So, recently I did a video about the... I don't even remember what the video was about, but at one point I explained that... Oh, it was about the self, I think.
And I said that the... I was ranting, I was off on a tangent that somehow related to the question, and I said that the body, for example, is unnatural.
And since then, I think three or four people at least have called me out on that and said, how can you say that the body is unnatural?
It was a wrong choice of words.
And I guess it really struck a chord with people who didn't agree with that.
But I stand by it.
And I'd like to explain myself exactly what I meant by the word unnatural.
First of all, the word unnatural is unnatural, which I've just found out makes it autological.
It's an example of itself.
In nature, or from outside of the realm of humanity, everything is natural.
So you might say that Buddhism shares that opinion, though I'm not convinced that it does.
Maybe, that the Buddha would have maybe said everything is natural.
Maybe, but maybe not.
I don't think that there's any proof either way.
But either way, the word unnatural itself
is a human construct.
So we delineate what is natural and what is unnatural.
And I think that there are two senses that we use it in.
The first is something that is perverse.
So I obviously wasn't using this definition of the word unnatural.
So if someone says that pedophilia is unnatural or... No, I don't know if that's even a good example.
Maybe eating feces is unnatural.
Something that is perverse.
What's a good example, Robin, of something that's perverse?
Do you get that sense?
Something that's unnatural?
Both of those were very perverse.
So we'd call that unnatural in a sense of... It's kind of, I suppose, Judeo-Christian in a sense of going against some godly, divine intention.
But I think in Buddhism we could at least accept that there are certain things that are perverse, and by that we mean unnatural.
The second sense is simply the human, well the first one is a human construction as well, but the second is the idea that the difference between something that is made by humans and something that exists in the natural realm, or as Buddhists we might expand that to say something that was created by a sentient being, explicitly created or intentionally, I don't know, maybe not intentionally, but
explicitly created by a sentient being.
And as we know, the reason we limit it normally to humans is that most sentient beings in this world, in this realm
don't create things.
But if we expanded it, we might say that a termite mound is unnatural.
But modern Western scientists would say, no, it's natural because it's not human-made.
So we consider that something artificial is something that is created by human beings.
It is an arbitrary distinction, but I think it's a useful one because there are clearly those things that exist outside of active, maybe you could say intentional human, I guess you'd say intentional human construction.
The body is not one such thing.
It's a key belief or theory or claim in Buddhism that distinguishes it from modern Western science, which will say that the body evolved naturally, based on natural selection.
consider that to be a limited partial explanation of how things happen.
Now indeed the environment has dictated to some extent how the human form has evolved, but the point I wanted to make is that we are in the end essentially responsible for creating
through our decisions from life to life to life, we're responsible for creating the form that we find.
And so the point, the importance of this is that without understanding it, we tend to think of the human form as being somehow the default.
The human form is
is somehow a part of what it means to exist in the universe.
And therefore, as a result, we get questions about sexuality.
We say, well, giving up sexuality, how can you do that when it's a part of nature?
It's a part of being human.
And the implication there is that somehow that means something.
Because something is a part of what it means to be human, then therefore it's natural.
And that I disagree with fervently, and that's the sort of thing I was trying to get at.
anything that you can pass off as being natural simply because it's the way humans it's what humans do eating food breathing having sexual intercourse any of these things there's no reason to think that they are in any way
I guess right or in any way the default.
They're a part of this artificial construct or artificial set of experiences that has been created through our specific repeated behavior, patterned behavior.
So by acting in a certain way we've evolved to become human beings.
And so basically the point being that the mind was partially, at least partially if not mostly, involved with the creation of the human form.
I guess it's an artificial distinction, but it means something in the sense that there's nothing to the human form that is in any way special.
Any set of experiences that are specific to humanity, for example, those involving sexuality, those involving digestion or ingestion of food,
are by no means special.
They're still just experiences.
The truth about nature is it's experience in some way.
The question of whether the six senses are intrinsic to nature is an interesting one.
Like whether there could be a seventh sense
Or any number more senses.
I imagine there could be, and I imagine the difference between, say, smelling and tasting is not really, chemically speaking, I don't think it's that different.
It's just different organs that do it.
I don't know that you could actually claim that there's anything different between the six senses.
The six senses themselves may simply be a product of the artificial state of detecting the environment.
But in any case, experience is the ultimate building block of nature.
Humanity is not a natural thing, it's an artificial construct, like a sand castle.
A human being is as natural as a sandcastle.
Sandcastle is not, by some definition, it's unnatural.
You go to the beach and you don't say, oh look what the waves did or look what formed by the wind.
It's clear that the sandcastle was put there, built intentionally, and the human form to some extent is similar, which is not nearly as obvious as the sandcastle.
especially based on modern Western science, which tries to deny that and saying that it just arose based on a series of non, of unconscious.
I mean, I guess the point is that modern science still hasn't, to my knowledge, adequately incorporated consciousness into the mix.
Although if you did, then you would say that consciousness is natural and nothing would be unnatural.
So in one sense, as I said, everything is natural.
But the only reason we use the word unnatural is to describe something that is specifically intentionally constructed by humanity.
We weren't aware.
It was unconsciously.
We weren't saying, hey, let's build a human body, obviously.
But through our choices, we have altered ourselves, is all I was trying to say.
Because it's unconscious, it may not be exactly...
No, but it's still artificial and it's still unnatural.
An unnatural thing doesn't have to be consciously created, but created through one's activities, like a garbage heap is created through one's activities or an anthill.
Even though they may not have wanted to make a hill, it's created because of the ants digging and the sand accumulates.
So because it was consciously created by sentient beings, we therefore call it unnatural.
So there's my defense, and it's an important one because it reminds us not to take the human form too seriously.
Okay.