by Wu Hsin
It cannot be found in any body, in any personage.
Yet, the mind will be searched assiduously until it is understood that the answer cannot be found there.
If you are existent, everything is existent; if you are non-existent, there is nothing existent.
To know one's thoughts requires that one take a stand outside of thought.
That this is possible proves that one is not one's thoughts but the Knowing of thoughts.
9
Self-consciousness can never understand wholeness or unity because it is the very nature of self-consciousness to divide.
Wanting to be somebody works against being nobody. Cease personalizing.
An event occurs; there is pain.
However, the mind translates this into "I am in pain". There is cooking, not I am cooking.
In this manner, life is a continuous stream of impersonal events.
10
Mind is not required for existence. It is only required for imagination.
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.
Cease to be the object to which things happen and become the subject on which all happens.
This is sufficient.
11
Hunger, thirst, crying, eating, sleeping, just appear and disappear. There is only awareness of whatever presents itself to you.
You are pure openness without any divisions or ratings. There are no judgments, divisions, or projections. The standards imposed by culture, education or religion are not yet in place.
There is no reference point to whom all this happens; no decider or thinker or doer. There is only observing, absent any me and others, absent any past or future and, most relevant, absent any problems.
No lines of demarcation have been established, no points of beginning and ending. No sex, no nationality or identity.
There are only the functional processes of breathing, digesting, eliminating, growing and perceiving.
12
How many versions of "you" have there been? Hundreds, thousands, more?
The measure of the real is a simple one: when you see other, you are imagining. You are not what you take yourself to be. You are nothing perceivable.
Find out what you are.
It is not to be approached as an effort toward an acquisition; it is the discovery of what is already present.
What effort is required to acquire what is already one's own?
It is like talking about the attainment of space. Space is not attained; it ever is. Merely remove that which obscures the space and the space is revealed.
The notes are not separate from the music; what can you be separate from when you are everything?
13
Identification with the body is common to all creatures. It is necessary for survival.
It is only when one is no longer concerned with survival that one may transcend body identification.
In humans, the urge for continuity, the drive to survive, is so pronounced that it skews perception.
It does this by creating an individual against which every object must be evaluated. The person is not the Knowing; rather, an object of the knowing.
In this which is subjective, there cannot be anything objective which could incur the process of disappearance or death.
14
In one sense, there is an intense struggle that is ongoing within each of you here.
On the one side is the attraction to appearances. Stated another way, it is the entrancement with the world.
On the other side, is the deep calling to abide as the essential Self.
The victory can only go to the strongest and the strongest is determined by which of the two is better fed.
15
One is not born with an identity.
One’s identity is acquired over time.
Take this acquisition and set it down for a short time. It can always be retrieved again.
Now, spend the balance of this day without this acquired identity and notice what arises.
That is all.
16
Wu Hsin cannot tell anybody what they shall become because there is no becoming. There is merely discovery, discovery of what one is.
"Me" is an idea only. When challenged, it dissipates.
Realize Subjective Being and stabilize there. Nothing more need be done.
The world of dreams appears, unbeckoned. When it arises, it is observed. This waking world also appears unbeckoned. When it arises, observe it only.
Nothing more need be done.
17
It is the habit of a lazy mind that wants to settle everything by authority, by saying that because someone has said it, it is so.
Wu Hsin does not welcome these minds.
What-is is simple, infinitely subtle, and greatly delicate. It cannot be discerned by the lazy.
It is not for those who continue to harbor like and dislike, for and against, good and bad, all antitheses.
These are influenced minds and What-Is is only available to minds that are not swayed by influence.
18
What is one trying to change?
The past is finished; it cannot be improved.
The future is yet unformed; one cannot alter what has no form.
The present cannot be grasped because in the instant one attempts to do so, it has slipped into the past.
However, when the present remains unseized, untouched, this-that-is willingly reveals itself, exposing its endless possibilities.
19
The openness one experienced as a newborn is gone.
In its place is the prison of a mind in a body.
All attempts at improving the body or the mind is nothing more than the desire to make the prison more comfortable.
Why rely on the mind to provide the solution? It is the mind that birthed the problem.
If a doctor damages a child by prescribing the wrong herbs, should he be asked to provide medical care for a second child?
20
You are not sad, sadness arises. You are not humble, humility arises.
You are not depressed, depression arises. You are not fatigued, fatigue arises
You are not hungry, hunger happens. You are not acting, action happens.
You are not thinking, thoughts happen.
You are a sentient, transparent screen which cognizes the phenomena that appear on it.
21
You cannot seek the unknown. What is sought must already be known, otherwise, it could not be recognized.
All recognition requires memory. What is recognized must have been cognized before. The process works as cognize, then name, and subsequently recognize.
There is nothing to be gained by pursuing the unknown. It is sufficient to fully comprehend the known.
Wu Hsin comes to take you to the real; his words are final. Drink them fully and your thirst has ended.
You are no longer mesmerized by your own self-importance. To have done so means to reach the state in which imagination is no longer taken for the actual.
22
The night fears the day since darkness can only exist in the absence of illumination.
Likewise, I-am-this can only exist in the absence of illumination. Thus man, like an owl, is blind to bright illumination.
Mind blinds. When mind is filled with beliefs, ideas, and definite conclusions, wisdom is not possible. Where doubt is not welcome, understanding cannot flourish.
Consciousness is the witness of all phenomena. However, what witnesses the consciousness must be antecedent to it.
When one discerns that they are this consciousness, then the apperception that they are also the content of the consciousness arises.
The I-other distinction dissolves, and one is the world.
23
What you have begun a scant few months ago, can be completed today.
What you believe yourself to be must surrend
er itself to what you always have been.
What you are not must surrender itself to what you are.
The alternative is the continuation of postponement and fractionalization.
24
The world is comprised of the supporting essence and the manifestation. The essence is always and everywhere.
Separate the observed from the observer, then the observed from the observing.
You imagine yourself to be at a certain location occupying a certain volume. What one is must be clearly discerned to be separate and distinct from the observed.
Look at the happenings of the world to your heart's content. But, understand that none of it happens to you. It all happens in you.
Whether there is utter silence or endless mental chatter doesn't matter. Both are events appearing in consciousness. So, let them be. What one is is prior to either.
Experiences confirm the individual's continuity. As such, they are continuously sought out. However, in truth, the only experience of value frees one from the need for experiences.
.
25
The wise person who knows who he is and what he really needs, avoids all trouble as he is seeking for real and not temporal solutions.
This one sees that detachment is not the solution to attachment. It may appear so, but what transpires is only an attachment to detachment.
He sees the solution to attachment to be impartiality. When one has no preferences, what can one be attached to?
Where desire says "If this, then that", wisdom says "Neither this nor that".
Whether one is facing inward or facing outward, whatever one is faced with, pass through it.
Then for the first time, one will not be entangled with things, and can pass freely anywhere one wishes to go.
26
If Wu Hsin were to accept people to be what they think themselves to be, he would only hurt them.
But, Wu Hsin understands that the platform is empty although it appears that someone occupies it. Whatever constellates around the words "I" and "me" forms the totality of the individual.
When the individuality is lost, whatever happens in the world is then realized to be an event, mere functioning, and is witnessed. There is no involvement.
Whatever is to come, let it come. Whatever is to leave, let it leave.
To believe that this requires effort is an error.
What effort must a towel make to absorb water?
27
There are many coming to Wu Hsin who want to know about illusion. Yet, this inquiry fails due to its not asking who it is that has the illusion.
Wu Hsin informs you that you are nothing perceivable. This notion is so alien that it borders on the inconceivable.
Wu Hsin says to have no concern. The soil has been prepared and the seed has been planted.
Flashes of understanding will come and go until it becomes steady.
It is like a child learning to walk. The child stands up, falls down, gets up again, then walks a little and falls down until it begins to walk steadily.
Then, the falling down is totally forgotten. Trust that it will fully fructify.
28
Wu Hsin cannot show you what you are because what you are is antecedent to all words.
As anything seen cannot exist apart from the eye, you are prior to all phenomena.
Do not expect Wu Hsin to blaze the trail for you. If you do, it is evidence of a lack of serious intention.
Suffice it to understand that imperfection is an aspect of the perfection.
A unitary perspective cannot be achieved until one can look at all the aspects of the world and repeatedly declare "This, too, is it".
29
How can Wu Hsin prescribe meditation as one's practice? True meditation does not seek a result.
Whatever will happen will happen. Just be clear: whatever happens doesn't happen by you as much as it happens through you.
Practices are ineffective in dissipating the illusion because all practices take place within the illusion.
Thinking that you can remove your confusion is symptomatic of the confusion.
Empty yourself of all ideas, all beliefs, and all concepts. Then, make yourself full with emptiness and see if there remains anything else to be done.
30
One too easily confuses the sense of being with the sense of being in a body. The latter is body-bound whereas the former is time-bound.
Prior to either is the support of all things which is neither Here nor There, neither Now nor Then and neither This nor That. It is everywhere, every when and every how.
In one sense, it could be said that there are two consciousnesses.
There is the consciousness that you have, the personal consciousness. Then, there is the impersonal consciousness, the consciousness that has you.
In this sense, the Knowing of who you are is distinct from who you are.
Death, therefore, is not the end; it is only the end of distinctiveness.
May (Sān Yuè)
1
As long as you are coming here, it must be obvious that your search is not over.
Why is it so?
Because there is a "you" that continues to search. As long as the doer is present, the ego is present.
Only when you drop all forms, become disidentified with all forms and get connected with the formless, will you be able to comprehend that you are existence without identification.
2
Wu Hsin expounds a thousand different sentences and ten thousand different words.
They are appropriate for all kinds of human beings with different sorts of confusion.
One will come to discern that self-centeredness is a prison.
The end result of such discernment is clarity which gives one nothing and takes away everything.
3
The feeling "I am" is not personal. It is the declaration from Conscious Existence of its conscious existence.
That which supports and animates the body of each is One; its name is "I".
When one hears the words "I", me and "my", let there be no confusion.
It is the voice of the authentic I, the sole actor and the sole possessor.
It is the experiencing factor in every experience.
4
No person’s body is the center of the world. Yet, the world seems to be experienced from such a referential center.
The body is only a physical instrument.
When the world is experienced subjectively, it is not known by the body, but via the body.
When one takes one's stand as an object, one is constrained by birth and death. When one's stance is as subjectivity, one enjoys no such constraints.
As such, when one understands that one is the subject to every object, one transcends birth and death.
5
To know an object is Knowing.
Even without an object, Knowing remains.
As such, one should understand that even though things come and go, the nature of Knowing neither comes nor goes.
6
Mind, divided into subject and object, creates a conceptual universe of images.
It is extended in space and time and intermittent, coming and going.
This is the world of living and dying as seeming entities. Peace is a state not of the individual mind but of a mind freed of individuality.
Consciousness is not an activity of the mind. Instead, it is the light which illuminates the mind’s activities.
However, one is only conscious in the relative sense. Absolutely, there cannot be any thing to be conscious of any other thing.
