannot mandate a morality but can restrain those determined to impugn it. Taoism, on the other hand, reminds us that it is only when the Tao is forgotten that people need morality to separate right from wrong and better from worse in the first place. But even then, as Dr King said, there are still those who need law to remind them of the civilised need for morality. Taoism itself is about a proclivity, an attitude, a disposition. It is fundamentally one of letting go. It says that if we live in humility, compassion and simplicity with all things without striving for this or that, without a desire to possess, then the result will be more peace. So it implies, if not directly says, that morality is an observed need if, and only if, you do not do this. It is when you forget or cover over the anarchic disorder of the universe that then you have to start the messy business of right and wrong, something which in Taoism’s naturalistic view only comes into focus once the amoral, non-purposive harmony of all things is forgotten.

THIRTEEN SQUARE

What is Thirteen Square? First, it is ancient wisdom from Taoist and Buddhist sources. The number thirteen squared equals 169 and so there are here 169 examples of such wisdom in 13 sets of 13. But what is it for? It is to provoke thought, to consider, to meditate on, to read in stillness. It is to use in whatever way helps and not hinders you. As the gathered wisdom of centuries of thought in these Eastern traditions it is here as guide, as warning, as support and as wisdom. You may concentrate on one saying at a time, read through the whole, pick sayings at random or use it in whatever way you see fit. As you read through the 169 sayings you are sure to be stimulated to thought if you let your mind be still.

Peace be with you.

1 An ant on the move does more than a dozing ox.

2 What you do right now is what matters.

3 The only Zen you find at the top of a mountain is the Zen you bring with you.

4 The problem is that ego can convert anything to its own use, even spirituality.

5 Best be still; best be empty. In stillness and emptiness we find where to abide. Talking and moving we lose this place.

6 The fundamental delusion of humanity is to suppose that I am here and you are out there.

7 In the pursuit of knowledge: every day something is added. In the pursuit of enlightenment: every day something is let go.

8 Whatever you do, you do to yourself.

9 Nature does not hurry, yet everything is accomplished.

10 However many holy words you read, however many you speak, what good will they do you if you do not act upon them?

11 It is the child that sees the primordial secret of nature and it is the child of ourselves we return to.

12 Before enlightenment, chop wood, carry water. After enlightenment, chop wood, carry water.

13 The mind of non-mind, the thought of non-thought.

14 Ordinary mind is the way. If you seek it you cannot find it. The way is not a matter of knowing or not knowing.

15 To understand nothing takes time.

16 Hope and fear are phantoms that arise from thinking of the self. When we don't see the self as self, what do we have to fear?

17 You may say, "I must do something this afternoon" but actually there is no "this afternoon". We do things one after the other. That is all.

18 Every morning we are born again. What we do today is what matters most.

19 Be mindful of intention. Intention is the seed that creates our future.

20 Do everything with a mind that let's go.

21 The mad mind does not halt. If it halts, that is enlightenment.

22 If your mind is empty, it is always ready for anything; it is open to everything.

23 When I let go of what I am, I become what I might be.

24 If your mind isn't clouded by unnecessary things, this is the best time of your life.

25 Can you remain unmoving until the right action arises by itself? The action of non-action.

26 A fool sees himself as another, but a wise one sees others as himself.

27 Step into the fire of self-discovery. This fire will not burn you, it will only burn what you are not.

28 By plucking the petals, you do not gather the beauty of the flower.

29 We shape the clay into a pot, but it is the emptiness inside that holds whatever we want.

30 The wise one is one who knows what they do not know.

31 We may idolize freedom but when it comes to our habits we are completely enslaved.

32 All wrongdoing arises because of mind.

33 This is the time. This is the place. This is the vastness. Right here is paradise. Always. Always.

34 The world is won by those who let it go.

35 All conditioned things are impermanent. 

36 Ask a cloud "What is your date of birth? Before you were born, where were you?"

37 Where ignorance is your master there is no possibility of real peace.

38 Zen teaches nothing; it merely enables us to wake up and become aware. It does not teach, it points.

39 You are one with everything; that things are separate is an illusion.

40 What is malleable is always superior to that which is immovable. This is mastery through adaptation.

41 For all things difficult to acquire, the intelligent one works with perseverance.

42 The only thing we really have control over is our own experience.

43 Our opinions have no permanence; like autumn and winter, they gradually pass away.

44 When you seek it, you cannot find it.

45 The truth you believe and cling to makes you unavailable to hear anything new.

46 The entire teaching of Buddhism can be summed up in this way: Nothing is worth holding on to.

47 When your inner commentary finally ends, your happiness can finally begin.

48 The one who knows how little they know is well. The one who knows how much they know is sick.

49 True peace cannot be achieved by force… it can only be attained by training the mind and learning to cultivate.

50 Treat every moment as your last. It is not preparation for something else.

51 As long as you seek for something you will get the shadow of reality and not reality itself.

52 What you possess, you lose.

53 A person stands in their own shadow and wonders why it is dark.

54 To give up yourself without regret is the greatest charity.

55 All that we are arises with our thoughts.

56 If you wonder what Buddhism has to offer you, the answer is nothing. If you wonder what life is about, the answer is the same.

57 The truth knocks on the door and you say, "Go away! I'm looking for truth," and so it goes away.

58 You have a treasure within you that is infinitely greater than anything the world can offer.

59 Flow with whatever happens and let your mind be free.

60 Our life is shaped by our mind. We become what we think.

61 Think lightly of yourself and deeply of the world.

62 It takes a wise person to learn from their mistakes, but an even wiser person to learn from others.

63 High understanding comes from not understanding at all.

64 Experience this moment to its fullest.

65 The quieter you become, the more you can hear.

66 Practice non-action. Work without doing. 

67 God or no god, infinite divinity or eternal emptiness; they are the same thing.

68 True happiness is based on peace.

69 Composure is the ruler of instability.

70 Those who know don't talk. Those who talk don't know.

71 Do not seek the truth, only cease to cherish your opinions.

72 In the confrontation between the stream and the rock the stream always wins; not through strength but perseverance.

73 Renunciation is not getting rid of the things of this world but accepting that they pass away.

74 Everything will come. Exactly as it does.

75 Meditation is a skillful letting go and the skill of letting go.

76 Be like water.

77 The no-mind thinks no-thoughts about no-things.

78 The soft and supple will prevail.

79 How you live today is how you live your life.

80 In the beginner's mind there are many possibilities but in the expert's mind there are few.

81 When you get to the top of the mountain, keep climbing.

82 Can you see time? No. Then you should stop looking for it.

83 There is no connection between I myself yesterday and I myself in this moment. Who I am tomorrow is not connected to who I am today.

84 Becoming awake involves seeing our confusion more clearly.

85 When you realise there is nothing lacking, the whole world belongs to you.

86 Stop measuring days by degree of productivity and start experiencing them by degree of presence.

87 The moment we desire to be something we are no longer free.

88 When you realise there is nothing lacking the whole world belongs to you.

89 The brush must paint by itself.

90 If right were really right it would differ so clearly from not right that there would be no argument. Is that how you experience right?

91 The sacred lies in the ordinary.

The yin yang symbol signifies unity in opposites. Difference and wholeness cannot be separated for each implicates the other.

92 Understand yourself and then you will understand everything.

93 The stories you tell yourself create a "you" that is not true.

94 Empty yourself of everything. Let the mind rest at peace.

95 If you are not happy here and now you never will be.

96 Die in your thoughts every morning and you will no longer fear death.

97 Mindfulness is the aware, balanced acceptance of the present experience.

98 Time is not a line but a series of now-points.

99 You need not do anything but be yourself.

100 There is only your perception of time.

101 Change how you see and see how you change.

102 The infinite is the finite of every instant.

103 The beginner sees many possibilities, the expert few. Be a beginner every day.

104 Loss is not as bad as wanting more.

105 On your way remain unknown.

106 Everything changes. There is nothing to stick to. That is the Buddha's most important teaching.

107 Relearn everything. Let every moment be a new beginning.

108 We must realise that nothing is as it seems, that what we think is not the same as what is.

109 All teachings are mere references. The true experience is living your own life.

110 In difference there is completeness. In completeness there is difference.

111 Know nothing.

112 No self is true self.

113 Be happy without reason.

114 If you realise that all things change there is nothing you will try to hold on to.

115 Life is like stepping into a boat that is about to sail out to sea and sink.

116 Your suffering is my suffering and your happiness is my happiness.

117 Abandon learning and you will be free from trouble and distress.

118 The torch of chaos and doubt, this is what the sage steers by.

119 To a mind that is still the whole universe surrenders.

120 Being free of desires it is tranquil. And the world will be at peace of its own accord.

121 If you understand, things are just as they are. If you do not understand, things are just as they are.

122 With eyes watching, one cannot see. With eyes closed, one can see clearly.

123 If you want to climb a mountain, begin at the top.

124 No matter how hard the past, you can always begin again.

125 Be a master of the mind, not mastered by the mind.

126 Not creating delusions is enlightenment.

127 Don't be interested in high-flown statements; bite your apple and don't discuss it.

128 Let things flow forward naturally in whatever way they like.

129 The holiest beliefs and the highest thoughts offer you nothing.

130 The world doesn't happen to you; you happen to it.

131 Simplicity, patience, compassion: these are your greatest treasures.

132 Thoughts aren't really fixed realities, but simply movements of the mind that is thinking.

133 Sheer futility, sheer futility: everything is futile. Everything is as insubstantial as breath. You try to grasp it, you cannot.

134 Much wisdom, much grief; the more knowledge, the more sorrow.

135 There is no disaster greater than not being at peace.

136 Laughter is a madness and pleasure no use at all.

137 There is nothing to be gained under the sun.

138 All is futility and chasing after the wind.

139 Be peace. Live peace.

140 We have to allow ourselves to realise we are complete fools; otherwise we have nowhere to begin.

141 Humility is its own reward and appropriate to what we are.

142 People like what is not true and they don't like what is true.

143 Truth is many.

144 A compassionate mind is a diligent mind.

145 There is a season for everything and a time for all tasks.

146 Stop looking for a point.

147 A flower falls, even though we love it; a weed grows, even though we do not love it.

148 Every new moment matters most. Concentrate on now.

149 If my mind doesn't go out to disturb the noise, the noise won't disturb me.

150 We see thoughts for what they are: the passionate attachment to unreal and non-substantial things.

151 The identity fades, the energy remains.

152 Be compassionate to all living things insofar as you can.

153 To see beyond ego is riches indeed.

154 To every person is given a key to heaven. The same key may also take you to hell.

155 Live slowly. Be attentive.

156 To understand everything is to forgive everything.

157 Nurture an innate recognition of your interconnectedness to all things.

158 "Is" is a deception in a world where everything is always becoming.

159 Look without searching. See without knowing.

160 A wise person sees others as themselves.

161 The function of mind is response. The function of life is adaptation. Forests are adaptations of seeds and seeds of dust.

162 Be content to be simply yourself without competition or comparison. This is respect.

163 Just live your day. Do your tasks. And then sleep. Nothing more is required of you.

164 The path to enlightenment is underneath your feet. Stay on the path.

165 Being is still; expression, moving.

166 Whatever you're doing, you're doing it now.

167 When there is no desire all things are at peace.

168 Wherever there is absence of self there are no others, because in absence of self I am all others.

169 We are here to awaken from the illusion of our separateness.