Nature, Nurture and Natural
Nature: innate essence.
Natural: according to nature; not caused by humans.
We marvel at nature’s natural cycles, forgetting that we are nature with natural cycles of birth, dwelling, old age and death. Our innate nature/essence is pure consciousness, the same as all sentient beings. To live naturally, we have to live in balanced harmony with nature around us; manipulating and interfering with nature and our natural open mind causes imbalance. This is different from cultivating, which is preparing the soil – the field of the mind.
Greed and desire bring about over-stimulation, over-manipulation and over-exploitation. This manifests in body and mind as fear of poverty, all because we ignore our true essence of pure consciousness. When we interfere with nature by manipulating through selective nurture, we create suffering.
Nurturing: feeding belief … interfering with nature.
Manipulating: skilful interference with nature … or the mind.
Cultivating: preparing the soil … putting the mind in good order.
We put our mind in good order through the non-dual clarity of meditation.
Once we wake up to our nature, this realisation is ever-expanding.
Religion is man-made nurture.
The pure spirit of uncontaminated consciousness is natural.
BUDDHA IN THE MUD is a blog - a living book based on the Dzogchen teachings. Our teacher is life, and life is karma. We are all Buddhas in the mud of concepts. 
Which indigenous people world-wide know and have always known. The Buddha was just getting back to nature, and his followers made a religion of him, and so it was said, “If you meet the Buddha on the road don’t even pause to say hello.”
The Buddha wasn’t Buddhist 🙂