Three Layers
Man has three layers; those three layers have to be understood. The first, the deepest core, is the soul; the soul means your center of being. And the outermost circumference consists of desires. And between the two is another concentric circle, half way from both, from the outer and from the inner. It is neither outer nor inner – that is your mind.
The soul of man loves purity.
By purity Ko Hsuan always means innocence, so don’t misunderstand it with any moralistic meaning of purity because Tao does not believe in any morality or any immorality: only innocence. That’s why the child is innocent, because when he is born he is just the intrinsic center; the two circles have not yet gathered around the center. That’s why every child looks so beautiful. Have you ever come across an ugly child? It is impossible. And what happens to all the beautiful children? – because if all children are beautiful then all people should be beautiful because these same children become grown up people. But somewhere on the way they all disappear; something ugly sets in. We give them wrong circumferences; we give them wrong minds, wrong desires. We create such a dichotomy in their being that they become a crowd, not a unity. They are no more integrated beings; they become fragments. And to be fragmentary is to be ugly because you lose all harmony, and without harmony there is no beauty, no grace.
The soul of man loves purity.
If you reach to your innermost core you will suddenly find innocence arising in you, roses of innocence flowering, but his mind is often rebellious.
But the mind is not willing just to be innocent. Innocence says yes, it is trust; the mind says no, it is doubt. The mind always lives through the no, it is negative; the soul is always positive. The soul has no idea of saying no, it knows nothing about the no; and the mind knows nothing about the yes. If the mind sometimes has to say yes, it only says it unwillingly. You can watch it in yourself: whenever your mind says yes it says it unwillingly because it cannot find any way of saying no, that’s why it says yes. Yes is not spontaneous for the mind; no is spontaneous.
Watch the truth of this statement. These are not theories, hypotheses, these are simple facts. You can just watch it in yourself: the first thing that happens to your mind is no; it immediately says no – even if there is no reason to say no.
