We continue from last time's passage of the Xin Xin Ming ...

Live neither in the entanglements of outer things,

nor in inner feelings of emptiness.

...

As long as you remain in one extreme or the other

you will never know Oneness.

Those who do not live in the single Way

fail in both activity and passivity,

assertion and denial.

To deny the reality of things

is to miss their reality.

to assert the emptiness of things

is to miss their reality.

Neither entangled in things, nor a captive of sweet emptiness. Rather, encountering each as one ... stillness in motion ... the sweetness in the bitterness ... the silence speaking assertion and denial ... the things of the world as a dream, as real ...

This echoes other chants and writings ... The Heart Sutra ...

Form is not other than emptiness, emptiness no other than form

... The Identity of Relative and Absolute ...

To be attached to things is primordial illusion;

To encounter the absolute is not yet enlightenment.

... The Platform Sutra of the Sixth Patriarch ... reminds of how to live with Wisdom in a word of good and bad, beautiful and ugly .... Do not throw them aside, nor cling to them or be stained by them ...

Do not sit with a mind fixed on emptiness. If you do you will fall into a neutral kind of emptiness. Emptiness includes the sun, moon, stars, and planets, the great earth, mountains and rivers, all trees and grasses, bad men and good men, bad things and good things, heaven and hell; they are all in the midst of emptiness. The emptiness of human nature is also like this. Self-Nature contains the ten thousand things..."

"Although you see all men and non-men, evil and good, evil things and good things, you must not throw them aside, nor must you cling to them, nor must you be stained by them, but you must regard them as being just like the empty sky. ...

Seeing through-and-through this dusty world, even as we live and roam this dusty world.

Today’s Sit-A-Long video follows at this link. Remember: recording ends soon after the beginning bells; a sitting time of 15 to 35 minutes is recommended