What kinds of bodily, verbal, and mental actions accord with the Path?

Diligent practitioners will reflect inwardly on their own minds in daily life. When observing their state of mind while eating, they notice their craving for food, and so they slow down their eating. In fact, wolfing down food when hungry is not necessarily craving; savoring food with slow, careful chewing may be even more so. Craving for tastes is one kind of craving, and craving for food and drink includes craving their form, smell, taste, and touch. As long as one does not crave form, smell, taste, or touch, but eats merely to relieve hunger, there is no craving mind. Thus one can eat without a craving mind, and can even eat quickly without a craving mind.

How does one distinguish a craving mind from a non-craving mind? In the past, a lay disciple asked Chan Master Dazhu Huihai: "Master, how does your eating and sleeping differ from the eating and sleeping of ordinary people?" Master Huihai said: "Ordinary people, when eating, do not truly eat—they make a hundred kinds of demands; when sleeping, they do not truly sleep—they engage in a thousand kinds of calculations. I, however, do not have so many thoughts; I simply eat and sleep." Having no particular thoughts about eating does not mean thinking of nothing while eating and eating with single-minded focus; rather, it means having no extra demands regarding food and drink, being picky about nothing, and having no craving mind.

What do ordinary sentient beings demand with their hundred kinds of demands regarding eating? Broadly speaking, it is nothing more than form, smell, taste, and touch, along with nourishment of the physical body for the sake of maintaining it. As for the details, the demands are numerous; to sum it up, it is all craving, all the result of the machinations of self-view and identity-view. When a person who has attained the Way eats, spoiled rice and leftovers are all the same to them; it is enough to eat their fill, not be hungry, and not interfere with cultivating the Way—there are no other requirements. What do ordinary sentient beings calculate with their thousand kinds of calculations when sleeping? Broadly speaking, it is nothing more than calculations about the six sense objects of form, sound, smell, taste, touch, and dharmas; in detail, it means calculations about the house, the bed, the bedding, and so on—essentially all manifestations of identity-view and self-view.

Whether a person has cultivated or not can be seen clearly and distinctly from the trivial matters of daily life; every detail reveals whether there is self-view. For those whose self-view is not severed, the demands of the physical body are many, and in order to maintain the body's demands, extremely abundant craving minds and craving behaviors will manifest—yet they themselves will not notice. Unconsciously, craving behaviors will always arise; that is the craving of the manas, and it is habitual. Because of the habit, they consider it normal and proper; if someone is not like them—craving nothing and being picky about nothing—they consider that person abnormal. This is called inversion. As for one's daily conduct, which parts accord with the Way and which do not, one must be skilled at observing and distinguishing, and continuously correct oneself; only then can one awaken to the Way as early as possible.

Bodily actions and verbal actions are both governed by the mind. If the mind is the craving, attached mind of an ordinary being, then bodily and verbal actions will unconsciously manifest the mental conduct of craving. Some ordinary people without cultivation always want to display themselves as having cultivation, and so they pretend to have it. Yet they do not know what kind of behavior counts as having cultivation and what kind counts as lacking it. Even the pretense cannot be sustained for long; crucially, they do not even know how to pretend, and so from time to time they expose their own uncultivated behavior—though laypeople cannot discern it.

In truth, for ordinary beings, from waking in the morning and opening their eyes, to beginning the day's activities, to sleeping at night—even in dreams—almost nothing in the entire day consists of bodily, verbal, and mental actions that are correct and accord with the Way. Is this an exaggeration? It is not. If the mind does not accord with the Way, then bodily and verbal actions do not accord with the Way; at all times and in all places, there are only actions of ignorance and affliction.

If one can know what kinds of mental conduct accord with the Way, then one will know what kinds of bodily and verbal actions possess the conduct of the Way, and what kinds lack it. In this way, one can roughly judge whether a person has seen the Way and realized fruition, whether they possess the conduct of the Way, and at what level their cultivation stands. Once the eyes are brightened, one will no longer be deceived and cheated, and will no longer be fleeced like chives.