Behind the Mind
Page 9
This is the root error. If it is not here now, then it lacks permanence. Haven't you had enough of chasing after the impermanent?
Attention liberates. From moment to moment, you chose what you attend to. If you choose the outflow of the mind or the appearance of the world, you take them to be real.
But neither can take you to the Real.
Let all sit in silence.
Master Wu Hsin continued:
Imagine a world without humans. It has birds and cows, cats and dogs, and hundreds of thousands of other organisms. Each behaves according to its nature.
There is not a single person.
Now introduce humans into the mix. They too, behave according to their nature.
Seeing this mix still devoid of a single person is clarity of sight.
Let all sit in silence.
Master Wu Hsin continued:
The idea of a permanent self is a conceptual fiction.
Too, adopting such a view leads to accepting the validity of notions such as ‘I,’ ‘me,’ and ‘mine’ with deleterious effects for well being.
In that sense, attachment to such a fictional ‘I’ is the root cause of a range of negative emotions, including selfishness, craving, hatred, conceit, and ill-will.
What is the true condition is that there is no subject that sees the other as an object.
There is only seeing, which is functioning as an aspect of the Potentiality.
Ponder these words; more tomorrow.
Master Wu Hsin began:
There is only an appearance of there being many different objects.
This appearance is one that is generated by the subjective mind, which holds itself in isolation from everything that it perceives as being outside of itself.
The world one experiences is tailored by one's beliefs.
How can it possibly be claimed to be real?
Let all sit in silence.
Master Wu Hsin continued
“To know the world, you remove your attention from its support.
To know the support, you remove attention from the world.
The preoccupation with the world is merely one’s love of narrative. Cease all worry regarding the world.
Until you can admit that the world is your own creation, you need not worry about the world.
Once you make the admission, the world takes care of itself.
Ponder this; more tomorrow.
Wu Hsin said:
“To continue, the process of phenomenal manifestation depends on the media of space and time.
In the absence of space, no object’s volume could become apparent.
Likewise, in the absence of time, no thing could be perceived without the duration necessary to make the object perceivable.
The process of phenomenal manifestation, therefore, takes place in this unique media.
Objects become appearances in consciousness.
They are perceived and cognized by consciousness, through an instrument that serves as its host.
This host is the body.
Therefore, consciousness becomes embodied within duality in order to perceive its diverse expressions.
Ponder this; more tomorrow.
Master Wu Hsin began:
You are not your thoughts.
The thoughts come to you in the same way that rain falls on you.
Nor are you a thinker.
In the absence of thought, you remain.
You are not a doer, an actor.
In the absence of action, you remain.
Let all sit in silence.
Master Wu Hsin continued:
When you direct attention to how you, the organism, function and behave, it gradually becomes clear that most of the function and behavior is mechanical and automatic.
You begin to realize that the person you have taken yourself to be is a fiction.
This person is like the music produced by the instrument. Or it could be stated that like the tartness in a lime or the sweetness of honey, the person is merely the quality or expression of the organism.
The individual is really a series of interconnected processes working together that give the appearance of being a single, separated whole.
Let all sit in silence.
Master Wu Hsin continued:
Do we possess an individual self or soul that is separate from our physical biology or are we simply an enormously complex biological network that mechanically produces our hopes, aspirations, dreams, desires, humor, and passions?
A name and a form are merely an address.
It is there, like your shadow is there in daylight. Give it the same attention that you give to your shadow.
What occupies the address is what is important. When you are alive and conscious, but no longer self-conscious, your days of personhood will have ended.
Ponder this; more tomorrow.
Master Wu Hsin began:
Consciousness is immovable omnipresence.
It goes to nothing, everything comes to it.
When beckoned, time comes, space comes, here and now begin.
Consciousness is no thing.
This is difficult to grasp because your frame of reference is of things.
Presently, you are like the moon, believing your light is your own.
Identity is the "who I am" whereas personality is the "how I am".
Body, senses and mind are not always with you.
Therefore they are not integral to the essence.
It is only self consciousness that sleeps and awakens and it is not that which decides to sleep and awaken.
It arises and sets outside of its own control.
Body identification is a habit; as it had a beginning, it can have an end.
Ponder this; more tomorrow.
Master Wu Hsin began:
Root mind is comprised of I-am and There-is.
Essential Nature, Conscious Being, is prior to these.
Conceptual mind is I-am-this and There-is-that.
The flaw is that we allowed conceptual mind to define what is real.
Yet, what is real is prior to concepts of any kind.
There is no me and you.
There is only Me as you.
There is only Me as this, as that.
There is only Me.
Ponder this; more tomorrow.
Master Wu Hsin began:
The entire manifestation exists only in consciousness.
The process would be that consciousness arises out of Awareness.
The Actuality appears from the Great Potential, as would be its nature.
In consciousness the world appears and disappears.
Consciousness is the witnessing of whatever happens.
Let us be clear.
Wu Hsin is not saying that the world does not exist.
It exists, but solely as an appearance in consciousness.
In that regard, its so called existence is temporal.
The world can be said to appear, but not be.
Ponder this; more tomorrow.
Master Wu Hsin began:
Wu Hsin declares “I am’ alone is; and not “I am so and so”, or “I am such and such”.
Particularized existence is a gross reduction of What-Is.
When we give up all thoughts except for "I am", are we not peaceful?
Now give up even the "I am" thought and see what remains.
Ponder this; more tomorrow.
The Master entered and sat himself when disciple Qin Qing approached, made his salutation and then began:
“Master, I have some questions”…………..
Wu Hsin interrupted him.
All questions are premature at his time.
It is indicative that your consideration of my words has not been sufficient in either depth or duration.
When the contemplation has been full and complete, there will be no questions.
Entrust these matters to silence.
Silence is the great solvent that dissolves all questi
ons
He then rose, clapped his hands together and said:
Ponder this; more tomorrow.
Master Wu Hsin began:
Let us continue this inquiry into the world.
The world is nothing but perceptions, thoughts, intuitions and feelings.
Where do they appear?
Where does experience happen?
When you perceive an elephant, the perception is held in your mind.
The weight of the elephant does not place any strain on the mind, because it is only an image.
In this regard, all perceptions are mere images.
An evidence based inquiry reveals the insubstantiality of it all.
It then becomes clear and obvious.
First listen to me.
Think over it deeply and imbibe it. Constantly think about it.
This brings you closer to ending your climbing up the stairs of endless doubt.
Ponder this; more tomorrow.
The Master began:
The first card in the house built of cards is self consciousness, the thought "I am this body". What most take for this "I" is solely identity plus personality.
The body and world rises only when the mind rises, exists only so long as the mind exists, and vanishes when the mind sets.
Therefore, is there a world apart from the mind?
Without the body, the world does not exist.
You have confused yourself with your uniform.
That which knows itself is embodied in the organism.
The body is the instrument through which Consciousness experiences its manifestation.
It is the window of Consciousness, so to speak.
This manifestation requires the media of time and space. Consciousness resides outside of both and is therefore not knowable as some thing to be known.
Ponder this; more tomorrow.
The Master began:
The true state of Being remains empty, fixed and silent.
All movement occurs in it.
But we ignore the former and focus solely on the latter.
However, we forget that the latter is impossible without the former.
When every "this" and "that" has been absorbed into "I", we see things as they really are.
Ponder this; more tomorrow.
The Master began:
The person is the Primary Distortion.
Therefore, anything experienced through the person must be distorted.
This person is a shadow of the Self.
We refer to it as my self.
When we ask "How do I take care of this body?", we infer a relationship between the "I" and the body.
Therefore, they are not the same.
It is clear that the body is an object.
The issue for investigation is "What is this 'I'?"
Ponder these words; more tomorrow.
Master Wu Hsin began:
Wherever one goes, "I" is always present.
What is this "I"?
This is the basis for the investigation.
However, the investigation must not start out looking for what we expect to find or for what we're told we'll find or for what we hope to find.
In that regard, we cannot define the target to be that which we have successfully hit.
Now stay silent.
Wu Hsin broke the silence.
The core confusion is the entanglement of Knowing with known actions of personality.
For true awakening, witness and witnessed must resolve into Witnessing.
Until then, duality continues.
Understand that personality is objectively observable; it can be discerned via the observation of behavior.
That which observes it is not it.
In that regard, the attention must move from the objective to the subjective for all to be made clear.
By way of further clarification, witnessing is not an experience.
Witnessing is the registration of the presence or the absence of experience.
In it, everything that happens is registered, including the happening referred to as "me".
Ponder these words; more tomorrow.
Master Wu Hsin began:
Conscious Existence is one's natural condition.
So-called states are add-ons to it.
Conscious Existence plus waking, we call waking.
Conscious Existence plus sleep, we call sleep and Conscious Existence plus dream, we call dream.
Conscious Existence emerges from the Primordial and returns to It.
It arises and sets with time and space.
It is therefore important not to lose sight of the fact that even Conscious Existence is not the final destination.
In that regard, any notion of attainment contains an inherent flaw: there is nothing to attain.
You can't attain what you already have.
Ponder these words; more tomorrow.
Master Wu Hsin began:
As long as one believes that they are finite and temporary, then death is their logical outcome. But what is death to the Infinite Timeless?
Therefore, there should be no preoccupation with the notion of an afterlife.
Death is the content of the afterlife. Our interests must focus on the after-death.
We want to transition from believing in our frail mortality to being immortal.
Seeing one's blindness is the first step in restoring this clarity of vision.
Now, be silent.
After a time, the Master continued:
Every thing is attached to "I".
Detaching every thing from "I" allows what remains to fully reside in that one true, anterior nature which is the source of all worlds and the seeming selves contained therein.
When there is a commitment to the investigation, one's personal chaos becomes one's question insofar as one must ask "Whose chaos is this?"
It should not be misunderstood to be an exchange of bad for good or sadness for happiness. These are two sides of the same coin.
The intended outcome of the investigation is to throw away the coin.
Ponder these words; more tomorrow.
Master Wu Hsin began:
The true state of Being remains empty, fixed and silent; all movement occurs in it.
But we ignore the former and focus solely on the latter, forgetting that the latter is impossible without the former.
What-Is is This-Here-Now, Conscious Being.
Any This-Here-Now that refers to appearances soon becomes That-There-Then and is revealed to be false.
Likewise, the time bound false self points back to the Eternal Self.
When every "this" and "that" has been absorbed into "That", we see things as they really are.
Ponder these words; more tomorrow.
The Master said:
Only I am.
The dualities of seer and seen resolve into Seeing; hearer and heard into Hearing, etc.
All perceivers and perceptions, all conceivers and conceptions, are objects only.
That which cognizes the object assumes that it is the subject of the cognition for other objects, in a world external to itself, and this cognizing subject regards its pseudo-subjectivity as constituting an independent, autonomous entity.