The Short Way
The path of ‘Living Dao’ is a ‘short way’. For over two thousand years this path has been passed on almost entirely in secret and is therefore unknown to us, is even very foreign to our thinking. For over thousands of years only the ‘long way’ has been continuously spread in all our great religions and most important philosophies. That is why the ‘long way’ has shaped all the views of our world.
The ‘long way’ – and thus also our great religions and philosophies – assumes that the Dao, our true being, can only be achieved through hard work and step by step. Only those who go to a monastery, retreat, live abstinently and virtuously, do many exercises, meditate and pray every day have a chance to get closer to the Dao and experience their pure existence, the ‘true life’.
The short way is the other way round: we are already perfect; we are like Buddha. We have simply forgotten. When an awakened master touches us in our heart, he can reawaken in us the memory of our true existence. From that moment on we can begin to live out of true reality.
Don’t try to understand the DAO with your mind.
I speak from my heart to yours
and I hope my words touch you,
like a medicine that slowly spreads through you.
(Master Shangshi)