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A Gem
Lionduck
Veteran
Just throwing this out there.
Your life is a priceless gem.
Polish it
Daily
8
Comments
Came across a quote today that “Buddhist masters esteemed a day more than any gem, for a gem, even once thrown away, may be recovered, while a day, once it has passed from your life, is gone forever.”
It seemed to resonate
Don't be precious. ?
Be a gem. ?
Gems sparkle because of flaws. ?
Here is something on polishing compressed carbon and tiling ...
One day while on Nan-yueh Mountain Ma-tsu was practicing seated meditation. Upon seeing Ma-tsu in zazen the Abbot of Prajna Temple, Huai-jang, asked Ma-tsu, “In doing zazen what do you hope to accomplish?” Ma-tsu quickly replied, “To attain Buddhahood.” Huai-jang then bent down and took up a piece of tile and began to polish it. When asked by Ma-tsu what he was doing, Huai-jang responded by saying, “I am trying to polish this tile into a mirror.” Amused by all of this, Ma-tsu asked, “How can you hope to polish a tile and make it into a mirror?” Huai-jang promptly shot back with, “Since a tile cannot be polished into a mirror how can you sit yourself into a Buddha?” “So what must I do?” asked Ma-tsu. “Well, take the example of an oxcart. If it doesn’t move what to you whip, the cart or the ox?” Ma-tsu was silent. Then Huai-jang said something quite remarkable.
In learning seated meditation do you aspire to learn zazen or do you aspire to imitate the sitting Buddha. If the former, Zen does not consist in sitting or in lying down. If the latter, the Buddha has no fixed postures. The Dharma goes on forever, and never abides in anything. You must not therefore be attached to nor abandon any particular phase of it. To sit yourself into Buddha this is to kill the Buddha. To be attached to the sitting posture is to fail to comprehend the essential principle.
http://zennist.typepad.com/zenfiles/2011/08/polishing-tile-is-making-a-buddha-mirror.html
Remember to read the comments
Actually, no they don't; they sparkle because of the cut and clarity.
Which are, I believe, equally pertinent as similes....
Does that actually apply to kryptonite rinpoche (precious jewel) @federica?
Yeah, it does.
SuperLobster.