LETTING GO 8 OF WATER   REVERSE
STRESS 7 OF FIRE	HARMONY 10 OF WATER	THE SOURCE ACE OF FIRE THE SOURCE
REVERSE	REVERSE	REVERSE
PLAYFULNESS PAGE OF FIRE: MASTERY OF ACTION

LETTING GO

In this image of lotus leaves in the early morning, we can see in the rippling of the water that one drop has just fallen. It is precious moment, and one that is full of poignancy. In surrendering to gravity and slipping off the leaf, the drop loses its previous identity and joins the vastness of the water below. We can imagine that it must have trembled before it fell, just on the edge between the known and the unknowable.
To choose this card is a recognition that something is finished, something is completing. Whatever it is - a job, a relationship, a home you have loved, anything that might have helped you to define who you are - it is time to let go of it, allowing any sadness but not trying to hold on. Something greater is awaiting you, new dimensions are there to be discovered. You are past the point of no return now, and gravity is doing its work. Go with it - it represents liberation.


In existence there is nobody who is superior and nobody who is inferior. The blade of grass and the great star are absolutely equal ... But man wants to be higher that others, he wants to conquer nature, hence he has to fight continuously. All complexity arises out of this fight. The innocent person is one who has renounced fighting; who is no longer interest in being higher, who is no longer interested in performing, in proving that he is someone special; who has become like a roseflower or like a dewdrop on the lotus leaf; who has become part of this infinity; who has melted, merged and become one with the ocean and is just a wave; who has no idea of the 'I'. The

STRESS

How many people do you know who, just when they were completely overloaded, with too many projects, too many 'balls in the air', have suddenly come down with the flu, or taken a fall and ended up on crutches? That's just the sort of 'bad timing' the little monkey with the pin in his hand is about to impose on the 'one-man-band' pictured here!
The quality of stress represented by this card visits all of us at times, but perfectionists are particularly vulnerable to it. We create it ourselves, with the idea that without us nothing will happen - especially in the way we want it to! Well, what makes you think you're so special? Do you think the sun won't rise in the morning unless you personally set the alarm? Go for a walk, buy some flowers, and fix yourself a spaghetti dinner - anything 'unimportant' will do. Just put yourself out of that monkey's reach!


All private goals are neurotic. The essential man comes to know, to feel, "I am not separate from the whole, and there is no need to seek and search for any destiny on my own. Things are happening, the world is moving - call it God ... he is doing things. They are happening of their own accord. There is no need for me to make any struggle, any effort; there is no need for me to fight for anything. I can relax and be." The essential man is not a doer. The accidental man is a doer. The accidental man is, of course, then in anxiety, tension, stress, anguish, continuously sitting on a volcano. It can erupt any moment, because he lives in a world of uncertainty and believes as if it is certain. This creates tension in his being: he knows deep down that nothing is

HARMONY

The experience of rest in the heart in meditation is not something that can be grasped or forced. It comes naturally, as we grow more and more in tune with the rhythms of our own inner silences. The figure on this card reflects the sweetness and delicacy of this experience. The dolphins that emerge from the heart and make an arc towards the third eye reflect the playfulness and intelligence that comes when we are able to connect with the heart and move into the world from there.
Let yourself be softer and more receptive now, because an inexpressible joy is waiting for you just around the corner. Nobody else can point it out to you, and when you find it you won't be able to find the words to express it to others. But it's there, deep within your heart, ripe and ready to be discovered.


Listen to your heart, move according to you hear, whatsoever the stake:
A condition of complete simplicity costing not less than everything ...
To be simple is arduous, because to be simple costs everything that you have. You have to lose all to be simple. That's why people have chosen t be complex and they have forgotten how to be simple.
But only a simple heart throbs with God, hand in hand. Only a simple heart sings with God in deep harmony. To reach to that point you will have to find your heart, you own throb, your own

THE SOURCE

ACE of FIRE The SOURCE

PLAYFULNESS

Life is rarely as serious as we believe it to be, and when we recognize this fact, it responds by giving us more and more opportunities to play. The woman in this card is celebrating the joy of being alive, like a butterfly that has emerged from its chrysalis into the promise of the light. She reminds us of the time when we were children, discovering seashells on the beach or building castles in the sand without any concern that the waves might come and wash them away in the next moment. She knows that life is a game, and she's playing the part of a clown right now with no sense of embarrassment or pretense.
When the Page of Fire enters your life, it is a sign that you are ready for the fresh and the new. Something wonderful is just on the horizon, and you have just the right quality of playful innocence and clarity to welcome it with open arms.


The moment you start seeing life as non-serious, a playfulness, all the burden on your heart disappears. All the fear of death, of life, of love - everything disappears. One starts living with a very light weight or almost no weight. So weightless one becomes, one can fly in the open sky.
Zen's greatest contribution is to give you an alternative to the serious man. The serious man has made the world, the serious man has made all the religions. He has created all the philosophies, all the cultures, all the moralities; everything that exists around you is a creation of the serious man.
Zen has dropped out of the serious world. It has created a world of its own which is very playful, full of laughter, where even great masters behave like children.