by Wu Hsin
This is the core delusion from which the deluded world view arises.
The most treacherous aspect of the I/not-I duality is that it is mistaken for actuality.
To frame questions within this context frames questions that are inherently flawed. Answers to such questions must therefore also be flawed.
Ponder these words; more tomorrow.
The Master said:
We consider as real anything that is perceptible to the senses, and yet every imaginable thing that is sensorially perceptible must pass through an interpretation by the mind before it is cognized.
Anything that is cognized in this fashion is obviously only an appearance in the consciousness of the cognizer.
As such, all phenomena are mere appearances in space-time, perceived in consciousness.
Consciousness experiences its expressions thru the body which is one of its expressions.
In the absence of a body, can we speak of conscious experience?
Ponder these words; more tomorrow.
The Master said:
I am the origin and terminus of every thought, of every movement, as waves arise and end in water.
As every wave occurs in the ocean, all phenomena occur in me.
Just as perception illuminates objects, I am that which illuminates perception.
Whatever appears can only appear because I am. Every appearance points back to this.
Every sound occurs against the background of silence.
When the sound is finished, the silence remains. Look for it.
Every object occurs against the background of empty space.
When the object is finished, the space remains. Look for it.
Ponder these words; more tomorrow.
The Master said:
The world is nothing other than a representation of sensation. Repeating sensations create the artifact referred to as "the known". These are the sensations that you re-call.
In no small way, what you see, hear, feel, and think is based on what you expect to see, hear, feel, and think. In turn, your expectations are based on all your re-calls.
Things are objects in time and space and thoughts are objects in time. Constrained by these, how do you propose to see That which is unconstrained?
Begin by seeing your unawareness of your unawareness. Then, establish an outpost of observation outside of your personality and identity.
What you are now is what you've always been. You are that beingness.................you are.
Yet, even this Beingness, the actualization of the Potentiality, is time-bound too. All the forms, all the names, only exist in this beingness, when you are.
Lacking the moment-to-moment awareness that "you are" doesn't mean that you are not. It only means that your attention is elsewhere. So, bring it back:
What is the difference between the eyes of a statue and your own?
Both are eyes, yet some power facilitates sight in you but not in the statue. Turn your attention toward that Power, toward That.
Ponder these words; more tomorrow.
The Master said:
Enlightenment or self-realization is the apperception of an existence transcending the body.
The person does not exist apart from the world. The world does not exist apart from the body.
The body does not exist apart from the mind. The mind does not exist apart from Consciousness; and Consciousness does not exist apart from Existence.
Seeing this clearly is enlightenment.
All states seem real from a vantage point within the state.
It is only when one is outside the state, that one can evaluate the state's reality. For example, the dream is real within the dream. It is only outside dreaming that the dream can be said to be false.
In a similar sense, whatever can be known with the mind is a product of said mind. The mind does not reflect; it distorts.
One who knows that the world is not as it appears yet refuses to investigate further is guilty of willful blindness.
Ponder these words; more tomorrow.
The Master said:
In dim light, many things are seen incorrectly.
When the pure light of consciousness is dimmed by mentation, we cannot experience reality. When we change the way we look at things, things change.
If we relinquish the notion of three states, that is waking, dreaming and dreamless sleep, and replace it with the notion of One State on which these three appear and disappear, everything takes on new meaning.
Just as friction is required to begin a fire, likewise friction is required for the attainment of clarity.
This friction is brought about by investigation of the validity of one's beliefs. It is not so much that the truth is gained as it is that the false is lost.
Ponder these words; more tomorrow.
The Master said:
If one is sincere in seeking to be free, one must free oneself from these beliefs and from all hearsay that has been acquired and taken to be fact. Otherwise, that which we are attached to binds us.
The foundational or root attachment is to the idea that I am an object.
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 is merely an address. 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.
The person may continue to be there, like your shadow is there. But it is seen for what it really is.
Ponder, then ponder more.
The Master said:
Egos are different but I-am is Oneness Itself.
Rest in I-am and ego loses its hold.
Ego means "I am this".
Understanding means "I am That".
Ego will never leave you.
Therefore, you must leave it.
You do so by ceasing to make it the focus of your attention.
A fish has no idea what water is like because it has nothing to compare it to.
It is only when we move away from personality that we can see it for what it is and what it isn't.
Ponder these words; more tomorrow.
Master Wu Hsin said:
How can an illusory “self” do anything to find reality when it is itself the obstacle to its realization and any effort to end itself only strengthens its seeming selfhood?
No amount of cleaning can make a wall white, as long as one looks at it through tinted glasses.
The individual mind is akin to the tinted glasses.
Self consciousness is the source of all dissatisfaction.
When consciousness is redirected away from the personal, dissatisfaction ceases.
Now, be quiet.
Master Wu Hsin said:
Words can only take you to the limits of words. Words are not facts, they only serve to point to them.
Where words end, is the borderline to reality. You cross it at your own risk, because once crossed, the seeming you is no longer.
It's all conceptual. You look at a log cabin and say "house" and I say "wood". Is one more right than the other?
If Wu Hsin goes to Fujian, digs up some soil, puts it in a jar, and brings it home, can he show the jar when friends ask what Fujian is like?
Ponder this, more tomorrow.
Master Wu Hsin continued his discoursing:
All ideas of responsibility require someone to be responsible.
To say it another way, an individual's purpose in life is to transcend individuality.
You can only experience ideas about yourself.
You cannot experience yourself because what you are is so subtle that it cannot be experienced.
Now, more quiet.
Master Wu Hsin said:
The traits you acquire over a lifetime, the good and the bad, are not you. They are yours.
Similarly
, the mind, that lifetime's worth of impressions one has collected, is also yours.
To discern the "you" in every "yours" is clarity.
The truth is that the anterior-most I is lighter than air.
The only reason we feel earthbound is because we are holding on to something.
That thing is "me".
Stay quiet and ponder this.
Master Wu Hsin continued:
We can study the function and behavior of any organism. Why is it that only in humans do we create the concept of a person?
The person is like the music produced by the instrument.
The situation as it presents itself is that there is an organism and an entity in the organism whose thoughts, feelings, and actions are referenced as "the person".
What we are therefore suggesting is that we are possessed by the entity.
Even if this notion was left unchallenged, it begs the questions: "Where does the entity come from?"
Stay quiet and ponder this.
Master Wu Hsin continued:
How many are there who are interested in a life that is beyond the identification with the brain in the body?
When you are asleep and dreaming, your eyes are closed, but you’re having full, rich visual experience —because it’s the same process of running inside, and then you believe that you are seeing.
One of the seductive aspects of a dream is that it does not allow one to doubt its reality.
Don't be deceived.
There is Functioning and the Perceiving of the Functioning. The seen is discontinuous while that which sees stands outside of time.
Tomorrow Wu Hsin will rest.
Master Wu Hsin said:
Consciousness arises spontaneously out of Pure Potentiality, noumenon.
This spontaneous arising brings about the sense of presence, of existence.
It results in the arising of the phenomenal manifestation in consciousness, appearing as subject and object.
Unity has been split into duality.
The manifestation requires the creation of “space” and “time”: “space” in which the objects could be extended, and “time” in which the phenomenal images could be perceived, cognized and measured in terms of the duration of existence.
This is the way of things; ponder this.
The Master began to speak:
Illusion can be accepted to be part of the totality of reality only when it is recognized as illusion.
Everything happens spontaneously without some grand plan.
The flight of swans is reflected in the lake's water, but the birds do not intend to make a reflection, nor does the water intend to reflect the flight of the birds.
Our senses readily perceive diversity but fail to discern the unity in diversity.
In much the same way, it is only our minds that stand between us and our god.
When imagination ceases, unity is self evident.
Anything you try to become is a movement away from what you already are.
All attempts at attainment are egoic, an attempt to reinforce what is in fact a fragmentation.
As water need not seek to attain wetness, one need not seek to attain what one already is.
Why not take "you are not what you appear to be" as a working theory, play with it continuously and then evaluate the result?
He then rose and left the Hall.
Master Wu Hsin said:
Today, Wu Hsin will be brief.
He tells everyone the same thing: "Your fundamental premises are flawed. Until you correct them, Wu Hsin cannot help you.
Once you correct them, you are already beyond the need for my or anyone else's help".
He then rose and left the Hall.
Master Wu Hsin said:
Presence is not a decision.
Presence is Being, not being here now. No effort is required to be.
Don't pollute this beingness, your knowledge that you are, I-am.
The pollution is adding to it; I am this, I am that. This is the source of the dissatisfactions and troubles.
Bar the imaginary.
The mind can destroy its inventions, given the proper circumstances. Whatever is temporary is fathered by the imagination.
See that only what is false strives for continuity. What is true has no concern for continuity because what is true is forever.
The outcome is pure mind. Not being constrained by any taint of self-consciousness, it has nothing separate from itself and is therefore only consciousness.
Ponder this, more tomorrow.
Master Wu Hsin said:
The Being Knowing Energy manifests.
Afterward, conceptions and perceptions appear. We take them to be "outside" and this is a fundamental error. All appears inside the Being Knowing Energy.
The waking state represents diversity in manifestation.
The dream state reveals that diversity is derived from a single source. The deep sleep state reveals said source and is not different from object-free consciousness.
The three states come and go; That which knows them does not.
That eternal principle which witnesses everything and the absence of everything is shaped like the wind, colored like the sky; how can it be described?
Ponder this, more tomorrow.
Master Wu Hsin said:
When Wu Hsin declares that we are immaterial, he is not being disrespectful.
Wu Hsin is saying that we are not matter and, as such, do not go through what matter goes through: origination, growth, decay and dissolution.
We are so preoccupied with what the body and the mind are doing. Yet, neither is the true self.
The ego chases after continuity, after perpetuity. In fact, it is seeking to return to the perpetuity from which it emerged.
We fear being alone as it is experienced as one step before not-being. Yet, for those who see the unity of all things, aloneness has no meaning.
Ponder this, more tomorrow.
Master Wu Hsin said:
Something is lost when you stop thinking, and that something is “you.”
The person was not there before you were born, nor will it be there after you die.
Instead of struggling with the person, why not leave the personal altogether?
It does not mean the extinction of the person; it means only seeing it in right perspective.
Even if it is only for a single second, the experience of "no you" has the power to be life altering.
It is the very transcendence of the twin prisons of past and future.
Ponder this, more tomorrow.
Master Wu Hsin said:
Wu Hsin cannot help anyone become realized because he can't help anyone become what they already are.
Thought obscures the essential nature. Absent thought, Conscious Being shines.
There are some who fear having no thoughts, They fear they will fall apart or dissolve. But the absence of thought need not be feared.
If you know you are a man, you don't cease to be a man in the absence of thought.
Be silent and ponder this until Wu Hsin returns.
Master Wu Hsin continued:
Stillness and sensitivity facilitate the sensation of Conscious Presence in the body.
One perceives objects through the senses.
One perceives the senses through the mind.
What is it that perceives the mind?
The mind is not anything in itself. It is a function, a process. When thought and feeling are absent, the mind cannot be said to exist.
