In the course of human life it is inevitable to experience things. Things are manifold, not up to one person alone.
A bird that nests on one branch in the forest would be lost in a roosting flock; an animal that fills its belly drinking from a river does not go seeking in the ocean.
Finding it in things outside and understanding it in yourself within, you realize you have your lot in life and you do not strive for what is not in your lot. You take care of things that are appropriate and do not take up things that are not appropriate.
If you take up things that are not appropriate, this damages your intellectual power. If you strive for what is beyond you, this wears out your body. If you are psychologically and physically uneasy, how can you reach the Way?
For this reason, nothing is better for people who cultivate the Way than to resolutely simplify things. Discern whether they are inessential or essential, assess whether they are trivial or serious, distinguish whether to eliminate them or take to them. Whatever is not essential and not serious should be abandoned.
It is like when people consume wine and meat, dress in silk, enjoy fame and prestige, and possess gold and jewels. These are all excess cravings of subjective desire, not good medicines to enhance life. The masses all pursue these things, bringing about their own death or ruination. If we reflect on this quietly, we see how very confused they are.
Chuang-tzu said, “Those who arrive at the truth of life do not strive for anything that has nothing to do with life.” What has nothing to do with life is anything excessive. Simple food and old clothes are enough to take care of essential life; who do you need wine, meat, and silk for your life to be complete?
So whatever is not necessary for life should be eliminated, and so should anything that is excessive beyond the needs of life. Possessions have an injurious energy, which hurts people when it builds up. Even if you have few possessions, you still worry about them; how much the more when you have a lot!
If you tried to shoot a sparrow with a jewel, people would laugh at you; how much the more ridiculous it is to turn your back on the Way and virtue, slight nature and life, and shorten your life span by pursuing inessentials!
If we compare fame and prestige to the Way and virtue, fame and prestige are artificial and base, whereas the Way and virtue are real and noble. If you can tell the noble from the base, you should get rid of the one and take the other, not hurting your body on account of fame, not changing your will on account of prestige. Chuang-tzu said, “One who loses himself by working for fame is no gentleman.”
The Scripture on the Western Ascent says, “Embrace the fundamental, keep to unity.” Spiritual immortalists who go to excess cannot keep to unity; they just sit in offices of glory. If you are not selective, everything you come in contact with will burden your mind and dull your intelligence; your practice of the Way will be defective.
As for those who deal with matters calmly and serenely, who are in the midst of things without being burdened, they are among those who have attained realization. If you say you are unburdened without really having attained it, you are really only fooling yourself.
Treatise on Sitting Forgetting