Why Can Self-Cultivation Nurture One's Nature?

Some people have certain psychological obstacles and afflictions, such as being overly suspicious, timid and fearful of trouble, anxious and uneasy, worried, 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 carried 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 so on.

People in the world often speak of cultivating the mind and nurturing one's nature. A person's character, temperament, and disposition are manifestations of the mind-nature; temperament is psychological emotion. Some psychological emotions are connected to physical health. If the internal organs have problems, it will lead to problems in psychological emotions, which in the eyes of ordinary people looks like a problem with one's cultivation. In reality, as long as one's physical condition improves, one's psychological condition will improve accordingly, and one's cultivation will improve 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 aggregate of form, and also 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—being hacked by knives or chopped by axes would be no problem; one's expression would not change and one's heart would not skip a beat.

Therefore, there is another saying in the world: cultivate the body and nurture the nature. However, there are extremely many people whose physical condition is especially good but whose mind-nature is not good. Such people truly have psychological problems and truly have a poor mind-nature. Whereas those who develop emotional problems due to bodily influence are not necessarily people with a poor mind-nature, nor are they necessarily people without cultivation. For example, a person who was originally extremely gentle in temperament, if suddenly disabled, unable to accept this cruel reality inwardly, would undergo a drastic change in temperament and become hot-tempered; once the body is healed, they would return to being that originally gentle-tempered person. The same applies to a person suffering from liver stagnation: it will affect temperament and disposition. A person with liver fire will also be irritable, fiery, and hot-tempered; once the symptoms of liver stagnation disappear and the liver fire is gone, they will return to their original gentle temperament.