If I were asked to distill the path of practice into one simple phrase, it would be: letting go.
Letting go is the heart of the contemplative life, yet it is not a single act. It deepens over a lifetime, from loosening a tight grip to seeing that there was never anyone gripping at all.
In the Returning to Nature framework, practice centers on uninvited events: whatever arises in body, speech, mind, and world without our choosing it. A pain, a memory, a flash of irritation, a sound from the street. We usually meet these events with a grip of some kind, either pushing them away or reaching to keep them. Letting go is the movement of returning them to nature, to the source they came from. Nature here means more than the natural world. That source is also our own original nature.
This guide describes four depths of that movement, resting on a common ground. They are offered as a map of how letting go tends to mature, not as a ladder to climb. To make the map easier to hold, we will use the image of a boat on a river.
The boat on the river
Imagine yourself in a small boat on a wide river. For most of our lives we row hard, often against the current, trying to get somewhere and trying to keep things from hitting the hull.
The river keeps bringing things downstream toward us: branches, debris, a floating blossom, and sometimes another boat. These are the uninvited events of our lives. Some are pleasant and some are not, but none of them asked our permission. Our habit is to grab the oars and fend them off, or to steer hard toward the ones we want.
Each depth of letting go changes our relationship to the oars. At first we simply ease our grip. Later we lift the oars from the water and look closely at what is happening. Then the oars stay shipped (drawn into the boat) and the boat drifts with the water until the water seems to still. Finally we discover that the river has been carrying the boat all along. Beneath all of it, the water is holding the boat up.
The ground: Settling
The water holds the boat.
Before any rowing or not rowing, the boat is already floating. Nothing we do holds it up. Settling is feeling that support.
Settling follows the classical pattern of heaven, earth, and person. The body settles down into the sit bones and whatever they rest on, aligning with gravity. Just as strongly, the crown of the head floats upward, as if drawn toward the sky. The person is the interplay of these two, the experience of being drawn down and lifted up as it occurs moment to moment. Nothing needs to be achieved here. We are only noticing that we are already held from below and drawn from above.
Settling is not a first step that we leave behind. It is the ground beneath every depth. It is also where the grip first becomes visible. Many of us do not realize how hard we have been holding until the body begins to align and let its weight down. Whenever practice turns tight or effortful at any depth, we come back to the feeling of the water holding the boat.
Depth one: Meeting
Easing the grip on the oars.
At the first depth, we stop fighting what arrives. Something drifts toward the boat, and instead of fending it off we let it come and touch the hull.
An uninvited event is greeted as a guest rather than an intruder. We soften around it and, where we can, savor it, discovering that even a difficult sensation has texture and life. Chanting a mantra or the name of a buddha often works at this depth too, its steady rhythm loosening the hands on the oars. When something is too strong to welcome, we come back to Settling and let the water hold the boat. That is part of the practice, not a retreat from it.
Who is letting go here? It feels like I am. I am choosing to soften and choosing to welcome. Don’t worry, that is fine. Nearly everyone begins with this kind of effort.
Practices that often open this depth: Welcoming, Befriending, Softening (and Savoring), Chanting.
The pitfall: tolerating what arrives while privately waiting for it to leave. Welcoming with a hidden agenda is still a grip, only a more polite one.
Depth two: Seeing Through
Lifting the oars and looking.
At the second depth, we lift the oars out of the water. Almost at once we catch ourselves rowing again, so we notice and lift them again. In the pauses, we look closely at what is actually happening.
Interrupting is the simplest form of this. A train of thought or reaction is stopped in its tracks, and in the gap there is a moment of open, unknowing awareness. Inquiring and investigating turn that gap into a question. Where does this anger come from, and where does it go when it fades? Who is the one rowing?
When we look sincerely, we cannot find a solid source or a fixed destination for what arises. We cannot find the rower either. This depth leads to not finding, and the not finding is the point.
Who is letting go here? It still seems to be me. But the one doing it has become a question rather than a certainty.
Practices that often open this depth: Interrupting, Inquiring, Investigating where it comes from and goes to.
The pitfall: turning looking into a new kind of rowing. Inquiry can harden into straining, or into a mechanical repetition of a question that no longer asks anything.
Depth three: Resting
The boat drifts and the water stills.
At the third depth, the oars are shipped and they stay shipped. We are no longer looking for anything. The not finding of the previous depth is simply allowed to be, without being turned into a new object to hold.
The boat drifts and its wake fades. As the water calms, it begins to reflect the sky. This is what the Chan teacher Hongzhi called silent illumination (mozhao): silence and clarity together, with neither one sought. In the Zhuangzi, Yan Hui calls it sitting and forgetting (zuowang), letting body and knowledge fall away until he merges with the great pathway.
Non-abiding belongs here. Nothing is pushed away, and nothing is taken up as a resting place, not even stillness itself.
Who is letting go here? No one seems to be actively doing it. Letting go is happening by itself. Yet it feels as if there is still, quietly, someone resting.
Practices that often open this depth: Non-abiding, Silent illumination (mozhao), Sitting and forgetting (zuowang).
The pitfall: stillness without clarity. Chan teachers warned against sitting like a dead tree, in a blank and comfortable calm with no illumination in it. The water stills in order to reflect, not to go dark.
Depth four: Returning
The river carries the boat.
At the fourth depth, we discover that the river has been carrying the boat all along. Our rowing never moved it as much as we believed, and our resting was never what held it.
Here, what arises is given back to the source it came from. The Daodejing describes this movement: all things flourish, and each returns to its root. It goes on to say that returning to the root is called stillness, so the stillness of Resting was already part of this return.
The Korean Seon teacher Daehaeng Sunim taught this as entrusting: returning everything, pleasant and painful alike, to Juingong, the true foundation that lives through each of us. In the language of this framework, we return it to nature. A request is set on the water and released, and an offering is made without keeping a receipt. With a bow, lower the head and hand back whatever we were carrying, including our regrets and our grievances.
The one who entrusts is entrusted too. Resting still had someone resting, and Returning gives that one back as well.
Who is letting go here? The question stops having a clear answer. Nature is returning to nature. What is uncovered here is that we and nature are functioning together as one fabric. We are not standing apart, handing things over to it. We are woven into it, and we are learning how to let it feel vividly through us and let its function unfold.
Practices that often open this depth: Requesting, Prostrating (repenting and forgiving), Entrusting, Offering.
The pitfall: a quiet watcher in the stern who guards the entrusting, making sure nothing interferes. That watching is itself a subtle grip. When we notice the watcher, we entrust the watcher too.
Depths, not steps
The four depths are not stages to be completed in order, our nature is already complete and can be recognized at once. The depths describe how letting go tends to mature in experience, not rungs we must climb before we are allowed to recognize it.
Any practice can be done at any depth. A mantra can be chanted with white knuckles or as a complete entrusting. An inquiry can be a strained search or an open question handed to nature. The practices are vehicles, and the depths describe how fully the vehicle has been surrendered.
In practice, we move among the depths within a single sitting, sometimes within a single breath. A hard day may call us back to Meeting, and that is not a failure. Each depth is a complete doorway to the same nature, and Settling is always available beneath them.
Three practices through the depths
The clearest way to see the depths is to follow a single practice as it matures. Here are three examples.
Settling
Because Settling is the ground, it shows up at every depth, and it changes as it goes.
Meeting: We let the weight of the body down into the sit bones and let the crown float up, welcoming whatever we find in between, perhaps tight shoulders or a restless belly. Settling is something we do, gently and on purpose.
Seeing Through: We look at the holding itself. Where exactly is the tension? When a knot releases, where does it go? We look for the person standing between heaven and earth and find only the interplay itself.
Resting: We stop settling. Earth draws the body down and heaven draws the crown up, with nothing left for us to manage between them, the way a reed stands upright in still water.
Returning: The body is entrusted to being held. It was never we who held it down or lifted it up; earth and heaven were doing that all along, and the person was simply their interplay. Even the wish to be more settled is given back.
Chanting
Chanting a mantra or the name of a buddha is often a practitioner’s first doorway, and it can travel all the way through.
Meeting: The sound soothes. Its rhythm gives the restless mind something kind to lean on, and the grip loosens.
Seeing Through: Attention turns to the sound itself. Where does each syllable arise, and where does it vanish? In the space between syllables, who is chanting?
Resting: Sound and silence are no longer separate. The chanting continues without being held or pushed, the way the boat drifts once the oars are shipped.
Returning: The chanting becomes an offering, and the one chanting is offered along with the sound. Chanted this way, the name of a buddha comes can uncover what Pure Land teachers mean by entrusting to other-power.
Requesting and entrusting
A request is a simple prayer or wish, such as “Please help what needs to happen be seen clearly” or “What seems best?” The openness of the request matters. “Please make this pain go away” grips at an outcome, while “What seems best?” opens the hands.
Meeting: The request acknowledges what is here. “This is present, and I am not pushing it away.” Asking is itself a way of welcoming.
Seeing Through: The request becomes a genuine question with no answer prepared. Asking “what seems best?” and then truly not knowing works much like inquiry.
Resting: After asking, we do not wait for a reply. The question is left open in stillness, the way ripples from a dropped stone settle back into calm water.
Returning: The request is released as soon as it is made, and the one who asked is offered along with the question. Whatever comes is received as nature’s response.
Returning is not drifting
The image of a river carrying a boat can sound passive, as if the deepest letting go means checking out of life. It does not. Daehaeng Sunim was emphatic that entrusting is lived in the middle of ordinary work and family life, not apart from it.
A boat with no one rowing still moves, and it can even raise a sail. A sailor does not push the boat; the wind does that. The sailor’s part is to trim the sail and keep a light hand on the tiller, moving with the wind and current rather than against them. This is the way Cook Ding’s knife in the Zhuangzi found the natural spaces in the ox without ever forcing the blade. All the power comes from nature, and the response is still precise.
Returning to nature includes responding. When someone needs help, we help. When something needs to be said, we say it. What changes is where the response comes from: not from a rower straining against the river, but from the river itself.
The raft and the empty boat
The Zhuangzi tells of a man crossing a river when another boat drifts into his. If the other boat is empty, he does not get angry, even if he has a short temper. If someone is sitting in it, he shouts at them to steer clear, and when they do not answer he shouts again and starts to curse. The collision is the same. What changes is whether anyone is there.
Zhuangzi’s teaching is to empty our own boat. With no one aboard, there is no one to be bumped and no one to do the bumping. This answers the last pitfall of Returning. The final step is not becoming a better passenger, but finding that no passenger was ever needed.
The Buddha offered a related image in his parable of the raft. A traveler builds a raft to cross a river, and on reaching the far shore he sets it down rather than carrying it on his head. The practices in this guide are rafts, meant to be used fully and then set down.
The raft points to letting go of the method. The empty boat points to letting go of the one using it. Between them lies the whole of this path: settling into the water that already holds us, and returning what arises, along with the one it arises to, back to nature.
The boat, the river, the wind, and the one who seemed to be rowing were never separate. This is the fabric uncovered at the fourth depth. Practice is learning to let it move through us, until its feeling and its function are simply our own life.