[harmonygirl]

Guille and WM, great quote battle (Tolstoy was a fav, although not as much as Doestoyevski, and of course, MG).
Guille, if we agree, I will have to check to see if Satan is iceskating to work!
WM, I actually think that one of the fundamental characteristics of humans is a drive to understand their environment and put it in context. This is true from orphans in Kenya to Nepalese monks to Spanish students. This is the reason for religion and politics and capitalism, etc. I think that our asking "why?" might just be encoded genetically. (hence the need for different forms of organization that don't seem to characterize animals or plants)
We understand different things at different points in our life, so I am not saying that once understood, the matter is resolved. There is growth, evolution, incorporating of new experiences, which result in different understandings. With your previous post, I have started to wonder if a fundamental difference between men and women is how they think (because no one I know thinks that understanding involves conquest!). Could there be a fundamental difference in the way we are hard-wired, that is not a part of social conditioning? hmmm.....I wonder.
My undestanding of the Let Go precept is that in order to obtain enlightenment, you must release yourself from desire, which brings about pain (pain of not getting as well as the pain of getting, sometimes!). I don't think that survival is incompatible with enlightenment, I mean you don't have to be sitting on a mountain top somewhere, existing on berries. You can put understanding into practice, whatever you do, however you live.
I think we are both, nature and part of nature (of course, I think everything's connected, but that's a whole other conversation)
When you say nature is immortal, do you mean it is infinite?
Don't you think that change is inevitable? If you are living, hopefully you are experiencing new things all the time, so you are synthesizing these new experiences into your awareness and hence, changing. Isn't this in our nature? I don't believe there is a problem in what is, it's just that life isn't stationary. Maybe we talk about change to consider who we want to be, what options are open to us and try to achieve balance?
Oneself is always oneself, but never the same.