UNBURDEN THE BODY: TAOIST THOUGHT

Thomas Cleary, Taoist Meditation: Methods for Cultivating a Healthy Mind and Body, translated and compiled by Thomas Cleary (Boston & London: Shambhala, 2000) (From "Anthology on the Cultivation of Realization": "If people want to do the finest thing in the world, nothing compares to learning. If they want to be the best learners, nothing compares to learning the Way." Id. at 7. "When people have desires, it is like trees having insects; consumed within unknown, before long they collapse. Those who think desire is fun do not realize desire is like fire; if you do not put it out, you will burn yourself. Your spirit will suffer from irritation, alcohol and sex will wear out your vital energy, producing illness and ulcers, so you cry out in pain day and night. Buddhists who say you suffer for your sins after death do not realize you already suffer while still alive." Id. at 10. "The only thing that differentiates humans from beast is this mind. Buddha said evildoers will come back reborn changed into beasts; I say people who lose their minds become beasts right then and there. Why? They may have human form, but they are no longer human." Id. at 24. "The reason people are unable to attain the Way is because they are burdened by the body." "If you want to get rid of this burden, you should realize this body is an impermanent thing, a painful material object with no owner, a bag of pus and blood, urine and feces. The whole body, inside and out, has nothing good about it at all.  Why do you want to feed it fine food and dress it in fine clothes? You show off sharpness and sell keenness whenever you are in the presence of others. People who are subject to compulsion are confused in mind and deluded at heart; everyone in the world has been strung along." Id. at 32-33. "Self-examination means examining your own mind." Id. at 60."Self-examination means awareness and control. It is none other than reforming faults and consciously developing. It is none other than mastering seriousness. Even though the Great Way has no practice and no realization, materialism must be polished away day by day," Id at 61. "Self-examination is like arresting a robber--you cannot relax at any time." "Self-government is like executing a rebel--you must cut through with one stroke of the sword. Attacking human desire must be like this before it can be successful." "Self-government is a matter of getting rid of what was originally not in us...." "Conscious development is a matter of preserving what is originally in us. We should realize it is originally there of necessity and does not come to be there by conscious development." Id. at 64. From Sima Chengzhen, "Treatise on Sitting Forgetting": "[N]othing is better for people who cultivate the Way than to resolutely simplify things. Discern whether they are inessential or essential, assess whether they are trivial or serious, distinguish whether to eliminate them or take to them. Whatever is not essential and not serious should be abandoned." Id. at 87. "The three precepts are: 1. simplifying involvement; 2. not craving anything; 3. quieting the mind. "If you diligently practice these three precepts, without flagging, then even if you have no mind to seek the Way the Way will come of itself." Id. at 102.).