IN CHINESE, THE SAME IDEOGRAM represents both body and mind. Westerners, familiar with a cultural and religious split, have a difficult time understanding this. To negate, even to torture the body is the way we choose to purify the mind. Unifying the body and the mind is the path to joy.
To find the body again is difficult. Giving up the constant internal discourse is even more difficult. The point here is not to negate the marvellous capacity of the mind, nor to devalue it in relation to the body, but to re-establish the right balance and stop making the body the slave of our thoughts.
What takes us away from presence is the constant and recurrent commentary of our desires, acts and mental fixations. If we could record a single day of mental discourse, we would have as much as fifteen to sixteen hours of continuous commentary of our actions and gestures. By comparison, reading this book only requires an hour. Ongoing discourse is not life; it is only the commentary of a possible life that we do not really live.
By practising attention and presence, this commentary will fade and disappear. There will only be spontaneous action; no fear beforehand, no hesitation, no explanation after the act, but simply rest in the silence of the mind. This is what Chan practises and teaches.
Years of practice are required to achieve this spontaneity, but we can all reach a beneficial balance in which the mind, without being completely silent, will be able to generate open spaces, resulting in our actions becoming simpler and more direct.
To live in joy does not mean that we will be hypnotised by an artificial joy. We will continue to be sensitive to the fluctuations of life, but its manifestation will seem to be suspended in a space of joy. A body that is open and more fluid, along with a more open mind, will not cling to suffering, which itself will be dissipated in a relatively short time.
To reach a state of joy requires the courage to ask oneself questions and to answer them with authenticity.
The only goal of this small guide of internal navigation is to create a process that allows for joy to flourish.
