Hi Ben again,
I have had a chance to get some sleep so let me try again from a different perspective.
Let us say a tragic event has occurred. Let us say a parent loses their child. The “natural” tendency of a human is to react by crying due to this loss. This natural human reaction occurs due to the emotional attachment of the parent which creates the sense of loss when the child dies and this motivates tears to express the sense of loss. So when a parent loses a child crying is a natural response. Not crying while uncommon is not necessarily un-natural because it may also be a coping mechanism wherein the person numbs their feelings because the emotions are too large to handle. However, if one feels the impulse to cry and forces themselves NOT to cry, from one perspective this would be an un-natural act. In this circumstance un-natural would mean to go against a spontaneously arising expression of emotion. Since crying is a healthy expression of intense emotion the act of forcing oneself not to cry could be viewed as unhealthy and therefore un-natural. Since it is a tendency for humans to seek their own higher good and they are ignoring a process that brings into being this higher good it may also be seen to be un-natural from that perspective as well.
Now, due to a person’s temperament it may common for them to suppress their emotions, in other words it may be a natural process of their temperament to resist spontaneous expressions of emotion. So in this instance the suppression of emotion may be a natural act for this individual in that they are following their personality inclinations. However, since the act involves forcing emotions down against their natural tendency to be expressed it is inherently un-natural from one perspective while natural to the individual from another.
To a person viewing the tragic event from the Absolute perspective the impulse to cry “because” of the tragic event would not necessarily occur. This would be because the event is perceived from a perspective of understanding that no one actually died; death is a natural occurrence of life, the spirit is eternal, etc. This act of not crying would be considered natural because the same event is viewed from a different perspective and under this circumstance the need for emotional expression most likely would not occur as a reaction to the death. However, this person MAY still cry. In this circumstance the crying might be caused by compassion for the sense of loss experienced by those who are unable to perceive the event from the Absolute perspective. This occurs to me at times in my practice of Nursing. When I have a patient that dies, I am many time relieved for the patient. Perhaps they were in pain, perhaps they were ready to die, perhaps they were in a vegetative state, etc. I perceive the death as a release for the patient from their suffering. However, the family members who suffer the loss perceive the event as the loss of their beloved family member. When witnessing their pain and sorrow I am often moved to tears out of compassion for the pain they are experiencing.
These illustrations demonstrate to us that an act, event or process is natural or un-natural according to the perspective one chooses to view it and the reason or motivation behind "why’ the event or process occured. Sometimes when we use the term natural we are referring to “common” processes. That is, what is most likely to occur as observed over time. If an event occurs outside the anticipate time period and is statistically unlikely to have occurred we may refer to the event as un-natural from that perspective, but once again from the perspective of the Absolute, just the fact the event occurred means it occurred naturally.
My statement: “It is not a natural process of Tao to have a strict timeline for anything” refers to processes of growth as observed over time. The example I gave of puberty is an example that illustrates the point. While puberty occurs at a generally consistent period of time within the lives of all animals, it does not occur at the “SAME” time for “ALL” individuals. Within a general time period there is a wide fluctuation as illustrated by my two high school friends who had widely differing times of puberty. One was essentially done by aged 14 while the other didn’t even begin until around 18.
In Taoist thought acts are considered un-natural when they occur out of accord with the principles of wu-wei and tzu-jan. Wu-wei may be simplistically defined as “without effort” or according to the path of least resistance, while Tzu-jan may be simplistically defined as occurring naturally, or of its own nature. According to these principles, an act that does not occur naturally is one that is contrived, that is artificially modified by an act of will. Under this definition only man or sentient beings (as far as we know) may behave out of accord with Tao. This is because we have a will that allows us to choose actions there are contrary to the natural spontaneous flow of Tao. Within this we may consider a sub-set view that it is a natural expression of man to act against the flow of Tao and therefore it is actually a natural act and not an un-natural act to behave against the flow of Tao. This is a return to the Absolute perspective. At any rate an illustration of an act out of accord with Tao, a contrived or artificial act, would be to suspend ones time of puberty using artificial means such as drugs or to stimulate the arising of puberty using artificial drugs. Since the body has a natural process and that process is artificially tampered with, in this case without an imperative medical need for it, the act may be seen as contrived, out of accord with Tao and un-natural.
