No Cultivation, No Attainment: At Ease and Natural
A homeless monk who has cut off desire and cast aside love, who understands his own mind-source and comprehends the profound principle of the Buddha, awakening to the law of non-action: within, he has nothing to attain; without, he has nothing to seek. His mind is not bound to the Way, nor does it form ties. No thought, no action, neither cultivation nor attainment. Without passing through the various stages, he is naturally supreme. This is called the Way.
Feeding a hundred bad people is not equal to feeding one good person; feeding a thousand good people is not equal to feeding one who upholds the five precepts; feeding ten thousand who uphold the five precepts is not equal to feeding one stream-enterer; feeding a million stream-enterers is not equal to feeding one once-returner; feeding ten million once-returners is not equal to feeding one non-returner; feeding a hundred million non-returners is not equal to feeding one arhat; feeding a billion arhats is not equal to feeding one pratyekabuddha; feeding ten billion pratyekabuddhas is not equal to feeding one of the Buddhas of the three periods; feeding a trillion Buddhas of the three periods is not equal to feeding one person of no thought, no abiding, no cultivation, and no attainment.
— Extracted from the Sutra of Forty-two Sections
In his Notes and Comments on the Poems of the Masters, Wang Guowei thus assessed Nalan Xingde: "Nalan Rongruo observed things with natural eyes and wrote of feeling with a natural brush; because he had newly entered the Central Plains and was not yet stained by Han-Chinese customs, he could be so true and vivid." Not only in literary creation but also in conduct and dealings with others, it is the same: whoever is too deeply stained by the mundane and too dogmatic can hardly attain the charm of nature. Behind ornate rhetoric and ingratiating countenance lies precisely the word "false."
When I first read the Sutra of Forty-two Sections, I took to it immediately, especially to the Buddha's advocacy of "no cultivation, no attainment" and "neither cultivation nor attainment." The Buddha took a great detour, thinking hard for many years, and finally realized that it is best to think of nothing—that the person in the natural state of "no cultivation, no attainment," or "neither cultivation nor attainment," is best. The reason I like this idea is probably that I am a lazy person who greatly dislikes arduous cultivation. My teacher taught me: "Only what is natural and spontaneous is lofty." Whether the natural is truly as "lofty" as my teacher said is uncertain, but that it is the most effortless and least taxing is beyond doubt. For a lazy person, letting everything follow nature is the most effortless choice. What does "at ease" mean? By "at ease" I mean following natural law: eat when hungry, drink when thirsty, sleep when tired, think little, demand little.
In the TCM classic Huangdi Neijing, the chapter "Lun on the Innate Truth of Antiquity" says: "In highest antiquity there were people of true reality, who embraced heaven and earth, held fast to yin and yang, breathed the essential qi, stood alone and guarded their spirit, and whose flesh and muscles were as one; therefore they could live out the span of heaven and earth, with no end. In middle antiquity there were people of utmost virtue, whose inner power was whole and whose Way was complete, who harmonized with yin and yang, adjusted to the four seasons, left the world and cast off the mundane, gathered essence and preserved spirit, and wandered between heaven and earth, seeing and hearing beyond the eight directions. These extended their lives and strengthened themselves, and also returned to the true reality. Next came the sage, who dwelt in the harmony of heaven and earth, followed the principles of the eight winds, adapted his desires to the world, harbored no anger or resentment, acted without departing from the world, wore robes with patterns, moved without being noticed by the vulgar, externally did not weary his body in affairs, internally had no anxieties of thought, took tranquility and joy as his task and self-contentment as his achievement; his body did not decline and his spirit did not scatter, and he too could reach a hundred. Next came the worthy person, who modeled himself on heaven and earth, imitated the sun and moon, arrayed the stars, adjusted to yin and yang, distinguished the four seasons, and followed highest antiquity to accord with the Way; these too could prolong their lives to a set limit."
This long passage from the Huangdi Neijing is the essence of TCM health-preservation. In a word, the author who wrote this "Lun on the Innate Truth of Antiquity" advocated a way of life that follows natural law, has few desires and little demand, is calm and harmonious, can blend with the world's dust yet is not stained by its customs.
Nowadays many people crown themselves with the title of TCM health-master. Test them with this passage, and we will find that most of them are fake masters. They are merely fame- and profit-seekers who hang out the sheep's head of TCM health-preservation but sell their own dog meat.
I have no spiritual pursuit. If I must say I have one, I would say my pursuit is "laziness." To what degree do I want to be "lazy"? I do not want to worry, do not want to be anxious, do not want to think (this point looks rather hypocritical!), do not want to scramble after petty gain, and do not want to scheme and maneuver. In short, I hope to "externally not weary the body in affairs, internally have no anxieties of thought"; the fewer worrying and taxing matters the better—ideally, none at all.
On the surface this seems hard to achieve; at least at this moment, as I type this article on the keyboard, I am thinking. I am busy every day, and it cannot be said that I am not doing things. But on close examination it is attainable. Although a person is thinking about problems, he is not burdened by thinking; if the heart achieves "externally departing from all appearances, internally not giving rise to confusion," then even when using the brain to think, it does not count as "anxiety of thought." Life lies in movement; it is good for a person's muscles and bones to move, and this kind of health-beneficial movement does not count as "wearying the body." It is when one works hard without rest in pursuit of more gain that one wearies the body in affairs. To use a fashionable phrase, what the Huangdi Neijing calls "wearying the body in affairs" is overwork, which if not handled well can lead to death from overwork.
I also do not want to be a member of any religion, although people always mistake me for one. Neither in form nor in essence do I have anything to do with religious believers. Just because I quote a few lines of Buddhist sutras and sayings of Christ in my articles, one should not forcibly put the hat of a religious believer on my head. I approve of some of the ideas of the Buddha and Christ and find it hard to agree with others. I respect others' religious freedom and would never offend it, but I myself do not want to be a disciple of any religious founder. I reserve the freedom to think independently and will not hand my soul over to any founder to manage. I like Jefferson's classic saying: "Every man's soul is his own to manage."
Human nature yearns for freedom and equality and rejects all restraint and dogmatism. The reason so many people have lost this nature is that society has transformed humans into what they are; it has nothing to do with nature. We are children of nature; when the Creator made us, He gave us a full innate nature of loving freedom and equality, and a simple, innocent child's heart. Only after being stained by too many worldly customs in the dust do people gradually become alienated into modern humans.
When modern people encountered the native Papuans and wished to instill in them all sorts of absurd and ridiculous social rules, asking them to be humble and polite toward so-called superiors, the Papuans stood tall and said: "We are human; when people walk, their backs are always straight." When the invaders tried to threaten them with their weapons, the Papuans said: "Yes, you have guns and cannons, but have you seen the bows and arrows in our hands? You would not know how to use these strong bows and sharp arrows. We can use them..."
I therefore love the Papuans immensely. If there were now a lonely island where only these lovely Papuans lived, I would go there to live and call them brothers. At the same time I would find a way to make, together with them, sophisticated weapons enough to defend against modern invaders, and defend together the rights to equality and freedom with which we were born. Before freedom, I will not yield to any power. The Papuans carry in them a human nature that is at ease and natural, unstained by the various hypocritical rules of modern society.
We modern people have become slaves to too many things: rights, money, status, positions, vanity, religious founders, superiors, politicians, and even all kinds of media and advertising. All these can enslave us, control our brains, and an independent and complete personality has become a rare thing.
When the economist Coase lived to over a hundred, he lamented that his life had been too long and joked: "I think God is too busy and has forgotten me." I hope I too belong to the forgotten clan—not forgotten by God, but forgotten by the "invisible hand." The anthropologist Malinowski said that our society is a machine, and that somewhere an invisible hand of God transforms people into various differently used parts that society needs. I hope this invisible hand forgets me; I only want to be, like the Papuans, a natural free person. It would be too sad for a free person to become a social part.
The historian Stavrianos said that humanity's transition from hunter-gatherer society to agricultural society, and then from agricultural society to industrial society, was extremely reluctant. Because this so-called social progress deprived people of too much freedom and went against human nature. The technological progress of human society promoted the rise in productivity, which did indeed feed more people and led to explosive population growth, but this progress has not done much for human happiness. I agree with this view: we humans living in the post-industrial age no longer quite understand the full meaning of being a free citizen of nature.
Were we born merely to be machined into the various standard parts the great machine of society needs? Or to be brainwashed by some ideology or doctrine and become its slave? That invisible hand of God always wants to lock each of us into the great cage of society and make us a part on society's assembly line; the great majority have been successfully locked up. Society tames people, through various rules, into obedient good parts; over time, the parts get used to not being free and lose their at-ease, natural human nature.
I hope that throughout my life I need never lose my at-ease, natural human nature and independent personality because of any pursuit. Nature is my home and my final resting place; I can pour out my heart to it. I need not gain anyone's approval, need not violate my own nature to obey various social rules, nor need I "cultivate" and "attain the Way" to prove myself or pursue so-called "enlightenment." Because heaven and earth gave us life and never demanded that we live in any particular way. That being so, why not choose to live, freely and at ease, according to my own wishes?