eric merino

“The Great Course is unproclaimed. Great demonstration uses no words. (2:34) Great Humanity is not humane. Great rectitude is not fastidious. Great courage is not invasive. For when the Course becomes explicit, it ceases to be the Course. When words demonstrate by debate, they fail to communicate. When Humanity is constantly sustained, it cannot reach its maturity.21 When rectitude is pure, it cannot extend itself to others. When courage is invasive, it cannot succeed.22 These five are originally round, but they are forced toward squareness.”
― Zhuangzi, Zhuangzi: The Essential Writings: With Selections from Traditional Commentaries

“If right were ultimately right, its differentiation from not-right would require no debate.”
― Zhuangzi, Zhuangzi: The Essential Writings: With Selections from Traditional Commentaries

“The empty-mindedness of chi sao applies to all activities we may perform, such as dancing. If the dancer has any idea at all of displaying his art well, he ceases to be a good dancer, for his mind stops with every movement he goes through. In all things, it is important to forget your mind and become one with the work at hand. When the mind is tied up, it feels inhibited in every move it makes and nothing will be accomplished with any sense of spontaneity. The wheel revolves when it is not too tightly attached to the axle. When it is too tight, it will never move on. As the Zen saying goes: “Into a soul absolutely free from thoughts and emotion, even the tiger finds no room to insert its fierce claws.” In chi sao the mind is devoid of all fear, inferiority complexes, viscous feeling, etc., and is free from all forms of attachment, and it is master of itself, it knows no hindrances, no inhibitions, no stoppages, no clogging, no stickiness. It then follows its own course like water; it is like the wind that blows where it lists.”
― Bruce Lee, Bruce Lee The Tao of Gung Fu: Commentaries on the Chinese Martial Arts

“Do not localize your attention Not to localize or partialize the mind is the end of spiritual training. When it is nowhere it is everywhere. When it occupies one tenth, it is absent in the other nine tenths. Let the gung fu man discipline himself to have the mind go on its own way, instead of trying deliberately to confine it somewhere. Therefore, during chi sao, you should have nothing purposely designed, nothing consciously calculated, no anticipation, no expectation. In short, you should be standing there like a dead man. To be conscious is characteristic of the human mind as distinguished from the mind of the lower animals. But when the mind becomes conscious of its doings, it ceases to be instinctual and its commands are colored with calculations and deliberations—which means that the connection between itself and the limbs is no longer direct because the identity of the commander and his executive agent is lost. When dualism (yang against yang) takes place, the whole personality never comes out as it is in itself (letting go itself from itself).”
― Bruce Lee, Bruce Lee The Tao of Gung Fu: Commentaries on the Chinese Martial Arts