
                                   12

                             Being Natural
                             ~~~~~~~~~~~~~


        Let it go and be spontaneous,
        Experience no going or staying.
        Accord with your nature, unite with the Way,
        Wander at ease, without vexation.

 The most important thing in practice is to be natural and spontaneous.
 Being natural does not mean neglecting everything. It requires careful
 attention. In meditation, you should sit in a natural posture and use
 your mind in a natural way. Sitting in a natural posture means sitting
 just right. If you are comfortable when you first assume the sitting
 posture, even if pains develop in your legs later on, that is still
 natural. It is unnatural, however, to sit bent over or leaning to one
 side, or with your head tipped back. A natural posture should follow
 the demands of your physiology. It is not natural to tighten your
 stomach muscles or to straighten your back by protruding your chest. To
 use your mind in a natural way means to avoid trying to control it. The
 more you try to control your mind, the more stray thoughts will come up
 to bother you. In fact, the very fear of stray thoughts is another
 stray thought. Therefore, if you have many stray thoughts, consider it
 a natural phenomenon and do not despise them. But on the other hand, if
 you completely give in to a train of wandering thoughts, that is not
 correct either. What is the best approach?  Pay close attention to the
 method. If you do that, stray thoughts will be kept to a minimum. It is
 not that they will not arise, but you will not worry about them. If you
 are really paying attention to the method, you will be aware of a stray
 thought as soon as it arises. When it comes up, just let it go. Do not
 be afraid that another thought may follow it. That fear is an extra
 stray thought. It is just like a person who is carrying a stack of
 bowls. If someone says to him, "Be careful! You're going to drop them!"
 he will drop them. But if nobody says anything, he will just keep
 going.

 Do not fear failure. Whatever happened in the past is past; do not
 worry about it happening again. Before you meet with success, failure
 is natural and necessary. As a baby learns to walk, it keeps falling
 down. Is this failure? Throughout our life we go through similar
 processes: going to school, pursuing a career, practicing Ch'an. After
 my first book, someone said to me, "Now you're a success." I said, "No.
 That book was a failure. I would write it much better if I had to do it
 again." It is the same with practice; there is never a successful
 conclusion. When you are working hard, failure is natural. If you have
 never failed, you have never tried.

 On the other hand, you should not have a defeatist attitude, thinking:
 "As long as I'm going to fail, let me fail." According to Buddhism,
 nothing can be a perfect, unqualified success. If you are elected
 president of the United States, would that be a success? Later on, you
 would most likely be criticized as a failure. Even President Lincoln
 would probably consider himself a failure. This is natural. It is when
 you do not feel successful that you put in the effort. When you no
 longer need to make an effort, that is true success, or liberation. At
 that point, there are no more vexations. Nevertheless, you have neither
 thrown away vexations nor grasped liberation. If you want to hold on to
 enlightenment and keep away vexations, that is not the true natural
 state.

 But to follow your own nature, in this sense, is not the same as
 following your personal habits or whims, as in the expression "be
 natural." Nature here refers to your self-nature, or Buddha nature.
 Some people think that one can become a Buddha through meditation. This
 is wrong. The potential for Buddhahood is already within your own
 nature. If it were true that Buddhahood depended on meditation, then if
 you stopped meditating after becoming a Buddha, you would become a
 common person again. The objective of practice is to be in accord with
 the natural way, so that your true nature can manifest itself. Just
 practice according to the methods taught by the Buddha and do not worry
 about being a success. The Heart Sutra says, "There is no wisdom and no
 attainment." Although practice may be trying, even physically painful,
 if your heart is carefree, nothing will bother you. A carefree approach
 does not mean not caring about how you practice; it means considering
 anything that happens as natural. There may be some pain, but there
 will be no suffering. There is nothing in your mind that you cannot put
 down.


        Bound by thoughts, you depart from the real;
        And sinking into a stupor is as bad.

 To be in bondage to your thoughts means to be influenced and carried
 away by various conditions in your surroundings. If you do this, you
 are grasping the false. You can try to limit your thoughts by using the
 method. But in fact, as long as the method is still in your mind, you
 are still abiding in the false, not in the real. But in that case,
 should you discard the method? The problem with discarding the method
 is that, while you may seem to have no thoughts, you may still fall
 into a foggy state. Even though the method is not real, it is even
 worse to be suspended in a nebulous frame of mind. The ideal state
 would be to drop the fogginess along with the method, to be unattached
 to conditions. What does it mean to be unattached to conditions? It
 means that there are no thoughts in your mind, but whatever appears is
 perfectly clear.

 When you reach this state you will perceive everything as equal. This
 is because at that time, to you, nothing really exists. Reality cannot
 be divided into individual people and objects. When nothing is in front
 of you, it is the same as when there are many things there. In a room
 full of people, you would not feel crowded and, if the room were empty,
 you would not feel lonely. Though there is no discrimination in your
 mind, when relating to people, you distinguish between a monk and a lay
 person, or a man and a woman. You follow worldly conventions. However,
 if your mind is blank, this does not mean you have discarded conditions
 and reached the state of no thoughts. The blank state would be
 equivalent to the foggy state, rather than to the truly empty state.
 Sometimes when you are exhausted, your mind takes a rest and you are
 not thinking of anything in particular. Do not confuse this with
 enlightenment.

 The method is another way of grasping onto thoughts, but it is a way
 that allows us to eventually overcome grasping. Using the method
 effectively is like knitting a sweater. You cannot drop one stitch,
 otherwise the whole piece will start unravelling. The method should be
 practiced in the same dense manner. "Dense" means that your attention
 is so continuous that there is no space in between for any
 interruptions.


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