Thursday, March 01, 2018

Turning the light around (with Thomas Cleary's translation of The Secret of the Golden Flower)





A/Z & Sheha Pleif: Pleif Mapa, chapter 2;
Tommy Cash/ Leave me alone; 

"Nothing is perfect—after all, it's the opposite of nothing."
"An actress friend told me that after she didn't want money any more and after she didn't want jewels any more, that's when she got money and jewels. I guess it's for our own good that it always happens that way, because after you stop wanting things is when having them won't make you go crazy... Everything becomes distorted when something you really want is sitting in your lap."
"... when you work with people who misunderstand you, instead of getting transmissions you get transmutations, and that's much more interesting in the long run..."
Andy Warhol

"Once I was at a house on Riverside Drive where people were invited to be present at a Zen service conducted by a Japanese Roshi. He did the ritual, rose petals and all. Afterwards tea was served with rice cookies. And then the hostess and her husband, employing an out-of-tune piano and a cracked voice, gave a wretched performance of an excerpt from a third-rate Italian opera. I was embarrassed and glanced towards the Roshi to see how he was taking it. The expression on his face was absolutely beatific."
John Cage (The Future of Music: Credo)

"... un incorporel autant qu'un impassible, pour parler comme Blanchot..." 
Gilles Deleuze, Le Pli
"... son corps atteignait l'idéal d'égoïsme qui est l'idéal de tout corps: il était le plus dur au moment de devenir le plus faible..."
Maurice Blanchot, Thomas l'Obscur 

"À la différence de l'effet (visé par l'agir dans un rapport moyens-fin), l'effect n'est pas à 'chercher', en y tendant directement et de façon volontaire; il est appelé à découler 'naturellement' du processus engagé. Toute stratégie consistera, en retour, à savoir impliquer le processus en amont, d'où l'effet sera ensuite conduit de lui-même à venir."
"... cette efficacité est de l'ordre du fruit qui, en se transformant imperceptiblement, est conduit à mûrir, non du geste héroïque qui prétend obtenir à l'arraché... impossible, comme on sait, de tirer 'directement' sur la plante pour la faire grandir, il faut la laisser pousser."
"... ce n'est pas en s'appliquant à la vertu d'équité qu'on peut parvenir à la droiture continue d'une conduite équitable, ni en exécutant minutieusement les rites qu'on peut parvenir à la pureté du respect rituel..."
"... ce qui permet à l'effet d'effectivement ouvrer est précisément ce 'fonds' discret — à l'antipode de l'effet voyant — qu'aucune mise en oeuvre ne saurait épuiser... Cette ressource ou ce fonds d'effet, comme on dit de quelqu'un qu'il a du fonds, est le fonds d'immanence de l'effet. Au gré d'images qui sont traditionnelles en Chine, il est la souche et le tronc de l'arbre à partir de quoi se déploient naturellement les branches comme autant d'effets singuliers; ou encore il est la mère de l'effet et les effets en sont les enfants..."
François Jullien (Traité de l'efficacité)
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"Turning the light around is not turning around the light of one body, but turning around the very energy of Creation. It is not stopping random imagination only temporarily; it is truly emptying routine compulsion for all time" (III, 5).
"Mountains, rivers, sun, moon, and the whole earth are all this light, so it is not only in the self. All the operations of intelligence, knowledge, and wisdom are also this light, so it is not outside the self... Therefore once you turn the light around, everything in the world is turned around" (III, 10). 
"If you can sit quietly for a while, all time—ten thousand ages, a thousand lifetimes—is penetrated from this" (III, 11).
"To focus means to focus on this as a hint, not to become rigidly fixated. The meaning of the word focus has life to it; it is very subtle" (III, 15).
"Where is it? Where does it come from? Where does it disappear? Push this inquiry on and on over and over until you realize it cannot be grasped; then you will see where the thought arises" (III, 16). 
"It is impossible to have no thoughts... It is impossible not to breathe. Nothing compares to making the affliction itself into medicine, which means to have mind and breath rest on each other" (IV, 5). 
"'The hen embraces the egg, always mentally listening.' These are the finest instructions" (IV, 12). 
"It is also essential to understand that this device is not mechanical or forced. Just maintain a subtle looking and listening" (IV, 23).
"When you are quiet, it is then essential to find potential and find its opening; don't sit inside nothingness or indifference (so-called 'neutral voidness')" (V, 4). 
"... the rhythm of reality is on the brink of existence and nonexistence. You can get it by intent that is not willful" (V, 6). 
"When there is uninterrupted continuity in quiet, the spirit and feelings are joyful and happy, as if one were intoxicated, or in a bath" (VI, 2). 
"... when you hear people talking it is as though from far away..." (VI, 7). 
"People experience higher things individually, according to their faculties and capacities" (VI, 9). 
"... you need not give up your normal occupation... 'When matters come up, one should respond...'" (VII, 1). 
"... act purposefully without striving..." (VIII, 3). 
"... and the whole body feels wondrously light and buoyant..." (VIII, 12). 
"... living midnight" (VIII, 14).
"Once you neither destroy things nor cling to things, this is the contemplation of the center" (VIII, 39). 
"To use the yang of water, you use the light of fire" (VIII, 46). 
"... there is true fire naturally existing in water" (IX, 2). 
"It is like a mirror reflecting without intending to do so... When there is an image in a mirror, there is no more mirroring..." (X, 3). 
"If emptiness is seen as empty, emptiness is still not empty" (X, 16). 
"The energy in our limbs and throughout our whole body is basically a network, so do not exert your strength to the full on it. Refine the conscious spirit..." (XII, 2). 
"When you reach the point where meditation is spontaneous, you do not know what fire and water are..." (XII, 7). 
"When you keep presence of mind, only then do you have autonomy" ("Questions and Answers"). 
"The light of mind does not belong to inside or outside" ("Questions and Answers").
"Few are those who are calm and serious, rare are those who are sincere and unified" ("Questions and Answers").
"If there is empty silence without radiant light, the silence is not true silence, the emptiness is not true emptiness — it is just a ghost cave" ("Questions and Answers").
"Temportal feelings and consciousness are marvelous functions of the primal" ("Questions and Answers").
"The primal and temporal are originally not two: what makes the distinction is only temporal... When people are deluded by emotions and do not know there is essence, they are ordinary ignoramuses. If they know there is essence but do not know there are emotions, this is senseless vacuity" ("Questions and Answers").
"The great Way is not quiet living... sit on the summit of a thousand mountains without leaving the crossroads" ("Questions and Answers"). 
"... what is before our eyes is hard to understand" ("Questions and Answers"). 
"The faculties of thinking, imagining, dreaming, and emotion are not destroyed in the earthly immortal of Taosim; rather they are brought under the dominion of their source of power and made into channels of its expression" ("Translation Notes"). 
"Liu also affirms the subtlety of the center, and the delicacy of the mental posture of focus on the center... 'If you seek it consciously, you fall into forms; if you keep it mindlessly, you enter into empty silence. Neither of these is the central way" ("Questions and Answers"). 
"Taoists and Buddhists both use the image of 'leaking' to represent the loss of energy through random mental activity and its corresponding physical unrest" ("Questions and Answers"). 
"To 'let go' is to free the mind from entanglement in objects, but to 'let go absolutely' is to fall into oblivion... Oblivion is a much more difficult problem..." ("Questions and Answers"). 
"... a common Chan Buddhist expression to illustrate the fact that there is no way to communicate or understand realization of spiritual awakening except by one's own personal experience" ("Questions and Answers"). 
"A 'living method' is one that is efficiently adapted to individual needs and integrated into everyday life... ecclesiastical operations generally call more attention to themselves than individual practitioners, who 'hide their light' according to classical recommendations..." ("Questions and Answers"). 
"In terms of energetics, the 'chamber of water' means the lower abdomen, where energy is built up for circulation..." ("Questions and Answers"). 
"... it is necessary to will the liberation of all beings..." ("Questions and Answers"). 
"... wuxin (unminding)..." ("Questions and Answers").
"It is so great that there is nothing outside it, so small it enters where there is no space" ("Questions and Answers"). 
"Spontaneity is the real meaning of wuwei, often mistranslated as 'non-action' or 'inaction'" ("Questions and Answers"). 
"... the lair of spirit and energy... dragons represent the inconceivable fluidity of spirit..." ("Questions and Answers"). 
"The theory and practice of the golden flower method do exist in Greek and Christian tradition..." ("Translator's Afterword"). 
All quotations from: 
THOMAS CLEARY, The Secret of the Golden Flower. The Classic Chinese Book of Life. The Authoritative New Translation. New York: Harper Collins Publishers, 1991.

See also:

1 comment:

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