Quiet your heart. Do not be moved by activity around you. Be perfectly still.
True quiet means keeping still when the time has come to keep still, and going forward when the time has come to go forward. In this way rest and movement are in agreement with the demands of the time, and thus there is light in life.
Tao Te Ching – Verse 68 – The best athlete wants his opponent at his best. The best general enters the mind of his enemy. The best businessman
Today: “When you fold hands, you neutralize yourself energywise, and when you bow, your whole blood circulation goes toward the head.” – Yogi Bhajan
Try these meditations:
Meditation: Shuniya Meditations as Taught by Yogi Bhajan, Yoga West, 1994
Meditation: Contemplate in Shuniya from the Spine
Kriya: Awakening Yourself to Your Ten Bodies
Meditation: One Minute Breath
See lecture on cold showers
See Meditation: Breath of Fire
Share The Magical Story of Mushkil Gusha over a meal with friends today.
Previous reading: “You are being liberated. Danger has been averted, differences are resolved. If there remains anything else to do, resolve it quickly.” –
Previous previous reading: “A great one is emerging among us. Still with his peers, he will rise in influence to set the world in order.”
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The teacher
See Richard Wilhelm's translation for this reading
52 – Fifty-Two. Kên / The Mountain
Above this Mountain’s summit another more majestic rises:
The Superior Person is mindful to keep his thoughts in the here and now.
Stilling the sensations of the Ego, he roams his courtyard without moving a muscle, unencumbered by the fears and desires of his fellows.
This is no mistake.
SITUATION ANALYSIS:
There is a higher vantage point available to you, but it is obscured by the visible peak of personal ambition.
To climb to this higher plane, you must shake off the desires and fears of the conscious, visible world around you.
To make this journey you must quiet the Ego, empty your mind of past and future, and dwell totally in the moment at hand.
Thorough mindfulness of what is before you is the only tranquility.
Be. Here. Now.
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above: Kên / Keeping Still, Mountain |
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below: Kên / Keeping Still, Mountain |
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The image of this hexagram is the mountain, the youngest son of heaven and earth. The male principle is at the top, because it strives upward by nature; the female principle is below, since the direction of its movement is downward. Thus there is rest because the movement has come to its normal end.
In its application to man, the hexagram turns upon the problem of achieving a quiet heart. It is very difficult to bring quiet to the heart. While Buddhism strives for rest through an ebbing away of all movement in nirvana, the Yi Jing holds that rest is merely a state of polarity that always posits movement as its complement. Possibly the words of the text embody directions for the practice of yoga.
THE JUDGEMENT
KEEPING STILL. Keeping his back still
So that he no longer feels his body.
He goes into his courtyard
And does not see his people.
No blame.
True quiet means keeping still when the time has come to keep still, and going forward when the time has come to go forward. In this way rest and movement are in agreement with the demands of the time, and thus there is light in life.
The hexagram signifies the end and the beginning of all movement. The back is named because in the back are located all the nerve fibres that mediate movement. If the movement of these spinal nerves is brought to a standstill, the ego, with its restlessness, disappears as it were. When a man has thus become calm, he may turn to the outside world. He no longer sees in it the struggle and tumult of individual beings, and therefore he has that true peace of mind which is needed for understanding the great laws of the universe and for acting in harmony with them. Whoever acts from these deep levels makes no mistakes. |
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Still Life with Chinese Lantern flowers.
Colored lithograph, H.A. Dievenbach 1
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THE IMAGE
Mountains standing close together:
The image of KEEPING STILL.
Thus the superior man
Does not permit his thoughts
To go beyond his situation.
Huang Shan
The heart thinks constantly. This cannot be changed, but the movements of the heart – that is, a man’s thoughts – should restrict themselves to the immediate situation. All thinking that goes beyond this only makes the heart sore.
1. Hendrikus Anthonius Dievenbach (1872 – 1946), was a Dutch artist.
In 1910 he settled in the village of Laren, North-Holland.
Henri Dievenbach was a traditional painter who was particularly inspired by his direct environment.
Apart from farmer’s interiors he made portaits of fellow-villagers. In his later life he painted especially beautiful still lifes and flower pieces, like this colored lithograph with Chinese Lanterns. |
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