Why Does Self-Cultivation Nurture One's Nature?

Some people experience psychological barriers and afflictions, such as heavy suspicion, timidity, fearfulness, anxiety, a fiery temper, and so on. These are all afflictions and psychological barriers. For some, these issues arise from purely psychological factors, that is, karmic obstacles carried over from past lives. For others, they are directly related to physical health, caused by physical conditions such as spleen deficiency (pi xu), heart deficiency (xin xu), liver stagnation (gan yu), gallbladder diseases, and so on.

People often speak of cultivating the mind and nurturing one's nature. A person's character, temperament, and disposition are manifestations of their mental nature. Temperament refers to psychological emotions, some of which are linked to physical health. If there are problems with the internal organs, it can lead to issues with psychological emotions. To ordinary people, this might appear as a problem with cultivation. In reality, as long as one's physical constitution improves, their psychological resilience will follow suit, and their cultivation will improve. It is physical problems causing psychological issues, which are temporary, not fundamental. As long as a person has not attained the fourth dhyana and transcended the realm 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 surrounding magnetic fields. Once beyond the realm of the form aggregate, no matter the state of the body, it will not affect the mind. Even being hacked by knives or axes would pose no problem—face unchanged, heart untroubled.

Therefore, there is another saying in the world: cultivate the body and nurture the nature. However, there are extremely many people with exceptionally good physical constitutions whose mental nature is poor. Such individuals genuinely have psychological problems; their mental nature is truly flawed. In contrast, those whose emotional issues stem from physical influences are not necessarily people with poor mental nature, nor are they necessarily lacking in cultivation. For example, if a person who was originally very gentle-tempered suddenly becomes physically disabled and cannot accept this harsh reality, their temperament may drastically change, becoming hot-tempered and irritable. Once their body is healed, they will return to their original gentle temperament. Similarly, a person suffering from liver stagnation may experience changes in temperament and temper—those with liver fire may become irritable, easily angered, and short-tempered. Once the symptoms of liver stagnation disappear and the liver fire is gone, they will revert to their original gentle disposition.