Man learns through experience, and the spiritual path is full of different kinds of experiences. He will encounter many difficulties and obstacles, and they are the very experiences he needs to encourage and complete the cleansing process.
In its function, the power to punish is not essentially different from that of curing or educating.
For him who has completed the journey, for him who is sorrowless, for him who from everything is wholly free, for him who has destroyed all ties, the fever of passion exists not… He is like a pool, unsullied by mud; to such a balanced one, life’s wanderings do not arise. Calm is his mind, calm is his speech, calm is his action, who, rightly knowing, is wholly freed, perfectly peaceful and equipoised.
Your hand opens and closes, opens and closes. If it were always a fist or always stretched open, you would be paralysed. Your deepest presence is in every small contracting and expanding, the two as beautifully balanced and coordinated as birds’ wings.
Pain and joy are like light and darkness; they are two sides of the same medal. They are interdependent and inseparably connected to each other.
