The Supreme Doctrine - neo-alchemist

SEEING INTO ONE’S OWN NATURE
dreaming, or at a moment when I am meditating, I must suspend my activity
in order to achieve it; I must suspend that which is my life of that moment,
and stop living. If, on the contrary, I want to perceive my state of existence at
a moment when I have real concrete occupation I realise that I can do so
without interrupting my action, that I can feel myself even in the middle of
my action. The imaginative film that I have in my mind when I am paying
attention to the present outside world is an accurate reflection of this world; it
is reactive; it is the outside world which determines it. This reactive
imaginative film does not hinder my perception of my state of existence; it is
like a wheel which turns with the regular rhythm of the cosmos and at the
centre of which my attention can direct itself to the perception of my state of
existence at this moment. Every active imaginative film, on the contrary,
fabricated by my mind without contact with the present outer world, forbids
me the perception of my state of existence. The inner work is, then,
incompatible with sleep, with day-dreaming, and with meditative reflection;
it is only compatible with life that is adapted to the present concrete world.
Thus are we able to understand why Zen masters have so often repeated
that 'the Tao is our daily life'. A monk one day asked his master to instruct
him in Zen; the master said to him: 'Have you had your breakfast, or not?' 'I
have had it,' replied the monk. 'Very well then, go and wash your dishes.' Zen
says also: 'When we are hungry, we eat: when we are sleepy, we lie down;
where in all that does the finite or the infinite come in? It is only when the
intellect, fertile in restlessness, comes on the scene and takes command that
we cease to live and that we imagine that we lack something.'
The inner task consists in an effort of decontraction, in a non-action
opposed to our reflex inner agitation; it is a simplicity opposed to our natural
complexity; and Zen insists often on this simplicity, this relaxation.
Sometimes then we come to think that the inner task should be easy, that we
do not have to take trouble; on account of our ignorance of the non-action we
believe that it is only in order to 'do' something that we have to take trouble.
Let us try, however, to decontract our whole body and to maintain it in a state
of complete decontraction for five minutes; we will see then what trouble we
must take to remain vigilant, without which one group of muscles or another
will quickly slip back into a state of tension. That is why Zen, if it often
recalls the simplicity of the inner task, says also: 'Inner peace is only to be
had after a bitter fight with our personality.... the fight should rage with
extreme force and virility; otherwise the peace which follows will only be a
97