by Wu Hsin
Solving Yourself: Yuben de Wu Hsin
Translated by Roy Melvyn
Solving Yourself: Yuben de Wu Hsin
Translated by Roy Melvyn
Copyright 2013 Roy Melvyn
Summa Iru Publishing
Boulder, Colorado 80020
Table of Contents
Translator’s Preface
Welcoming
January (Dōng Yuè)
February (Là Yuè)
March (Zhēng Yuè)
April (Èr Yuè)
May (Sān Yuè)
June (Sì Yuè)
July (Wǔ Yuè)
August (Liù Yuè)
September (Qī Yuè)
October (Bā Yuè)
November (Jiǔ Yuè)
December (Shí Yuè)
Closing
“The point when the words of Wu Hsin are accepted as true and are lived spontaneously and in every aspect of daily life, is the gateway of realization.”
Translator’s Preface
In ancient China, there were certain isolated, mountainous areas in the rural regions that were known as places reserved for intense, secretive trainings. What was taught was believed to be so powerful that it was rumored that there were those who realized their true nature in a single instant.
One such place was the compound of Wu Hsin in Hunan province.
Once a year, on the day following the second full moon, the compound opened its doors for new students. Inside, they gathered to receive what was to be an initial thirty days of instruction. At the end of the thirty days, novices could opt to depart or remain for an additional eleven months.
Wu Hsin's style for this teaching was to speak numerous times during the course of a day, twice at length and other times quite sparingly. Each time was followed by a period of silence. The silence was seen as clearing away any and all conceptual processes in order to facilitate Wu Hsin's direct transmission.
In addition, on arrival, each received a scroll containing the Yuben or Compendium of the Master’s Aphorisms, which were 400 contemplatives to be used by the students. At regular times during the day, the students were responsible for making copies of the scroll for themselves and for future students.
A typical day in a student's life began with arising well before dawn, before they can see the lines in the palm of their hand. After their morning toilet duties, they gathered in the main hall where the daily Yuben was read aloud and a period of sunrise contemplation ensued.
Next came breakfast, usually rice with a modest portion of vegetables, and subsequent cleanup. Afterward, each student met individually with Wu Hsin in his quarters, where the student's understanding of the Yuben was examined.
Once dismissed, the students would attend to the garden and grounds of the property. After lunch (the main meal of the day with its leftovers constituting supper) and cleanup, there was more work in the garden, planting and harvesting, as well as repairing the buildings or other maintenance chores. Mid-afternoon, there is a second discourse by Wu Hsin in the garden followed by silent contemplation on said discourse.
The balance of the day was filled by cleaning and upkeep of the interior of the buildings. Then, as nightfall descended, the evening bell rang out to signify the work day's end.
During the evening, the student will spend an hour or more making additional copies of the Yuben. Too, they may sit in contemplation of the daily reading. Finally, late in the evening, they went off to bed.
Solving Yourself: Yuben de Wu Hsin focuses on the transcendence of the body and mind, which results in sudden insight into one's true nature. It produces an involuntary reversion to one's essence, a clear seeing that there is no place that one can call the center or a reference point here. There is nothing substantial that would allow one to declare ‘This is where I begin, this is what I really am.’
Wu Hsin's words take their stand outside any scriptures, and are sourced solely from his direct experience and subsequent realization. Its foundation was Li-shih, the interconnectedness of Noumenon and phenomena. He teaches that our true natures are always pure and luminous and that personality is an acquired add-on. Awakening occurs when we pierce through the obscurations that we have created and allow our original purity to shine forth. His words were spoken from the standpoint of the Ultimate, the non-dual reality underlying our everyday unenlightened experience of separation and division.
He assigns no value to volitional activity, yu wei. To awaken, Wu Hsin stresses the spontaneous cessation of thought, no-thought (wu nian), a non-conceptual state of mind that allows one to experience reality directly, as it truly is.
His ideas sketch out a distinctive worldview of dynamic, interactive relationships that unfold in the natural course of things. In this perspective, one can obstruct one’s inherent tendencies or open conscientiously into a more free and responsive way of engagement. The latter is the natural way of being. As such, this awakening is the natural result of seeing into this innate but hidden potential and allowing it to manifest in every moment.
He targets the self-conscious sense of separation that tends to arise out of deliberative thinking and living. His focus therein is short on the theoretical. Instead, he advises that one mustn't get distracted with philosophical or speculative thought but instead realize one’s true nature in the present moment.
One can see the obvious similarities between this approach and the Daoist notion of wei wu wei and of jnana yoga as outlined in the Bhagavad-Gita.
His unique teaching style makes frequent use of paradoxical statements aimed at jolting students out of their habitual mental processes. He is highly provocative; although he teaches briefly yet it is filled with a concise efficiency.
Those unfamiliar with Wu Hsin will discover a new source of ageless wisdom filled with pointers to one's natural essence.
Over the years, I have used the scroll for reflection on an inscription in the same fashion as was done thousands of years ago. I consider the contents of such value that I have translated them, consolidated the 400 into 366 representing them herein as a daily contemplative to create Solving Yourself. As has been the case with previous Wu Hsin translations, I have taken a bit of license in translating his words into more contemporary expression.
Those who are familiar with Wu Hsin will quickly see the Yuben to be of considerable value. The sayings can act as a stimulant; they are not so much about what Wu Hsin says but about what they evoke and how we respond.
To my way of thinking, what makes the work of Wu Hsin such a pearl of great price is that the articulation of his experience pre-dates, by many hundreds of years, the expressions of the great Channa (Ch’an) masters of the T’ang Dynasty, often considered to be the apogee of Chinese thought.
In that sense, Wu Hsin was the herald of the great insights to come.
Welcoming
The doctor prescribes the taking of herbs for a limited time. During that time, they do their work.
Likewise, our time together will be limited. However, Wu Hsin's words will not be limited. The seeds are planted and will yield fruit.
Wu Hsin's instructions will not lead you to anywhere. They lead you toward the place that you have never departed from. No religion with its requirements of intermediaries and postponement is spoken here. There is no one to wait for and no time need be waited on.
Listen to Wu Hsin and don't listen to your mind. There are two ways of listening: there is the mere hearing of words and there is the listening which catches the real significance of what is being said, the listening that requires a keen, alert mind. To the words of Wu Hsin, hearing is not enough.
It is irrelevant whether or not you agree with what is said. Truth does not require your agreement, merely your recognition.
In the da
ys ahead, there will be opportunities for questions. All the questions that have ever been submitted to Wu Hsin are wrong questions. No one has ever submitted the right question.
The right question is the last question; it leads to the end of questioning. The wrong question merely births more questions.
You come to realize what is timelessly, endlessly, present here and now. It may seem like an attainment, but it is not. You gain nothing, but only lose what wasn't yours to begin with.
The experience of stillness is not it. The experience of silence is not it. The experience of complete peace is not it.
The experiencing is it.
In a sense, the past and the unknown run in parallel. Clinging to the former makes it impossible to gain glimpses into the latter. As such, there is nothing to learn; however, there is much to unlearn.
One must have immense patience to discern this. The discernment appears in an instant, but when it appears cannot be dictated.
Those who wish to keep their illusions can do so and will remain frozen in place. Those who fear them will recede into safer illusions, while those of you who see through them move ever forward.
Clarity does not require giving up all of one's material possessions. All that is needed is to relinquish one's erroneous beliefs.
What Wu Hsin speaks about is a process of unlearning. It is the abandonment of ideas and beliefs, of all rigid forms of thought and feeling whereby the mind tries to organize its own activities into orderly compartments.
These dogmas and philosophical systems are only ideas about reality, in the same way as words are not facts but only ideas about facts. What Wu Hsin points to is the coming into direct contact with reality itself without allowing the belief systems to intervene.
We begin as a child and most often end as a child. Much of what we acquire in the interim will at some point be lost.
Therefore, let us look at the situation in a different way and decide on what really matters.
Doubt and uncertainty often lead to new points of view. Here, we admit the distinction between what is and what appears to be. We cease accepting imagination as reality.
Now, in order to examine anything thoroughly, we must be outside of it.
So, tomorrow we begin by standing outside ourselves and take a bit of time to view what's there.
January (Dōng Yuè)
1
Prior to the rising of self-consciousness, there were no wants. Now there are wants; you all want to know about death.
Why inquire regarding what happens after death? We remain unclear on what is going on right now. Let us clarify that first.
This person that you are so preoccupied with, what is it? What, in fact, is born?
This person is to the body what color and fragrance is to a flower. It comes into being when the foundation to support it appears, that is, self-conscious.
What is born, in the strictest sense, is witnessing via a body.
With the arrival of self-consciousness, this pure witnessing is obscured and all perceptions and conceptions are experienced through the seeming person.
The sounds that emanate from a musical instrument are nothing more than a movement of energy through the instrument.
Likewise, the person is nothing more than a movement of energy through the instrument, the body.
2
Narcissism is the primary interruption to Life.
When you are loving Life, the perceiving, feeling, thinking, experiencing, creating, you are aligned with it. When there is dissatisfaction, it is a call for a realignment with What-Is.
In nature, everything pulsates. It appears, it throbs and then it disappears. Heart, breath, digestion, sleep and waking, birth and death.......... everything comes and goes in waves.
Time scales may vary, be the outcome is always the same. Periodicity and the harmonious alternation between extremes is the very essence of life.
Wu Hsin cannot provide you with what you have predetermined to be acceptable. His words are not another's; they are uniquely his own, emanating in much the same way as the fragrance of a flower.
3
This inert object, this body, when combined with the Conscious Life Energy forms a Composite which is often referred to as a person. All the "I run, I sit, I sleep, I think, I remember, I worry" statements confuse the subjective with the instrument of the subject.
What is required to make a person? One needs a form and a name that refers to it. But this is not enough; otherwise, a tree would be a person.
The form with a name also needs modalities of cognition and action. But this too is not enough; otherwise, a tiger would be a person.
The final ingredient is that one needs to be a human. Only humans are persons.
See that the person is, in reality, nothing more than a verbal construct and that there is no entity as such. This is the Primal Error, assigning reality to something which is merely an idea.
4
The rabbit runs away from the fox on the hunt. It is only a body that runs, there is no one who ran.
Expanding on this, we can see that all notions of a personal self are false. An action occurred; at that moment there is only acting, but no actor. It then follows that any life of a personal self is likewise false.
The flower’s inherent response to turn toward the sun is in the essential nature of the plant. The mode of any action of any form, its behavior, is inherent in its nature. There is no entity doing anything; the organism reacts.
This self-deception, this I-am-this-body idea, can die while the body continues to live.
But there cannot be anyone to bring it about.
5
Appearances in Emptiness can never affect Emptiness. The space inside the cup is the same as the space outside the cup. Only walls, mental or physical, delineate inside from outside.
The silence preceding the words is the same silence after they are spoken. These are the offspring of the Unchanging.
Therefore, forget whatever can be forgotten. In so doing, what is revealed is that which cannot be forgotten.
One must be empty of the known to understand this. To try to incorporate it into the known is bound to fail.
6
We miss What-Is due to a lack of attention. Instead, we create something else using excessive imagination, which is like a high fever insofar as it makes you see things which aren't really there.
People have become enslaved to their thoughts. They listen and obey. They are so entranced in the world that their discrimination has atrophied. They cannot even discern the difference between diamonds and rock salt.
You are where your mind is. Escape from the thought sphere, therefore, is the imperative. It is not accomplished by killing the mind, resisting thought or similar acts.
Instead, it happens quite naturally by removing attention from thoughts. Without the energy of attention, thought dies.
7
It is suggested that nothing can change without effort.
Making tremendous efforts teaches the futility of effort. It is like trying to escape from a pit by digging downward.
Wu Hsin says no effort is required in the sense that no effort is required to be aware. Just relax, don't make an effort to relax. In that natural relaxation, what you need to know will present itself.
No one can do it for you just as no one can eat for you to appease your hunger.
8
Only what is finite can have a center.
What you are is Infinite Being, that which is without dimension.
A body and mind with desires becomes a body and a mind without desires.
If the identification continues, the problem continues.
With the cessation of imagination and desire, the drive to becoming ceases and being this or being that merges into pure being.
9
Thoughts appear as a necessary function in the human organism.
The organism does not decide to create them any more than it decides to breathe.
&nbs
p; They are sourced from that which sustains and supports the organism.
To believe that you can stop your thoughts presupposes that you initiate them.
10
Why don't you provide some sort of instruction so we can understand what must be done?
To be free from the obsession with "what's next?" is all the instruction necessary. You are waiting for the arrival of something that is already present. This is a trap with no exits other than directly seeing the construction of the trap.
