The Mirror of Simple Souls

Margaret Porette 1250 - 1310

Chapter 7. Of how this Soul is noble, and how she takes heed of nothing.

Love: This Soul, says Love, takes no heed of shame or honour, of poverty or of riches, of comfort or of hardship, of love or of hate, of Hell or of Paradise.

Reason: For God’s sake, Love, says Reason, what is the meaning of what you say?

Love: What does it mean? says Love. The one whom God has given understanding of it knows that, and no-one else, for no book contains it, nor can man’s intelligence comprehend it, nor can any creature’s labouring be rewarded by understanding or comprehending it. Rather this is a gift given by the Most High, into whom this creature is ravished through fullness of knowledge, and in her understanding she remains nothing. And such a Soul, having become nothing, at once has everything and has nothing, wishes for everything and wishes for nothing, knows everything and knows nothing.

Reason: And how is it possible, Lady Love, says Reason, that this Soul can wish for what this book says, when it has already said before that she has no will at all? 

Love: Reason, says Love, it is not at all her will which wishes this, but rather it is the will of God which wishes it in her; for this Soul does not dwell in Love, for Love would make her wish for this through any longing; rather it is Love who dwells in her, who has taken her will from her, and so Love works her own will in the Soul, and Love performs her works in her without her help, as a result of which no anxiety can remain in her. This Soul, says Love, is no longer able to speak of God, for she has been brought to nothing in all her external longings and inward feelings and all affections of the spirit, so that whatever this Soul does she does because it is some accustomed commendable practice, or because Holy Church commands it, but not through any longing of her own, for the will which prompted longing in her is dead.

 

Chapter 8. How Reason is astounded that this Soul has abandoned the Virtues, and how Love praises them.

Reason: Ah, Love, says Reason, who understands only the obvious and fails to grasp what is subtle, what strange thing is this? This Soul experiences no grace, she feels no longings of the spirit, since she has taken leave of the Virtues, which give to every pious soul a form of good life, and without these Virtues no-one can be saved or attain to perfect living, and with them no-one can be deceived; and none the less this Soul takes leave of them. Is she not out of her mind, this Soul who talks like that?

Love: No, not at all, says Love, for souls such as she possess the Virtues better than any other creature, but they do not make use of them,2 for they are not in their service as they once were; and, too, they have now served them long enough, so that henceforth they may become free.

Reason: And when, Love, says Reason, did they serve them?

Love: When they remained bound in love and obedience to you, Lady Reason, and also to the other Virtues; and they have stayed in that service so long that now they have become free.

Reason: And when did such souls become free? says Reason.

Love: Once Love dwells in them, and the Virtues serve them with no demur and with no effort3 from such souls.

Love: Ah, truly, Reason, says Love, such souls who have become so free have known for long the bondage which Lordship is wont to exact. If anyone were to ask them what is the greatest torment which any creature can suffer, they would say that it is to dwell in Love, and yet to be subject to the Virtues. For one must yield everything they ask to the Virtues, at whatever cost to Nature. And so it is that the Virtues ask honour and possessions, heart and body and life. That is that such souls should give up everything, and still the Virtues say to this Soul, which has given all this to them and has held back nothing with which to comfort Nature, that only with great suffering is the just man saved. And therefore this wretched Soul,5 still subject to the Virtues, says that she would be willing to be hounded by Dread and suffer torment in Hell until the day of judgment, if after that she was to be saved. And it is true, says Love, that the Soul over whom the Virtues have power lives in such subjection. But the souls of whom we speak have brought the Virtues to heel, for such souls do nothing for them: but rather the Virtues do all that such souls wish, humbly and with no demur, for such souls are their mistresses.

 

Chapter 9. How such Souls have no will at all.

 Love: If anyone were to ask such free souls, untroubled and at peace, if they would want to be in Purgatory, they would answer No: if they would want here in this life to be assured of their salvation, they would answer No: if they would want to be in Paradise, they would answer No. Why would they wish for such things? They have no will at all; and if they wished for anything, they would separate themselves from Love; for he who has their will knows what is good for them, without their knowing or being assured of it. Such Souls live by knowing and loving and praising; that is the settled practice of such Souls, without any impulse of their own, for Knowledge and Love and Praise dwell within them. Such Souls cannot assess whether they are good or bad, and they have no knowledge of themselves, and would be unable to judge whether they are converted or perverted.

 Love: Or, to speak more briefly, let us take one Soul to represent them all, says Love. This Soul neither longs for nor despises4 poverty or tribulation, Mass or sermon, fasting or prayer; and gives to Nature all that it requires, with no qualm of conscience; but this Nature is so well ordered through having been transformed in the union with Love, to whom this Soul’s will is joined, that it never asks anything which is forbidden. Such a Soul is not concerned about what it lacks, except at the needful time; and none but the innocent can be without this concern.

Reason: For God’s sake, what does this mean?

Love: I tell you in reply, Reason, says Love, as I have told you before, and yet again I tell you that every teacher of natural wisdom, every teacher of book-learning, everyone who persists in loving his obedience to the Virtues does not and will not understand this as it should be understood. Be sure of this, Reason, says Love, for only those understand it who should seek after Perfect Love. But if by chance one found such Souls, they would tell the truth if they wanted to; yet I do not think that anyone could understand them, except only him who seeks after Perfect Love and Charity. Sometimes, says Love, this gift is given in the twinkling of an eye; and let him who is given it hold fast to it, for it is the most perfect gift which God gives to a creature. This Soul is learning in the school of Divine Knowledge, and is seated in the valley of Humility, and upon the plain of Truth, and is at rest upon the mountain of Love.

 

Porette, Margaret. The Mirror of Simple Souls (Notre Dame Texts in Medieval Culture) University of Notre Dame Press.

 

    Mine is

    a homeless home and

    a selfless self.

    - Soen Nakagawa. 1907 - 1984

 I came to realize clearly that mind is nothing other than rivers and mountains and the great wide earth, the sun and the moon and the stars.

- Dogen

 

When your consciousness has become ripe in true zazen —

pure like clear water,

like a serene mountain lake,

not moved by any wind — 

 

then anything may serve as a medium for realisation.

 

 

~ Yamada Kôun Rôshi

 

Hakuin’s Chant in Praise of Zazen

(Zazen Wasen)

From the beginning all beings are Buddha. 
Like water and ice, 

without water no ice,

outside us no Buddhas.

 
How near the truth, 

yet how far we seek. 
Like one in water crying, "I thirst!" 
Like a child of a rich birth wandering poor on this earth,

we endlessly circle the six worlds.

The cause of our sorrow is ego delusion.
From dark path to dark path we've wandered in darkness, 
how can we be free from birth and death? 
The gateway to freedom is zazen samadhi -

beyond exaltation, beyond all our praises,

the pure Mahayana. 

Upholding the precepts, 

repentance and giving, 
the countless good deeds, 

and the way of right living 

all come from zazen. 

Thus one true Samadhi extinguishes evils;

It purifies karma, dissolving obstructions. 
Then where are the dark paths to lead us astray? 
The Pure Lotus Land is not far away. 

Hearing this truth, heart humble and grateful. 
To praise and embrace it, 

to practice its Wisdom, 
brings unending blessings. 

brings mountains of merit. 

And when we turn inward and prove our True-nature, 

that True-self is no-self, 

our own Self is no-self - 

we go beyond ego and past clever words. 

Then the gate to the oneness of cause-and-effect is

thrown open. 

Not two and not three, 

straight ahead runs the Way.

 
Our form now being no-form, 

in going and returning we never leave home. 
Our thought now being no-thought, 

our dancing and songs are the Voice of the Dharma. 

How vast is the heaven of boundless samadhi! 
How bright and transparent the moonlight of wisdom! 
What is there outside us? 

What is there we lack? 
Nirvana is openly shown to our eyes. 
This earth where we stand is the pure lotus land! 
And this very body - the body of Buddha.

(Rochester Zen Center translation)

 

SIDDHARAMESHWAR MAHARAJ

Non-Action

Many people feel that they should do something to acquire true spiritual knowledge. Then what remedy does the master prescribe to the disciple to acquire knowledge? If a man is healthy and he asks the doctor to cure his disease, what can he reply? Then he asks the same question to the chief of the village and to a lawyer, and they tell him, "You have become stout." Then he thinks, "What could be the reason that I have become stout?" He asks the doctor. The doctor feels his pulse and thinks, "What can I say to him, he has no disease? It can't be diagnosed." Then someone wise tells him, "You are affected by a terrible disease! What else can I say?

Pursuing absolute truth is similar to the example given above. People do so many things to attain Truth because they feel they must act. People tell them, “You have become an individual being (jiva).” Just brush it all aside, saying “Nothing has happened. Surely, nothing has happened.” Let your understanding be this, and thus become completely free. Can there be any talk about that which never existed? When you say “I”, the notions of “mine” and “yours” arise simultaneously, and this is the main problem.

There is one and only one truth. When you say, “My hand is paining me”, you know that you are not your hand. Knowledge is for learning what you have heard. One should know God as he is, then there is nothing left to achieve. When you understand the true meaning, then nothing is left to be done. So to understand truth, all that is illusory must be destroyed. People make all kinds of efforts to conquer the illusion, but the illusion is very tricky. It still resides in the one who says he has to conquer the illusion. So how should it be tackled? And what has to be done after one realises the truth. If you ask this, the answer is – “you have to do nothing regarding the body, your household, etc… let them be as they are.”

Suppose while you are asleep you had a dream that you met a bear while walking on the road. You wrestled with it, sat on its chest and finally killed it. The moment you awoke there was no bear to be seen. There was nothing. Similarly, to feel that, “I am realised”, “I am a saint”, “I am an aspirant”, or “I am after spiritual knowledge” is delusion. To feel that God “comes” and “goes away” is an illusion. Your illusionary concepts play the role of the bear – when you wrestle with them, sometimes they make you fall and at other times you make them fall. The master’s advice is, “Why do you meddle in this? All this chaos is the chaos of illusion.” Let the objects be wherever they are. If you try to manage affairs, you will forget the primordial Supreme. Doership is the illusion and non-doership is Self.

The aspirants always think of that which is untrue. They ask, "What shall I do, Maharaj?" The Guru asks him not to sniff tobacco, and the disciple immediate reacts by putting his nose into the box containing tobacco! Or he may say, "You say that all this is false, yet you yourself also indulge in it." There are only two things in the world: worldly existence and Reality. To take interest in what has happened is to get involved in worldly affairs. If you abandon all these things, true knowledge will dawn. This is why a man gets caught in bondage. Individuality is to involve the mind in the objective world, and Godhood is to do nothing. God is in the temple while there are rocks lying outside. Why should God value rocks? For this God [your own Self], to live among stones is called "individuality" or "ignorance". Saint Tukaram says, "God is quite ancient." God is prior to everything. A jnani has understood that the Supreme being [Paramatman], which is prior to all, is silently sitting in his heart. Leaving this God alone, people think of doing good or bad. That is the illusion for the individual being. The illusion makes man knowledgeable, makes him a narrator of the Vedas, and makes him play this worldly game. If a thing is good, it is good; if it is bad, it is bad; if one is wealthy, he is wealthy; and if one is poor, he is poor. Who is the real aspirant? He is the one who has understood the illusion is nothing. However much you may have wrestled with the bear in a dream, it is still all false. But the illusion does not allow the aspirant to be victorious. The concept of "I" and "you" is a delusion, as is the concept of "aspirant". Even the idea "I am God" is a delusion. This world itself is rooted in delusion. If I and you are God, then why should there be any supposition? As told before, "Abandon everything!" Ignorant people start beating cymbals for worship. This knowledge is actually ignorance. Hence, even this knowledge has no true value. Only knowledge of the Self destroys ignorance. The individual "I" is the one who dabbles in the illusion. So just do nothing. The aspirant is tortured by those who tell him, "You must do this and you must do that." All this is to fool him. The illusion has long horns on his head. If you supersedes him, he gores you, and if you fall behind, he kicks you. Thus, the key to transcending the illusion lies in doing nothing. All happiness, misery, worry and anxiety are inherent in the illusion. You have to do nothing, you have to abandon nothing. In Dasbodh, Saint Ramdas says, "Action and non-action are illusion." So those who have not understood this illusion may dance wild. The illusion is dreamlike. If you wrestle with a bear in a dream, your victory or defeat is irrelevant. So it is said that the illusion is unconquerable, even for Lord Brahma, Vishnu, Harihera, etc., since they all take it to be true. Vishnu said, "I shall protect them", so he became a four-handed God. This is an illusion, yet all are engrossed in it. Suppose a barren woman's son said that he had held a torch at Maruti's [an eternal celibate] wedding. This world in the form of illusion is just as fictitious. So those who say they have conquered the illusion are thoroughly deceived. The devotee of God does not experience the happiness or misery arising from the illusion. His glory is small, but higher than that of the gods Hari and Hara. The reason is that he takes everything as untrue and knows that there is no action, cause or doer. Wherever there is a feeling of cause and effect, it is due to the feeling "I am not Reality." This feeling is the effect and the "I" is the cause. When you feel that you are not Reality, you become an individual "I". When you feel that you are neither an "I" nor Shiva, you become Final Reality. "I", "good", "bad, etc., all these are signs of delusion rising up from the material world. All this is a game of "blind man"s bluff". Reality is the one who covers the players eyes, and hence, he is not part of the game. He blindfolds the participants only once. Knowledge and ignorance are the material cause of the world [prakriti]. This itself is delusion. Who expounds the scriptures and who conveys knowledge? Chanting, penance, methods, study, etc., are all the mesmeric activities of the illusion. You cross over the material world only when you are free from all "duties". These are all matters at this initial stage. So long as there is knowledge, there is delusion. Reject whatever you suppose you are. "Reject" means do not dabble in anything whatsoever. Continue your worship: "I am the Self, I am Reality, I am not the body, I am not the name." The one who is speaking inside is "I", is God. Just be convinced of that. There was a princess who wanted to find a lazy man to marry. Accordingly, an announcement was made in every village. Prospective suitors claiming to be lazy soon arrived at the palace. The princess wanted to assure the validity of their claims. One man pretended to be so lazy by arriving on the shoulders of someone else. Another feigned silence in support of his claim, and another refrained from using his hands to eat food. There were as many pretensions of laziness as there were suitors. The princess rejected them all. But there was one shrewd fellow who simply informed the princess that he had come to get married to her. She asked him, "How can you prove that you are lazy?" He replied, "All the others are merely pretending. They are only actors and are not lazy at all." Maintaining silence, not walking, and not eating with the hands – these are all external actions meant to deceive. These qualities are not of the nature of a really lazy person. Similarly, for a jnani, it is absolutely evident that he is Reality. The true mark of a saint is taking the world to be untrue. If it is not understood that it is in the nature of the material world to be false, then one cannot get "married to the princess." Laziness does not mean abandoning outward actions. The individual "I" has the habit of engaging itself in constant activity. To do something is in the nature of the body consciousness. What has to be done, and for whose sake? Illusion implies "my idea". There is a proverb: "He started worshipping God when he got tired of doing things." If you reject all that is untrue, then you become God Reality. The illusion is believing that "I ought to first do this and that, manage this and that, become rich, and then afterwards I will become a saint and start acting differently." So leave things exactly as they are. If you meddle in things, your body consciousness will get enhanced and you will constantly feel that you ought to be doing something. This is the obstruction for attaining Final Reality. When you are not the body, then it is useless to think about wealth or poverty. All is untrue. Then why this unnecessary query? Godhood is "not to do anything." We say, "Remain quiet, like God", but in actuality we indulge ourselves in body consciousness. To not worry about anything and to be at peace is called "OM Shanti". This is my blessing to you all.

https://www.inner-quest.org/Siddharameshwar_Non-Action.htm

 

~Words from Kusan Sunim

 

Words from Our Ancestors:

A monk asked Zhaozhou, "Does a dog have Buddha-nature or not?"

Zhaozhou said, "Mu."

This one word "mu" is a knife to sunder the doubting mind of birth and death. The handle of this knife is in one's own hand alone: you can't have anyone else wield it for you; to succeed you must take hold of it yourself. You consent to take hold of it yourself only if you can abandon your life. If you cannot abandon your life, just keep to where your doubt remains unbroken for awhile: suddenly you'll consent to abandon your life, and then you'll be done....You won't have to ask anyone else...

During your daily activities twenty four hours a day, you shouldn't hold to birth and death and the Buddha Path as existent, nor should you deny them as nonexistent. Just contemplate this: A monk asked Zhaozhou, "Does a dog have Buddha-nature or not?" ZhaoZhou said, "Mu."

 - from a letter of Dahui to a student in Swampland Flowers translated by Christopher Cleary

Words from Don:

We make use of the expedients passed down in our tradition: 'sayings', koans, encounter dialogues, poems. We engage with, inhabit, enliven them in our practice. The process does not require anyone else's presence or permission. As Yasutani reminded us, "You sit alone, You awaken alone, You die alone." 

The great matter of birth and death is your matter to resolve. No one else can do it for you; no teachings will settle it; guidance can be reduced to "let go of false thinking."

"You can not grasp it; you can not reject it."

 -From Hilo Zen Circle Newsletter