The primal mind is radiant and clear by nature, but is darkened because of corruptions.

pabhassaramidam bhikkhave cittam
tanca kho agantukehi upakkilesehi upakkilittham:

'Monks, this mind is originally radiant and clear, but because passing corruptions and defilements come and obscure it, it doesn't show its radiance.' This has been compared to a tree in the poem that runs,

A tall tree with 6,000 branches:
Big chameleons swarm it each day by the hundreds,
Small chameleons, each day by the thousands.
If the owner doesn't watch out,
They'll bring along more and more of their friends every day.

This can be explained as follows: The tall tree with 6,000 branches — if we cut off the three zeroes, this leaves us with six, which stands for the six sense doors, the entry way for the chameleons, i.e., things that are counterfeit, not things that are genuine. Defilements aren't genuine. They are simply things that come drifting in through the sense doors by the hundreds and thousands. Not only that, defilements that haven't yet arisen will arise more and more every day as long as we don't find a means for rectifying the nature of the mind.
The mind is something more radiant than anything else can be, but because counterfeits — passing defilements — come and obscure it, it loses its radiance, like the sun when obscured by clouds. Don't go thinking that the sun goes after the clouds. Instead, the clouds come drifting along and obscure the sun.
So meditators, when they know in this manner, should do away with these counterfeits by analyzing them shrewdly, as explained in the strategies of clear insight. When they develop the mind to the stage of the primal mind, this will mean that all counterfeits are destroyed, or rather, counterfeit things won't be able to reach into the primal mind, because the bridge making the connection will have been destroyed. Even though the mind may then still have to come into contact with the preoccupations of the world, its contact will be like that of a bead of water rolling over a lotus leaf.


Ajaan Mun

Goodness

Every act should be considered from the point of view not of its object but of its impulsion. The question is not `What is the aim?' It is `What is the origin?'

'I was naked and ye clothed me.' This gift is simply an indication of the state of those who acted in this way. They were in a state which made it impossible for them not to feed the hungry and to clothe the naked; they did not do it for Christ, they could not help doing it because the compassion of Christ was in them. It was the same with Saint Nicholas who, when going across the Russian Steppes with Saint Cassian to meet God, could not help being late for the appointed time of meeting because he had to help a poor peasant to move his cart which had stuck in the mud. Good which is done in this way, almost in spite of ourselves, almost shamefacedly and apologetically, is pure. All absolutely pure goodness completely eludes the will. Goodness is transcendent. God is Goodness.

Simone Weil

Self-effacement

I cannot conceive the necessity for God to love me, when I feel so clearly that even with human beings affection for me can only be a mistake. But I can easily imagine that he loves that perspective of creation which can only be seen from the point where I am. But I act as a screen. I must withdraw so that he may see it.

I must withdraw so that God may make contact with the beings whom chance places in my path and whom he loves. It is tactless for me to be there. It is as though I were placed between two lovers or two friends. I am not the maiden who awaits her betrothed, but the unwelcome third who is with two betrothed lovers and ought to go away so that they can really be together.

If only I knew how to disappear there would be a perfect union of love between God and the earth I tread, the sea I hear....

What do the energy, the gifts, etc. which are in me matter? I always have enough of them to disappear.

May I disappear in order that those things that I see may become perfect in their beauty from the very fact that they are no longer things that I see.

I do not in the least wish that this created world should fade from my view, but that it should no longer be to me personally that it shows itself. To me it cannot tell its secret which is too high. If I go, then the creator and the creature will exchange their secrets.

To see a landscape as it is when I am not there...

When I am in any place, I disturb the silence of heaven and earth by my breathing and the beating of my heart.

Simone Weil 

Gravity and Grace

All the natural movements of the soul are controlled by laws analogous to those of physical gravity. Grace is the only exception.

We must always expect things to happen in conformity with the laws of gravity unless there is supernatural intervention. 

What is the reason that as soon as one human being shows he needs another (no matter whether his need be slight or great) the latter draws back from him? Gravity.

Lear, a tragedy of gravity.Every thing  we call base is a phenomenon due to gravity. Moreover the word baseness is an indication of the fact.

The source of man's moral energy is outside him, like that of his physical energy(food, air etc.). He generally finds it, and that is why he has the illusion- as on the physical plane- that his being carries the principle of its presevation within itself.

Simone Weil