Be Nature - Be Yourself

As a human being you are all nature, every fiber of your body is natural, it all depends on and grows with the energy of nature. To think of yourself as an isolated entity is an illusion. You can survive only very shortly without breathing, taking in oxygen and releasing carbon dioxide. You regulate the temperature of your body to keep it more or less constant, but must adjust to the climate around you. You eat and defecate, drink and urinate. Your cells are formed and die as you go.Your DNA is the plan for your organism, but it follows the principles of and is very much like the DNA of other animal species. 

As a mature human being you are also self conscious. As it is presented in the myth of the Fall in the Bible, Adam and Eve ate from the Tree of Knowledge and suddenly saw themselves as naked. In a way they felt ashamed of themselves, judging themselves. 

This "doubling" Danish philosopher Soren Kierkegaard expressed in his philosophical language, when he said that the human self is "a relationship that relates itself to itself". Humans have developed minds, which has both positive and negative aspects. "It is only in your mind" means that you can misread reality with your ability to transcend it. "Mindfulness" on the other hand points to the ability to face up to reality. The growth of mind leads to an alienation from yourself and from nature that characterizes the development of a human individual. This alienation, however, entails a seed of freedom that can lead you on a trail to wisdom, the consciousness of a greater perspective of your life. After leaving home you, so to speak, can find your way home again, can find yourself and your place in nature. 

The highly cultivated traditional Chinese culture focuses very much on the endeavor of melting into nature again. You find this in art, in the pictures of bamboo leaves and of steep mountains, a lonely fisherman by a stream etc.

There are two main lines of the Chinese understanding of society and the world: The Confucian tradition emphasises the beauty and importance of human made order, rituals and art such as music. The Taoist tradition emphasises the return to nature. In the tai chi practice the two lines are in a way combined. Through discipline and conscious practice, "over-learning", the movements become second nature and intuitive. This is essential in both meditation and fighting. The force of nature, the energy of changes and movement, to the Chinese appear as two opposite and interacting energies. As shown in the yin and yang "fish" symbol called tai chi they are closely connected in a cyclical "model". Hard becomes soft, hot becomes cold, light becomes dark and vice versa. The maximum of one becomes the starting point of its opposite. Like everything else in nature also human beings become subject to such changes. Wisdom is simply acknowledging the fluctuations of life and striving to keep your balance riding the wave.