Luxuries that cloy and pleasures that bore

George comes out really quite sensible at times. You’d be surprised. I call that downright wisdom, not merely as regards the present case, but with reference to our trip up the river of life, generally. How many people, on that voyage, load up the boat till it is ever in danger of swamping with a store of foolish things which they think essential to the pleasure and comfort of the trip, but which are really only useless lumber.

How they pile the poor little craft mast-high with fine clothes and big houses; with useless servants, and a host of swell friends that do not care twopence for them, and that they do not care three ha’pence for; with expensive entertainments that nobody enjoys, with formalities and fashions, with pretence and ostentation, and with—oh, heaviest, maddest lumber of all!—the dread of what will my neighbour think, with luxuries that only cloy, with pleasures that bore, with empty show that, like the criminal’s iron crown of yore, makes to bleed and swoon the aching head that wears it!

It is lumber, man—all lumber!  Throw it overboard.  It makes the boat so heavy to pull, you nearly faint at the oars.  It makes it so cumbersome and dangerous to manage, you never know a moment’s freedom from anxiety and care, never gain a moment’s rest for dreamy laziness—no time to watch the windy shadows skimming lightly o’er the shallows, or the glittering sunbeams flitting in and out among the ripples, or the great trees by the margin looking down at their own image, or the woods all green and golden, or the lilies white and yellow, or the sombre-waving rushes, or the sedges, or the orchis, or the blue forget-me-nots.

Throw the lumber over, man!  Let your boat of life be light, packed with only what you need—a homely home and simple pleasures, one or two friends, worth the name, someone to love and someone to love you, a cat, a dog, and a pipe or two, enough to eat and enough to wear, and a little more than enough to drink; for thirst is a dangerous thing.

You will find the boat easier to pull then, and it will not be so liable to upset, and it will not matter so much if it does upset; good, plain merchandise will stand water.  You will have time to think as well as to work.

~ Three Men in a Boat - Jerome K Jerome

You must cease for reality to be

Is God to be found by seeking him out ? Can you search after the unknowable? To find, you must know what you are seeking. If you seek to find, what you find will be a self-projection; it will be what you desire, and the creation of desire is not truth. To seek truth is to deny it. Truth has no fixed abode; there is no path, no guide to it, and the word is not truth. 

Is truth to be found in a particular setting, in a special climate, among certain people? Is it here and not there? Is that one the guide to truth and not another ? Is there a guide at all? When truth is sought, what is found can only come out of ignorance, for the search itself is born of ignorance. 

You cannot search out reality: you must cease for reality to be. 

Source

Vast Emptiness, Nothing Sacred

Bodhidharma's reputation as a Dhyana master was said to have preceded his arrival in China, and so and the Chinese Emperor Wu, a devout Buddhist, called upon Bodhidharma to visit the Imperial Palace to teach. Having sponsored the construction of a great many Buddhist monasteries and temples and patronizing the teachers of the various Buddhist sects, Emperor Wu—in accordance with his understanding of their teachings—assumed that he would gain much 'merit' in the form of a happy and prosperous reign. And he assumed he was earning an auspicious rebirth in what some Buddhist schools called a 'Pure Land' where, unlike on earth, all the conditions of life would be conducive to his attainment of Enlightenment.

Emperor Wu: "I have built many temples, copied innumerable Sutras and ordained many monks since becoming Emperor. Therefore, I ask you, what is my merit?"


Bodhidharma: "None whatsoever!" 


Emperor Wu: "Why no merit?"


Bodhidharma: "Doing things for merit has an impure motive and will only bare the puny fruit of rebirth."


Emperor Wu: (a little put out) "What then is the most important principle of Buddhism?"


Bodhidharma: "Vast emptiness. Nothing sacred."


Emperor Wu: by now bewildered, and not a little indignant: "Who is this that stands before me?"


Bodhidharma: "I do not know."


Source