Wednesday, July 08, 2015
from Kalidas and the Tao Te Ching
Dear Friend
Encountering the Infinite, the Dark One,
The mind falls into silence
Like no silence it has ever known.
Not the silence of sleep,
Or unconsciousness,
Nor the foggy quiet of self-absorption,
But absolute silence,
magnificent,
terrible,
overwhelming -
the silence of pure awe.
Enter the presence of the One
and feel the mind
extinguished,
annihilated,
erased.
Kalidas (Lawrence Edwards)
And this from the Tao Te Ching:
The tao that can be told
is not the eternal Tao.
The name that can be named
is not the eternal Name.
Naming is the origin
of all particular things.
Free from desire, you realize the mystery.
Caught in desire, you see only the manifestations.
Yet mystery and manifestations
arise from the same source.
This source is called darkness.
Darkness within darkness.
The gateway to all understanding.
(Stephen Mitchell, trans.)
