Comparative Zhuangzi

Therefore, it is said that the ultimate man has no self, the spiritual person has no accomplishment, and the sage has no name.

~Zhuangzi (tr-Mair)

Therefore I say, the Perfect Man has no self; the Holy Man has no merit; the Sage has no fame.

~Zhuangzi (tr-Watson)

As the saying goes,

The utmost man is selfless,

The daemonic man takes no credit for    his deeds,

The sage is nameless.

~Zhuangzi (tr-Graham)

Thus I say, the Consummate Person has no fixed identity, the Spirit Man has no particular merit, the Sage has no one name.

~Zhuangzi (tr-Ziporyn)

The realized remain selfless. The sacred remain meritless. The enlightened remain nameless.

~Zhuangzi (tr-Hinton)

Therefore complete people have no self, spiritual people have no merit, saintly people have no name.

~Zhuangzi (tr-Cleary)"

Among complete Zhuangzi translations into English, the most literal is by A. C. Graham (1981; 2001), while others follow the content orientation, using different Chinese and Western renditions as their backdrop. These include Mair (1994a; 1994b), Palmer (1996), Höchsmann and Yang (2007), and Ziporyn (2009). More theme-based and aimed at modern practitioners are the renditions by Cleary (1999), Mitchell (2009), and Kohn (2011). Illustrated versions, moreover, include Feng and English (1974), Cai and Bruya (1992), and Towler (2011) (see Small 2013). Each translation is different, and each has its own unique take on the text, opening various visions on this powerful, multifaceted work.

~Livia Kohn

45 Prophecies

Dreams are conceived to see through. Seeing through a dream is like looking in a mirror. Self-awareness is reflecting in moon river.

Sometimes I forget I’m acting. Sometimes I forget my lines. So I weave this mantra as I go. Self-awareness is the light of divine imagination after all.

Being cures the cure. Love is like skunk cabbage. Discovering lucid dreaming before developing compassion is what it is. Between the self and self-awareness stays in lost Vegas.

I love disbelief! Absolute potentiality rules. All belief is false. Even mine! Always be being. For one is the heart of the hand that holds the tool, and not the tool.

You do you. I am I. Compassion is the ultimate energy. Frodo lives! Remember, love never dies although the memory may. Love and self-awareness are mirror images.

Love is the language of manifestation. Belief is its shadow. The language of love expresses self-awareness like a poet from the thirteenth century .

“I said, “The scent of your hair has led me astray in the world.” She said, ”If you understand, it can also be your guide.”

Consciousness lingering in the air. Actually the air is appearing in consciousness. This an example of poetic paradox.

When myth becomes belief, print the legend. One second of love is worth ten thousand dynasties. Everyone is conceived in love despite appearances. Low fog. Rising sun. The smell of a nearby mountain.

Again remember, love never dies although the memory may. The lack of love in scientific materialism is equal to the lack of science in religious fundamentalism. Figure it out.

I don’t like to stray too far from love. There’s too many rabbit holes out there. As self-awareness is the eternal light of divine imagination, love is its heat. Neither something nor nothing. Neither absence nor presence.

In the Name of the Undivided Source

Self-awareness is another name for self-arising wisdom.

Self-awareness has no beginning. Self-awareness is beyond the space-time mind of universal consciousness.

Self-awareness is the eternal light of divine imagination!

Absolute awareness and self-awareness are not two but the undivided source.

There is no name for, nor concept of, the undivided source.

This is why I call it self-awareness.

Zhuangzi's Caterpillar

Sometimes you eat the ouroboros and sometimes you’re its vomit. Self-awareness is never pretty.

Self-awareness is self-realization in real language. If I’m not talking paradox, I’m not really talking.

Construction is easy. Deconstruction is hard. Caterpillar, leaf, tree, ground, earth, sun, black hole.

In the Name of Natural Perfection

I come to clean myself of the world tonight in a mythic shower of silence. In this stream of consciousness sometimes we sink sometimes we swim. Tonight we float. Sometimes I dig history. Sometimes I lose track of time.

Keep your eye on self-awareness. Make it your mantra. The living room seems so much smaller when there’s something other in it. It is said natural perfection is absent, open, spontaneous, and unifying. So I’m resting in consciousness to wash out my ears.

Absent like emptiness. Emptiness like transformation. Transformation like impermanence. Return to absence. Open mind, open air, open sky, open space-time. Everything is broken open. Spontaneity is the only constant! Unity is unborn. The end.

As the Divine Turns

Without divine imagination, there is no self-awareness. And with belief there is no self-awareness.

Thought is a tool to be used and not to be one’s identity. Without the concept first, there is no mirror. There is no turning within the mirror when the mirror is believed.

Two iambics followed by one anapest, to indicate the turn, pursued by five iambics to the very end.

Space-time is just a cross-section of self-awareness. Self-awareness is the aura of the unknown.

The unknown is like a black hole. Science theorizes there is a black hole by its interaction with light. I know it because I am it.

After Longchenpa

This is dedicated to the one I love as revealed by Longchenpa Rabjampa seen through the lens of Keith Dowman, in particular his translation of Longchenpa's Treasury of Natural Perfection.

Mixing the relative with the absolute makes the absolute another concept.

Stay with the deitic point

of the concept

until

semantic satiation is occurring

and all that is remaining is

the deity.

One, the concept is I am.

Two, the deitic point is being.

Three, semantic satiation of the concept is

the actual point of mantra—

being.

For non-conceptual being is the absolute 

as I am That.

Look, just between you and me, nothing happened here

2021

If consciousness is the sun and sunlight is the stuff of dreams,

then the furthest experience to be known is that which the high priests of scientific materialism call the black hole of the unknown unknown.

Woe are they who do not know I am that.

Happy new year!

Take one. Consciousness is the aura of the absolute's self-awareness.

Take two. Consciousness is the aura of my impersonal self-awareness.

Bonne année!

And as the absolute, I cannot emphasize enough that all is well.

You be you, my love.

Feliz navidad!

This is the key to western paradox. 

From the outside, it looks like fate. 

From the inside, it feels like free will. 

Felix sit annus novus!

There are no sides. There's just belief.

And as belief is disbelieved, belief becomes one-sided. 

Self-righteousness is the antichrist of self-awareness. 

Akeome! Kotoyoro!

Self-awareness is a pre-existing condition.

Shana tova!

Repeat after me,

I am...

unborn .

Year 2525: Take One Every Day

Consciousness is the bridge between the lyrical and silence. Consciousness is the expression of silence. The lyrical is the expression of consciousness. The mind is fine, the movie is groovy, all manner of things shall be well.

Divine imagination is the lyrical mirror of self-awareness. In fact, consciousness is the bridge to nowhere from nothing. Universal consciousness is like a blast of self-awareness in slow motion.

There’s no disease called separation. That’s why it’s called the universe. It’s also called the cure. Take one every day. Some call this Zen meditation. Some call this Christian science. Some call this as it is.

Mindfulness is to lucid dreaming as amfulness is to self-awareness. This is perennial math. This is my lotus. Take, eat, American beauty. Anne Bradstreet is to Jack Kerouac as

the Merrimack from Andover to Lowell. Like Passaconaway to Agawam is as hogan to kiva. The dreamstate doesn’t serve just somebody. It serves the enlightening intent of absolute self-awareness.

Last Paraverse in 2020

1. last case of 2020

In the end, it’s just a case of great forgetfulness and mistaken identity.

Like trochaic intent falling into dactyls and anapests.

Or an I for an eye.

There’s nothing wrong with dreaming. Everyone does it.

2. speaking suddenly

When the fog of personality disappears

the black hole / blank screen is dispassionately witnessing

the sunlit mirror of universal consciousness and worlds appearing in it

as spontaneous kensho/revelation of sudden self-awareness so to speak. 

3. greetings people of earth

I am writing myself a melody baroque by self-addressing this love note to you. 

As in poetry, all wars are formal. We’re like mythic frogs practicing their haiku in boiling water.

The penultimate is the ultimate paradox. It’s either paraverse or western bartleby by eastern samadhi.

There is no personal choice. Enlightening intent is the strangest of ways. It’s my new year's resolution for you. Enjoy!