Natural Life

When we hear of something supernatural, we feel interested in it. On the contrary, if we hear of something natural or normal, we don’t feel interested. In the same way, when people hear of the life of a Buddhist, they feel that this is normal life, nothing interesting, and boring. It may be true if they like something supernatural.

For me, as a Buddhist monk, I like to live a plain life as it really is. The reason is that it is like sweet water and plain water, the taste and nutrition are different; real life is like the plain water and the fake is like the sweet water which is mixed with sugar. Buddhism teaches the world to investigate life closely to see what they need in real life. Life can be divided into three states; the first is natural (ignorance), the second is conventional (delusion) and the third is natural (ignorance, but not the same as the first one). These three states are compared to a football player; at the beginning, he doesn’t know how to play, so he has to learn the method; and then, when he knows the method, he plays and improves himself till he can play without the method, just by his experience. In my monastic life, at the beginning I knew nothing about it, and thought that a monastic might be special, but now I have learnt and lived accordingly, I know that nothing is special, it is just normal. I just do my duty, like Nan-In, a Zen teacher, who taught one doctor Zen (Zen means meditation), for three years, "Zen is easy, if you are a doctor, you help your patients with loving kindness. That is Zen."

It is as the Zen teacher said, "Before I practised Zen, I saw the mountain as mountain and the river as river, but when I practised Zen, I saw the mountain not as mountain and the river not as river. And then I attained enlightenment, now I see the mountain as mountain and the river as river once again. "So when we look at life, it depends on what state we are in and how much we understand life. We have to know what we want in life; real or fake. In general, we have to live the life we want, as the Buddha said, "We are our life, our own teacher, our refuge", so normal life or special life is your choice, which you have to make.