Gild the lily.

Something that has a specific interest to me, and something that comes up quite often here on r/zen, is the problem of being natural, being in harmony, versus being unnatural.

Let's take meditation as an example. Some may say, that meditation is a practice, and all practices are not natural, are a construct, a contrivance, and nothing is to be gained from such practices, using mind to still mind, is creating a false reality.

However, isn't practicing anything, also a part of our natural state of affairs, doesn't our mind, naturally create our reality anyway?

I think, the practice of the way, is to harmonise, both these, apparently contradictory states, which exist simultaneously anyway, into harmony..

Thus being, like Bruce said, "The ideal, is unnatural naturalness or natural unnaturalness. it is a combination of both. Here is natural instinct and here is control. You are to combine the two in harmony. If you have one to the extreme, you'll be very unscientific. If you have another to the extreme, you become, all of a sudden, a mechanical man No longer a human being. It is a successful combination of both. That way it is a process of continuing growth."

Submitted June 02, 2020 at 12:13PM by transmission_of_mind https://ift.tt/2zIUWMz