Why can cultivating the body nurture the nature?

Some people have certain psychological obstacles and afflictions, such as being overly suspicious, timid and fearful, anxious and uneasy, worried, or hot-tempered, and so on. These are all afflictions and also psychological obstacles. For some people, these problems arise purely from psychological factors—that is, karmic obstructions brought over from past lives. For others, they are directly related to physical health and are caused by bodily conditions, possibly due to illnesses such as spleen deficiency, heart deficiency, liver stagnation, gallbladder disorders, and the like.

People in the world often speak of cultivating the mind and refining one's nature. A person's character, temperament, and disposition are all manifestations of the mind-nature. Temperament is precisely psychological emotion, and some psychological emotions are connected to physical health. If any of the internal organs have problems, it will lead to problems in psychological emotion, which in the eyes of ordinary people would appear to be a deficiency in one's cultivation. In reality, as long as one's physical condition improves, one's psychological condition improves accordingly, and one's cultivation improves as well. It is a bodily problem that causes the psychological problem; this is temporary, not a fundamental problem. As long as a person has not attained the fourth dhyāna and has not transcended the domain of the aggregate of form, they will be affected and influenced by the physical body of the form aggregate, as well as by environmental factors such as the surrounding magnetic field. Once one has passed beyond the domain of the aggregate of form, no matter what condition the body is in, it will not affect the mind—even being hacked by knives and chopped by axes would be no problem: one's countenance would not change, and one's heart would not skip a beat.

Therefore, there is another saying in the world: cultivate the body and refine the nature. However, there are extremely many people whose physical condition is especially good yet whose mind-nature is poor. Such people truly have psychological problems and truly have a poor mind-nature. Meanwhile, those who develop emotional problems due to bodily influences are not necessarily people with a poor mind-nature, nor are they necessarily people without cultivation. For example, suppose a person who was originally of an especially gentle temperament suddenly becomes physically disabled. Because they cannot accept this cruel reality inwardly, their temperament will change drastically and they will become hot-tempered; but once the body is healed, they will return to being that originally gentle-tempered person. The same applies to a person suffering from liver stagnation: it will affect their temperament and disposition. A person with liver fire will also be irritable, quick to flare up, and hot-tempered; but once the symptoms of liver stagnation disappear and the liver fire is gone, they will revert to their original gentle temperament.