A Circa Text on Goodness and The Way
These sayings are not the destination. They are a signpost, pointing around the mystery.
If you grasp these words, you have missed the Way. If you turn them into a new law, you have built another wall.
This is a circa text. It is permission to be in the "in-between," for the Kingdom is found in the soft focus of the now.
You have been taught to name the Ultimate, to call it "good," "loving," "compassionate," or "true." These are fine names, but they are like drawing a circle and insisting it is the moon.
Do not mistake the name for the reality.
If you say "This is good," you have already created "This is not good." If you say "This is love," you have created "This is not love." This is the disease of the mind, which splits the One into two.
The Goodness I speak of is not the opposite of bad. The Love I speak of is not the opposite of hate. It is the Great Way that holds both, as the sky holds the cloud and the sun.
When you are free of preferences, this Goodness reveals itself.
Consider the rain. Does it fall only on the fields of the righteous? Consider the sun. Does it shine only on the pure of heart?
This is the nature of the Way. It gives without asking. It loves without condition. It is utterly, indivisibly one. It does not judge, yet it is the source of all true judgment.
Do not lay up for yourselves treasures of opinion, or definitions of "good" and "evil." For where your definitions are, there your heart will be also, trapped in a prison of your own making.
Instead, lay up treasures in the empty heart. Blessed are the poor in spirit, for they have let go of their certainties. Theirs is the inner kingdom.
When you seek to be "right," you are lost. When you seek to be "good," you are lost. When you let go and simply are, the Goodness that is beyond all names flows through you.
This is the "circa" of the heart.
You are not "at" the destination. You are not "at" the fixed point of enlightenment. You are here, around the mystery, living in the approximate grace of this breath.
Therefore, do not resist what is. Do not grasp at what is not. Be merciful, and you are circa Mercy. Be a peacemaker, and you are circa Peace. Be pure in heart—empty of opinion—and you will see the One.
This is the work. Not to find the final word, but to live gently within the mystery.