Solving Yourself
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Thoughts, feelings and actions arise and set in their cycles, creating a sense of continuity which is interpreted as "person". This "person" is then localized in time and space as "my body".
Can you discern the distortions that this fragmentation breeds?
You can't be what you are on a part time basis. What you are you always are; what you aren't comes and goes.
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This "you" that you take so much pride in, has no more autonomy than your heart.
Each becomes a self to itself and each becomes another to another. It is all mental, with nothing attained; a thief entering an empty house does not gain anything, and the house does not lose anything.
The urge to define yourself causes you to limit yourself, since the unlimited defies description.
Presently, you have lost your identity with subjectivity and replaced it with the shadow of subjectivity, the individual.
For most people, their mind is their teacher, preacher, and master. They believe it, obey it, and work unceasingly in its service.
See the phenomenal world as a unity whole, not as someone in the world separate and distinct from the rest of it.
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One speaks of what the individual experiences as his or her body and mind. But neither are external to this individual.
What the individual experiences as an external environment, is it really external?
What knows the body cannot be the senses because the senses are part of the body; likewise, what knows the mind must be outside of the mind.
Although it permeates time and space, this Knowing is not limited to time and space.
Your existence is its own proof. Nothing outside of you can prove it because you must be there first to verify the thing outside.
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Nothing exists by itself other than Self. What is Self remembrance other than self-forgetfulness?
The state of deep sleep provides the taste of the unity. Death, as the cessation of the known, is the total returning.
Every man fears this Nothingness, because when he comes into contact with it, he becomes it in the same way as flame engulfs whatever it touches.
Then, he is no longer something distinct.
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The drive for certainty inhibits investigation. One wants confirmation of one's beliefs, not doubts. Thus, the pursuit of the opiate of certainty.
Non-investigation is the string on which all beliefs are strung. It is this very inaction that reveals how comfortable you are in the cell you have built for yourself.
Admittedly, the beliefs make the cell comfortable and secure; but it is a cell nonetheless.
Most who seek to be free of their cell have simply relocated to another.
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It is only the seeking that prevents the finding. Therefore, one must avoid creating obstacles.
Remove all which has been preventative. Remove every imaginative memory of the past, up to this present moment, and one is without personal identity: not even a name for oneself.
This removes the preoccupation with shadows, the enslavement to one's self-image.
Then, one discerns that eternal and infinite life which is not identified with the "you" or the "me".
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What knows the body? That which knows the body is other than the body.
What knows the mind? That which knows the mind is other than the mind.
What knows these?
Knowing knows. It is expressed as clarity. What is clarity?
It is the revelation of that which had been previously hidden or obscured coupled with the cessation of distortion.
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Understand that if one flower bud opens when the sun rises and another does not, it is due to the preparedness of the flower and not to any partiality of the sun.
To come to Wu Hsin is to prepare to open.
Today you are asked "How can one be free while enslaved to one's beliefs?
Does one need to believe in sunshine or is it an acknowledged fact?
Wu Hsin frees you from the belief in "you".
This is his great magic.
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Preoccupation with the past is the study of echoes.
Preoccupation with the future is the exercise of imagination.
The view of a life as an individual's life is pure imagination, because the individual is pure imagination.
Therefore, when you speak to Wu Hsin about "your life", he understands that you are talking of your dreams.
Not even Wu Hsin can make you into what you already are.
Acquisition or loss does not change you; it only changes your image of yourself.
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When one is full, one cannot be filled. Listening to Wu Hsin filled with thoughts, filled with concepts, one cannot understand.
Wu Hsin's task is to point out what is, not to satisfy man's endless curiosities.
What you seek is so near you, that there is not even any space for the introduction of a way to it.
What-Is is simplicity itself. All there is is the functioning of the expressions in consciousness and the observance of these expressions.
To add anything more is to build a narrative. The builder of the narrative becomes the narrative.
Then, all is lost.
The potential actualizes into manifest being: human being, water buffalo being, dog being, tree being.
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There is no beyond to be taken to.
There is only before:
before beliefs,
before ideas and concepts,
before stories and histories,
before imaginations,
before words,
before language,
before projections,
before emotions,
before sensations,
before feelings,
before love and hate,
before good and evil,
before every this and every that.
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Whatever is conceivable lies latent in the Potentiality. Whatever the Absolute conceptualizes, appears.
This is the mechanism of manifestation, the expressions of the Absolute.
Consciousness is the screen on which the stream of images appear. It is the light that illuminates the images and it is the content of the stream. It is the observing of the rise and fall of all things.
It is invulnerable.
What damages can the reflections cause to a reflective surface?
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Everything is an object, either material or mental.
Each object points back to the subject that perceives it. Yet, one fails to follow the pointer to that which it indicates.
Instead, these phenomena contaminate the mind, making it unable to discern what is real from what is mere appearance.
Whatever is momentary is mere appearance.
One who seeks the essence must discard all that is non-essential.
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Any world based on self-consciousness is a false world.
Personality, a specific movement of energy, requires a body as its base.
The body behaves in such-and-such a fashion in accordance with its nature. This constitutes personality.
The feeling of individuality is the illusion of limited beingness. I-am is taken to be particular, when in fact it is universal.
The only impediment to lasting peace is believing in this individuality.
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If the notion of “you” is mere imagination,
How can you remove it?
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Transiency makes evident the Unchanging. How could one know the former in the absence of the latter?
We know that the world is transitory because we can hold it up against something that is permanent.
It is only the Unchanging that can discern the changing.
This is an unbroken continuum onto which appear the three mental cycles of waking, dreaming and sleeping.
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Beliefs provide comfort and security, but no understanding. They are the comfort and security of a pleasant dream.
In the same way as sleep overtakes you, true wakefulness will also overtake you.
That is the end of beliefs.
There is nothing for you to do to bring it about because there can be no "one" to do anything.
A candle in a painting cannot be extinguished by the wind.
A thought arises and the body reacts in accordance with its nature.
It is the Conscious Life Energy that acts while you imagine that you are acting.
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Do not follow Wu Hsin. Wu Hsin desires no followers. To become a follower is to relocate from one prison to another.
Those who seek to exploit you discourage doubt.
Doubt is not the absence of faith. Doubt is the action of converting faith into certainty.
Doubt is a healing ointment and is the antidote to hearsay.
The end of doubts is brought about by ending the doubter. This is achieved by seeing that the doubter is a mere construction and no longer infusing it with the energy of attention.
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The process of thought assigns labels, translates, judges and forms representations based on the sense data coming in.
A cat doesn't need to know that a snake is a snake in order to survive. It only needs to recognize the form and respond to it.
All animals seek to attain physical security. To this, humans have also added a need for mental or psychic security.
As such, there is established an association with objects: one's name, one's body, one's ideas, memories of one's relationship with different things or of one's psycho-physical environment.
The experience of oneself as a continuous entity results from the complexity of this mental process.
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The expressions of the Conscious Life Energy can be three-fold.
I-am is the first expression of the Conscious Life Energy.
The second expression is "I-am as Wu Hsin". Like any fine actor, this expression becomes totally immersed in its role. It is often called identification.
Lastly, Wu Hsin as expression, is made up of body, thoughts, historical narrative, and personality.
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Realization is not by one's doing something, but one's refraining from doing anything, by remaining still and by being simply what one really is.
Stop looking for the source of things among the things themselves.
If chasing one's shadow is foolish, how much more foolish is it when it is the shadow that is doing the chasing?
To be yourself, stop imagining yourself to be this or that.
Just be, allowing your true nature emerge.
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The shack is demolished in order to construct a temple.
This is the work done here.
Anyone who comes "here" is bound to reach "there", because there is no distinction here between "here and there".
Every question has an answer and every answer is available when the mind is quiet.
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When one controls the language, one controls the dialogue. In that way, whether or not the world is real depends on one's definition.
All phenomena seem real at the moment of perception.
In Wu Hsin's view, whether the phenomena are real or unreal is not important.
What difference could it make to the detached observer?
April (Èr Yuè)
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Wu Hsin begins today with what cannot be argued: you are. You cannot say you are not. He starts there. That you are is a certainty. What you are is to be looked at.
The underlying ground, the underlying essence is consciousness. When you look at people, when you look at mountains or oceans, when you do this you must be conscious.
You are conscious. You're conscious when you're asleep, you're conscious when you're awake. You can perceive objects, you can perceive movements and activities.
When you dream, it's the same. It is within consciousness that all these images are projected. The consciousness that you are is what all the mental images appear on.
Once you realize that whatever appears to you cannot be you, you are free of all your personas and their demands.
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The existence of the Supreme is indicated by the word “I” only.
Through this Wu Hsin vehicle, the Supreme is acting and working, using the form as an instrument.
It is not a body that is speaking. There is a power that is inspiring this body, intellect and mind.
In each one, the same thing is happening, but often it is said, “I am speaking.”
There are no persons; there are only roles performed by animated bodies.
There being absent any doer, whom would you have Wu Hsin instruct?
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There is a singular obstacle. It is inattention. Your seeming bondage is by inadvertence only.
One holds to a set of beliefs implanted by parents, peers and society.
However, these beliefs are like tying a rope around one's legs in that they limit the distance that the intellect can travel.
Wu Hsin has declared that one is not a certain body; neither the body of the waking state nor the body in the sleep state.
Neither is one a personality, that being nothing else than a presentation that one makes of oneself at certain moments.
A being that is bound or limited by time, space or origins; are all ways of thinking. It is not so.
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What will eventually die? Only a way of thinking, a way of viewing oneself and the world.
One must continue until "you" ends with the experience which never changes, never comes and goes.
It is the experience that you are, effortless existence.
It is prior to all psychological structures, before all discriminating processes.
It is direct perception, perception unmediated by the mind, undistorted by imagination.
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To describe is to assign name and attributes.
How can you expect Wu Hsin to describe that which has neither?
Yet, it is as undeniable as breathing. Being it is as effortless as seeing.
The unmanifest manifests, lingers for a time, and dissolves back into Itself.
Understand it to be the prime cause in every chain of causation.
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There is nothing Wu Hsin can point to and say "I am this".
He is nothing that "my" can attach itself to. He is neither "my" sandals nor "my" robe nor "my" body.
As the sandals and robe are possessions of the body, the body is the possession of the Conscious Life Energy which, in turn, is the possession of the Absolute.
Whatever is held as "myself" disappears in time. Only that which was present at the beginning persists.
What was born, must die. But what was never born cannot die.
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For those with no background, techniques may have utility.
But you have come here and Wu Hsin does not provide techniques. Those who use techniques never excel.
Here, excelling, excellence, means never returning to what was.
Discontent with the false necessarily impels one toward what is true.
One begins to make cracks in the wall of their previously-held certainties.
Ultimately, the wall crumbles.
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Enlightenment has no address.