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Right Conduct, continued...

This week as I have turned over this paramita there has been a distinctly different feel. I have found words like 'source' and 'center' and 'still' and 'silence' to have a gravity to them, and a reminder to continually come back into that center... to abide there.

I found myself reading parts of quite a few translations of the Tao de Ching, and digging up a Wayne Dyer audio book I'd listened to in the car a few years ago. The cd I went over had the line "The greatest virtue is to be in harmony with the Dao" which lit fireworks up for me.

What I felt, was that there is no way that the time one spends in meditation, in getting in touch with the Still Center, is wasted... that cultivating this depth enriches everything else. Virtue of virtues.

Since no situation or moment is the same as another one, it seems that the greatest 'skill' to be cultivated that would do the most good (in the sense of 'my gain is the gain of everyone endlessly') is the kind of intuition and discernment which comes from having a taste for what is Essential... so one can act from *that place* rather than ego which usually has a hidden price. 

Of course this resonates with relaxing the sky koan we touched on a few weeks ago, too, 'the virtues of life' flowing from the heart center, as well as 'doing by not doing' and Naturalness.

Something I have shared before but which seems to fit:

I explain to you matters
Pertaining to enlightenment,

But don't try to keep
Your mind on them.

Just turn to the ocean
Of your own essence
And develop practical accord

With its nature.

- Yangshan