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In spring, hundreds of flowers; in autumn, a harvest moon;
In the summer, a refreshing breeze; in winter snow will accompany you.
If useless things do not hang in your mind,
Any season is a good season for you.

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If you want to reach the true path beyond doubt, place yourself in the same freedom as sky. You name it neither good nor not-good.'

The sky is pervasive... everywhere. Things 'appear' in the sky but it doesn't hold them... doesn't even try. It would never occur to the sky to do such a thing as try to pin everything down. :) 

I found "place yourself" an interesting phrase, in part due to a discussion about nets and space... there is imagery of a kind of leaning back... resting in openness. 

Then "beyond doubt" builds on that, because it conveys a sense of surrender. One 'beyond doubt' isn't wrestling with hope or fear. The sky is at rest, so its 'hands' are open... empty, generous. :) Nothing left out or caught into. 

"You name it" must speak to our tendency to label "this is bad, this is good."

I once engaged in an exercize of listing good events and bad events in my life. Step two was to take each 'bad' event and see what came of it that was good, etc. Then to do the same with 'good' events. Working with this broke down a sense of frozen labeling, as I could see that some of the deepest treasures came out of things no one would choose to go through, and that some of the big accomplishments were very 'thin' or unsatisfying over time.

So I guess one relinquishes a bit of their trust in their *own* 'ordinary mind' sense of responsibility and intention. I mean, most if not all of our trying to control and label and box, we do with a sense of good intentions and of taking responsibility? But perhaps our scope is small. We are taking responsibility for this thing and that thing, this thought and that worry... but what about getting to the end of that and letting 'what you are in a larger sense' take responsibility? 

Rest.

So in that context/seating, everything that arises, is itself path. Life. I hesitate to say that it is 'food', but that is sometimes the imagery I have when thinking about resting in meditation... that everything (good, bad, happy, sad, rainy, snowing, sunshine) appears openly ... is kind of eaten up. Or offered in some way.

zen wrote:     We have to show that we are somehow 'special.' Or we want to organise, control, adjust things around us, picking and choosing how they should go, instead of appreciating and embracing and ENJOYING them the way they ARE.

Yes! Just way they are/we are. I also appreciated the distinction between Joshu having a realization and somehow grasping the shiny trophy of "enlightenment" which the sky would never do. :)

Somehow being Satisfied without enlightenment, seems enlightenment.