Why Is It Hard to Connect with and Appreciate a Sunset?

“How Connections Break,” “Why Is It So Hard to Connect with Nature,” and “Why Beijing’s Olympic Forest Park and Hangzhou’s West Lake Heal Me Less Than Parks in Small Yunnan Towns”: because the nature we go out to explore often comes with conditions and involves seeking outward. It is not the ordinary nature close at hand. Of course, perhaps the ordinary nature around us really does lack a strong power to move us, and the connection with light is not enough to counter karmic obstructions and awaken us.
This article focuses on one specific question:
Why is it hard to connect with a sunset?
Appreciating a sunset and feeling infinite beauty and tranquility within it—that is, becoming one with heaven and earth and entering meditative absorption—is an expression of innate wholeness. It requires neither study nor spiritual practice.
So the key question is: what are karmic obstructions? If entering meditative absorption and becoming one with heaven and earth is so simple, if connection is so simple, why are people disconnected? Why are they unable to connect with a sunset, and even less able to connect with the light of their own nature?
How can karmic obstructions obscure such a powerful light within our own nature?

1. At sunset, people are in offices, on the road, or on the subway. They are not appreciating the sunset.
   Many office workers, when they occasionally go out for work or get off early and see the sunset, will stop to look. They also feel at a loss: they find it beautiful, but do not know what they should appreciate or what feelings they should express. They are also bewildered: where am I going, with these footsteps that never stop? I am struck by how people are trapped in offices every day, so far removed from the sunset. A vague thought of freelancing arises. When I read Su Shi’s words, “The rivers and mountains, the breeze and the moon, have no fixed owner; whoever has leisure is their owner,” I was deeply moved and felt a powerful resonance.
2. When people watch the sunset on the weekend, they think of the weekend drawing to a close and feel sad. They cannot help thinking that only once they achieve financial freedom will they be able to enjoy freedom.
3. When people watch the sunset during holidays or while traveling, by the sea, in the mountains, or somewhere scenic, it is beautiful but brief. They cannot help thinking that they need to earn more money so they can travel more and see more sunsets.
   May we all often watch the sunsets close to home. Watch them regularly on weekends—on Friday, Saturday, and Sunday. On ordinary workdays, slip out at sunset to watch. Then our thinking will turn around: we need to stop those meaningless pursuits so that we can appreciate the beauty all around us, wherever we look. Daoism does not prize things that are hard to obtain; it returns to simplicity and authenticity. Of course, many people do not have the circumstances that allow this.
   We will come to realize that the beauty of nature and our own beauty have always existed unconditionally. Social alienation has merely delayed our enjoyment of that beauty. We are children of the universe, children of nature, part of the universe and nature. Of course, unfortunately, we are also part of society and history, and people are disconnected from society and history as well.
   This very moment of oneness with heaven and earth is the other shore. Beautiful scenery is the Buddha’s light; the radiant heart within me as I connect with and appreciate that scenery is the Buddha.

Addendum:
Recently, I have been reading some material on Oxhead Chan and Mazu Chan.
My own path led from Chan Buddhism to Marx + Zhuangzi, so I feel a particular affinity with Chan schools like these, where Zhuangzi’s thought and Chan converge.
No cultivation, no attainment; our own nature is whole and complete, requiring no effort. This also reflects the strength of Daoist philosophy in dissolving attachments. The *Recorded Sayings of Mazu*, the *Record of Linji*, and the *Treatise on the Transcendence of Contemplation*, which I have been reading recently, are all concise and exquisite. They reveal the heart and illuminate one’s nature—works of true persons.
Someone online said: Sometimes, when I read about Chan and the Buddhist teachings, I am very tired but force myself to keep reading. Then I realize: how could studying Buddhist teachings be as important as sleeping? So I go to sleep. Today, while reading about Chan and the Buddhist teachings, I saw that the light outside was especially beautiful. I realized: how could studying Buddhist teachings be as important as watching the sunset?