Spiritual Practice Is a False Concept: Striving Goes Wrong; Let Things Take Their Natural Course
I. “Subduing the Mind” Is a False Concept
The mind has innate wholeness. The mind is Buddha. The mind heals itself. The phrase “subduing the mind” makes it sound as though the mind were something bad.
Then why do so many people feel no sign of the mind healing itself, and feel only the pull of the abyss? Why do they work so hard at “spiritual practice and recuperation,” only to find that self-healing never comes, or comes in tiny amounts?
The reason is that karmic obstructions obscure the mind, and the mind is continually clearing them away. Can people intervene in this process? Believing that people can intervene, calling this “spiritual practice,” and continually “working hard at spiritual practice” and “striving diligently” is itself a confused understanding. It is “the fixation of the spiritual practitioner’s ego.”
II. Reversing Cause and Effect, Misattributing Causes: The “Cargo-Cult Spiritual Practice” of the “Spiritual Practitioner’s Ego”
Physicist Feynman’s story of “cargo cult science”:
A group of indigenous cargo cultists lived on islands in the South Pacific. During World War II, Allied aircraft used these islands to move supplies. The islanders saw planes land and unload packages full of good things. After the war ended, the planes stopped coming. The cargo cultists missed the good old days. So they built a road resembling an airstrip and put up a small thatched hut. Inside sat a person with two coconut shells strapped to his head as pretend headphones, with bamboo sticking out of them as pretend antennas. This person was imitating the controller in the control tower. Then they waited for planes to land and bring supplies. Everything they did looked right, but no planes came.
Feynman’s example was precisely a criticism of certain confused understandings in education and psychology, although that lecture did not explore them in depth.
The true self’s “high-energy state” allows people to become aware of the ego, to look down upon the ego, emotions, and thoughts from a greater height, to arrive at new insights, to find resonance with “classic” books, and to have better experiences while “sitting in meditation.” It is not reading classics, sitting in meditation, or meditating that brings people into a “high-energy state.” People mistakenly believe that they have summoned this “high-energy state” through their own “hard work at spiritual practice,” forming a new fixation.
Effort is useless. Someone who has just reached an intellectual understanding strains to make fire by rubbing sticks together, becoming more tangled up the harder they try. The spiritual practitioner’s ego, with its persistent fixation, leads them further astray. The moment you apply force, you miss the mark. Spiritual practice is instead about letting go of all effort and ego, allowing the true self to heal itself.
III. The Question of “Stages in Spiritual Practice and Inner Change”
Does an ordinary person who is suffering and mired in mediocrity become, in a single instant, a perfected sage whose true self is radiant and supremely good, or are there stages? How should those stages be divided?
Can people intervene in these stages? By what methods, and through what efforts? So many accomplished practitioners and eminent, enlightened Buddhist monks have still not attained supreme goodness. Is the problem their methods? Are they not trying hard enough?
Does “the true self becoming aware of the ego” really require effort? Is failing to notice the ego merely a matter of not trying hard enough?
Since we believe innate wholeness is the ultimate answer, and everyone has experienced innate wholeness before, why has innate wholeness still not cleared away karmic obstructions, swept away the dust, and dispersed the dark clouds?
IV. The Four Stages of Inner Change
The First Stage: Rock Bottom and the Abyss
Living at rock bottom or even in the abyss, with karmic obstructions blotting out the sky and the sun, leaving everything in darkness. These are unawakened states of habitual living, obsession, and being utterly consumed. One is entangled in suffering, emotions, dreams and illusions, greed, anger, delusion, fixations, and the ego. One “switches seamlessly” between different egos and states, in a “dream within a dream” from which one never wakes.
The Second Stage: “Sunlight Through the Clouds” at Rock Bottom
- Sunlight Through the Clouds
Various movements of the inner true self and external coincidences bring people to recognize “meditative stillness”: the eternal tranquility of the true self, the unity of humanity and nature. It is like sunlight through a gap in dark clouds. Meditative stillness has never been far from anyone; this is simply the first time they have valued its “light” and “warmth.” Illuminated by this light, the world looks entirely different. This is “seeing the mind and realizing one’s nature.”
Can the light return? How can it be brought back? People believe it came about through their own “efforts and actions.” They begin to draw conclusions about “spiritual practice” and study theories, continually performing “rituals to summon the light”: Buddhism’s approach of entering meditative stillness through precepts, seated meditation and counting breaths; Daoists treating Zhuangzi’s “sitting in forgetfulness,” “fasting of the mind,” and “the empty chamber filling with light” as “methods” rather than results; mindfulness meditation in spiritual circles; psychological counselors recommending sunshine, exercise, and making friends; inspirational posts on social media recommending walks in the park, reading, and so on. All of these are essentially about “subtraction”: continually reducing the interference of karmic obstructions so that the clouds part and the sun appears.
These suggestions really do “work.” Sometimes, after the “rituals,” the light really is “summoned.” People even come to think of this as “making fire by rubbing sticks together.” The “spiritual practitioner’s ego” begins to immerse itself in “rituals.” Some people practice seated meditation for decades; others meditate for decades, believing this to be their “secret.” In fact, it is often “the success philosophy of doing push-ups in an elevator”: people who do push-ups, squats, or clap their hands inside an elevator believe these actions are what took them to a higher floor. Zen speaks of attempting to “polish a tile into a mirror.”
The “spiritual practitioner’s” ego also frequently monitors and psychologically manipulates itself, having already forgotten that it came in search of meditative stillness, not to “find fault.”
- Airing the Bedding When the Sun Comes Out
As entering meditative stillness becomes more likely, and “sunrises” become more frequent, people begin airing their bedding when the sun comes out. They “observe” themselves “continually digesting” old fixations. This makes it look even more as though “working hard to make fire by rubbing sticks together is paying off,” as though they have secured the “sunrise” through their own initiative.
The Third Stage: The “Safety Rope, Swim Buoy, and Pacemaker” Halfway Up the Mountain
Halfway up the mountain, one has gradually left many karmic obstructions behind and can see more light and scenery.
One becomes more at ease and enters meditative stillness more readily, frequently dwelling in a state of stillness and awakening.
It is like a safety rope when rock climbing, a tow buoy when swimming in open water, or a pacemaker for the heart. Whenever something feels wrong, it is there to catch you, to “wake you up” at any moment. It will not let you fall into the abyss.
Or perhaps meditative stillness is more like an accomplished dance partner leading the dance. When we occasionally lose focus or make a mistake, he gently guides us back to mindful enjoyment.
The Fourth Stage: The Radiant Heart at the Mountaintop
You climb to the mountaintop and discover a plain, with sunshine and warmth everywhere. There is no need for matches here, no need to make fire by rubbing sticks together. This is what human beings are “normally” like. It is what Feuerbach and Marx called “human species-being.”
The light of the true self’s “meditative stillness” is always present, but karmic obstructions obscure it.
Spiritual practice requires no effort. There is no need to practice deliberately. Instead, when all egos, effort, and deliberate striving are absent, awareness naturally guides people toward awareness in high-energy situations.
(My understanding is limited; the later stages are merely what I imagine them to be.)
V. Can the Stages and Their Progression Be Controlled? They Seem Free and Self-Directed, but All Are Within Fate
The “stages” described above seem to imply freedom and initiative, as though a person continually “improves” through their own “efforts.”
But is the pace of this change, the pace at which the true self dissolves the ego, really something “I” can control?
Some people have deep karmic obstructions; others have shallow ones. Is that something they can decide for themselves?
All karmic obstructions are misfortunes, unrelated to the “self.” This proposition is easy to accept, but it leads to deeper, more “difficult to accept” reasoning. Countless people are trapped by karmic obstructions and cannot awaken; some even become bad people. This is certainly not a matter of “effort.” Is it “choosing to degenerate”? It is the misfortune of karmic obstructions. Are bad people born bad, or do they become bad later? In other words, are they unfortunate from birth, or do they encounter misfortune later?
Some people attain insight early, awaken early, and reach a high level of understanding. Is this a matter of talent, effort, intelligence, or perceptiveness? Luck is the only explanation.
The depth of karmic obstructions is the degree of misfortune; the progress of “awakening” is the degree of good fortune. Otherwise, is failure to awaken completely simply a matter of not trying hard enough? If people could accelerate this process, why would they not work hard to achieve supreme goodness and perfection in three years, one year, six months, or that very day?
The luck involved in karmic obstructions is unequal. Life is unequal to begin with. Are people with disabilities equal to people without disabilities? Some say that a disability does not prevent someone from attaining wealth and happiness or practicing spiritually. The inequality in the depth of karmic obstructions is even greater than the inequality involved in disability. Yes, people have conditions more severe than disability, yet they do not know it—the condition itself is “not knowing.” That shows how severe it is.
Once we accept that we cannot control the “stages of inner change” ourselves, and become aware of the fixation of the “spiritual practitioner’s ego,” we also let go of our fixation on “changing others” and “enlightening others.” Everyone has the rhythm of their own “fate.”
VI. Innate Wholeness Means People Have Always Done Their Best; Their Current Progress and Pace Already Reflect Their Utmost
They have simply had bad luck.
I have written a great deal about this before, in thematic articles such as “Innate Wholeness” and “A Focused Discussion of Effort.”
Here I will make just one small point:
I suggest keeping a diary recording the times when you feel happy, internally motivated, positive, full of energy, and tranquil.
This is actually also the process of gradually entering meditative stillness. Everyone has experienced it.
It is, in fact, a record of each person’s innate wholeness. You will discover that all true happiness is actually “the same”: a kind of “tranquil, supreme joy.” That is the feeling of “meditative stillness, the true self.” It is simply too fleeting and too “ordinary,” so we overlook and dismiss it.
To be specific, these days I take easy shots at the basketball courts in the county town, playing casually for my health and feeding passes back and forth with everyone, old, middle-aged, young, and adolescent. I already feel “innate wholeness,” tranquility, and supreme joy. I want nothing else.
This is actually the most important purpose of a diary. For more than ten years, I mainly used mine to record notes, stray thoughts, and self-criticism. My strategy was mistaken, a sign of being unawakened. But that is all in the past.
VII. Daoist “Trust in Fate”: Human Limits and the Complexity and Uncontrollability of Fate
- “Follow the course of human affairs and rest content with Heaven’s decree.” Not “do everything humanly possible”: that “everything” still contains “effort and unwillingness to accept.” We naturally respond as we do, and the “self” merely goes along with “its own actions.” Looking back on secondary school, for example, all of us simply “did” what came naturally, whether that meant tying our hair to a beam and pricking our thighs to stay awake studying, being anxious and uneasy, putting on an air of disdain, skipping school for internet cafés, or imagining ourselves geniuses.
- “Trust in fate” does not mean “everything is predestined.” Fate is always changing, beyond the power of human effort to alter. Precisely because things are not predestined, many people suffer. Precisely because it is not complex and difficult to predict, it appears all the more “not predestined,” as though “human determination can overcome Heaven,” like “performing rituals to summon the sun” or “the success philosophy of doing push-ups in an elevator.”
- Trusting in fate is not “resigning yourself to fate.” The future is unknown; there is no fate there to resign yourself to.
- Trusting in fate certainly does not mean “fortune-telling.” Fate cannot be calculated.
- Fate cannot be controlled or grasped. “Take your fate in your hands” is a line sleazy old men use when sexually harassing someone.
VIII. Life Flows Naturally Like a River
Life flows naturally like a river, and the true self, like a fish, simply lives tranquilly within it, at peace with its circumstances and free of care. The mind naturally does things, and life naturally flows onward. Where interactions with the outside world are involved, there is also the uncertainty of fate, along with acceptance and adjustment. It has always been life and the mind flowing naturally. “Effort” has never entered into it. “Effort” is merely the ego moving itself with its own performance and claiming Heaven’s achievements as its own.
People are actually no different from animals and plants; they cannot “change” anything. Ants store food, bees gather honey, swallows build nests, cats and dogs seek mates, peacocks spread their tails, lions lick their wounds, plants turn toward the sun, great trees put down roots, and Venus flytraps catch insects. Like other organisms, human beings live within nature and the biosphere according to biological, physical, and historical laws, and then die. Human thought “overestimates” itself, mistakenly believing that humans are gods who can be omnipotent, immortal, turn stones into gold, and “change” the world, history, and other people.
Zhuangzi speaks of living like fish, butterflies, and trees. This means accepting the nature and life allotted by the universe.
Life has always been governed by external forces beyond our control and by randomness. Like a tree: whether it grows to maturity and what shape it takes depend on fate. Yet this does not make it feel unfree, nor does it diminish its innate wholeness, completeness, equality as a living being, or unity with nature. A tree has no ego. It does not envy other trees for growing taller or more beautiful.
IX. Where, Exactly, Is Freedom?
Does freedom exist, then, and where exactly is it? Human beings are forever confined by physical laws and finite lives. We have always been a tiny part of the universe, a tiny part of nature. When humans transform nature, nature is transforming itself.
What people call freedom, ability, and human determination overcoming Heaven are often merely the ego’s greed, anger, and delusion.
“Non-non-free” is a kind of freedom. Freedom is the feeling of the true self when unfreedom has diminished to a certain degree. Likewise, happiness is the feeling of the true self when unhappiness has diminished to a certain degree, and tranquility is its feeling when agitation has diminished to a certain degree. “In pursuing the Way, one diminishes daily”; “the empty chamber fills with light.” The more we are “fortunate enough” to follow fate, the fewer “karmic obstructions of the ego” we have, and the less “unfree” we feel.
X. Not Practicing Spiritually and Not Striving Means Accepting Karmic Obstructions, Fluctuations in Our State, and Fate, Without Pursuit
The “spiritual practitioner’s ego” does not accept fluctuations in its state, or the mediocrity, karmic obstructions, setbacks, and suffering of the present. It clings to “rituals” and to an imagined beautiful future. This is itself a karmic obstruction. See “The Birth of a New Ego: The Spiritual Practitioner’s Ego.”
“I am not happy enough or sufficiently settled in meditative stillness because I have not worked hard enough at my cultivation, and because my spiritual methods and teachers are not advanced enough.” What a terrifying fixation. It is simply bad luck.
Effort = the ego becoming consumed by obsession. Call it the “striving ego.” It is a very common and frightening ego. I have already systematically criticized effort in “A Focused Discussion of Effort.” The “spiritual practitioner’s” ego is a variation of the “striving ego.”
Ever since I first became conscious of “spiritual practice,” I was always “working hard” at it. The “spiritual practitioner’s ego” and the “striving ego” were always monitoring and psychologically manipulating me. Once I had completely killed off the “striving ego,” I gave up effort altogether and became entirely natural and spontaneous.
Seeking within is a false concept. Desire nothing, seek nothing, and let things take their natural course.
Someone online asked, “How do you become first-rate: through effort, persistence, choices, or talent? How can ordinary people break through their circumstances?” Ordinary people will most likely remain ordinary people. There is no need to pursue being first-rate blindly. Ordinary does not mean mediocre. Innate wholeness, the equality of everyone’s soul, tranquility, happiness, and joy have nothing to do with being first-rate. Of course, this state cannot be attained through effort either; it also depends on luck. Once people reach this state, even “ordinary people” are often “first-rate.” Be at peace with the times and follow fate; let things take their natural course.
XI. Accept Fate and Let Things Take Their Natural Course
The ultimate answer is that people cannot find an ultimate answer. Stop searching for any answer. The other shore is right here, right now; simply live quietly.
Everything is fate. Live whatever life presents, and let things take their natural course.
Will people consider this article defeatist? Even Zhuangzi himself has been considered defeatist; what standing or ability do I have to expect otherwise? Accept being misunderstood, and let things take their natural course.
Appendix:
I. Further Remarks on the Question of Effort:
Previous article: “A Focused Discussion of Effort: Stop Trying So Hard”
A. What About Mental Health Professionals’ “Efforts” and “Interventions”?
Mental health professionals are gardeners, not surgeons. Can a gardener claim all the credit for roses blooming?
Can a mental health professional bring about a “qualitative transformation” in someone, from “mediocrity and karmic obstructions” to “radiance and perfection”?
Mental health professionals themselves, along with their “knowledge” and “therapies,” are products of historical development and organic parts of society. A person’s struggle between the “true self and karmic obstructions” has its own rhythm. Their decision to seek out a mental health professional, and how much that professional can help, are all part of that rhythm. Someone was beginning to improve, but then lost their job in a round of layoffs and deteriorated again. Is that something a mental health professional can determine?
When can individual will intervene in this rhythm?
B. Aren’t Scientists Always Working Hard?
Some people ask: scientists are always “working and striving,” which is why science continually progresses, knowledge becomes more advanced, productive forces and humanity’s fate undergo continual, enormous changes, and human civilization keeps advancing. Yes.
But parrots can talk, and cats and dogs have learned to accommodate humans, too. Their lives keep improving. Are they also working hard, or are they simply adapting?
And can individual will intervene in human history?
How are the world’s six billion proletarians doing, and who can change that? Aren’t proletarians “working hard”? What exactly are people emphasizing when they emphasize scientists’ hard work?
How are scientists themselves doing, and what are their karmic obstructions like? Historical materialism is all the more a matter of fate.
C. Aren’t Small-Town Exam Whizzes Who Make It from Impoverished Villages to Universities in Beijing, Then Rise Through Promotions and Pay Raises to Become CEOs, Defying Heaven and Changing Their Fate?
Then why, over the thousands of years before the founding of the People’s Republic, could so few small-town exam whizzes do this, whereas after 1990, large numbers could? This is the course of history, not individual effort. Did those who did not manage it really fail merely because they did not work hard to defy Heaven and change their fate? Are they cowards and fools before fate? Why can billions of children across Asia, Africa, and Latin America not do it?
It is precisely these people who blindly believe in “hard work” who push their children frantically until they break down. Are these children fortunate? When these children become mired in psychological problems, bad schools, and bad jobs, is it simply because they do not work as hard as their parents? These are their karmic obstructions. Everything is fate.
The psychological problems of both generations are part of fate and their times. Whether they can heal also depends on fate. Aren’t many mothers “working hard” to heal both generations? Even more mothers are themselves unaware, simply suffering without knowing what the problem is. Countless people suffer without realizing it.
Awakening others is a false concept—as though the greatest revolutionaries, educators, and psychologists had never tried. Historical materialism and fate.
Oh, right: when these elites are laid off and unemployed at 40, why don’t they “work hard to change their fate”? Why don’t they “stop complaining about the broader environment and look harder for their own problems”?
Someone online asked, “Is there any way for university students to break out of their predicament?” It is only a predicament if there is no way to break out. Everyone has done their best; everything is fate. Accept mediocrity, accept everything, accept not accepting, and let things take their natural course. “Work hard to do something” makes it sound as though this person has not already tried hard enough.
D. Shouldn’t Bad People Work Hard to Change?
What if I discover that I am a bad person and have made a complete mess of the lives of everyone around me? Shouldn’t I actively work hard to change?
Even people like this often realize they need to change, and succeed in changing. This precisely demonstrates human innate wholeness, the strength of the true self, and the strength of the capacity for self-healing.
People with especially deep karmic obstructions, moreover, are completely unable to realize that they have a problem or need to change. That very “realization” is the awareness of the true self.
Is whether someone awakens really something people can easily intervene in, either for themselves or for others? Humanity has had laws, judges, and teachers for thousands of years. Have they been able to intervene?
As productive forces and relations of production have advanced, war, famine, cannibalism, and serious crime have all declined substantially. This is history at work.
E. But Don’t Peasant Uprisings, Rebellions, and Revolutions Change Fate Through Effort?
No. Uprisings and revolutions are all products of their times. Individual effort never plays a role. Are uprisings and revolutions changing history, or are they themselves products of history?
Then does inequality between people not need to be overcome? Must it simply be passively accepted? Well, yes, actually.
Then is Marxism-Leninism wrong? Marxism-Leninism is a scientific theory. It scientifically explains how the inequality brought about by private ownership inevitably leads to revolution, explains the laws of history, and teaches people how to follow the course of history. It is not magic that eliminates every inequality or accelerates historical change.
People will always differ in height and weight. Marxism is concerned with ensuring that differences in height and weight do not lead to one person enslaving another.
F. Losing Weight Has Nothing to Do with “Effort”
In losing weight, it appears that I overcame a whole host of things and then managed to do a whole host of unpleasant things, such as exercise. In reality, the ego’s greed, anger, and delusion, along with the karmic obstructions of binge eating and staying up late, weakened. I was able to do the exercise my body and mind already longed for, and eat light meals until I was seventy percent full.
All of this is the work of the true self. It happened because the true self happened to be able to overcome karmic obstructions, and because external conditions also allowed me to eat light meals and get enough sleep.
Losing weight has less to do with effort than almost anything else. I often see people unable to resist karmic obstructions: the harder they “work to lose weight,” the more frustrated and dispirited they become, and the more weight they gain.
G. What Is Frightening Is Being Rewarded for “Effort”
Accommodating unwritten rules, committing fraud, deceiving, speculating, and betraying—and reaping rewards.
“I” “work hard to overcome” the instincts of the heart, suppressing my disgust to accommodate people I dislike and do illegal or legally dubious things, and I make money. This deepens karmic obstructions. This is the negative ego exerting itself, while social alienation rewards and reinforces that negative ego.
In many industries and organizations, bad money drives out good. Karmic obstructions resonate with one another; Hitler and the Nazis are a typical example.
If the true self cannot counteract these effects, life becomes a continuous process of degeneration. Degeneration is not the direction of life itself. It is external alienation, an unfortunate fate.