Are you a Taoists ???

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Nory you cheered me right up

I’m so glad Pixel8! And thanks for the Sufi!! I hope your painting is going well.

Here is another of my favorites from Kodojin. He wrote it after a group of friends, including a poet friend the monk Gu’An, came to visit him for a trip to admire cherry blossoms:

Evening, and I return from the city,
and close the thatched gate by myself.
Suddenly a mountain monk stops to visit:
“Too bad there’s no moon out tonight!”

The night is calm, pure with autumn air;
A solitary monk has come to my thatched hut.
Here in the mountains it is like antiquity:
The wind in the pines mingles with noble talk.

Yesterday he left after sipping tea;
today he comes bringing wine.
This old monk certainly knows how to cherish guests:
Laughing, he points to a branch of flowering plum.

I look at the number of times this thread has been viewed and I think there are a lot more potential Taoist out there and that makes me smile. Look at the work Nory and Pixel8 have done for the last two pages!! Thanks Ladies!

Averick I ain't no lady,
Even if I was a woman I doubt I would be lady.
However it's nice to be appreciated.
Perhaps it's all the philosophy and art
Im just a sensitive bloke

These recent posts remind me strongly of the powerful influence Taoism had on Zen Buddhism. So many of these poems and stories could have come from the Zen (Chan) tradition. I am also pleased to see references to Sufism come up. All roads lead to the truth, if one travels far enough.
...........................................

Everything is honored, but nothing matters. Forms are born and die, yet you are aware of the eternal underneath the forms, You know that "nothing real can be threatened."

When this is your state of Being, how can you not succeed. You have succeeded already. -- Eckhart Tolle.

I'm sorry Pixel8.

I didn't know.

More about art... Here is a little hermit hut by a river. From this perspective, peeking through the little window, you cannot really tell whether the Sage inside is a boy or a girl:





I'm so lame.

It's cute, Nory.

That's gorgeous, It's so loose and free
I'm just beginning to get my head around painting
Its hard to acknowledge your own talent
and trust your instincts.
But when I'm painting its like an altered state or meditation
where my forebrain is so utterly focused on what im doing
that my subconcious is sorting out lots of other stuff without me getting in the way.
When I've finished I feel I have literally woven my thoughts into the brush strokes
and I see them in the finished product.
It's so liberating.

Nory: Thanks.

28
Know the male,
yet keep to the female:
receive the world in your arms.
If you receive the world,
the Tao will never leave you
and you will be like a little child.

Know the white,
yet keep to the black:
be a pattern for the world.
If you are a pattern for the world,
the Tao will be strong inside you
and there will be nothing you can't do.

Know the personal,
yet keep to the impersonal:
accept the world as it is.
If you accept the world,
the Tao will be luminous inside you
and you will return to your primal self.

The world is formed from the void,
like utensils from a block of wood.
The Master knows the utensils,
yet keeps to the the block:
thus she can use all things.

I hope you won't see me differently now you realise I'm a man.
I found it highly amusing and just a tiny bit worrying.
I just assumed you knew, I assumed you and Nory were both men too.
Well I knew Averick was as I'd seen his mugshot.
Life is strange sometimes.

Don't you mean my mugshot is strange?

hehe

(Nory's a female, right?)

Er...I hadn't thought so,
but I'm starting to now.
Curiouser and curiouser!