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LOVE CROSS SITUATION

Center - The issue. Left - internal influence that you are unable to see. Right - External influence of which you are aware. Bottom - What is needed for resolution. Top - Resolution, The understanding.
EXISTENCE
MAJOR ARCANA I

existence Zen love tarot card
THE FOOL
MAJOR ARCANA 0
 
THE OUTSIDER
5 OF RAINBOWS
 
PLAYFULNESS
PAGE OF FIRE: MASTERY OF ACTION
 
the fool Zen love tarot card the outsider Zen love tarot card playfulness Zen love tarot card
THUNDERBOLT
MAJOR ARCANA XVI

thunderbolt Zen love tarot card
 
REVERSE
 


EXISTENCE


This naked figure sits on the lotus of perfection, gazing at the beauty of the night sky. She knows that 'home' is not a physical place in the outside world, but an inner quality of relaxation and acceptance. The stars, the rocks, the trees the flower, fish and birds - all are our brothers and sisters in this dance of life. We human beings tend to forget this, as we pursue our own private agendas and believe we must fight to get what we need. But ultimately, our sense of separateness is just an illusion, manufactured by the narrow preoccupations of the mind. Now is the time to look at whether you are allowing yourself to receive the extraordinary gift of feeling 'at home' wherever you are. If you are, be sure to take time to savor it so it can deepen and remain with you. If on the other hand you've been feeling like the world is out to get you, it's time to take a break. Go outside tonight and look at the stars.

You are not accidental. Existence needs you. Without you something will be missing in existence and nobody can replace it. That's what gives you dignity, that the whole existence will miss you. The stars and sun and moon, the trees and birds and earth - everything in the universe will feel a small place is vacant which cannot be filled by anybody except you. This gives you a tremendous joy, a fulfillment that you are related to existence, and existence cares for you. Once you are clean and clear, you can see tremendous love falling on you from all dimensions.


THE FOOL


Moment to moment, and with every step, the Fool leaves the past behind. He carries nothing more then his purity, innocence and trust, symbolized by the white rose in his hand. The pattern on his waistcoat contains the colors of all four elements of the tarot, indicating that he is in harmony with all that surround him. His intuition is functioning at its peak. At this moment the fool has the support of the universe to make this jump into the unknown. Adventures await him in the river of life.
The card indicates that if you trust your intuition right now, your feeling of the 'rightness' of things you cannot go wrong. Your actions may appear 'foolish' to others, or even to yourself, if you try to analyze them with the rational mind. But the 'zero' place occupied by the Fool is the numberless number where trust and innocence are the guides, not skepticism and past experience.

A Fool is one who goes on trusting; a fool is one who goes on trusting against all his experience. You deceive him, and he trusts you; and you deceive him again, and he trust you; and you deceive him again, and he trusts you. Then you will say that he is a fool, he does not learn. His trust is tremendous; his trust is so pure that nobody can corrupt it.
Be a fool in the Taoist sense, in the Zen sense. Don't try to create a wall of knowledge around you. What so ever experience comes to you, let it happen, and then go on dropping it. Go on cleaning your mind continuously; go on dying to the past so you remain in the present, here-now, as if just born, just a babe. In the beginning it is going to be very difficult. The world will start taking advantage of you ... let them. They are poor fellows. Even if you are cheated and deceived and robbed, let it happen, because that which is really yours cannot be robbed from you, that which is really yours nobody can steal from you. And each time you don't allow situations to corrupt you, that opportunity will become an integration inside. Your soul will become more crystallized.


THE OUTSIDER


The small child in this card is standing on one side of a gate, looking through it. He is so small, and so convinced that he cannot get through, he cannot see that the chain holding the gate is not locked: all he has to do is open it.
Whenever we feel 'left out', or excluded, it brings up this feeling of being a small, helpless child. It is not surprising, as a the feeling is deeply rooted in our earliest childhood experiences. The problem is that, because it is so deeply rooted, it plays over and over again, like a tape, in our lives. You have an opportunity now to stop the tape, to quit tormenting yourself with ideas that you are somehow not 'enough' to be accepted and included. Recognize the roots of these feelings in the past, and let go of the old pain. It will bring you the clarity to see how you can open the gate and enter that which you most long to become.


So you are feeling yourself an outsider. This is good. This is the transitory period. Now you have to be alert not to fill yourself with pain and misery. Now that God is no longer there, who is going to console you? You don't need any consolation. Humanity has come of age. Be a man, be a woman, and stand on your own feet ....
The only way to be connected with existence is to go inwards, because there at the center you are still connected. You have been disconnected physically from your mother. That disconnection was absolutely necessary to make you an individual in your own right. But you are not disconnected from the universe. Your connection with the universe is of consciousness. You cannot see it, so you have to go deep down with great awareness, watchfulness, witnessing, and you will find the connection. The buddha is the connection!


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.


THUNDERBOLT


The card shows a tower being burned, destroyed, blown apart. A man and a woman are leaping from it not because they want to, but because they have no choice. In the background is a transparent, meditating figure representing the witnessing consciousness.
You might be feeling pretty shaky right now. as if the earth is rocking beneath your feet. Your sense of security is being challenged, and the natural tendency is to try to hold on to whatever you can. But this inner earthquake is both necessary and tremendously important - if you allow it, you will emerge from the wreckage stronger and more available for new experiences. After the fire, the earth is replenished; after the storm the air is clear. Try to watch the destruction with detachment, almost as if it were happening to somebody else. Say yes to the process by meeting it halfway.


What meditation does slowly, a good shout of the master, unexpectedly, in the situation where the disciple was asking some question, and the master jumps and shouts, or hits him, or throws him out of the door, or jumps over him ... These methods were never known. It was purely the very creative genius of Ma Tzu, an he made many people enlightened.
Sometimes it looks so hilarious: he threw a man from the window, from a two-story house, and the man had come to ask on what to meditate. And Ma Tzu not only threw him, he jumped after him, feel on him, sat on his chest, and he said, "Got it?!" And the poor fellow said, "yes" - because if you say "No", he may beat you or do something else. It is enough - his body is fractured, and Ma Tzu, sitting on his chest, says, "Got it?!"
And in fact he got it, because it was so sudden, out of the blue - he could never have conceived it.


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