Respect For Truth

　　There are four kinds of truth in the body of every human being: stress, its cause, its disbanding, and the path to its disbanding. These truths are like gold: No matter whether you try to make gold into a bracelet, a ring, an earring, or whatever, it stays gold in line with its nature. Go ahead and try to change it, but it”ll stay as it is. The same holds true with the nature of the body. No matter how wonderful you try to make it, it”ll have to return to its normal nature. It”ll have to have stress and pain, their cause, their disbanding, and the path to their disbanding.

　　People who don”t admit the normal nature of the body are said to be deluded; those who realize its normal nature are said to know. Wise people realize the principles of nature, which is why they don”t get caught up in a lot of fuss and confusion. In other words, the body is like an object that originally weighs four kilograms. Even though we may find things to plaster onto it to make it heavier, the plaster will eventually have to fall off and leave us with the original four kilograms. You simply can”t escape its original nature.

　　The stress and pain that occur in line with the principles of nature aren”t actually all that troublesome. For example, pain and disease: If we try to fight nature and not let there be disease, or if we want it to disappear right away, sometimes we make the disease even worse. But if we treat the disease without worrying about whether or not it”ll go away, it will follow its natural course and go away at its own pace without too much trouble or suffering on our part. This is because the mind isn”t struggling to fight nature, and so the body is strong enough to contend with the disease. Sometimes, if we have this attitude, we can survive diseases that otherwise would kill us. But if the mind gets all upset and thrashes around, wanting the disease to go away, then sometimes a small disease can get so bad it”ll kill us — like a person with a scorpion sting he thinks is a cobra bite, who gets so frightened and upset that the whole thing gets out of hand. Sometimes we may come down with a disease that ought to finish us off, but the power of the mind is so great that it fights off the pain and the disease goes away.

　　This is one of the principles of nature — but we shouldn”t be complacent about it. If we get complacent, then when the disease comes back it”ll be worse than before, because the truth, when you get right down to it, is that no matter what you do, these things can”t escape their true nature. When the body”s normal nature is to have pain and stress, then try as you may to make the pain go away, it”ll have to return to its true nature. Whether or not you can cure it, the truth is still the truth. In other words, even when you cure the disease, it comes back.

　　Suppose, for instance, that we feel ill, take some medicine, and feel better. We think the disease has gone away. People of discernment, though, realize that it hasn”t gone anywhere. It”s simply been suppressed for a while and then it”ll have to come back out again. We may think that we”ve made the disease go away, but the disease is smarter than we are. When it comes back again, it wears a new costume, like actors in a theater troupe: If the public gets tired of one play, they put on another. Otherwise, no one will spend money to watch them perform. In other words, the disease is smart enough to come from a new direction. If it put on the old play, it wouldn”t get any reward. At first it came in your stomach, so this time it comes in your leg. You treat it until it goes away, but then it comes back in a new play — in your eye. You treat it in your eye until it goes away, and then it comes back in your ear. So you treat your ear. Wherever it comes, you k…

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