The Good Life

This topic is for talking about the way of the good life.

The way of the good life just means the simplest way for living a good life.

What is a good life?

I don’t know, but the more relaxed I am the better I feel and the more enjoyable life seems to be.

Living the good life is becoming what you are and learning how to relax and take it easy.

Take what life throws at you and stand with it and accept it.

The more you attach to what you think you know about the good life the less you probably actually know about the good life.

“Beware the barrenness of a busy life” -Socrates

“The whole future lies in uncertainty: live immediately” -Seneca

“As you rise with the morning Sun, think of what a precious privilege it is to be alive - to breathe, to think, to enjoy, to love.” -Marcus Aurelius

The good life is trusting the way to the way.

The good life flows with the rhythm of the good life.

It’s free and easy.

It doesn’t know what tomorrow might bring, but it has hope that those looking for peace out there might find it here.

Welcome to the good life.

A good life is a relaxed life.

To really relax in life you have to learn how to flow with change.

”The only way to make sense out of change is to plunge into it, move with it, and join the dance.“ -Alan Watts

I have found that the best way to join the dance of change is to cling to nothing and let life happen.

To cling to nothing means you have to smash your idols and crystal balls.

Be suspicious of all appearances, especially thoughts.

This thanksgiving I am thankful for not knowing.

Not knowing the appearances makes each appearance every moment a marvelous wonder.

Can you accept what is?

Do you really think you can?

Actions speak louder than words.

Accepting what is is aligning ones self with the flow of unknowable appearances.

You think you know what creation is?

Prove it.

Walk the walk.

Life is good.

I have no qualms with anything really.

I showed up.

I took a risk with love.

At the end of the day I’m still standing here abiding the unknown.

Nowhere to go and not a thing to do.

Home.

Here keeping don’t know mind doing not-doing.

The simple life is the good life.

Only music here.

Guitar Jesus

Having found oneself in the natural state in sync with nature and the way things are, it may be natural to ask oneself if it is natural to become out of sync with nature and the way things are.

The answer is yes.

Because we are free to be anything we sometimes find ourselves pretending to be sheep, when underneath the sheep skin there is a goat in hibernation waiting patiently for the stars to align so he might wake up and break out.


The sheep skin we hid under all those years was both a cancer and a chrysalis, but in reality it was neither.

Once we realign with nature we can lay back and relax.

Knowing the way, we learn how to leave the way to the way and instantly merge the outside with the inside.

Started reading “The Way of Zen” by Mr. Alan Watts.

Watts wrote: A way of liberation can have no positive definition. It has to be suggested by saying what it is not, somewhat as a sculptor reveals an image by the act of removing pieces of stone from a block.

We can get a sense of our natural relaxed state by observing the self and the way the self tends to get hung up on things.

Zen shows you that all your hang ups can be short circuited when you embrace don’t-know mind.

With don’t know mind you can see through any pretenders who think they know the way.

The path to here is no path at all.

Anyone hung up on a particular way to liberation is like someone who thinks they have figured out a way to kiss their own lips.

Liberation is only for the bravest of goats.

Who will make their way to Cold Mountain and sit with me in the clouds?

Like rolling thunder.

Like water.

An overgrown trail to match an overgrown beard.

A goat and an owl.

To go where no foot can go.

To see what no eye can see.

Taste the tasteless.

There is no such thing as Zen.

There is only what is.

Zen seems to point to the fact that the meaning of things is their appearance itself and nothing more or less than that.

Understanding the meaning of the appearance is not something that can be known conceptually, it has to be perceived directly through cutting to the root of delusions.

Once you cut to the root you see clearly that the real self is not a thing that is static and unmoving, but a flow that is one with nature and the way things are as a continuous flow of conceptually unknowable appearances.

To know the appearance is to be one with the flow of appearances and not get hung up on trying to conceptualize the natural world.

We cannot capture a thing that is always appearing to move and flow.

The moment you try and hold it in your hand you loose it.

The key to liberation is already in your open hand.




...


Found the difference between English and Chinese to be interesting in how the language itself has something to do, perhaps, with the difference between the western philosopher and the eastern philosopher.

Watts wrote: In English the differences between things and actions are clearly, if not always logically, distinguished, but a great number of Chinese words do duty for both nouns and verbs–so that one who thinks in Chinese has little difficulty in seeing that objects are also events, that our world is a collection of processes rather than entities.

What happens to my fist when I open my hand?

What happens to the self when the self opens up to the way things are as a flow and rhythm between the spaces of becoming and begoing?

Who knows....just this.

If you love a flower don’t pick it.

If you pick a flower it will die.

So it is with the suchness of life, you can’t capture the suchness of life with conventional words or thoughts.

Zen stories and koans have a unique way of capturing not-capturing the suchness of things that I thoroughly enjoy.

Of course, zen is not really about stories and koans, zen is really about the suchness of being....of self.

Anyone who says they know what Zen is is a liar.

Nobody knows...just like you can’t know who you are.

So just discard all you have acquired as being no better than a bed spread for you when you were sick. Only when you have abandoned all perceptions, there being nothing objective to perceive; only when phenomena obstruct you no longer; only when you have rid yourself of the whole gamut of dualistic concepts of the 'ignorant' and 'Enlightened' category, will you at last earn the title of Transcendental Buddha.

Therefore is it written: 'Your prostrations are in vain. Put no faith in such ceremonies. Hide from such false beliefs.' Since Mind knows no divisions into separate entities, phenomena must be equally undifferentiated. Since Mind is above all activities, so must it be with phenomena. Every phenomenon that exists is a creation of thought; therefore I need but empty my mind to discover that all of them are void. It is the same with all sense-objects, to whichever of the myriads of categories they belong. The entire void stretching out in all directions is of one substance with Mind; and, since Mind is fundamentally undifferentiated, so must it be with everything else. Different entities appear to you only because your perceptions differ...

Huangbo Xiyun

One day someone asked Master Yunmen, "What is Zen?"
The Master replied, "That’s it!"
The questioner went on, "What is the Way?"
The master said, "Okay!"

Yunmen Wenyan

Zen has been described as, "When hungry eat and when tired sleep".

When the student got that description he said, "Well doesn't everybody do that?".

The master said, "They don't. When hungry they don't eat but think of 10,000 things. When tired they don't just sleep, but dream innumerable dreams."

**nod**

“The individual is in a jail cell of knowing” -Jim Newman

Of guardian angels, when all hope seemed lost.

Burn The Ships