Training the Heart to Be in Harmony
The following is a guest post by David Hessler, long-term student of Master Meng Zhiling, Vice Chairman of the Chinese Daoist Association and an accomplished practitioner in Daoist personal cultivation.
David hopes to bring Master Meng back to the United States in the summer of 2022. He will teach a four day seminar on Laozi or Dao De Jing. If you’re interested, please email David at: dhessler@mka.org
This is another lesson from Master Meng recorded by David Hessler. It is based on a lecture he gave at a 2018 seminar on Daoism in New York City. 明理Mingli- Understanding the Truth.
Here is a story about understanding the True nature of things:
If a dog is sitting chewing on a bone and a Cow ambles by, the dog will leave his bone and chase the cow. Cow says “Why are you chasing me?” Dog replies, “You want to take my bone.” Cow responds “no, of course not, I’m a cow!” But Dog insists and they go back and forth in this way. To a human, this argument seems funny or ludicrous. Because we know that Cow would never want to eat Dog’s bone.
If Dog and Cow would reach a higher state of consciousness, then they find it unnecessary to continue such an unnecessary argument. If only one of them was to achieve a higher state of consciousness, Cow, then the situation would play out very differently. When Dog barked at Cow, Cow would not be interested in arguing with Dog. Cow would ignore Dog’s barking and not take that aggression in to his heart.
People are the same when we argue with people. We think we’re being rational in proposing a good argument. But when we reach a higher state, we’ll stop arguing with people. It will become meaningless to try and win an argument.
This is an important part of the process of training the heart. First, we have to understand all things. Second will be the process of naturally forgetting. When you train your heart in this way, then you can go far. If you don’t, then you will only be able to see what is right in front of you. You will be incapable of making a deep change to your heart/mind.
The pre-condition to this process is to forget all of our burdens. This is a difficult process but an essential one.
Here is another story that illustrates the importance of understanding the true nature of all things and uncovering the relationship which can exist:
In the formless world, everything is in harmony. But between lions and humans there is conflict. However, is it possible that humans and lions become friendly? A lion brought up by a biologist in Africa developed a close relationship. Eventually, the biologist understood that the lion had to be released in to the wild. Over the course of three months, the lion was reintroduced to the wild and joined a pack of lions. Two years later, the biologist went back to the area. The lion smelled her and came to the clearing where the two hugged.
When we are connected spiritually to Nature and all things, then we are not in conflict. If we want to follow the Dao, then our focus should be on the spiritual world. Then we’ll be in harmony.
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