When one meditates on it, one is bound to observe that what we call “human nature” is not natural at all. In fact, human nature only gives the appearance of being natural like a wooden fence around a green pasture or a stone wall bordering a nature preserve.
Although that which is inside is natural, the wooden fence and the stone wall are no longer in their natural state but instead serve the unnatural purpose of being an artificial division. That is true of human nature as well.
The term is in all actuality an oxymoron. While there is Nature in each and every one of us, we rarely allow ourselves to experience it. Instead, we have become slaves to our emotions and live by the artificial division of Me and Other, of Having and Not Having.
How did this unnatural division come about? Chaungzr tells us that ancient men lived in a world of primitive simplicity in a time when the yin and the yang worked harmoniously.
Although men had knowledge, they did not know what to do with it. This was the time of complete unity, when nobody interfered and people lived according to their nature.
Gradually, however, man’s character began to decline.
Man abandoned nature and attended to the development of his mind. Mind rubbed against mind and produced knowledge, but as knowledge was not adequate to bring peace to the world, they resorted to cultural refinement and learning and scholarship.
So, it is the very education and cultural refinement that we strive for – in a word, ambition - that has undermined our natural selves.
Cultural refinement destroyed the inner character of man, and scholarship and learning submerged man’s mind. From that time on, the people were perplexed and confused and lost the way whereby they could recover their original nature and return to the original state.
Our education and upbringing, our language and communication skills that enable social interactions with family members, teachers, students, co-workers and friends have instilled in us a code by which we think and live.
It is through that artificial code that our minds decipher all of the impulses gathered by our senses. Hence that artificial code leads us to determine what to like, to hate and to fear. Our personality, our ego replete with all its emotional responses is constructed from those likes, dislikes and fears. It is the fence around our original nature.
But unlike most fences which are constructed to keep other people out, this fence has been constructed in a way that keeps the fence builders out, unable to experience our original nature within.
Meditation is one way to tear down that fence. Tai Chi or moving meditation is yet another. Every time you do your form, you are chipping away, little by little, at that artificial barrier you have been creating and reinforcing since childhood.
The trouble is that you have built that fence unknowingly, unconsciously, and it can only be torn down the same way. You cannot meditate or perform tai chi with the conscious purpose of attaining your original nature or enlightenment as many call it. To do so is like a dog chasing its tail.
How can one have a mind free of goals and ambitions when one has the specific goal of freeing the mind of goals and ambitions?
Both Tao and Zen solved that dilemma by insuring us that the goal of reaching enlightenment or realization is completely unnecessary because we are already enlightened beings. We simply are not aware of it yet.
Zen is an outgrowth of Chan Buddhism. Chan merged Taoism with the Mahayana school of Buddhism brought by Bodhiharma from India to China, where it was eventually suppressed. However, it flourished in Japan when the Samurai class adopted its practices.
Specifically, Zen arises from the Sudden Enlightenment School begun by the sixth patriarch, Hui Neng, in Southern China, where it quickly spread to become the dominant school of Buddhism during the Tang dynasty. However, it encountered severe persecution at the end of the Tang era when it reemerged in Japan as Zen Buddhism.
Sudden enlightenment is just that – sudden. There is no formulaic process that one follows to achieve a goal. You are already at that goal. Realizing this is enlightenment. It can come about in any number of ways: at work or school, doing chores around the home or performing tai chi.
Both the Zen and Taoist traditions focus on awareness and a sense of presence in all our daily activities. That very focus on every activity is enlightenment for every being everywhere. There is nothing but Tao, nothing but Buddhahood.
Instead of reaching for enlightenment, we merely need to step back into ourselves. Instead of trying to gain some advantage as we do when we set goals, we need to subtract or lose the need to gain an advantage and rid ourselves of all the excesses.
This is the approach that both meditation and tai chi use – subtraction rather than addition, focus rather than manipulating, contriving. Have you ever noticed how advanced grandmasters actually reduce their external actions as they progress to the highest levels? Their external form consolidates from large circle to small circle while their internal energy increases.
But you do not need to become a recognized master to be a master. If you perform tai chi faithfully, everyday with full awareness, then you are a master, a master of your very own self.
The other notion is this. When one sets a goal, one must know where the end point is. But meditation and taiji have no ending. They are circular. While they may spiral from one level to the next, there is never an end in sight no matter how much one develops.
Even the Buddhas and sages never stopped meditating, never stopped discovering concepts of universal import. The same is true of the greatest grandmasters of the martial arts. They never stopped exploring the highest realms of their particular art. Even as they aged, they continued their practice. Even as their bodies weakened, their minds delved deeper and deeper discovering secrets that few of us can imagine.
So, if you are faithful to your practice for no other reason than the pure joy ofndoing it, then you are a true master. And the more you apply that same attitude and intensity to your everyday life, you will lose your human unnature and realize your original Nature.
