The Lost Writings of Wu Hsin

Pointers to Non-Duality in Five Volumes

The Lost Writings of Wu Hsin

Pointers to Non-Duality in Five Volumes
By Roy Melvyn
Copyright 2011 Roy Melvyn
Volume One: Aphorisms for Thirsty Fish
Brief Background
It is widely believed that Wu Hsin was born during the Warring States Period (403-221 BCE), postdating the death of Confucius by more than one hundred years.
This was a period during which the ruling house of Zhou had lost much of its authority and power, and there was increasing violence between states. This situation
birthed the hundred schools, the flourishing of many schools of thought, each setting forth its own concepts of the prerequisites for a return to a state of harmony. The
two most influential schools were that of Confucius and the followers of Mozi ("Master Mo"), the Mohists. The latter were critical of the elitist nature and extravagant
behaviors of the traditional culture. The philosophical movement associated with the Daodejing also was emerging at this time. Wu Hsin's style of Daoist philosophy
developed within the context defined by these three schools and appears to be most heavily influenced by that latter. In addition, it most clearly contains the seeds of
what would become Chan Buddhism in China or Zen in Japan.
Wu Hsin was born in a village called Meng, in the state of Song. The Pu River in which Wu Hsin was said to have fished was in the state of Chen which had
become a territory of Chu. We might say that Wu Hsin was situated in the borderlands between Chu and the central plainsthe plains centered around the Yellow
River which were the home of the Shang and Zhou cultures. Certainly, as one learns more about the culture of Chu, one senses deep resonances with the aesthetic
sensibility of the Daoists, and with Wu Hsin's style in particular.
If the traditional dating is reliable, Wu Hsin would have been a contemporary of Mencius, but one is hard pressed to find any evidence that there was any
communication between them. The philosopher Gao Ming, although not a Daoist, was a close friend and stories abound of their philosophical rivalries.
Wu Hsins work was significant for Daoist religious practitioners who often took ideas and themes from it for their meditation practice, as an example, Sima
Chengzhen's Treatise on Sitting and Forgetting (ca. 660 C.E.).
He offers a highly refined view of life and living. When he writes Nothing appears as it seems, he challenges the reader to question and verify every belief and
every assumption.
Brevity was the trademark of his writing style. Whereas his contemporaries were writing lengthy tomes, Wu Hsins style reflected his sense that words, too, were
impediments to the attainment of Understanding; that they were only pointers and nothing more. He would use many of the same words over and over because he felt
that people needed to hear words repeatedly, until the Understanding was louder than the words.
His writings are filled with paradoxes, which cause the mind to slow down and, at times, to even stop. Reading Wu Hsin, one must ponder. However, it is not an
active pondering, but a passive one, much in the same way as one puts something in the oven and lets it bake for a while.
He repeatedly returns to three key points. First, on the phenomenal plane, when one ceases to resist What-Is and becomes more in harmony with It, one attains a
state of Ming, or clear seeing. Having arrived at this point, all action becomes wei wu wei, or action without action (non-forcing) and there is a working in harmony with
What-Is to accomplish what is required.
Second, as the clear seeing deepens (what he refers to as the opening of the great gate), the understanding arises that there is no one doing anything and that there
is only the One doing everything through the many and diverse objective phenomena which serve as Its instruments.
From this flows the third and last: the seemingly separate me is a misapprehension, created by the mind which divides everything into pseudo-subject (me) and
object (the world outside of this me). This seeming two-ness (dva in Sanskrit, duo in Latin, dual in English), this feeling of being separate and apart, is the root cause of
unhappiness.
The return to wholeness is nothing more than the end of this division. It is an apperception of the unity between the noumenal and the phenomenal in much the same
way as there is a single unity between the sun and sunlight. Then, the pseudo-subject is finally seen as only another object while the true Subjectivity exists prior to the
arising of both and is their source.
All five volumes consist of what would appear to be his day-to-day reflections as they spontaneously arose. There is no progression in the pages, no evolution of
the concepts put forth. As such, reading pages randomly or from the beginning has the same efficacy. Nor should it be read with haste; a page or two at a time is
sufficient to allow for the content to sink in, as a thrown stone falls to the bottom of the lake.
In its essence, this Volume One is a collection of hooks; any one of them is sufficient to catch a thirsty fish
Translators Note
Material of this nature is not served well by language. It may seem that there are anomalies and contradictions. So, it is important to state that the translation of Wu
Hsins words herein is not purely literal. Instead, it contains an interpretation of what was clearly implied, and this is where the limitation of words is quite evident.
Compounding this problem, I have chosen to incorporate certain words into the translation which may appear to be incongruent relative to the time of Wu Hsins
writing.
The clearest example of this would be my use of the word ego which wasnt to come into being for many of hundreds of years after Wu Hsins death.
I have done this to best capture the real essence of the intention behind the word. The original Chinese word (ge ren) means the individual. However, using
the individual doesnt capture the sense of separateness that is better conveyed by ego.
The Sanskrit language also provides us with some marvelous insight. In it, the word for mind is manas, which translated literally means that which measures and
compares. That says it pretty well. The Sanskrit word for ego is ahamkara; its translation is I am the doer. Within the context of Wu Hsins message, the conveyance of
the idea of I am the doer is vitally important. As such, this and other small liberties that I have taken with the translation feel more than reasonable.
RM
Text
What follows is
A dissertation on the Unspeakable.
It is an attempt to
Describe the Undescribable;
To capture with words
That which cannot be captured;
The Unutterable.
As such, it is destined to fall short.
That having been said,
Let us now proceed.

These words are

The transmission of Wu Hsin.
Thanks be to Heaven for
Granting their approval.
They transcend time and
Therefore are beyond time.
They will be as valid in
Five thousand years as
They are in this moment.
In the absence of a resonance,
They will have no meaning nor
Create any interest.
This resonance cannot be willed into being.
It is either inherent by nature or
It is not.
These words come out from
A place devoid of
Concepts and doubts.
As such, they are not only spontaneous, but
Natural and true.
They are not intended to
Create new concepts,
But, to instead,
Dispel old ones.
The words of Wu Hsin are
Not meant for discussion which only
Distorts and pollutes.
Take them in and
Move on.

This is the present condition:

Birth is the entry to phenomenality.
Death is the exit from phenomenality.
All that requires insight is:
Who is born and who dies?
Or better stated:
What is born and what dies?

The attachment to beliefs is

The greatest shackle.
To be free is
 To know that
One does not know.

One is what
One absorbs

It is easier to teach a blind man

To paint than it is
To convey What-Is with mere words.

The end of questioning is

The same as
The end of seeking.
Further and further explanations
Do not provide
That which is sought.
Additional information
Does not provide
That which is sought.
Drop these activities and
Rest in what is
Prior to all mental activity:
Awareness.

Sound is the same but

Its expression
Through various instruments is different.
So it is with Being.

Half knowledge cannot take one

To full wisdom.
Knowledge of the world is inferior to
Knowledge of that which
Births the world and is
Prior to it.

What problems can there be that

The mind did not create?
The solution to problems begins with
The cessation in believing in
The content of ones thoughts.

To know that one is, is natural.

To know what one is
Requires a diving into the depths of
Ones own being.
The pearl rests on the bottom.

An event becomes
An experience through
Personal involvement.
Collecting experiences can be
Helpful with the daily aspects of life,
But it is not
The road to happiness.
It is understood that
Sleep is the desire for
A period of rest
For the body.
It is less understood that
Sleep is the desire for
A period of rest
Away from the body.

The inherent nature of mind is

To process thought.
To attempt the cessation of thought
Goes against what is natural.
The goal, therefore, is not
The cessation of thought.
The goal is cessation of
Identification with thought.

All this running around,

Praying and making offerings so that
The next life will be better than
This life.
What silliness!
Life after this death is
Not different than,
Nor better than
Life before this birth.

At the root,
There is no difference between
Separation and dissatisfaction.
This is so because
Feeling separate and apart is
The primary dissatisfaction.

Thoughts intrude, like

Unwelcome guests at a party.
Ignored and unfed,
They depart.

What is called peace by many is

Merely the absence of disturbance.
True peace cannot be disturbed;
It resides beyond the reach of disturbance.

Nothing is as it seems.
The common view is that
There is a subjective observer
Observing an objective world;
The former separate from
The latter.
Nothing is as it seems.

When here becomes

 Everywhere and
Now becomes
Always, then
One has succeeded.

When one is enthralled with

The beauty on the surface of the ocean,
The immensity of its depths can
Never be discerned.

The Source and Substance of everything

Has no name.
When Wu Hsin names it:
The Eternal or
The Infinite or
What-Is or
That or
The Mystery or
The Absolute,
He merely points to It.
Make a list of
All your pains,
Your sorrows,
Your hurts and disappointments.
This, too, is
Part of It.

There is reading
But no reader of this writing
Without an author.
The merger of
The reading and the writing is
Deep insight and understanding.

How many have there been

Who have come to Wu Hsin
To ask Why?
Why is this? or
Why is that?
Why?
As there are many perspectives,
There can be many answers.
Yet, in the end,
The best answer to Why? is
Why not?

It is man
Who is in movement
Against the background of immobility.
But who moves the moved?

We are afloat in
The Great River.
All are carried along.
Some swim against the flow.
 They, too, are carried along.

The departure from what is natural is

The birthplace of personality.
The world of persons is
A solitary place,
Each separate and alone.
To achieve peace,
One must retrace the way one came.

What is latent and

What is dormant are
Not the same.
The dormant arises and sets;
The latent ever is.

Only the fool

Seeks to stop
The shaking of
The moons reflection on the water.
The acceptance of what
Cannot be changed
Paves the way to
The changeless.

All of the world, with its

Past, present and future,
Arises every morning and
Sets every night,
To arise again the next day.
The knower of this has moved
Out of involvement and
Into the understanding that
In order for this world to be known,
The knower must precede it.

The one who considers himself

To be free
Is free.
The one who considers himself
To be bound
Is bound.
The only prison is mental.

Wu Hsin has no sumptuous buffet

Presented on a silver platter.
The offering is basic fare,
To be eaten and fully savored.
Then, there is nothing remaining
For one to do.

Controlling the mind doesnt

Take one to freedom.
Controlling the mind
Adds another link
 To ones shackles.

Regardless of how fast one runs

There is no escape
From oneself.
The impetus of this escape is
This state which is
Believed to be unsatisfactory.
To succeed, one must relinquish
The smaller for
The greater.

Whereas pain is
A physical experience
Suffering is a mental one.
It is the sense that
Things should be
Other than they are.
Its antidote is
Acceptance.

The trance of separateness is

The jail.
The imagination is
The jailer.
When one no longer believes
What one imagines oneself to be,
The cell door opens and
The realization dawns that
A life filled up with being somebody is
An empty existence.

When the waterwheel stops turning,

What happens to
The energy that turned it?
Is it said to be used up or
That it remains dormant,
To turn again?
When the body dies,
What dies and
What goes on?
That which animated the body
Ceases to do so.
This That is not affected and
The cycle continues.

Gods and their universes

Come and go.
Avatars appear in unceasing succession.
In the end, that which was present
At the beginning
Remains.

Instead of scurrying here and there,

Man must stabilize in
 That which supports him.
Once stabilized,
All scurrying becomes
Spontaneous and appropriate.

The reformation of others

Must not take precedence over
The reformation of oneself.
Reforming oneself requires
The remembrance of the days
Prior to which
One became an individual.

Solitude is not
A condition of the body.
Instead, it is
A condition of the mind.
Solitude may be found
In the busy market or
May be elusive in the forest.

Do no mistake
The five points of a star
For five stars.
All there is
Is a single, unitary
Everything.

The seeker of union

Must admit separation.
For the knower of union,
There is nothing to do.

There is no difference between

That which dwells
Within a sparrow and
That which dwells in
The body of man.
Two instruments;
One large,
The other small.

The best altar has

Nothing on it.

What Wu Hsin says

Requires no explanation.
Explanation requires concepts and
Cogitation.
That is not the way.
Wu Hsin plants the seed in the soil;
It grows at its own pace.

Openness has no location in particular.

It contains everything.
 It contains thoughts and
The absence of thoughts.
It contains feelings and no feelings,
Sights and no sights,
Sounds and silence.
Within openness,
Everything is invited and
Everything is accepted.
There is no way
To be open because
There is no difference between
Being open and
Being.

In human beings,
There is a need
To create order
Out of what is
Perceived to be chaos.
This ordering mechanism is
The mind.
As such, the mind seeks causes
To explain what it
Doesnt understand.
Is the carrot the cause of the chicken soup
Or is it the chicken
Or is it the broth
Or is it the cook?
With the apperception that
Everything is perfect as it is, that
Everything causes everything else,
The mind, as fixer,
As judge,
As organizer,
Loses its relevance.

Words are the net used

To capture the world.
Mind is the means used
To devour the world.
Both fail;
Can the wind be kept in
A box?
Truth is halved when
It is told.

A common misconception is
The belief that thinking is
The creation of thought.
Rather, it is
The reception of thought from
A source which has no name and
From a place that cannot be found.
Since one cant decide to think
Nor can one decide
 Thoughts contents,
Why does one
Claim their ownership?
Is every sound Wu Hsins because
He can hear them?

Do not come to Wu Hsin as if

To a tailor
With an order for a garment where
The style, fabric and measurements
Are all predetermined and acceptable.
Rather, desire to come away nude;
Denuded of concepts, beliefs and
All ideations.

The personality is like

A unique color.
When its work is done,
It returns to the colorless
From where it emerged.

Do not become preoccupied with

What occurs after death unless
There is willingness to die today.
This death, which is only
The death of identification, is
The doorway to liberation.

Immanence,
Intemporal
Impersonal and
Infinite
Is the canvas
On which the world
Appears and disappears.
Drops on a canvas,
Nothing more is
Man .

All men are seekers from birth.

First, they seek to suck
From their mothers breast.
Later, they seek wealth or fame
Or security
Or power
Or love
Or peace.
Seeking itself is
The fundamental condition of the world and
The seeker is merely the instrument
Through which it occurs.

Let us go upstream
For a moment
To a place before
 You and me;
Before
All yous and all mes.
This place is called
Beginning.
Empty, yet full
Of potential,
It is from here that
All emerges.

Here is the utter

Simplicity of the matter:
In the absence of identification
With any thing,
Who are you?
Or better still,
What are you?

The sight of the face of

Your god
Continues to be elusive.
How can the Formless,
That pervades every aspect of
Every thing,
Be seen
Or heard
Or smelled
Or touched
Or tasted?
At the core, Wu Hsin asks:
How is immanence discerned?
The answer is known to those
Who understand that
There is no difference
Between the substance and
That which animates it.

The Ultimate Understanding is

An impersonal event
Occurring in phenomenality.
As such, there is no need for you,
Or any you
To be concerned about it.
Go about your business and
Enjoy life.

For many,
The first step on
A spiritual journey is to
Become lost.
The final step is
Losing ones self.

To draw water from this well

Called Wu Hsin,
 One must bring a bucket and
Ten feet of rope.
Most arrive with eight feet of rope,
Then leave,
Believing the well to be dry.
It is as it is.

Life is experienced
As a series of events
Happening to an individual.
Wu Hsin says:
Life is happening.
The individual is merely
One of the series
Of events.

Chasing after the things

One yearns for is
Inferior to
Chasing after
The source of the yearning.

The entire universe is

The teacher
If one is willing to end
The entrancement with
The momentary.
Lessons then become boundless.

Ebbing begins when

Tides are at their highest.
When the unbearable is recognized
To be bearable,
Profound transformation occurs.

How can it be otherwise?

Perfection contains all
Imperfection;
The smaller within the larger.
Do not chastise your gods
For the aspects of life deemed
Unacceptable.

To search for happiness

Implies its absence.
This implication is a fundamental flaw.
Happiness is ever present.
It may become obscured,
Such obscuration being temporary.

All experience is like an echo,

Occurring after the event and
Distorting it by varying degrees.
The distance between the event and
The experience is directly related to
 The scale of involvement of
The experiencer.

Infancy comes, then

Childhood and adulthood
Followed by middle age and lastly,
Old age.
All these stages come and go upon
That which is immovable.

Viewed through the lens of time,

Many important things are
Rendered unimportant.

Although a mouse in a well

Knows nothing about
The sparrows in the sky,
In the moment of its escape
Everything changes.

The preoccupation with

The foreground, the sights,
The smells,
The sounds,
Takes the attention away from
The background.
Yet, it is in this very background that
The Mystery resides.

When there is no inside,

No outside,
No top,
No bottom,
No breadth,
No width,
No surface and
No depth, then
There is only here and
There is no place else to go.

One is carried on a raft

Within a floating stream.
One is neither the raft nor
The stream yet
The perceiver of both.

What is natural
Follows no laws nor
Requires any.
Can there be a rule for
The beating of the heart or
The blackness of the raven?
There is a natural rhythm to
The workings of the world.
Some are discernable
 While others cannot be discerned.
It is the dance
Between the two that
Creates action.

Trust that what brought you here

Will take you there.

The Infinite has no preferences.

It kisses both the darkness and
The light equally.

Wu Hsin speaks of only

One thing, and that
One thing is
Everything.
As soon as the speaking begins,
There is movement away from It.
Words reduce the incomprehensible into
Something more digestible.

Contrary to popular belief

The perceiver and that
Which is perceived are
Two ends of
The same stick.
The absence of one is
The absence of both.
The absence of everything
Uncovers the presence of
The Seed of everything.

Whatever has been clung to as myself

Disappears in the course of time.
Yet, what has been steady throughout, is
Overlooked.

Many writings speak of

The Creator.
Yet, in truth,
This Creator is only
Another creation.
Who created
The Creator?

What begins as a crack

Becomes a window
Then a door
Until the entire structure vanishes.
Wu Hsin calls this
The unfolding of awareness.

There is no forest,
There is no cave,
There is no mountaintop
 Where one can hide
From oneself.

One cannot acquire true knowledge and

Maintain a hold on ignorance.
The two are mutually exclusive.
Release of the latter is
A precondition for the
Arrival of the former.

When vision and compassion

Expand to include the opposition,
The opposition ceases to oppose.

Slow ripening and rapid flowering

Alternate.
One is not superior to the other.
Be not concerned with pace,
Be concerned with depth.
Worries about progress are for children.

All there is is consciousness.

Consciousness is all there is.
In the absence of consciousness,
What is there?
All manifestation
Appears in consciousness
Disappears in consciousness.
Consciousness is the precondition for
All perception.
Everything perceived
Is perceived
By consciousness as
An object in consciousness,
Including the perceiver.
Understand this and
Then grow your carrots.

Wu Hsin requires that

One question those things that are
Not open to question.
These are the rocks to which
Ones feet are tied.

All experiences are transitory.

The wise man neither seeks nor
Rejects them.
In this manner,
One remains rooted in
The Unchanging,
The stage upon which
All change occurs.
For many,
What they believe to be
Their castle, is in fact
 Their jail.
The addiction to the drug called intellect,
Results in analysis of everything.
All this perusal,
Evaluation and
Analysis complicates
What is simple.
Becoming purely receptive
Strips away the false,
Leaving the great gate to open, then
What-Is is clearly comprehended.

The greatest enjoyment is experienced

When there is no concern for its duration.

When there is indifference to outcomes,

One is willing to work with
Less than ideal means and
Postponement is avoided.

Utilizing the mind in the attempt to

Achieve Ultimate Understanding is
Akin to hiring a thief to
Protect a house from burglars.

Man can do
Whatever he wants.
However, he cannot
Will whatever he wants.

Your reading these words

Is evidence enough to Wu Hsin that
The hook is already
In the fishs mouth.
I cannot tell you
How long it will take
To reel it in.
Most fight,
Some do not.
In the end,
All come into my net.

Shadows working on shadows,

Seeking to comprehend the
Inconceivable immensity that is
What-Is.
Better it would be to
Simply enjoy oneself,
Doing what one is moved to do.

If heat and cold

Comprise temperature and
Tall and short together
Comprise height,
Do subject and object comprise
 The sum of life,
The perceiver and the perceived?

Suppression is a lack of acceptance,

An attempt to nullify what is natural.
The treatment of symptoms
Does not cure the disease.
Effects vanish when
Causes are removed,
Not when they are suppressed.

The deep secret is that

You are beyond time,
Beyond the heavens.
You contact each at two points:
Here and Now.
Wu Hsin knows this,
You do not.
As such, you see yourself
As separate from the Totality
When, in fact,
You are the very Totality
You feel separate from.
Change your viewpoint and
Change the world.
Just as the eye
Cannot see itself,
The mind
Cannot know itself.
As such, all knowing
Must spring from that which is vaster.

To dig a hole,
One employs a shovel.
When the hole is completed,
The grip on the shovel is released.
In order to teach,
Concepts must be used.
Once the teaching is assimilated,
The grip on the concept must be released.

When the need for action

Reaches an appropriate crescendo,
Action occurs.
This is the nature of
The world.
The one who
Performs the action is only
The instrument of action,
Nothing more.

The only wisdom

One can acquire here is
The full apperception of
Who is the acquirer.
 All else is like
Asking an unmarried man if
He has stopped
Beating his wife.

The sum of a past is

I was.
The sum of a future is
I will be.
The continuous crossing back and forth
Between the two
Obscures the present moment,
The I am,
Being Itself.

The empty cup

Has emptiness inside.
Wu Hsin asks:
What happens to the emptiness
When the cup is smashed?

The dawning of a willingness

To accept the unacceptable.
Produces the cessation of worry.
In a world without worry,
The empty man is an emperor.

You have an image of

What this outcome should be.
I say to you:
Drop it.
There is no standard,
No bellwether,
By which to measure.
The appearance is of
No importance.
All that can be said is
You will recognize the unity
Prior to all appearance.

To grow is necessary.
To outgrow is, likewise,
Necessary.

Wu Hsin does not speak

In hypotheses.
It is the direct experience
Of What-Is that is conveyed.
The fact that
Words and concepts are
The pointers to this are
The inherent limitation
In all communication.

All emotions come and go

 You remain.

Your sack of concepts

Compels you
To see things
In a prescribed manner.
Dropping this sack
Allows your eyes to open and
For clarity to manifest.

All your goodness,

All your years of practice,
All the prayers you have spoken,
Mean little to Wu Hsin.
Instead, tell me if
You are prepared to relinquish
The control that you exercise
On every aspect of your life?
Are you now ready
To enter into the flow of life
Without the oar of your seeming will?

A free mans life is

A life that is free of
Demands,
Free of dependency.
With nothing to drag along
One goes where one will.

Why is there so much

Struggling with the practices,
Techniques and
Methods that are
Alleged to end all struggling?

The groundless expanse is

Unknown territory.
Men prefer what is known,
Regardless of whether it is
Painful or pleasant.
Because there is nowhere
To hide in the vastness and
There is no place to run to,
The choice seems simple.
Yet, it is the very unwillingness
To embrace the unknown
That keeps it in the shadows.

Is the perceiver
Separate from that which
Is perceived?
Tell Wu Hsin:
What is it that sees my knee
When I gaze upon my lap?
What is the world?
The world is the sum of the known
Embraced by the fullness of
The unknown and
Protected by that which is
Unknowable.

When the mind feasts,

True knowledge is lost.
When the mind eats not,
True knowledge manifests.

The experience of
The Mystery is the banter of fools.
Only objects,
Overt or subtle, are experienced,
While the Mystery is prior
To all objects.

You are a sinner,

You are a saint.
You are a murderer and
You are a monk.
The entire world that
You experience is
Inside yourself.
To fix the problems of
The world,
You need only
Fix yourself.

Where is the line

Of demarcation
That separates heaven
From this life?
Can you show it to me?
Does it exist at all, anywhere,
Aside from inside your head?

Do not come to Wu Hsin

So that your questions may be answered.
Do so in order that
Your answers may be questioned.

All that is required

Is Understanding.
Not an understanding of things but
An Understanding of
The Potential of All Possibilities
That is prior to things.
Understand this and
You understand all.

You came to this life

With your own unique nature.
 It was combined with
The experiences you had
To forge who you are.
You had no say in the matter.
You are a one-of-a-kind instrument
Performing the work that
Only you can
In the service of That which
Sent you.

What can you really

Claim to be yours
When it can be taken,
In the time it takes
To snap a finger,
By the One who
Gave it to you?

My father is
This-Now-Here;
My mother is
This-Now-Here;
My brother is
This-Now-Here;
My neighbor is
This-Now-Here;
All related.
When each is gone,
What endures?
This-Now-Here.
Thoughts are only
Puffs of smoke
Rising from the chimney of the mind.
Attaching attention to them is
The heart of suffering.

What one really is

Is what one is
In the absence of
The who that
One thinks one is.

There is no requirement to
Transcend the past.
All that must be done is to
Stop carrying it,
Like a block of stone,
On ones back.

Man is ensnared
In the continuum called Past-Future.
His attention remains fixated there,
Uninterrupted.
To free oneself from the trap,
Even for a single instant,
 Return to the point of presence,
Of being.
Of being no thing in particular.
In this moment.
Then, miraculously,
The snare dissolves.

Do not mistake
A mere rearranging of the furniture
For true change.

Thinking creates more problems

Than it solves.

Do not look for It

In moving water.
Moving water distorts.
Look for It
In still water.
Still water reflects perfectly.

There is great joy when

The raindrop is reunited with
The ocean.
Likewise, there is great joy
In death.
What dies, other than
A story filled with much sorrow and
Intermittent joy?

Know Wu Hsin as
The Untouched.
Unaffected by time or
Space or
People or
Places or
Things,
Wu Hsin is not
While all else is moving.

All doing is contained

In being.
When the attention is shifted from
Doing to being,
The doing takes care of itself
Without any intended doing and
In the absence of a doer.

What is it
That brings people to
The doorstep of Wu Hsin?
It is simply the desire
To know this What.
When Wu Hsin says
This What cannot be known,
 Most go away disappointed.

I tell you:
You must open the doors.
You must pull back
The shutters.
How else can light enter into
A darkened house?

Why fight with

External foes?
Your neighbors are
The very least of
Your problems.

This is Wu Hsins open secret:

The only evil is inattention.
It is the father of stupidity and
The grandfather of the twins,
Suffering and sorrow.

It is not possible to hurt another

Once one understands that
All anothers are inside oneself and
Emerge from there.

Knowledge will take you

To the goal.
But, not knowledge
Of things.
Knowledge of things will
Distance you from the goal.
Wu Hsin tells you to
Call off your search.

Followers of the sun

Never know darkness.

The Mystery is not reached with words.

Nor can the mind reach It.
Unseen,
Unheard,
It cannot be taught.
What remains is the experiencing
Without an experiencer.

The man of contentment

Seeks nothing that
He doesnt have and
Understands that
Whatever he has
Isnt his to own.

To live and to die

Is natural.
 To be afraid
To live and to die is not.

If man spent as much

Time and energy
Demolishing his prison
As was spent in building it,
All would be free.

You are not the main character

In the play.
You are one of many characters.
Each has a role to play.
This realization is
The first step toward
The unity that is, always was and
Always will be.

So many things you could

Give up and
Still not achieve clarity.
Instead,
Simply give up your notions
Of I, me and mine and
Allow stillness to carry you forward.

Forms through which action occurs,

Be it plant, insect, tiger or human
Behave according to their nature.
Understand Nature and
Understand all.

The fundamental question is:

Do you have awareness or
Does Awareness have you?

The world cannot improve until

The peoples of the world improve.
The peoples of the world cannot improve until
The person improves.
The person cannot improve until
All self interest is removed.

The particular and the universal are not separate.

They are merely two aspects of
The indivisible;
One viewed from within,
The other from without.

The desire for understanding

Arises from misunderstanding.
The way out is through
Questioning and examining the habitual.

The animating presence is

 The building block upon which
You have been erected.
Even after you have been torn down,
The building block remains.
Centering your attention there is
The direct means to gain
Primordial insight.

What-Is or
You may call it the Truth,
Must be apperceived.
Once one attempts to express it,
It becomes a concept and
Food for discussion.
Then the Truth is lost.
Seekers of Truth must ask:
What distinguishing marks will
Allow one to recognize it?

What does the orange tree

Have to do
To grow oranges?
What does the sky
Have to do
To be blue?
What do you
Have to do
To be?

Wu Hsin takes many

To the river, but
Crosses it for none.

Unhappiness comes to man

Through two doorways
The first doorway is named
Not getting what you want.
The name of the second doorway is
Getting what you want.
Either takes you there;
The former faster
Than the latter.
The former teaches
The futility of willfulness.
The latter teaches the foolishness
Of believing that
Satisfaction and happiness are the same.

When is there to live

Other than now?
How is there to live
Other than now?
Why is there to live
Other than now?
Where is there to live
 Other than now?

Desire is presupposed on the belief that

The desired will convey
Some lasting benefit
To the one who desires.
When this is apperceived to be false,
The running after
Persons or things ends and
Impartiality to all that comes and goes
Takes root.

Underneath is the support.

It is the water
To the boat, and
The sky
To the cloud.
The known is supported by
The unknown which, in turn, is
Held by the Unknowable.
Ignoring this is
The folly of men.

Everything moves toward

Its own destruction.
The flame is lit.
The flame is extinguished.
What is between the two is
Labeled time.

Do not confuse
Emptying the pot with
Shattering the pot.
A pot that is emptied
Can be refilled whereas
A shattered pot ceases to be.

It is only when
The very idea of changing is seen
As false that
One can perceive the changeless.

The body is a borrowed thing.

One uses it for a time; then
It must be returned to
That from which it was borrowed.

There is nothing
For me to tell you
That will make a difference.
There is nothing Wu Hsin can say
That will bring about
Your awakening.
The sound of my own voice
Holds no appeal for me.
 Nor should you
Be enamored with it.
Ask Wu Hsin to be quiet
This has much more value.
A viable strategy is to bring about
The end of the questioner.
When there is no questioner,
Then there is no one
Being questioned and
There are no questions.
Within this space
All can be revealed
Most easily.

There is a birth,
A life, and then
A death.
Throughout this cycle of
From the Source - To the Source,
The Source remains ever as it was.
To know the Source is to
Transcend the cycle.

This game being played is

A subtle one;
It begins with the mind
Taking What-Is and
Parsing it into
Millions of pieces.
The balance of the game,
The balance of life, is
Spent trying to
Put it back together.

Clear seeing is elusive

Like trying to capture water
With a net.
The particular net employed is
The belief in the power of
The thinking mind.
For as long as this mind is worshipped,
Clear sight is not to be obtained.
It is little wonder that
The dog chasing its tail
Becomes dizzy.

You are not satisfied

With the answers
Given by others.
So you come to Wu Hsin.
But what you really seek
Are not answers
But confirmation
Of what you think
You already know.
 If you were to admit
That you know nothing,
Then I will most gladly answer.

Essence is the size of the sky.

It holds the body and
The mind as if they were
Rose petals in its hands.

The meditation of suffering is

The meditation of:
I am this body
I am this story
I am these thoughts and
I am these emotions.
The meditation of freedom is
The meditation that lacks
A meditator.

All activity to hold on to

That which is
Inherently impermanent is futile and is
The prerequisite for unhappiness.
Releasing all attachment to
The impermanent
Brings with it the revelation of
The face of
The Permanent and is
The harbinger of peace.

Thinking is so tiresome,
Requiring so much energy
Solely for the purpose
Of reinforcing the notion
Of a thinker.
What a waste!
Stop thinking and
Merely watch
Everything being done
Without your interference.

The marriage of
Full consciousness with
Life
Is the most beautiful union
This world has ever known.

You dont know what is good.

You only know
What is good for you.
Tomorrow, that might change.
Then, good will become bad and
You will claim to know it.
All this, however, is relative.
What is good for you
 Might be bad for me.
What is good for you today,
Might be bad for you tomorrow.
Wouldnt it be better
To leave the judging
To the fools?

Do not use
Wu Hsins words
As a platform for
Launching new concepts.
Instead, listen deeply,
Apperceive and then
Forget.
Do not store the words away.
Let them penetrate you,
As would an arrow.

The arrival of what is absent is

Preconditioned on
The departure of
What is present.
So long as
The inn is full
No rooms are available.

I will not tell you

What it looks like
Because then
You will assume that
You know
What you are looking for.
You cannot know it
You can only
Be it and
This being is without cause.
So what is left
For you to do?

Whatever is embraced,
Whatever is clung to, will leave.
Why, then, empower it
By making it important?

When river water is

Placed in a jar
Does its quality change?
The container is irrelevant.
The attention must remain upon
What is of essence.

To fixate on what is not,

The past, the future,
The way things ought to be,
Inherently creates struggle with What-Is.
 See this and step out of it.

What is natural
Requires no study or practice for mastery.
Does one study how to sleep?
To reach what is natural
Merely remove what is not natural.

One must either be content with

Ones individual accomplishments or
One must break free from
The notion of individuality.

Why do you offer

Such resistance to life?
Has not Wu Hsin told you
That resistance
Only extends and intensifies
Your pain and discomfort.
There is a secret word
Which, when used
With sincerity,
Aligns you with all of life.
That word is
Yes.

Hope requires the future,

Faith dips into the past,
Trust that all is as it should be
In the present moment.

Look deeply inside yourself and

Try to find yourself.
The ensuing failure is
The true finding.

Do not speak to Wu Hsin of

Your godhead experiences.
All experience is dualistic,
Requiring a subject and an object.
Is your godhead an object
To be experienced?

What could be more meaningless

Than to say that
What you are looking at
Is the one who is looking?
However, nothing is closer to the
Primordial way of things than this.
Do you wonder, then,
Why Wu Hsin is laughing?

The antagonism toward the world,

Toward people,
Places and
 Things,
Is the impediment
To the realization
Of the peace that
Underlies it all.
Every No keeps peace
An arms length away.

How many of your questions

Have been answered,
But still
You dont have the answer?
Is it possible that
The answer isnt
Found in more questions?
Is it possible that
The answer isnt
Found in more concepts,
More thoughts?
Is it possible that
The answer is
Revealed in their very absence?

The number of forms

Within this manifestation is
Without limit.
Focusing the attention on
This limitlessness,
It is easy to become lost.
The way back is
The way out.
Return the attention to
That from which
The limitlessness arose.

For the world to change is

Preconditioned on
The acceptance of What-Is.
Once accepted, there is no need
For the world to change.

How glorious is
The purposeless life.
Events occur in
Their natural course and
One need not do anything or
Be anything in particular.
Can there be
A greater freedom than this?

Chasing after more and more is futile.

It is only less and less that lastingly satisfies.

In an instant,
There is awakening and
 The world arrives,
Unbeckoned.
In a short time,
It recedes and is
Forgotten until
Its next arising.
Understanding the stage on which
This play is performed is
The way out of it.

Silence is the bridge between

The Formless and
The world of form.

How can light find darkness?

Darkness is merely
The absence of light.
How can one find ones source?
Ones source is revealed in
The absence of ones self.

Beyond what?
Beyond where?
Beyond when?
Beyond whom?
This beyond
Is not outside yourself,
But is the vast,
Limitless expanse
Within.
It is not knowable
Nor does it reside
Within the space of the known.
Stop running toward
Positive states.
Stop running from
Negative states.
Stop.
Take whatever comes
As it comes;
Without judgment,
Without embellishment.
Then, watch it pass until
Whatever is to be
Next appears.

The greatest crime is

The overlooking of
Who you really are
In favor of
The story of
Who you think you are.
This preoccupation with
Your personal drama is
The cloud that masks
 The sun.

I am sorry
To disappoint you.
But Wu Hsin has no teaching
For you.
No method,
No way,
No system.
Simply be as you are and
All will be right.

Turning the attention

Toward the unfamiliar and
Away from the familiar is a
Prerequisite to the arrival at
True understanding.

Do not accept
Any of the words of Wu Hsin
As the truth.
Investigate for yourself.
This willingness to investigate,
To deeply inquire into
My words, into
Your assumptions, is
The front door to
The house of illumination.

Your hope
For the future is that it will
Bring salvation,
A completion or
A satisfactory conclusion to
Your unsatisfactory past and
The unsatisfactory present.
Wu Hsin tells you that
You are mistaken.

It has taken considerable time

For your illusions
To be built up.
Yet, it takes no time at all
To dissolve them,
To replace them
With simplicity in, and
Acceptance of,
Life.

When a water bubble

On the ocean bursts,
It returns to the ocean.
This is death;
All deaths.
Your death and my death.
 Returning to the Source,
What is there to fear?

Expectation is the grandfather of

Disappointment.
The world can never
Own a man
Who wants nothing.

So many aspirants
Seeking understanding from
Magicians,
Meditators,
Representatives of hearsay,
Intellectuals and
World renouncers.
Who amongst these can reveal
The shadow of the Formless?

The body is charged with

Life Force Energy and
Sustained by food.
Where is the role of an individual in this?
It progresses through life
Reacting to people, places and events
In a manner
Specific to its nature.
Where is the role of any individual
In determining this?
Wu Hsin wants to know:
What causes the belief that
You are an individual?

When a gale blows from the east,

Walk to the west.
When a gale blows from the west,
Walk to the east.
Acceptance of the hard and the soft is
The foundation of trust that
All is right.

The adversarial relationship

With life is the prison.
Acceptance of life as it comes,
Day by day,
Moment by moment, is
The key to the lock on the door.

Maturity evolves upon

The realization that
Your numerous strategies
For escaping
Have failed you.
Maturity brings with it
The dawn of understanding of
 What it is you are trying
To escape from.
Maturity prompts the examination of
Whether you are really imprisoned at all.

Make no effort to meditate

Make no effort to not meditate
Make no effort to make no effort
Being is not something
One does
Being is what
One is.

Dont come here so that Wu Hsin may

Prescribe a path for you.
Choose the path
Of your inclination,
Regardless of appearances
Or opinion.
All paths meet
At the One Path which goes beyond
All paths.

The necessity to delineate

Right from wrong,
Truth from not-truth,
Is itself the impediment.
The truths of men are finite,
With many nuances.
Primordial Truth
Has infinite expressions
While removing all need
For interpretation.

Prior to the realities of man,

There is an Ultimate Reality.
Many have sought to speak
Its language, but
In the end,
They became ruled
By dogma and ritual.

Every form reflects It,

Yet, It cannot be seen
By the eyes.
In silence,
A subtle, inner eye opens,
That sees the Real
Underlying all appearances.

When names and forms

Are put away,
When all judgment ceases,
What remains is called
The True.
 It appears like a mirror
In which the Infinite
Is reflected.
It looks back at each
Who gaze upon It.

Do not allow
Your progress in understanding
To become a concept.
See it as a ladder,
Reaching into the Infinite.
Ladders are not for discussion,
They are for climbing.
It will help you to
Climb to the place
That contains your world,
Yet is beyond it.

Lu Pao had many preoccupations.

Some were large and
Others were small.
When his clothes caught on fire,
None mattered any longer.

A bone with no meat is better

Than no bone at all
To a beggar.
The words of Wu Hsin are
All meat and no bone.
Who is hungry for this?

All necessary work is accomplished

Without actively thinking.
That which moves Wu Hsin
Provides all his words.
Thoughtless,
Wu Hsin cannot be wrong.

Do not divide
Do not label or categorize.
Rather than seeing the many
Within the One,
See the One
Inherent in the many.

If one focuses exclusively on

Dissatisfaction,
The cause of dissatisfaction and
The end of dissatisfaction,
Everything resolves itself in ease.
Dont pretend to be
What you are not;
Dont refuse to be
What you are.
If one saw oneself as
The entire world,
One could do no harm.
Why see oneself as only
Hands,
Feet,
Torso,
Thoughts and feelings?
This is a falsehood.

Every effort
Births more effort.
What has been built
Must be maintained.
What was acquired
Must be protected against loss.

Seeing clearly is
Not mistaking imagination
For reality.
A life seen clearly is
A life without conflict.

All presence, that is,

You,
Me,
It,
Occurs against the background of
Total Absence.
At the end of you,
Me,
It,
Total Absence remains unchanged.

What is pristine knowledge

Other than
The knowledge that
Worldly knowledge isnt worth
A pile of straw.
Admittedly, worldly knowledge can
Take you through the world, but
It can take you neither
Beyond it nor
Before it.

Wu Hsins motivation is
Easy to understand.
It is the same as
The birds motivation
To sing.

In the instant of action,

There is no actor.
It is only afterward that
The ego,
 This false identity,
Appropriates the action as mine.

When the mind is seen as

Continually kidnapped by thoughts,
The first step toward freedom
Has been taken.
Now, cease listening to
What is being heard.
Instead, listen to
What is listening.

Relinquish the fixation

On beginnings and endings,
On past and future.
All that matters is
This-Now-Here.
Once lost,
It cannot be recovered.

Four questions:
How many more failed strategies
Will you undertake
To gain what you want?
What do you want?
What will getting what you want
Give you?
Who wants to know this?

Everything comes and goes.

That which gave them birth,
Sustained them,
And called them back
Goes by many names.
Wu Hsin prefers Being
Among the list.

Beginning and end

Are not two,
But equal aspects
Of one.
The fruit contains
The seed
Which contains the fruit.

The greatest wealth is contentment.

The greatest happiness is
Freedom from opinions.
The greatest peace is attained
Through the abandonment of desires.

If one desires clear sight

One cannot place ones trust in reflections.
The way in is
The only way out.
The room was filled with
Hundreds of his devotees
When Chow Ling asked,
Why are you worshipping the teapot
Instead of drinking the tea?

Many there are

Who come to Wu Hsin for help
With their search.
Wu Hsin says he cannot help;
The search must fail, because
All searching is for some thing and
This Sought is no thing.
If it is not an object,
How may it be found?

From the point of view of

The person
Problems never cease.
From the point of view of
The Totality
Problems never arise.
Perfection is disturbed by
The arrival of judgment.

Just sitting;
Without a goal,
Without a schedule,
Without an intention,
Without form and
Without deliberateness.
The seed opens into the fruit.
Just sitting.

There are some who

Retire to the forests and mountaintops
To avoid involvement with
The world.
Yet, the inner involvement continues.
Every thought
Cries out for involvement.
This is the involvement from which
Retirement is to be sought.

To conquer the large,

Begin with the small.
To change your world,
Begin by changing yourself.
What needs to be changed?
Only the point of view.

The calligrapher begins with

White parchment;
Nothingness.
 From there,
All emergence is possible.

In the presence of fuel,

The oil lamp generates flame.
When the fuel is exhausted,
The flame is extinguished.
The lamp remains,
Ever as it was.

The experience of ones birth is not personal.

Therefore, it is not remembered.
Lao Yin lost his memory and
Could not speak
Concerning his personality.

There is no scripture
That can take you
Beyond the world.
Nor is any meditation or
Ritual the modality.
Wu Hsin counsels that
You stop deceiving yourself.

Man is a part
Of the Largeness
Called Nature.
One part in an infinity of parts.
None higher,
None lower.
Each has value and
Fulfills its purpose.
Do not interfere.

You are a microcosm

Of the cosmos.
Your body is comprised of
All the elements
Of the world.
The cosmos has donated itself
To make you.
The day will come
When she will request a refund.
Grant it smilingly.

Do not mistake birth

For beginning.
Likewise,
Death is not
An ending.
Prior to birth is
Existence without limit.
This is the quality
That is masked
By incarnation.
 Remove the mask and
Remove the bindings.

Emergence is
The realization of
Potentiality.
Things appear,
Stay and ultimately depart.

Grace appears
In the world
Like a giant cloud
Pouring refreshment
On the parched and
On the thirsty.
The closed ones
Fail to partake
Fail to benefit
Because they are
Otherwise engaged.

Will adding copper to gold

Improve it?
What is inherent in each
Needs no improvement.
What is not inherent is not
Worthy of attention.

What comes
Will go.
Only the permanent is beyond
Coming and going.
How much time is left,
One minute or fifty years?
Why squander it on
The transient?

Liberation does not occur

To any thing in the outer.
It is an inner experience of
Freedom from attachments to the outer.
The saint in prison is free,
The emperor is bound.

Save your time.

Do not come to Wu Hsin.
What you seek
Is below;
It is above.
It is behind you and
In front of you.
To the north,
South,
East and
West.
Follow Wu Hsin,
If you can.
I follow the path
Left behind by birds
In flight;
The trails of fish.
And I answer to no one.
How can leaves grow
On a tree with
No branches?

Believing oneself to be
The author of ones life is
No different than being
The piglet of a barren sow.

Desirousness is
A bottomless well
The only route
To its bottom is
Through desirelessness
When your feet touch
Solid ground
Then you are free.

Being aware of
The sound of the bell
Does not mean that
The bell belongs to you.
Likewise, being aware of thoughts
Does not mean that
The thoughts belong to you.

The shadow cannot exist

Without the substance, but
The shadow is not
The substance.
How can the world exist for you
If you are not present
To perceive it?

Creation stories are for children.

The world is created in
Every new moment.
Stand aside and simply marvel.

Singular wholeness is always the same.

It is unchanging.
That which changes may appear on it.
It is unchanging.

Where is the observed

In the absence of
The observer?
 If the observed object requires
A subjective observer
Is not this subjective observer
Also an object?
Where, then, is
The true Subject?
Since the true Subject
Is not an object
The true Subject
Cannot be found and
The notion of where
Loses all meaning.

This mystery fulfills all its functions unceasingly

Even though it appears to be
Silent and unmoving.
It is the field upon which
The knower and that which is known meet.

Wu Hsin is not different from you

Except that he owns fewer things,
Owns fewer opinions,
Owns fewer concepts,
Owns fewer thoughts.

Renewal requires destruction.

The old must be torn down before
The new can be erected.

Wu Hsin is so full that

Nothing can be added.
Wu Hsin is so empty that
Nothing can be removed.
The outer world of perceptions,
The inner world of thoughts,
Wu Hsin is neither yet
The knower of both.

Nothing succeeds like failure.

Failure is a natural
Call for attention,
Like pain.
To pay attention is to
Step out of your trance.

To free the chick,

The shell must be broken.
To free what is inside
One must shatter
What is outside.

The key to understanding is

The dissolution of
The barriers between
Subject and object,
 Knower and known and
Seer and seen.
In this condition,
One cannot locate
The markers of separation.

What is known is familiar

Yet unsatisfying.
What is unknown is feared
Yet desired
Life thrives in risks and
Dies in stasis.
Live.

The Master is not the goal

Fixation on the Master
Impedes reaching the goal
Releasing the Master
Releasing all ideations
About the goal
Takes one a long way
Toward the goal.

To destroy the ego

One must first find it.

The bell rings then

The sound ends.
Hearing awaits.
The fruit is sweet,
Now the taste is gone.
Tasting remains.
Believing oneself to be
What comes and goes is
High folly.

Men are so entranced by

The tree
That they have forgotten
The seed,
The source of the tree.
Forgetting the source is what
Keeps men from
The source.

How much time does it take

To apperceive conditions as they are?
It takes much less time than
You have and
Much less time than
Youre willing to allocate.
By now, it could be completed
If only you could relinquish
Your stranglehold on appearances.
When there is hunger and
Food is provided,
Does one say that the mouth has
Compassion for the stomach?
When there are no others
There is no compassion.

What is a name?
What is a form?
Are they not the symbols
Of someone who
Regards himself as separate?
The name.
Is it not merely
The name of an ego?
But the Nameless has no name.
Wu Hsin asks:
Where does one end
And the other begin?

The wheel of becoming

Spins unceasingly.
Becoming this,
Becoming that.
When one steps off of the wheel,
What has always been,
What need never become, is illuminated.

All the strategies you use

To protect yourself are actually
The chains that
Keep you bound.
To be free of the world
You must be free of yourself.
The fear that is experienced
When you consider
What must be done is merely
These strategies fighting
For their survival.
Ignore what you hear
Ignore what you may tell yourself and
Trust that which
Wu Hsin tells you is
The way out.

This morning
I take my pen in hand
To write
But who or what
Is it that writes?
Is it the pen?
Is it Wu Hsin?
Is it both
Or neither?
Wu Hsin moves the pen
 But what is it
That moves Wu Hsin?

The world changes profoundly

When demands on it cease.
The real world and ones imagined world
Share little.

Ridding oneself of ignorance is

Worth more than the acquisition of knowledge.
With memory gone
The past is gone
Relinquishing hopes and fears
The future is gone.
The present is upon you.
In every moment.
You are free.

My friends come to me
And speak of acquiring merit
Through good deeds
Wu Hsin asks Why?
They tell me
It is the way to Heaven.
Yet when Wu Hsin asks
What is it that goes to Heaven?
All fall silent.

What needs to be revealed

Reveals itself by itself.
No coaxing, no persuasion,
No effort at all is required.
It shines by itself and
Needs no illumination from the outside.

No mountain has only one side.

At times, it is sunny on one side and
Raining on the other.
The side that has seen the sun
Will experience the rain.

A comfortable bed does not

Lessen the discomfort of
A nightmare.
This is only achieved by
Waking up from the nightmare.

Put the time, attention and energy

That you use trying to get
What you think you want
To better use.
Getting what you thought you wanted
Has never brought you
Lasting happiness.
Instead, use the time, attention and energy to
 Realize the fullness that is
Ever present and
All around you.

Who dies
When the body dies?
What dies?
In this inquiry,
The sun burns away the fog and
The mists lift.

To have no thought and

To make no effort is
The first step toward Understanding.
The second step is
To go nowhere and
To do nothing.
Upon completion of these,
Resting for a while is advised.

Each being is a moment in time

With a name and
A form and
A script
To be performed
In this play called
Life.
None chose the name
Nor the form
Nor the script
Yet each believes himself to be
The master of his destiny.
Once their sight clears,
They, too, will laugh.

Awakening occurs
Not when there is no more
To be added
But instead,
When there is no more
To be taken away.

I am a shadow,
A reflection mistaken for its image,
An echo mistaken for its voice,
A ghost mistaken for its substance.
My true substance
Is found in
Every Moment
Of Being
Present
Now.

Two men from the province of Yi,

Debating the predominance of the will over destiny,
 Or vice versa,
They are the source
Of many laughs
For Wu Hsin
Those who have real knowledge,
Not concepts
Or the knowledge of things
Are free
From both free will
And destiny.
They are lions
Who follow no path
But their own.

What could be simpler to understand?

Whoever thinks as, or on behalf of,
An entity
Which he thinks he is,
Who works on this himself
Through prayer,
Fasting,
Meditation,
Ritual or
Good works
Has not yet begun to understand
What it is all about.

Moving the eyes from

The front of the face to
Behind the head
Allows for the clear perception that
One is not separate from manifestation,
But rather a part of it.
The space that fills the small pot is
The same as the space
That fills the large pot.

A ripple appeared on the lake in Guangzhou.

Most who saw it
Became interested in the ripple and
Forgot about the lake.
The world has many distractions,
Its background has none.

Over the parched earth,

Rain clouds appear.
Yet, one cannot
Make it rain.
The ingredient that must be added is
Waiting.
To wait in the face of urgency
Is to understand that
All is as it is intended.

Ones god cannot be reached

 Through a beggars bowl.
Asking for the fulfillment of wants,
For the worlds acquiescence
To ones will,
Insults the very deity
That is prayed to
By revealing that
Trust in this god is absent.

Illusion holds enormous power

Until its reality is investigated
The greatest illusion is that
There is a line
Of demarcation separating
Me and you.

Flirting with time is

A losing game.
In the end,
Time eats everything except
The timeless.

Man lives through his fictions.

He acts as if
He will not die.
He acts as if
There are gods that
Reward and punish.
He acts as if
He controls his life,
Controls his destiny.
It need not be otherwise;
The next moment will
Take care of itself.
Substance is immanent in
Every shadow.
This is the gate without a gate that
One must pass through
To attain understanding.

Are you willing to risk

Everything, to be
Totally and utterly exposed?
Are you willing to see
How you defraud.
Demean and trivialize
The totality of your being
By relegating it to
This psychosomatic device
Called you?
Or would you rather
Be fishing?
The ability to discriminate
Between what appears to be and
What-Is is
 The mark of the wise.
They reside at the hub
Of the wheel
While others
Revolve around the rim.

Involvement is the
Father of happiness and the
Mother of sorrow.
In the absence of involvement,
The pendulum stops swinging and
Peace and balance prevail.

Being clean is
Its own reward.
It is the same with
Being free from
That which is false.

As long as you are,

A doer,
Whether doing or not doing,
Thinking or not thinking,
Meditating or not meditating
This you is
No closer to home
Than it was
On the day
It left home.

Your minds problems are not

Your problems.
Why get involved?
Seeing the false as false is enough.

Wu Hsin is like white paper

Before it is touched
By the pen.
Once the strokes are put down,
The white paper is ignored.

Can we agree that

Madness is little more than
The searching outside for what
Can only be found within?
To change the face in the mirror,
One doesnt change the mirror.

Seeing requires two components:

The seer and
That which is seen.
In the absence of a seer,
Nothing is seen.
When there is nothing to be seen,
There is no seer.
 As the seer and the seen are
Interdependent,
So is all of this play called
Life.

The recognition of what one is not

Goes a long way toward illuminating
What one is.

What comes and goes is

Merely an appearance.
That which perceives all
Comings and goings is
The only substance.
Drinking this elixir,
Life is recognized to be eternal.

Staying sacred isnt difficult.

Its sole requirement is
The removal of ones lips
From the mouth of the profane.
Then sacredness blossoms like
Flowers in the Spring.

The relinquishing of all searching

Allows the immobility to arise
That reveals
That there is no becoming;
All already is.

The world may be divided into

Three parts:
The known,
The unknown and
The Unknowable.
It is to the last that
One must go
So that you may receive
What you are after.

The loss of habitual certainties is

The gain of clear vision.
The common man looks at things,
Uncommon man sees through them.

Upon the arrival of

The great death,
All concerns for
The lesser death
Disappear.
Somebody becomes
No body in particular and
Life goes on without fear.

Wu Hsin does not possess

 The pass key to heaven nor
The escape route from hell.
Both are available
On this earth and are chosen
In every moment.

Everything can be seen in daylight,

Except daylight.

The play is
An illusion;
The stage is not.
In the absence of
A distinct seer and
A distinct seen
All that remains is
The seeing.

Every being is
An object
To every other being
Which considers itself to be
The subjective.
This misunderstanding explains
The reason men believe
They can act in a manner
That is counter to what is natural.
But this is only a belief and
Wu Hsin tells you that
Most of what you believe is wrong.

The newborn fish does not

Learn to swim.
It swims.
The swimming arises from
The natural state of things.
Abiding in what is natural,
One cannot make mistakes.

A common error is to believe that

The Eternal will reveal Itself to you
On your terms, in your time and
In your way.
Throw away all notions and
Simply be willing
To see.

Doing or not doing;

Pick either,
Only do not attach value to
The outcome of either.
In this manner,
The flow of peace
Remains uninterrupted.
If Wu Hsins words
Create a resonance, then
He is called a wise man.
If they do not,
He is dismissed as
A bag of feces.
The words are the same,
The hearer is not.

With the willingness to bear

Whatever comes,
Comes the end of
The need of
Any and all strategies and
Safety is recognized as
The illusion that it is.

It is not possible to love the world

Without loving oneself first.
Is one not
Part of the world rather than
Apart from it?
Love the smaller first,
Then the greater.
In so doing, the space between
Oneself and the world disappears;
One becomes the world.

Mo Hua,
The wise old man from Li Jiang.
Daily rode in his horse-drawn cart.
Although it took him
Wherever he wanted to go,
He never mistook
His cart for himself.

When the specialness is relinquished,

All is well and natural.
When the gold necklace is melted down,
Is it not still gold?

Names and forms,

The content of perception,
Comprise the world.
The world exists
Because one exists.
But one is not the world,
Only its knower.
The proof is that
The arising of the knower
Precedes the arising of the world.

The same power that is

Plowing the fields is
Cutting the vegetables and
 Moving the wind.
It resides in every thing to
The special benefit of none.

Place your ear into the

Heart of Wu Hsin.
Hear the words
Before they are spoken.
Absorb them directly by
Bypassing the mind.
This is the most direct means.

The notion that human life

Has greater value
Than any other form of life is
The greatest demonstration of arrogance.

The harder the wood,

The hotter the flame.
The stronger the personality,
The brighter the light generated
Upon its demise.

The arising of any thought,

Feeling or emotion, is
Independent of the person.
It is only when involvement
By a person occurs, that
The thought, feeling, or emotion
Becomes personal.

When naturalness is lost

Ideations and concepts rush in to
Fill the void.
Wholeness is seemingly lost when
The world is viewed with self interest.

Darkness cannot reveal

The color of a flower.

For how long

Have you been seeking unity
With your particular god?
Why has it eluded you?
Wu Hsin suggests that you cease
Searching for this jewel.
The necklace has,
All the time,
Been around your neck.

Your only asset is

The presence of awareness.
With it, you are everything,
Without it,
What are you?
Do not plan to make changes.
If change is required,
It will arrive
In its own time.
Wait and watch.

Every scene is a preparation

For the subsequent scene.
The sum of the scenes is
Life.

Is pain the interval

Between two pleasurable experiences or
Is pleasure the interval
Between two painful experiences?
The absence of both,
The absence of thought,
This interval is
Evenness and tranquility.

Man is solely an intermediary

Standing between What-Is and
Its designed outcome.
Instruments produce actions
But take no credit for results.

If you want to know the truth

You must be able to recognize falsehood.
Once the false is removed,
The true stands illuminated.

You see before you

This body called Wu Hsin.
But Wu Hsin is not the body.
Wu Hsin is
The seeing,
The hearing,
The perceiving,
The smelling and
The tasting of all that is
Seen, Heard,
Perceived,
Smelled and tasted.
The attention never goes to stillness;
It always goes toward movement.
The stillness,
That which is prior to movement, is
Therefore missed.
Pay attention and
See things as they really are.
What other discipline is required?

Personal freedom is
Nothing more than
 Freedom from the personal.
As such, personal freedom is
Not available to any body.

The easiest method to remove

The ongoing condition of vigilance is to
Remove the me whom
The vigilance protects.
Then, vigilance dissolves.

Devotion to any teacher, any sage,

Perpetuates the illusion of
Division and separation.
That which animates the teacher
Animates all.
Direct ones devotion to That.

The wise man does not

Need the peoples prayers.
The wise man is
The answer to
The peoples prayers.

When the tendency to

Manipulate and control
Every experience ceases,
A new world arises,
Filled with a balance and a peace
Previously unexperienced.

Ascetics are everywhere.

They renounce shelter,
Work,
Fine clothing,
Speech and
Lifestyle.
But they are self deluded.
True renunciates renounce concepts,
Ideas,
Opinions,
Judgments,
Hopes,
Past and
Future.
Show Wu Hsin a single one of these.

Happiness comes, happiness goes.

Stop chasing it.
Sorrow comes, sorrow goes.
Stop running from it.
Relax into what doesnt come and go,
What is present in every moment,
In every here and now.

How can a man be free

 Who is attached to so many things?

There are many who practice to develop

Wisdom,
Generosity,
Patience and
Discipline.
In this fashion,
These are the products of the practice.
Wu Hsin notes that with
Clear understanding,
All these arise as
By-products while
No practice is required.

One seeking transcendent wisdom

Embarks on a journey where
The mind cannot go.
It is only in the
Absence of preconceptions that
What-Is can be revealed.

There can be no observer

In the absence of
An observed object.
The two comprise
One whole.
Fold oneself
Into oneself and
Simply be
The subjective witness of
Ones objective expression.

All aspiration is self deception.

It is preconditioned on
The arrival of tomorrow.
What can arrive tomorrow
Can likewise be had in
This moment if
The view is right.

The stream of mind is

A continuous flow.
To believe that one can
Permanently stop it is like
Believing in ones success at
Burying ones shadow.
Once this is realized,
It, too, is accepted.

When the path narrows.

Stand aside to allow
Those rushing forward
To pass you by.
The goal is not to arrive,
 The goal is to
Fully experience the journey.

The mind,
The body and
The world are not separate.
They arise together,
They set together.
Upon apperceiving this,
Methods are seen as useless.

Everything arises from

A single source which
Resides in the space between.
It can only be reached
Through removal and negation.
Take away this thought,
Take away that object and
What remains is
What-Is.

Inside a cloud,
The vision is limited.
Outside the cloud,
The cloud is seen.
Other clouds are seen.
The sun is seen.
The sky is seen and
The moon and the stars.
This is Wu Hsins invitation:
Step out of the cloud.

All goals,
All getting,
Serve to only strengthen the ego.
The recognition
That there is nothing
To be gained or attained,
That everything is already
Here and now, is wisdom.

Like water is shaped by its container,

Man is shaped by
The essences of the parents and
The experiences of life.
Controlling neither,
One is what one is.

Never mind the mind.

It is like pouring droplets of water into
A hot frying pan.

When one is struck by awe or wonder,

There is no line of separation between
The knower and the known.
 In this space, the world and
Every act in it is spontaneous.

Real happiness is causeless.

Happiness that is caused is not real;
It is transient.
Believing that the transient
Can take one to
The intransient is
Self deception.

All musts are false.

No must can be spontaneous and
Only that which is spontaneous is
Real.

The creation of distinctions

Births the cycle of pleasure and pain.
When everything is
Accepted with equanimity,
Calm is established.

Wu Hsin plants a seed

In the ground and waits for
The right season to arrive when
It will sprout and
Grow and
Become a mighty tree.

Looking through colored glass

Colors what you see.
What keeps you from clearly seeing
What is real is the colored glass of
The mind.
Its preferences,
Its dramas and,
Its need to evaluate are
Keeping you from that
Which you believed
Wu Hsin could provide.

All conflict
Between friends, lovers,
Family or states
Begins as conflict inside yourself.
Freeing yourself from conflict
Frees the world of conflict.

Words and concepts

Are not to be regarded as
Systems or methods to be adhered to.
They merely facilitate a
Deepening of understanding.
They are a source of stimulation, and
Nothing more.
 Adopted as regimen,
They are a hindrance.

How many of the seemingly earnest are

Devoting their energies to
The attainment of liberation
Which, by its most rigorous definition,
Is unattainable?
Is not the egoic striver
The real barrier
Between what one thinks one is and
That which one wishes to become?
How can one become
What one has always been and always will be?
Does sugar suddenly become sweet?

You are not your cart,

Nor are you the horse pulling it.
You are the knower of both and
The identity of neither.

Time can tear down mountains.

Consider what the timeless source of time can do!

Before there is clarity,

Everything is viewed through a keyhole.
After there is clarity,
The door has been removed.

Desire is the urge to be happy.

Desirelessness is the
Fruit of the recognition of
Inherent happiness.

The accumulation of knowledge does not

Lead to omniscience.
Knowing what needs to be known,
For every moment,
In every moment is omniscience.
It begins with
Knowing ones mind.

One who feeds

The wolves of excess is never alone
Nor ever appeased.
By making oneself lower,
One attains the highest.

Long ago,
Wu Hsin used to be somebody.
Now, he is in all things and
All things are in him and
He has become
No body in particular.
Being in the Way, that is,
Alignment with Divine Intention
Means simply not to
Be in the way.

Freedom is not something

One possesses.
Freedom is
That which possesses.

Until one escapes from

The prison of the body,
For every inside, there will be
An outside.

Morality is an illusion;
Who can stop
The movement of the world?
Who can improve upon the sacred?

It is only the empty man

Who understands and embodies
The subtleties of subtraction.
It is he who is intimate with
The Mother of all things.

Life is the oscillation between

Pleasure and pain.
However, pleasure is not happiness.
Pleasure is momentary,
Dependent on circumstances or things.
Happiness depends on nothing.

What further evidence is required

To prove your complete distrust of
Your god
Beyond the fact that
You worry about tomorrow?

So many fear aloneness.

This is the great paradox.
Upon the realization that
There is no other,
Aloneness is understood to be
What is natural.

What follows is
A listing of things
One must do
To attain Oneness:

To make Wu Hsin laugh,

One need merely talk
About ones feeling of disconnection.
Wu Hsin sees the thirsty fish.
 Wu Hsin laughs and laughs.

Just as water is serene

When it is free of ripples,
Likewise, the mind is serene
When it is free of thought.
Free of thought:
Free of judgment,
Free of discrimination,
Free of defense
Free of agenda and
Free of strategy.
Free.

Awareness alone exists.

Prior to the arising of things,
Awareness simply is.
Upon the arising,
Awareness is conscious of things.
Things come,
Things go.
Birth, growth, dissolution.
Amidst it all,
Awareness is the Unmovable;
No where to go to,
No where to come from.

Every man is a star in the sky

Appearing,
Moving for a time and then gone.
Each star fulfills its purpose
Without concern for whether
Its movements are right or wrong.

As the long, winding road

Unwinds,
The sense of specialness
Disappears and is replaced by
The apperception of the unity
With every thing.

Only this now-moment is eternal and real.

All else is mind.
Spontaneity is presence in the present.
Where is the place for mind there?

To smell the flowers

Growing amidst the pile of garbage,
One must choose where to place
The attention.
This challenge goes on
In every moment until one can utter
This too.

Whatever is perceived is transitory.

 It came, it will go; it is imperfect.
The One who knows the imperfect is
Perfect.

There is nothing new here.

Wu Hsin puts forth
That which is most ancient.

This life that you speak of,

This life that you tell your friends about,
This life that you are so unhappy with;
Whose life is it?
When mine is seen for the mirage that it is
Then silence fills the void made by its absence.

Everything you think,

Everything you do, is for your self
But who is this self that is
Claimed as yours?
And who is the claimer?
My body,
My thoughts,
My feelings and emotions.
You are not them.
Because they are yours, separate.
Show Wu Hsin youre my.

The past is only

A memory.
The future is only
A hope.
All there is,
Is this moment.

The deep understanding,

The clear seeing
That there is no liberation
Is itself,
Liberation.

Do not speak to me of the Truth

As if Truth is something to be led around on a rein
Or bottled.
Truth resides in a dimension beyond thought.
Beyond concepts.

The beggars bowl may be made of

Pure gold, but if
The beggar does not know this, then
He is a pauper.

Unity has no thoughts

Because, in unity
There is no thing to think about.
Wu Hsin cannot help you
Find your god.
Your god is somebody,
My god is no body.
Your god is somewhere,
My god is everywhere.
Your god is something,
My god is no thing, yet
Everything.
How can you expect Wu Hsin to help you?
Wu Hsin cannot separate the flame from
The fire.

Stop demanding that

Life provide happiness.
Happiness is inherent and
Internal to Being.
Looking for happiness in the external
May provide heat, but no light.

The Great Mystery

Cannot be thought through to solution.
In a single flash,
Clear Seeing occurs and
The Mystery is dissolved.

Memory is undependable.
Selective,
Sporadic,
Exaggerating and
Distorting,
It is an unreliable storehouse.
That which is unreliable
Must not be empowered.

As the sugar is completed pervaded

By the sugar cane juices,
This world is pervaded by
The Light.
When the Light shines;
All is seen.

My method has
No method.
You need only to stop.
Stop clinging,
Stop scheming,
Stop praying,
Stop seeking,
Stop analyzing,
Stop all your strategies and lastly,
Stop giving your thoughts
The authority to define
Who you are.
Simply allow what remains to
 Reveal Itself.

Wu Hsin will not

Engage you in debate.
Debate is food for
The mind.
My preference is not to
Feed the mind but to
Starve it.

Reject the path

Reject the journey,
Reject the desire to become
Anything in particular.
Reject time itself and
Become enveloped in what remains.

What is realization?
Realization is the understanding
That there is no one to be realized.
Nothing else.

What one was before this,

What one will be after this, is
No different from
What one is now.
Prior to a body,
Prior to a mind,
Prior to a personality,
This is It.

Chasing what is impermanent

Brings joy on the
Day of acquisition and
Sorrow on the day of loss.
Why not chase
What is permanent instead?

Man is not possessed

By a separate self.
He is merely possessed by
His belief in one.

Do not look at me.

I come before you to
Point you to the sun.
Do not look at me.
Look at the sun.

Why do you complain

About the darkness
When there are unlit candles
Beside your bed?
Its really quite simple:
Know what you are not,
 Everything that you are not.
What remains is what you are and
Have always been.

Wherever there are others

There is a separate self,
Wherever there are no others
There can be no self,
Wherever there is no self
There are no others,
Because in the absence of self,
One is all others.

The temples and monasteries

Cannot hide you
When you are running away
From yourself.
There is no sanctuary
Other than to dive inward and
Investigate who is running away
From what?

Over the course of your life

Your image of yourself
Keeps changing.
Wu Hsin wants to know
Why you convey
So much power to
Something so undependable?

It is only through
Losing ones mind that
One may come to
Ones senses.
All else is like
Trying to smooth water.

What is before birth and

What is after death is
The identical vastness.
A life is only the briefest
Interlude between the two.

Identification is bondage.
Whether it is identification
With a thought
With a feeling
Or with an object
It matters not.
Only identification with the Limitless is
Freedom.

If it may be so called,
My Concept is the
Concept of no concepts,
 My Practice is the
Practice of non-practice and,
The Method of meditation is
By non-meditation,
This results in the Mind of no mind,
The Thought of no thought and,
The Action of no action.
In summation,
It is The Presence of the
Absence of volition,
Which is awakening.

Nothingness:
Wanting nothing
Getting nothing
Having nothing
Needing nothing
Doing nothing
Being nothing
Being no thing.
This is Freedom.
This is Fullness.

Life is
Its own purpose.
There is nothing
That needs to be done and
There is no one to do it.

The dissatisfaction with,

The insufficiency of,
This moment is
All that need be transcended.
The door to
This transcendence is to be
Found in acceptance.

Habitual and normal are

Not the same.
Nor are
Different and separate.
Herein, the confusion lies.

The person is a collection of

Habits and memories.
Who is it to whom
The person happens?

In every instant
There is change.
Nothing is constant.
Where can one find
Security in this?
One cannot,
So why use so much energy
 Attempting to do so?

No one is humble
There is only
Humility
No one is compassionate
There is only
Compassion
Removing the one
Reveals the One.

Although preparation for change

May be gradual,
All true change is sudden.

Seeing clearly is an impersonal event

Occurring in the absence of
One intending to see clearly.
In fact, it is the one
Intending to see clearly
That is the very impediment to
Seeing clearly.

Wu Hsin would happily

Provide you with a way.
But how does one go
From here to here?

How do you
Describe color
To a man
Blind from birth?
All this talking,
Why?
Let the Stillness
Speak
And all questions are answered.

In an instant,
An entire world is created
When you dream.
The dreamer merely watches,
Having no control over what
The dreamed characters are doing.
Then you awaken.
In an instant,
An entire world is created.

In the moment when

The sight meets
The mirror
There comes an explosion in understanding
That there is no difference
Between the two.
One may teach it to you
Using five thousand words
While another
Teaches it
Using only five.
This should not be
A source of worry.
Your ears will go to
The one they can hear.

The dungeon of individuality is a cold keeper.

Liberation is liberation
From the idea of liberation.
The essence of what
You see before you are
The infinite reflections of
A single lamp.

If the words are heard,

Fully heard, not just
Listened to,
Then the work is over:
You are
What you have always been and
Always will be.
Therefore, what is left
To be done or undone?
And who is to do it?

The central problem is not that

You think too highly
Of yourself
Nor is it that
You think too lowly
Of yourself.
Instead, it is that
You think constantly
Of yourself.

The failure to understand

The Great Mystery
Resides in the inability to perceive
What should be obvious
Due to a conditioned response
That causes the looker
To always be looking in
The wrong direction.

My shadow is real
Because it can be observed;
It is unreal
Because it cannot exist
Independent of me.
I am real
Because I can be observed;
 I am unreal
Because I cannot exist
Independent of That
Which supports and preceded me.

To be free of the obsession

With the future,
With the preoccupation of
What to do next, is
Most well regarded by those that
Others label as lazy.
Even if it were so,
It would be
The highest form of laziness.

Wishing for a better past,

A different past,
Is the cornerstone of unhappiness.
Awash in the present,
In every What-Is,
Joy is boundless.

When expectation and wants

Are set aside,
The flow
Of the natural is unimpeded.
Life softens
And ease arises
And one is that much closer to peace.

Roots wither in darkness.

Keeping the root healthy and
Well watered
Will insure that
The fruits are sweet.
Attention should always be
Directed to the root.

There is nothing that Wu Hsin has

That another doesnt have
In equal measure.
As such, what has Wu Hsin
To give anyone,
Other than the awareness of
Our equality?

Becoming has no beginning.

Becoming has no end.
Becoming merely restarts itself
In every instant.
Becoming this or that is
A movement away from it.

The universal is everywhere and

In every thing, yet
 It cannot be discerned
With eyes that are personal.

The guises you employ

To protect yourself
From the world
Also deny you
Full access to your heart.
To love fully and completely
Demands the willingness
To be annihilated.

Achieving immortality is easy.

Only set aside
Ownership of body and mind and
Remain rooted in what was there
Before their appearance.

This knowledge came upon me

In a flash:
I sought to remember
What I was before
Thoughts arrived, before
The sense of the body arrived, before
This me was born.
What was revealed was that
I was birthed from Nature,
From the Totality of every thing.
Shackled by time,
Shackled by an identification
Of my own making,
With smallness.
And when I am done, I will
Return there;
The cycle will be complete.

Why are you so afraid of life?

Why do you distrust it so?
Why must you control
Every aspect of
The environment around you?
Why must you defend yourself
Against anothers words or actions,
Regardless of how trivial?
Why?

For something to be seen

Or known
Or perceived or cognized,
There must be
A subject and
An object.
That which you seek is
Prior to these.
How will you know it
 When you find it?
How can you find it
When it isnt an it?
The notion of I is
A basket into which
So many other notions are thrown.
Upon deep examination,
The basket is revealed to be empty.

Name and form are a unit of time,

Emerging from and returning to
The Timeless.

Birth and death are merely

The beginning and ending of
A series of events.
Stand on the outside,
Observe them but
Dont get involved.
Standing on the high cliff,
The river below can be
Observed and enjoyed without
The observer getting wet.

The promise of the future is

A falsehood.
How many futures have come and gone
While dissatisfaction remains?

Once the great awakening occurs

Whatever ensues afterwards is of no consequence.
Outward changes may occur,
They may not.
Outward signs need not announce
Inner transformation.

What is your life other than

The functioning of
The Totality from
The viewpoint of
The specific?

The very next second

Holds the possibility that
You can disengage from
Your enchantment with
You life story and
You can enter into
The realm of
Complete peace.
Wu Hsin wants to know:
What are you waiting for?

Admittedly, we are all objects

Known to the senses of one another.
 Yet, the knower of all objects
Must exist
Prior to all objects.
Therefore, how can the knower
Be known?

Only an object
Can manifest
The effect of a cause
But an object
Cannot know the effect.
The subject
Knows the effect.
Suffering arises
When the supposed subject
Mistakes itself
For the object.
The end of suffering
Is the end
Of objectification
By the supposed subject.

True innocence requires

The willingness to be hurt,
The willingness to be wrong,
The willingness to be awed and
Out of control.
True innocence is
The doorway to
The eternal.

In the beginning,
There were no others.
Then I arrived,
You arrived,
They arrived
And peace departed.

All that happens is

The cause of
All that happens.
Every event requires
The cooperation of
The totality.

All this running

Back and forth
In the name of doing.
What does a rose do
In order to smell
Like a rose?
What does the sky do
So that it may be
The sky?
Wu Hsin says
 All doing is inherent in being.
Be.
Wu Hsin is not
The sun.
The sun that knows
No night
Was before Wu Hsin
And is after Wu Hsin
Yet during Wu Hsin.
Who is Wu Hsin, therefore
To speak of nothingness?

Everything you have had

Will be lost.
Everything you have
Will be lost.
Everything you will have
Will likewise be lost.
Why make them important?

Using your mind will not

Take you to Freedom.
How can the mind
Name the Nameless,
Grasp the Formless or
Know that which cannot
Be known?
This tool cannot
Cultivate this field.

The success of Wu Hsin

Rests on one act,
That being,
Keeping myself
Away from myself.
It was not anything I did
It was only
What was done.

The recognition of illusion as illusion

Does not necessarily
End the illusion.
However, it ends the involvement
With the illusion.
This is enough.

In order to achieve Understanding

Ones focus need be less on
What one is
And more on
What one is not.
When the clouds
All disappear
The sun is revealed
In its full splendor.
You are dreaming
My child:
Dreaming that you are asleep
Dreaming that you are awake.
All the while
Life is being lived.

What is required
To keep your problems alive?
The answer to this is your
Meditation on your suffering.
Freedom from pain
Freedom from suffering is only
Freedom from my pain
Freedom from my suffering.
True freedom is
Freedom from my.

The people believe

That the answer to happiness
Lies in having more,
Acquiring more.
Wu Hsin tells you
This is an error.
Having twice as much
Doesnt make one
Twice as happy.
Take everything away
Until all that is left is you.
Then take you away
And the abode of happiness
Reveals itself.

At all times,
There have been
Good people
Doing what they thought
They should do.
At all times,
There have been
Evil people
Doing what they thought
They should do.
This is the nature of the world.
There is no such thing
As a one sided coin.

Those with wakefulness have lost everything.

Therefore, they have nothing left to lose.
They are fearless
In the face of whatever appears.

The process of Understanding is like

Washing a printed cloth.
 First the design fades,
Next the background,
Until all that remains is
Plain white.
What began as white returns
To where it began.

My dear children,
You are not
What you think you are
This what-you-think-you-are is
A shadow of
What you are,
Just as the moon
Reflecting on the lake water is
Not the moon.

A thing can become spiritual

In any moment that
Its reference point is
Its Ground.

Desiring nothing,
Disdaining nothing,
One cannot be impacted and is unassailable.

You come to Wu Hsin and ask,

Can you take away
My pain?
Can you take away
My unhappiness?
Can you take away
My fears?
Wu Hsin cannot take away
Pain
Nor unhappiness,
Nor fear.
Wu Hsin can only take away
My.
In so doing,
My pain
My unhappiness and
My fears evaporate

I am dying
You are dying
It has been this way
Since birth.
To be free from death
Wu Hsin says
Look to what you were
Before this birth.

Man spends far too much time

Rejecting what does not suit him
 But what does not suit today
May very well suit tomorrow
By then
It may be too late to retrieve it.
It is better to accept
All that comes
With deep understanding
That it is only temporary.

If you knew this

To be only a dream
Would any of it
Really matter?

Hearing with the ears is

Inferior to listening
With the heart.

Love and compassion

Are natural
To the man
Lacking in
Self motivation.

To be,
No past or future is required.
These are requirements to be
Some thing in particular.
Giving up the lesser
Gains the greater.

True loving must be pure,

Empty of all attributes.
It contains no I and
No other.

The entire world is

Merely a play
Performed on your stage while
You are seated
In the front row.
Volume Two: The Magnificence of the Ordinary
Forward
It has been said that should someone find a bright star, they have no right to keep it in their pocket. Instead, they should carry it openly so that its light may shine on
all.
These lost writings of the ancient Chinese Wu Hsin are one such star. In Volume One: Aphorisms for Thirsty Fish, Wu Hsin spelled out the reality of being and
stripped away the hallucination of the separate, individual doer.
In Volume Two: The Magnificence of the Ordinary, he concentrates much of his writing in describing what its like to live from this different point of view.
Surprisingly, it is not some cosmic, mind blowing, disassociation from everything. Instead, he suggests that the mystery of life is not a problem to be solved, but a reality
to be experienced.
He presents a view of the world where black is not separate from white. They are two opposite poles of a unitary wholeness. No good without bad, no high
without low, etc. What may be good today may be bad tomorrow. Seeing this clearly, one understands it is best to live without judgment.
He also draws a definitive distinction between knowledge and knowing. The former is of things, of form, of the world. It is cumulative. The latter is organic, inherent
and not contingent on anything. It is the very movement from knowledge to knowing that is the unambiguous affirmation of a life lived naturally and in alignment with
What-Is. He describes such a life this way:
Wu Hsin has given up
All notions of what he is not:
Not the mind,
Not the body,
Not the senses.
He knows that he knows these
But is not them.
His is a life of ease.
No longer habitual,
No longer mechanical,
Remembering only
What needs to be remembered;
Doing only
What needs to be done,
Spontaneously, in every moment.
His words are often terse, yet undeniably potent; provocative and immensely profound. In a sense, each text is hologramatic; a seeming part containing the whole.
A single statement within this collection is sufficient to jolt the reader into a new dimension of awareness. He prescribes no process, sets out no path to be followed.
Everything unfolds.
He stresses that none of this is something to be acquired. It is not something to be gained which can eventually be lost. It is here and now; it was here before and
will continue to be here in the future. It is the very Ground of Being and it is available to all without further postponement or delay. He sums this up succinctly in his
opening four lines:
The world is a collection of objects.
That which perceives the objects
Cannot itself be an object.
You are That.
There will always be conscious beings wondering about the fact of their being conscious and enquiring into its cause and aim.
What am I? Who am I?
Such questions have no beginning and no end. And it is crucial to know the answers, for without a full understanding of oneself, both in time and in timelessness, life
is an illusion, a projection from the mind, completely enslaved to neurology, genetics and circumstances.
Simplicity and humility are the keynotes of the life and words of Wu Hsin. He espouses no teaching, claiming he has none to offer, no system or philosophy or
method to expound. He knows his own real nature, acknowledging that it is no different from anothers.
The key, he suggests, is that the mind must cease its incessant movement and recognize and penetrate its own being, not as being anything in particular, neither here
nor there, but just timeless being.
This timeless being is the source of both the primal energy of life and of consciousness. Every human has it, every human is it, but not all know themselves as they
truly are. Instead they identify themselves with a name, a shape, a personality and the collections and content of their thoughts.
The only way to rectify the error is to understand the modes of the mind and to turn it into an instrument of self-discovery. In earlier times, the mind was originally a
tool in the struggle for biological survival. It had to learn the laws and ways of Nature in order to conquer it. That it did, but in the process, the mind acquired the art of
symbolic thinking and communication, the art and skill of language. Words became important; ideas and acquired the appearance of reality, the conceptual replaced the
real. The result is that man now lives in a world, where verbal pointers are mistaken to be facts.
The most commonly used word is I. The mind includes in it anything and everything relating to its counterpart, the body.
 To explore the sense of I, to reach its source, is the breakthrough into the real and away from the imagined.
Discontinuous, the sense of I must have a source from which it emanates and returns. As to methods of realizing ones unity with beingness and life, Wu Hsin is
elusive. But for all, the portal, regardless of how one arrives at it, is the sense of am-ness, prior to the notion of I am, as something separate and distinct.
It is through apperceiving the full scope and vastness of this am-ness, that one can realize the primordial and the ultimate.
This dwelling on the sense of being is simple, easy and natural. No preparation is required and no effort, regardless of its intensity, can achieve it.
The payoff is that one becomes fully conscious while remaining active and is therefore a gift to the entire world. Life goes on, but it is spontaneous and free,
meaningful and happy.
Volume Two, The Magnificence of the Ordinary continues Wu Hsins elucidation of this natural state. In it, he provides additional pointers to this effortless way
of being.
Text
The world is a collection of objects.
That which perceives the objects
Cannot itself be an object.
You are That.

Just as honey is not sweetness,

The words of Wu Hsin are not
The truth.
However, time spent with these words is like
The aftermath of rain.
In due course, a sprouting of
Understanding will occur and
Will bear fruit at a pace
Outside of ones control.

Do not deem
Wu Hsin to be insane
Simply because you cannot hear
The music he dances to.
Man is the one who is insane:
His solution to his
Need for security is to
Lock himself away in a prison.
What could be more secure than
A prison?
He passes his time
In a solitary cell labeled me.
Believing he is now safe and that
No other can harm him,
He has exchanged freedom
For security.
What is outside
The walls of the prison is the unknown,
Possibly not secure,
Not safe,
Alien, at times hostile, and
Not at all predictable.
Yet what sane man would choose
Prison over freedom?
Man is the one who is insane:
He trades the experience of life,
Here and now,
For time and attention spent
On regretting the past,
Wishing for a better past and
Hoping for a brighter future,
For a future that will right
What is now deemed not right.
The fragrance of the apple blossoms,
The laughter of a child,
The blueness of the sky,
All sacrificed on the altar of
 Mental preoccupations.
What a waste!
Man is the one who is insane:
Yet, quite normal
Within societal boundaries.
Numerous methods may lead one to
Being more comfortable.
But that is all you get:
One who is more comfortable in their prison,
Not one freed from their prison.
Nothing gets a person out of their prison
Because the person is the prison.

Wu Hsin may say something well;

That doesnt mean he has
Anything to say.
What he speaks of is greater than
Anything he can say about it.
He will reveal it
In much the same way
As a sculptor reveals the image,
By removing chunks from the block.

These words are not directed to

Any individual,
Any personality,
Any you.
Instead they go to that
Which supports the you,
Sustains the you,
Yet is prior to it.

If one takes the rear end of a dog

From the front end of a dog
One has no dog.

Yu Ping watched the moon rise

Yu Ping watched the moon set.
He saw the sun rise and the sun set.
Day after day:
Moon rise, set
Sun rise, set.
Noticing that the sun always rose,
After the moon set,
Yu Ping wrongly concluded that
The setting of the moon was
The cause of the rising of the sun.

How can black be known

In the absence of white?

The success of one

Can only be measured against
The failure of another.
To whatever degree
Man attempts to control nature,
Nature responds in kind.
It cannot be mastered but
It can be destroyed.
In so doing,
Man destroys himself.

It is the way of energy that

It does not need a governor.
Why perpetuate an illusion
By seeking to control anything?

All enemies are implicit allies

In the game of hatred.
In the absence of either,
There is no game.

Perfect archery
Has no archer.

The strategy of seeking

An advantageous position
Over life is
The wellspring of sorrow.

Wu Hsin did not

Come into the world;
Rather, he came out from it.

Man and his environment are not

Separate and distinct;
Push one and the other moves.
This interaction is an
Integral process of a
Unitary wholeness.

At what point does

Telling your god
What to do and
What you want,
Become tiresome?
At what point is this
Seen through
For the sham that it is?

Time eats every thing.

All life is a single event:

One moment flowing into the next,
Naturally.
Nothing causing everything.
Everything causing everything.

How is beginning defined?

 Is it the birth of the baby or
Is it the birth of its mother?

What is the world other than

Numberless mirrors
Reflecting the light from
A single source?

The Source of being

Cannot be conceived.
Only objects are conceived,
While the subject remains
Finer than mist.
Wu Hsin advises to
Stop searching for
What cannot be found and
Instead realize that
Ones inherent nature is that of
The sought.

No amount of study,
No attendance in any school
Can teach one to be oneself.
Being is everything,
Being any thing in particular is
An illusion.

Like the scab on the foot

Drops off when
No longer needed,
So, too, do beliefs and traits
Drop off when their service is
No longer needed.
Let the scabs
Attend to themselves.

A mind kept independent of

The thoughts that arise in it has
Attained the clarity of sight to which
Wu Hsin refers.

All declarations of Truth

Declare that Truth is undeclarable.
Any awakening to the Truth is an
Intuitive and spontaneous process.
There is nothing to be done.

All matters resolve themselves

In the course of time.
If there is a need for
The involvement of the individual,
Involvement occurs.
Otherwise, why not rest and
Smell the flowers?
Self cultivation may require
Unimaginable time but
Clear seeing occurs in an instant.

Those with insight are free.

They have no desires.
They want only what they have
In every moment.
They are the law unto themselves.
They are without obligations, with
Nothing that has to be done.
Their virtues arise effortlessly;
Their efforts arise effortlessly.

When the mind ceases to imagine,

It ceases to be.
Who, then, is to
Know this mind?
When its projections return,
Its personal knower returns, yet
Its impersonal knower has never left.

Stillness, dreaming, waking;

This is the Great Wheel.
When the Knower
Of the three is known,
The great gate opens.

Those that are so upright that

They cannot be bent
Must continue their
Dissatisfaction with the world.

It is the nature of the flame to burn.

It is the nature of the moth to
Fly toward the light.
When the moth is destroyed
By the flame,
Can it be considered to be
The fault of the moth?

When the understanding arises that

The personal will is
The servant of That,
Then one need not seek reasons for
Any action that occurs.
Without all the whys,
Peace reigns.

Can man become too secure?

At what point has
Spontaneity and aliveness
Been sacrificed on
The altar of safety?
Other animals are born
Knowing who they are and
What they must do.
Why is this knowing so difficult for
Humanity to grasp?
Might it be because
In the kingdom of animals,
There are no individuals?

From the absence of Understanding to

The presence of Understanding,
There is a process at work.
It is the same process that results in
The growth of a baby in the womb and
Both occur without conscious effort
By anyone.

Recognizing the body,

One is apart from the body.
Recognizing the mind,
One is apart from the mind.
This that is apart stands supreme;
Prior to the arising of any thing.

The background is
The father to the foreground.
Everything emanates from it and
Returns to it.
Lacking in qualities,
It cannot be described.

Trying to understand oneness is as futile as

Trying to drink with the ears.

To be nobody is to
Have no body.
That which is prior to
Name and form is
What one truly is.
Whatever it is called, when called
It does not reply.

The Life-Energy and

Awareness arrive.
In due course,
The instruments purpose is fulfilled.
The Life-Energy and
Awareness depart.
The cycle is completed.
Understand this thoroughly and
There is nothing else to do.

When a golden dragon is

Melted down,
It returns to its original state.
 It is what it was before and
Yet, it is not.
Golden dragon is no more;
Gold remains.
So it is with all things.

A return to wholeness is
An end of division.
No seer,
No seen,
Only seeing.

The return to the original nature is not

A rising up
But a sinking down.
Whereas rising is active
Sinking is passive.
This return is therefore effortless.

The man of complete knowledge is

No longer an individual.
That which applies to the individual
No longer apply to this one,
Thus making him
Difficult to recognize.

How different the world is

When the identified individual is
Absent from it.

One becomes ones thoughts

When one claims
Ownership of them.
When they are merely noticed
But not attended to,
They can do no harm.

Permanency is the primary misconception.

Everything comes and goes.
When this is fully comprehended,
Clinging ceases and
The joy for each thing is magnified.

Clear seeing is
The end of rushing.
One realizes ones
Perfect alignment in time,
In space.
One is where
One is supposed to be
In the time
One is supposed to be there.

True knowledge is not

The accumulation of concepts.
 It is the absence of concepts.
It is a knowing that
Cannot be expressed and
Where concepts are useless.

Why limit oneself to

A particular body?
Return to the state of wholeness,
Even though the body may be broken;
To the state of riches,
Even among the lack of earthly possessions;
To the state of peace,
Even if the world is aflame.
There is no requirement for waiting.
Do it now.

Nothing to be reached.
Nothing to be gained.
Nothing to be added.
That which is sought is
Here and now.
Does one speak of space
Entering a room?

Preying on caged canaries may be

Great entertainment to the housecat.
It is far less so to the canaries.

That from which

Nothing can depart
Holds all,
Nurtures all, and
Sustains all
In much the same way as
The ocean holds raindrops.

One gains the power of the river

When one swims in
The direction of its flow.

Identity is difference.

When the sandals are comfortable

One feels as if barefoot.
When the robe is comfortable,
One feels as if naked.
All discomfort is
A call for attention.

The eagle flies over the lake

Casting a reflection without intention.
This is effortless effort.
To manifest this,
One cannot attain know-how,
Only no how.
Boundaries can either divide or
Bind together.
The absence of boundaries is
The absence of
Division and togetherness.
What remains is one.

A centipede controls
Its one hundred legs at once by
Not thinking about it.
All intention is the beating of
A skinless drum.

The thinker of thoughts is merely

Another thought.
The one who knows this is
No longer in his own way.

The governor of Shu province

Sent his courier to the south.
Being a wise man,
The courier never mistook himself
For the government and
Understood that he was only
Its messenger.

Wu Hsin arrived
Just prior to the world.
I am, therefore,
The world is.

To understand the way things are

Understand the way things were.
Before a man,
One was a boy.
Before a boy,
An infant.
Before an infant,
A seed and
Before the seed,
One was all.

Thinking one thought at a time,

It would take forever
To understand everything.
The quicker route
With the same outcome is
To understand Nothing.

In the beginning, no thing is.

Then there is one,
Then there is two,
Then there is ten thousand.
To understand the beginning,
 One must return to it.
When the aroma of
Springtime flowers
Wafts down the hillside.
One must trace
The aroma to its source
To find the flowers.
So too it is
With the aroma of being.
Once the function of perceiving is
Clearly understood,
The notion of inside and outside vanishes.

The world is merely

The interplay of opposites;
One and many,
Solid and empty,
Coming and going.
This flow goes on
Without end.
The one unaffected by the flow is
The one who has accepted it.

In the absence of change,

What one was is
What one is and
What one shall be.
Hence, time is voided because
Time is change.
When the foreground
Remains the same,
Against the background of eternity,
Of what use is time?

Wu Hsin does not desire

The other shore;
This shore is more than enough.
This very acceptance
Transforms this shore into
The other shore.

The jump from the periphery to

The center can
Occur in an instant.
The notions of preparation for it are
Fools errands.

The ignorant person is

One who ignores
That which is essential.
To know of heaven and
Earth and things but
To not know oneself is
The height of ignorance.
Make a distinction between
Knowledge and knowing;
Knowledge is always of things
Whereas knowing is inherent,
Like a seed knows how to sprout,
The flower knows how to open or
The heart knows how to beat.
Knowledge is the lock;
It can be described with words.
Knowing is the key;
It is unspeakable.

The wise man is unpredictable;

He never reacts yet
He always responds.
Being ever present,
His previous responses
Cannot be used to predict
What he will do in this moment.

Once the mountain peaks have been viewed,

Even from far away,
There is an implicit invitation to
Go there.
Wu Hsin extends his invitation:
Stop limiting yourself to yourself,
Stop identifying yourself with what is thought.

Moving from the circumference to

The center is the enemy of fear.
Fear cannot exist at the center;
There is nothing to fear there.

Ideas distort experience.

The one who is empty of ideas
Experiences life in all its fullness.

Self cultivation can take

An inexorable amount of time
Whereas awakening to clarity
Can occur in any instant.
Its nature being instantaneous,
It cannot claim a path.

The present stands outside of time;

Lacking in duration,
It cannot be measured.
To be timeless is
To be present.

Exchanging worldly desires for spiritual desires is

The last gasp of the separate self.

From infant to child, to teenager,

To adult, to elder, what can be
 Less permanent than identity?
To root oneself in identity is like
Planting a tree in mist.

The cured insomniac does not

Lie awake all night recalling how
He used to suffer.
Do not fool yourself into
Believing that
Something has been achieved.

To dismember is to tear apart;

To re-member is to put back together.
The old must be dismembered
So that which was prior to it
May be remembered.
Therefore, to re-mind is
To dismember and then re-member.

The present moment resides

Between imagination and stupor.
When both are rejected,
It shines like a lamp in
A room with ten thousand mirrors.

Ambition is the desire to be

Something other than what one is.
It is the deadliest of poisons.
In the absence of ambition,
All futures dissolve and
One is natural in all things.

One cannot count

The number of beliefs that arent so.

If nature cannot be trusted,

How dare one trust oneself?
If the sun is cautious of the wind,
Does not the sky become a battlefield?

When the innumerable searches are concluded,

The realization dawns that
The optimal place to be is
Where one already is.
It is an arrival at the place
Where there is no solid footing beneath,
The understanding of all things.
Until the conclusion,
The searcher is like
A cod asking directions to the ocean.

Chin Ho told Wu Hsin,

I must be going; there is so much
I have to do.
Wu Hsin smiled.
 The world goes along quite well
Without you and your doings.
Didnt it do so
Before you arrived in it?
Dont you believe it will do so
After youve left it?
Why not stay with me and
Lets do nothing for a while longer?

The average man cannot distinguish

Between his problem and himself.
To become what one believes,
To become what one feels, is
The definitive statement of hell.

Adhering to the notion that

Man can advance
While his environment deteriorates is
Tantamount to hugging smoke.
When it is seen that
Each depends on the other,
Harmony ensues.

Hell is worrying about the future.

The only step on the journey
One needs concern oneself with is
This one now.

The destruction of beliefs is

Superior to the creation of beliefs.
The destruction of identification is
Superior to the
Creation of identification.
When all destructions are completed,
What remains is the highest,
Yet it is ordinary.

When the trance is broken,

All the qualities one has been
Trying to cultivate
Sprout spontaneously as if
Spring has arrived in the fertile valley.

Defer all investigation until

It can be begun without beliefs.
In so doing, there can be no
Taint on the findings.

Any day, in any life, requires

The acquiescence of
The entire universe
To be as it will be.

One night, Wong dreamt of

A beautiful world with rivers
 Abundant with fish,
Clear blue skies and
Beautiful mountains that were
Tens of thousands of years old.
A barking dog
Ended his sleep and
He awoke to a beautiful world with
Rivers abundant with fish,
Clear blue skies and
Beautiful mountains that were
Tens of thousands of years old.

The entire manifestation is

One unitary functioning.
As such, there is no room
For an individual that is
Separate from the whole.

The plum tree is not

Commanded to bear fruit.
Such is Nature:
None giving orders,
None obeying.

To be attached to something,
Be it person, place, object or idea,
Is to be shackled to it.
How can the shackled one
Realize their freedom
Without the breaking of the shackle?

A nose kept in books

Cannot smell the dogwoods.
While the scholars are
Studying the menu,
The wise are eating the meal.

There are no sounds that are unheard,

No sights unseen.
The One who
Presides over it all
Has been given many names,
But no garment fits It.
All effort to find It is like
Driving a spike into the sky.

No monastery can provide sanctuary to

The one running away from himself.

Goallessness is itself the goal.

Means become superfluous in
The absence of ends.
The efficacy of trying is revealed to be like
Catching the wind in a sieve.
The natural follows no rules;
It is a spontaneous outpouring
Which is always correct.
The cock that announces the dawn
Has not been taught to do so.

The world is a singular event.

Looking at the pieces,
Conflict is apparent.
Looking at the whole,
Harmony is apparent.
The way things seem to be
Depends on the vantage point.
A movement toward higher ground
Results in an improvement in vision.

A push is also a pull.

A life in alignment with What-Is is like

The willow in heavy snow:
Supple, bending, but not fractured.
The pines succumb as
Their rigidity is their undoing.

The journey inward cannot be

Taken on foot,
Yet, it is as necessary as
Salt is to stew.
The return is always
A source of joyous celebration
For the one who returns although
He is not the one who departed.

There is nothing to be done

In order to see clearly.
Such seeing arrives suddenly,
In the time it takes to realize that
Fire is hot to the touch.
It arrives causelessly; as such,
Wu Hsin has no
List of instructions that
One must follow.

The inherent tension between self and other

Cannot be extinguished by force,
Just as one cannot
Blow away the night.
The tension ebbs and flows of its own accord,
In a manner no mouth can describe.

Following rainbows is
The end result of clear insight into
A black-and-white world.

The sound of flowing water

 Cannot be captured in a bucket.
To seek to control life
Is to deaden it.
To try to gain
An advantage over life is as difficult as
Drawing a round square.

The world may seem vast,

But the space that contains it is
Vaster still.
This foreground and background are
Two pieces of a unitive integrity.
When the background is forgotten,
The foreground is expensed.

The full life is not measured

By the breadth of the experience
But by its depth.
Those who are totally aware
May have never left their home.

At the most fundamental level,

Man is merely the experience of sensation and
The reaction to it.
As such, he is revealed as
Nothing more than
One of the many processes of life.

The most craven of idols of worship

Are not made of stone or brass,
But of beliefs.

The natural man has no preferences,

Takes no sides, and avoids labels.
His ordinariness is so vast that
He is considered merely
A part of the landscape.
Yet, he has mastered the world by
Disempowering it.

The microcosm depends on the macrocosm

To no less degree than
The macrocosm depends on the microcosm.
The death of a beetle affects the tides
In ways too mysterious to understand.

The individual perceives that

Life is happening to him whereas
The one who has
Relinquished his individuality
Perceives that life is
Merely happening.
This is the state wherein
Tension cannot arise.
Many times has Wu Hsin been asked:
What is emancipation?
Emancipation is
Freedom from attachment;
Attachment to people,
Attachment to things,
Attachment to ideas and beliefs.
With all attachments cut,
One trusts that one will float
Rather than fall.

Many times has Wu Hsin been asked:

What is emancipation?
Emancipation is
The horror of mortality
Transformed into
The ecstatic sense of
Freedom from the individual.

One tiny insect can damage a

Huge expanse of grain.
Do not, therefore,
Be deceived by size.
Everything impacts
Everything else and is
Essential to the way of things.

Those who do not know

Mask their ignorance in
Scripture and holy texts.
Wu Hsin uses these merely to
Wipe off the cloak of the intellect.

Accepting that the snow is white and

The crow is black and
Summers are hot and
Winters cold,
Is the heart of understanding
All that is.
It is not the extraordinary that
Demands attention,
But the ordinary.

Awaken from the trance or

Remain buried alive.

Clear sight is similar to

The demolition of a building in that
It is a tearing down of
All the old structures.
Then, the world appears to be
Wearing a new robe.

The state Wu Hsin speaks of

Cannot be sought by pursuit nor
 Escaped via flight.
It is here; it is now.
Concerning oneself with
How to attain it is merely postponement.
The focus of attention for
A single second is sufficient.
A single broken thread may
Unravel an entire garment.

Each thing bettered is

The world bettered.

To act without seeking benefit

To act without seeking results
To be disinterested in outcomes is
To be aligned with What-Is as it is.

The way out is

To get out of
Ones own way.

The goal of the individual is

The perpetuation and preservation of
The individual.
When the individual is understood
As nothing other than a construct,
All notions of the goal disappear.

The simple man

Leaves no track behind.
He enters the water
Without causing a ripple.
He walks through the valley
Yet the grass is unbent.
He is invisible to the powerful
But their power
Pales beside his.

Just watching.
Not trying to get anything.
Not expecting anything.
Not seeking anything.
Not hoping or praying.
Not commenting or judging.
Not intending to relax or breathe correctly.
Purposelessly, just watching.
Do not ask Wu Hsin to describe
What happens next.
How can he?
Then, it would be watched for.

Those in alignment
Follow the order of What-Is, they
Follow the way of What-Is, they
Follow the timing of What-Is and they
 Follow the design of What-Is.
They are calm;
They are clear;
They are real.
Having arrived at the root,
They are never confused by the branches.

The beauty of music is felt,

Not analyzed.
Grasp a single note for
A single second too long and
The melody is lost.
As such, Wu Hsin has
Nothing to give,
Just as one man cannot
Eat the others dinner for him.

The nature of What-Is is

Likened to eating food:
It should be taken in, digested and
Then eliminated.
Trying to keep it is
The surest way to lose it.

Pulling the weeds

Fortifies the plant.
The removal of erroneous beliefs
Prepares the way for clarity.
The removal of those beliefs remaining
Heralds the arrival.

To be calm amidst inactivity is

Not difficult.
The masterful ones are those who
Remain calm amidst intense activity.
To be the embodiment of calm is
To be freed
From the power of circumstances.

It is easy to become
Wet in a fog.
The dry ones are those who have
Escaped the trance of
Self and other.

Living at the center results in

Changes at the circumference.
As the periphery continues to shrink
It becomes increasing difficult to
Discriminate between the two.
Every day is the arrival of Spring.

Seeing through the veil,

One no longer relies on
Ones own resources.
 Instead, one allows oneself to be
Maintained and directed by
That which maintains and directs
The sun, the wind,
The water and the waves.

Noticing without fixating,

One is free.
All the beauty of the world
Appears in the smallest and the least.
When this is not recognized
One is thinking about
Ones third slice of cake
While still eating the first.

The cloud has no destination

Which it must reach.
It is purposeless.
In much the same way,
When there is no longer
A sense of worry,
A concern for what comes next,
One can walk without
Needing to arrive.

That which has always been is

Like a seamless ball.
Its beginning is nowhere and
Everywhere.
Its terminus is everywhere and
Nowhere.
Do you see
It cannot be shown?

To fathom the fathomless and

Know the end of the endless is
To arrive at the gate of
The Great Understanding.

To be eternal is to
Stand outside of the process of
Becoming and
The field of time.
Upon the clear perception that
There is nothing to become and
No time in which to achieve it,
Eternity is realized.

The common man is chasing shadows;

Here one moment
Gone in the next.
The man of clear sight
Observes shadow
But is not enamored with it.
He understands that
 The reflection of light
On the background
Creates the foreground.
Focusing his attention on
The background
He sees all.
Look without naming.
Listen without naming.
Thoughts come,
The kettle whistles.
Respond the same to each.

That which occurs naturally

Is vastly different from
What occurs through effort.
The former is aligned with the world,
The latter,
Only with the self.
The stream flows effortlessly.
What has to be done
To bring the arrival of spring?

It requires true courage to

Reject the familiar and
The convenient.
Rigorously question
What youve been telling yourself.
Wu Hsin suggests that
You have not been listening
To a friend.

The cost of anticipating

The next moment is that
This moment is lost.

Every life becomes

Sheer wonderment when
The mental commentary is removed.
The cup of black tea is
Transformed into a holy moment.

How much of ones personal narrative

Could survive if
The perceived enemies and
The perceived adversities in it were removed?

One who desires

To live in emptiness,
Cannot be empty.

That which gives life to the living

Never dies.
That which transforms things
Never changes.
It is this That which is
 The father and mother of all things.

Rejecting illumination
The way is dark.
How easy it is
To become lost.

Events and activities occur like

The grass growing by itself.
Nothing is superior or inferior.
Whatever mental concept or image comes up,
Naturally happens by itself.
Does the snake think about camouflaging itself?
There is no need to discard or get rid of it.
Notice it, and it is finished.

The exercise of true faith is

The exercise of trust.
When one is trusting,
The need for gods to believe in
Becomes superfluous.

Pick up a single link in

A chain and
All the other links come too.
Apperceive one thing correctly and
One apperceives everything.

There is no separateness.
There can be
The appearance of separateness,
The experience of separateness, yet
There is no separateness.
Because the spaces that
Serve as connectors are not perceived,
Separateness is assumed.
When space is perceived and
The things spaces connect are perceived
Unity is perceived.

Caught between
Memory and expectation,
Xin Shu was enslaved by
His mind.
He freed himself by
Putting one foot
In front of the other.

Either one trusts no thing or

One trusts some thing.
To trust no thing is to
Live a life of fear and vigilance.
To trust some thing is to relax,
Allowing that worldly matters are
Attended to without
 Ones direct involvement.

An excellent carpenter
Never makes his work more difficult by
Standing in his own light.

The bridge that does not sway

In heavy winds,
Usually tumbles in pelting rain.
To move with What-Is,
To not resist,
Promotes longevity in all things.

Words cannot explain

The taste of water or
The taste of life.
Only through direct experience
Does one reach either.

What is beyond here is

Likewise here.
Those who discriminate
Between imaginations and reality
Perceive that there includes here.

The point of contact between

The phenomenal world and
The sacred is
The sense of presence,
The sense of being; I am.
Not I am this nor
I am that,
I am.

To one who is inattentive

This years sparrows seem like
Last years sparrows.

The world begins anew when

All the structures one has created,
Have been torn down,
When all the things clung to
Have been released and
When all the dramas one perpetuates
Have been forgotten.

The same step that is

Too high for a child is
Too low for an adult.
The same step that is
Too wide for a child is
Too narrow for an adult.
The same step, therefore, has
The qualities of being high and low,
Wide and narrow, at the same time.
 Reference is everything.

What for one form of life is

A waste product is,
For another form of life,
An essential nutrient.
What is a predator for
One species is
Prey to another.
One cannot speak in absolutes
Except about the Absolute.

What is inside his skin,

Man names his insides.
Why then, does he not name
What is outside his skin,
His outsides?
Were he to do so,
His connection to everything
Would be self evident.

When the world is understood

With clarity,
It no longer disappoints.

One cannot succeed

Looking for the mind
In the head; the mind is not
In the head,
The head is in the mind.

In his first eighteen months,

Chung experienced the world
As himself.
Then he was taught that
He was separate from it,
Different from it and that
It was his adversary.
It was then that
Chung was truly born.

To return to that
Which is prior to this and that,
Requires the undoing of oneself.
Yet, it is the very same one
Who cannot do this
Anymore than
The teeth can bite themselves.
As such, if the undoing is to occur,
It occurs of its own accord;
All seeming effort
At the undoing is
A mere illusion.
Problems are created when
The impersonal is made personal.
 When an event becomes,
An experience,
Trouble ensues.

Arrange the blocks of life

To your hearts content.
As long as
The blocks dont move,
All is fine.
One who sees clearly understands:
Life is inherently change.

The world is perfectly ordered.

It appears not to be so only to
The individual.
Small vision cannot perceive
Grand scale.

The dropping of
Its leaves in autumn
Does not affect
The root of the tree.
Likewise, essence is not affected
When forms dissolve.

All naming builds a fence

Between that which is named and
The one who names.

There is always something

To worry about,
For the one who
Does not know oneself.

Living for the future is

The surest way to
Destroy the present.

All life is momentary.

If attention is otherwise engaged,
Life slips away like
Oil through the fingers.

The eye makes no effort,

Yet it sees.
The ear makes no effort,
Yet it hears.
The tongue makes no effort,
Yet it tastes.
Action that is natural,
Action that is appropriate,
Requires no effort.

The outcome of seeing clearly

Can be stated in
 A single sentence:
There is nothing wrong.

Memory is the corpse of experience.

Why live with the dead when
One can live with life?

One is thirsty and

One asks for water;
One is hungry and
One asks for food.
One doesn't know and
One asks.
One is open to receive.
If one thinks one knows and
One asks,
One is not open and receptive;
One is only seeking confirmation of
What one thinks one knows.

A simple man
Can enjoy music without
Knowing who wrote it.
He can relish the fragrance without
Naming the flower and can
Laugh with a child without knowing why.
A simple man is also lighter on his feet,
Lighter in his gait.
He is lacking in
All those concepts,
All those beliefs,
All those labels to carry around.
He is complete despite
All the things he lacks.
He is the most
Ordinary of ordinaries.

Trying to explain the unknown

Using symbols and words of
The known is like
Trying to smell ones nose.

The greatest conqueror

Conquers only himself.
With that conquest completed,
The conquest of anything external is
The play of children.

Those who adhere to

The experience of others
Gain knowledge.
Those who seek
Experience of their own,
Know.
The world is the honey,
Man is the fly.
The harder one tries to gain release,
The more stuck one becomes.

The attempt to gain

Control over oneself is like
Trying to stuff ones shadow
Into a sack.
Acceptance of ones nature is
A relaxation,
A movement toward peace
Within peace.

Follow the trail of your blessings

To their source.
Follow the trail of your sorrows
To their source and
You will find that
Both arrive at the same place.

Investigation returns one

To the root.
Upon attainment of the root,
Branches no longer confuse.

Forsake all paths,

Roam aimlessly and
Find What-Is.

The real ones consider everything

To be minor.
They take the world lightly.
In so doing,
Their heart cannot be burdened and
Their mind cannot be unsettled.

Tell Wu Hsin:
How many have been killed
Pursuing desires?
Now tell me,
How many have been killed
Pursuing desirelessness?

There is great wisdom in

Not deliberating.
It is within the nature of What-Is for
Whatever needs to happen
To happen;
Whatever needs to arrive
To arrive and
Whatever needs to depart
To depart.

The fulfillment of ones purpose

 Does not require
The understanding of ones purpose.
This is why a flute can be a flute and
A horse can be a horse.
Although the functions may be different
The essences are one.

Those with clear sight have befriended

The beginning and the end,
They hold no preferences.
They understand that
The good exists
Only in relation to the bad as
Does the sacred
In relation to the profane.

It is easy to be lost in imagination.

More difficult it is to be
Rooted in What-Is.
Forsaking the former requires
The willingness to see a world
Different from the one you planned.

To draw distinctions is to separate.

To separate is to
Move away from the natural.
Into how many pieces,
Can one cut the sky?

To be early or
To be late
Makes no difference
To one who is out of time.

That which is Supreme

Has no skin; nothing to delineate
The inside from the outside.

There is nothing wrong in this moment

Until one thinks about it.
What problem can there be if
There is no one to refer it to?

The description can never be

The described.
Wu Hsins word are not it;
They merely point to It.
They are a lamp
Illuminating a darkened wall.
Dont look for the lamp
On the wall.

Thoughts are only

Bubbles in water.
They stay for a while
 Then theyre gone.
How can the water be enjoyed
If there is preoccupation
With the bubbles?

I am this or
I am that is
A translation by the mind of
The sense of presence.
This presence is prior to
Any thing that can be
Referenced as this or that and is
The inherent nature of the cosmos.
This must become evident.
The sun need not proclaim
I am shining.

The stars do not

Fall from the sky.
The seasons arrive;
They depart.
Flowers bloom;
Leaves fall.
The tides ebb and flow.
It sustains the real and
The illusion.
That which governs these is
The Mystery not dared named.

To end strife,
One must end opposition,
The root of which is mind.
Right and wrong,
Good and bad,
Past and future,
Joy and sorrow,
Desire and aversion are all
Created by this thought factory.
Taking the attention away from mind is
A movement toward peace.

Open the eyes;

Seeing happens.
There is nothing else
To be done.
Who is it who claims
I saw?

The thought I see,

Cant see.
The thought I hear,
Cant hear.
Yet, there is seeing;
There is hearing without
Anything being done by
 Anyone in particular.

The entire cosmos works by itself,

Not needing assistance from
The great or the small.
What more does one need to understand?

Does Wu Hsin want to live 100 years?

Of what use is longevity to
One who is beyond time?

Those who see clearly

Want nothing,
Need nothing, not even a god.
Not needing any god, they become
Greater than any god.

All experience,
All perceptions are outside of
That which experiences and perceives.
Remember only this and
Identification with the local will end.

Life becomes other than it is

When there is acceptance that
Life is the way it is.

One is the knower of the world

Through the sense organs;
The knower of the sense organs
Through the mind; and
The knower of the mind
By knowing alone.
Actions, perceptions, thoughts and feelings
All come and go.
But knowingness never departs.
In the world of change,
Knowing is the only constant.

Mind as mind knows no peace, and

Mind at peace is no mind at all.

Diversity only relates to objects.

That which perceives them all is
One and the same.

The primary sin is

Identifying oneself with
Any thing in particular;
Identification with the transient,
Identification with the limited.
Freeing oneself from the particular,
One encounters oneself as
One really is.
Man has been taught
To be individualistic, separate.
Man has been taught
Not to accept but to fight.
Man has been taught
Not to trust but to doubt.
Man can either begin
The lengthy task of unlearning or
Return to the point that is
Prior to when the learning began.

The common man

Sits by the stream and
Hears its gurgling.
The awakened man
Sits by the stream and
Hears ten thousand hymns.

Those who act in

The name of their god are
A danger to all.
Those who claim to know
What is good for others are
Likewise dangerous.
Only those who know that
There are no others are
The possessors of wisdom.

Li had an old cat.

It lived naturally and
Never had a worry.
Li observed it every day until
He lived naturally and
Never had a worry.

The delusional want to

Make things happen.
They are in a hurry
To get to the future.
The wise allow
Things to happen.
They are at home in
The present moment.

Never confuse
Rest as a state of mind with
Rest as a state of being.
The former comes and goes
Like dew on grass
Whereas the latter is
The source of all activity.

All experience terminates in the mind.

What is beyond the mind
Cannot be experienced.
 All experience conduits through the personal.
What is beyond the personal
Cannot be experienced.

Living consciously is
Lifes only purpose.

Just as the rising of the sun

Obliterates the stars in the sky,
So too does discernment
Obliterate delusion.
With the questioning of every assumption,
The false is discarded and
The reality of What-Is shines through.

The movement away from holiness is

Characterized by the belief that
Something need be added to
What one is.

When the mind becomes

Entangled in its happenings,
One misses out on
What is happening.

The integrated man

Refuses to contend.
He understands the fundamental fellowship
Between yes and no.
He discerns the manure in
The fragrance of every rose.

The end of unhappiness occurs

In the absence of any one
Who is unhappy.

Chow Wang had found

His god's house, yet
He balked at the door and
Could not knock on it.
Overcome by fear of
His absorption in his god, of
Losing who he thought he was,
He ran away, never to return.
Now Chow Wang preaches:
"I know where he lives;
I can show you too"

He lives in one long moment

Having no beginning and no end.
What comes is accepted,
What goes is accepted.
Everything appears and disappears
In front of him as
The ever changing display of phenomena.
 He knows himself to be
Nameless and formless awareness while
People refer to him as Wu Hsin.

The quality of ownership is the great undoing.

My opinions,
My thoughts,
My actions,
My body,
My mind.
But where is the owner?

Those that are

Free of the world are
Blessings in the world.
They stand beyond conflict as
They are the very antithesis of conflict.
In the time it takes
To snap ones finger,
Everything changes.
What before had been perceived from
An individual center is
Now perceived from the totality,
As the Totality.
What before was division is
Now merely difference.
Difference does not separate.
What before was a particular event is
Now seen as a link in one whole.
The small pieces,
Cut up as they were by the mind, are
Returned to a single, integral unity.
The contraction within life ceases;
There is fullness.

There is nothing about knowledge that

Direct experience cannot cure.
Stop trying to be anything, then
See what happens.

Shi Fang was an excellent cook.

He would gather all his ingredients,
Cooking them all in his marvelous way and
Once they were delicious,
He knew nothing further need be added.
Likewise, when ones view changes and
Life is seen as delicious, then
It is understood:
Nothing further need be added.

There is no secret formula.

Wu Hsins words are to be
Treated like food:
Bite them off,
Chew on them a short time and
 Then swallow them;
Involvement is over.
Whatever happens afterward is
Automatic and unconscious.

The particular and the universal are inseparable.

They are two aspects of that which
Cannot be named.
One is the view from the inner,
The other from the outer.
Ones with clear sight do not
Shun one or worship only the other.

All desire is
The urge to fill that which is
Deemed to be not full.
When the sun of clear sight
Burns this cloud away,
Striving comes to an end.

The wise are forever peaceful.

They remain calm and composed during their activities.
They realize that they are
Moved by something that is No Thing and are
Unaffected by what others do, say, or think.
They have no worries, anxieties or cares because
They understand that nothing is theirs and that
Everything is being done by this
Something that is No Thing with which
They are in conscious union.

Things are the way they were because

That is the way they are supposed to be.

You are your only obstacle.

The way beyond yourself is
Through yourself.

Seeing both sides of a coin is

The only way to understand it.
Not preferring one side
To the other is
The only way to know it.
Nothing is good or bad.
Seeking to make it otherwise is
The root of unhappiness.

Preoccupation with objects of the senses,

Preoccupation with thought,
Draws attention away from their source and
Reduces life to a series of
Inconsequential instants.

Both the process of seeing and

The seeing of process are important.
 The former facilitates the latter.
A single sun is reflected in
Ten thousand drops of morning dew.
Seeing passed appearances,
The one source is seen.

Wanting life to be
Other than it is is like
Wanting a river to
Flow uphill or
A cat to bark.

Hu carried a large rock

Wherever he went.
If someone suggested he
Set it down, he replied
If I do, Ill have nothing left
However, the day came when
The rock became too heavy to carry.
Hu was obliged to set it down.
On that day, he acquired
A lightness of being and wisdom.

The greatest knowing is inherent and

Need not be searched for.

Understand the nature of things and

The need for emotion subsides.
Can one resent a fig tree for
Secreting its juice?

When asked what is

The key to his happiness,
Wu Hsin replied that
He simply forgoes the non-essential.

Death is the end of

Enslavement to the body and the mind.
A fortunate few have died
Before they died and
In so doing,
They reached the deathless.

What is natural is
Always for the best as
Naturalness is the
Epitome of equilibrium.

Words are no more than pointers.

One cant cure an illness by
Repeating the word medicine.

To each person, the world appears different.

This is so because believing is seeing; however,
The world is not external.
 It only arises after its perceiver does.
Its nature is as the reflection of a crystal.
The color it radiates is dependent upon
The backdrop against which it is held.

What injures the hive

Causes injury to the bee.
When the wise man finds
The well that quenches his thirst,
He sleeps beside it.

All that exists is the seedling

From which emerges
All that exists.

Outside of the skin is

A mechanical process that
Most call the world.
It has no regard for
Any thing claiming individuality.
When a wise man is
Confronted with the world,
He softens, melts and
Returns into it.

Since the beginning,

Man has sought to define himself
In relation to the world
Outside himself.
However, all definitions must
Dissolve at the instant of
The clear insight that
There is nothing outside oneself.
The world one sees is
The world one is.

One who sees the present moment clearly has

Seen everything clearly.

Peace that is
Dependent on circumstances is not
Peace.
Happiness that depends on people or things is not
Happiness.
True peace, true happiness is
Independent of the world.

When the attention

Shifts from past and future to
The present instant, there is
A commensurate shift from
There being never enough to
What-is is enough.
Then, the desire for
A chicken to be a duck
 Comes to an end.

There is something unknown

Doing what cannot be understood.
Why get in the way?

Each definition
Limits one further.
Each limitation
Defines what one
Appears to be.
The person is only an appearance,
Like the space in the pot
Appears to have the shape of the pot.
The sense of separation
Results in fear.
This fear produces
A sense of further separation.
This toxic circle is broken upon
The recognition of
The inherent oneness of
Self and other.
Be no one in particular.

Pure water only flows from

A pure source.
The actions of one who is integrated are always
Appropriate to the moment.

Complete understanding does not involve

Knowing what one is;
It only requires
Knowing what one is not.

The bin that holds the garbage

Must be emptied and cleaned before
It can become a home for roses.
Let the thoughts come,
Let the feelings come,
Let the dirt come.
For them to go,
They first must come.

Being enough is enough.

One who has awakened to

The workings of the world
Understands that the mind
Fills space with objects and
Time with events.
Released from captivity of the mind,
One is finally free.

Shutting the door may

Eliminate the sunlight but
 It doesnt eliminate the sun.

All that is required is

The transition from
Seeing oneself in the world to
Seeing the world in oneself.

Identification with the personal localizes.

It is a contraction, a smallness.
When this is dropped,
One expands to encompass
The entire cosmos.

You ask me to describe

How I view the world.
Wu Hsin declares:
All the world is my object, and
I am the changeless subject.
I live in the best way, which is
Aligned with living and only living,
Completely forgetting the
How and the why of it.

The sum total of the work is to

Replace the object of attention with
The subject of attention.
The answers to the questions
Do not reside in
The already known.

Any personal point of view is

Merely a fraction.
One can clearly see the Totality by
Summing endless fractions or by
Ending all fractions.

When there are no longer any goals, then

The goal is attained.

What could be
A greater sign of a fool than
His continuous antagonism
To the present moment?
He thrives on conflict,
Defines himself in conflict.
In the absence of conflict,
What is he?
He is a former fool.

Diving in is
The only way out.
There is no place where
Wu Hsin will send you to because
All there is, is here.
To see things clearly is to understand that
The world is exactly as it should be.
As such, there can be no mistakes.
All so-called mistakes are personal,
Labeled by a person as
Not right, not acceptable or not desired.

The balanced man knows that

All there is, is Life.
He apperceives that
What is seen and
What is experienced are the many
Forms of this Life and that
He is the space in which
It all occurs.

When discrimination was born,

Heaven was lost.

There is great liberation when

Life doesnt have to be
A certain way.

Belief establishes reality.

What one believes in is
What is real for them.
His investigation of his beliefs
Brought Song Jing to the understanding that
He creates the world he experiences.
As such, he was
The subject to every object.
What he experiences may
Depend on many things;
That he experiences
Depends on no thing.

The food is as much the singularity as is

The excrement.

Retreating to the point of creation,

What can possibly be said?
The voice of silence
Says it best.

To know that one is, is natural.

To know what one is, is
The fruit of deep investigation.
Once self-interest and self-concern are transcended,
An opening occurs.
What had previously been important
Becomes unimportant.
What had previously been ignored
Becomes the sole focal point.

In order to see that

 The cart is moving,
One must be out of the cart.
Otherwise, it appears that
The landscape is moving and
The cart is still.
Likewise, in order to
Clearly see the world,
One must be out of it.

Wu Hsin has given up

All notions of what he is not:
Not the mind,
Not the body,
Not the senses.
He knows that he knows these
But is not them.
His is a life of ease.
No longer habitual,
No longer mechanical,
Remembering only
What needs to be remembered;
Doing only
What needs to be done,
Spontaneously, in every moment.

The feeling of separateness,

The feeling of individuality is
The mother of desire;
The wanting of things that
One is seemingly not.
In the apperception of wholeness,
All desire vanishes.
One cannot want what
One already is.

Ones ideas of oneself

Change over time.
Being is constant.
Therefore, the choice is between
Attending to the changeful and
Attending to the changeless.

What is death?
The candle is gone.
The flame is gone.
The smoke is gone.
The sky remains.

All names pertain to forms.

All forms come and go.
Who then dares to
Assign a name to
The Nameless?

While you are sleeping,

 You dream of a snow leopard.
Just as it is about to pounce on you,
You wake up.
Likewise, this Wu Hsin is about to
Pounce on you and
The end result will be the same.
The paradox is that
When the awakening occurs,
You is not to be found.

You cannot see the moon with

The use of Wu Hsins eyes.

What changes you

Moves through you in the same way
That water always takes
The shape of its container.
Its qualities cannot be
Described any more readily than if
Wu Hsin were to describe the sweetness of sugar.
To know it, you must eat it.

Stillness is not the absence of thought.

Stillness is prior to both
The absence and the presence.
It cannot be created but
It can be found.

The one who observes their mind is

Free of their mind.

All paths lead somewhere.

Wu Hsin tells you:
No path is needed,
There is no place to go.
You are the destination.

Regardless of the certitude one feels

Regarding a feeling,
A perception or
An idea,
Wu Hsin reminds that there are
Other possibilities.

True living is what occurs when

There is no one trying to
Direct life.

Belief is the food of experience and

Experience is the food of belief.

Animation is the arrival of

The observing energy
Combined with
The life energy.
 For the one who knows these,
No other god is necessary.

Those with limited views are

Constrained by fear.
The faster they hurry,
The slower they progress.

Division is contrary to
The nature of things.
Good and bad,
Better or worse, are merely
Personal judgments
Lacking in basis.

How much can one receive

Who is not willing to give?

The superior man lives without intention, not

Projecting the past into the future.
Living without end-gaining,
Spontaneously,
Without referencing the already known.
His is a life without restriction,
Overflowing with fullness,
Seeing the magnificence in
The ordinary.

The entirety of manifestation and

The observer of the manifestation
Rise and set together.

It is only the fool who

Chases after more knowledge.
Is the one who is most knowledgeable
The one who is the happiest?

When he focused on his smallness,

Chun San was filled with anxiety.
When he saw his vastness,
Anxiety was nowhere to be found.

All art is created in

The absence of the artist.
So it is with all action wherein
The notion of an actor arrives
After the action is completed.

To make a thing transparent;

To see through it, is
To understand it.
This is clear sight.
To speak the truth,
One must see the truth clearly.
One with deep insight
Does not discriminate between
Out there and in here.
His reality is not determined
By the majority.
Some may call him crazy
But to this one,
It is merely a different viewpoint.
He revels in the womb experience:
No individual,
No self and other.
Only all.
To look to the mind as
The reference point of who one is
Overlooks what was present
Before the mind arose.

Many there may be who listen,

But few there are who hear:
There is no way to
Teach who one is.
There is no way to
Learn who one is.
All that is required is to
Be who one is.

A dislocated bone is painful because

It is out of alignment.
So it is with the ill ease that
Pertains to the individual.
The integrated ones understand this;
Most do not.

For movement to be perceived,

For change to be perceived,
Requires a changeless,
Unmoving, continuous background.
This is the truth of what one is;
The clear point, the non-dimensional
Source of all dimensions, onto which
All perception is displayed.

Learning is inevitable.
One either learns from
Wu Hsins words or from
Ones own mistakes.

The jail cell is built with

The imagination and the
Self-identification with
The imagined.

Inattention is the great obscurer.

Attention is the universal solvent.
The secrets to living are these:
First, the past cannot be improved upon.
Acknowledge what was and move on.
Next, the future cannot be molded.
Then, why bother?
Last, nothing can ultimately be controlled;
Not the past, nor the future, nor the present.
Accept this moment as it is.
Honoring these three,
One lives without shackles.

When the mind is filled with false beliefs

There is no room for
What is true to abide there.

Too much time is squandered on

What was and
What might be
Leaving only table scraps for
What-Is.

This mystery of which Wu Hsin speaks:

It is unperceivable, yet
It is the very root of perception.
Although unfelt,
It causes all feeling.
The father of thought,
The mother of being,
It is the immovable background upon which
All motion occurs.
To name it is to
Diminish it.
Wu Hsin references it as
That from which all emerges and
All returns.
Saying even this is
A movement away from it.

Why chase after more and more?

What Wu Hsin needs to eat is provided;
What Wu Hsin needs to know is provided.

What-Is is like a great river;

It flows, yet
It is eternally there.

Only what is limited

Can be made perfect.
The unlimited is already perfect.
Seeing the latter in oneself is easier than
Working on the former.

Wu Hsin is aware of many things, yet

He is none of them.
It is only when identification arises that
 Clear sight is obscured.

Much has been said about silence.

Yet, all talk of silence is mere noise.

If the questions didnt seem so meaningful,

Finding the answers wouldnt
Be so important.
The state of no questions belongs to
Those who have seen through the faade.

Man is the greatest enemy to himself.

When this becomes clear,
What he is doing
Becomes less important than
What he stops doing.
What must be lost
Becomes greater than
What is gained.

The one who follows a method

Continues to follow the method
Until the one who follows the method is
No more.

Wu Hsin says
One is never alone.
The closest friend,
The life force, is always there.
When the actor walks off of the stage,
When the life force departs,
One is said to have departed.

Only what was ones own

In the beginning
Will be ones own in the end.
The interim is filled with
Gaining and losing.
To find what is ones own is
To find the great jewel of clarity.

Words contain little,

Action contains much.
Hearing rice does not
Satisfy the hunger.

The mind mirrors the world.

Albeit imperfectly.
The person mirrors the mind,
Perfectly.

When the sun rises,

The lamp is not longer required.
Likewise, with the arrival of clarity,
Wu Hsins words may be set aside and
 The mind becomes like
The moon in the sky in daytime;
It is there but
It is not needed.

Enormous effort must be made to

Earn the realization that
Effort takes one nowhere.

Those seeking to know their god

Must begin by knowing themselves.
In knowing ones self,
Ones god is known.

The change in perspective of which

Wu Hsin speaks is
Easy to understand.
One is no longer on the outside
Looking in, but instead is
On the inside
Looking out.
The one who looks is not
Apart from the world
Looking at it, but instead is
An integral part of it.
When this is realized,
The true looker,
The conscious center of perception,
Has been found.

Many worry unceasing

About the future.
Wu Hsin says:
It is better to understand the present than
To worry of the future.
Once the present is seen clearly
All worries of the future are gone.

All that appears,

All that disappears
Can only occur against
A changeless background.
When one knows oneself
To be That and
Only That,
There is nothing left to do.

This identification,
This individuality,
This self-consciousness is
The least refined.
Transcended, it is
Pure consciousness,
The perceiver of all things.
This consciousness arises from Awareness,
 The knower of no things,
Pure potentiality.
This is the highest to which
One must return.

Inquiring deeply into

The source of unhappiness,
One becomes clear about unhappiness.
When one is clear about unhappiness,
One becomes clear of unhappiness.

Whereas awareness is the eternal potential

Consciousness is the eternal actual.
Consciousness is the surface;
Awareness is the limitless ocean.
Consciousness is the guide for the journey
Through the known and into
The unknown.
In truth, they are not two, but
Aspects of a unified whole.

Dull people deny existence to

What they cannot imagine.
Wise people deny existence to
What they do imagine.

The desire for happiness is

The very seed of unhappiness
For the one whose happiness is
Dependent upon conditions.
Those with insight are happy because
There is no desire for happiness to
Obstruct their inherent happiness.

It is of less importance to
Try to change the course of events.
It is of greater importance to change
Ones attitude toward them.
To discriminate between
The important and the unimportant
Facilitates the arrival of wisdom.

Things may happen as

One wants them to happen or
One may want them to happen as
They happen.
Clear beings have no preferences.

Awakening is like a bottomless well;

When an individual falls into it,
The individual disappears.

No action is wasted;
Everything tills the field for
What ensues.
Recognizing an illusion
As an illusion
Does not make it disappear;
It makes it transparent.

Those seeking clarity must not

List all those things already given up.
This is not important.
What is important is to
List all those things not given up, and then
To do so.

The removal of misunderstanding is

The prerequisite for understanding.
The central misunderstanding is
Believing oneself to be
An intermittent, momentary, changing
Collection of memories and reactions
Referred to as the person.

To see the usefulness of everything is knowledge.

To see the uselessness of everything is wisdom.

At what point does

Low become high;
Small become big?
Those who apperceive
The continuum of all things
Dont waste their time on such matters.

The Source of all things resides

Prior to all things.
It is therefore quite foolish
To seek among things
For the Source of all things.

Wholeness is simply
The perception of the
Non-existence of any parts.

When asked to describe clear sight,

Wu Hsin could only say
It is the difference between
Being inside a cloud and
Being outside a cloud:
Inside the cloud, one barely sees ones hand,
Outside the cloud, one sees
The sky, the sun, the moon
The stars and all eternity.

A realized man apperceives that

He is neither
What is the inner mentation or
What is the outer manifestation.
 As the knower of both,
What is there left
For him to do other than
To simply be?

One is closer to the truth

When one sees oneself
As a process rather than as
An entity and that
The sum of all processes is
The world.

Under a rock,
There is always darkness,
Regardless of how bright the sun.
To see matters rightly is only
To emerge from under the rock of
Identification with the personal.

One thing is most clear:

The only man who is
Free in the world is
The man who is
Free of the world.

The real giving up is in

The understanding that
There is nothing to give up because
One has nothing to give up because
Nothing is ones own.

This you has a life of its own,

Separate from You.
It is a mechanical process,
One of action and reaction.
It is that which life happens to.
There is nothing to be
Done about it;
When one understands it for
What it isnt, one
Sees it for what it is.

I is a false notion,
Merely an idea of a thinker, a doer.
There are none.
There is only thinking and doing
With no one to refer to either.

All searching takes one

Away from oneself.
Wu Hsin cant give it;
How can he give
What one already has?

One who believes that

 Peace and freedom are
Not available here and now,
Requiring time,
Requiring the future in which to find it,
Must believe in the
Ill-formed idea of practice.

It comes when it comes:

If there were a formula for it,
Which there is not,
It would be the absence of imagination,
The absence of will,
The absence of effort,
The absence of no effort,
The absence of all movement
In any direction,
On any level,
In any dimension.

The end of illusion is the end of you.

You can't be without illusion;
Being you means
Acknowledging illusion.
That is what you is.

Wu Hsin is a fragrance,
One of millions of fragrances,
Emitted from the flower of being.

I am and the world is is

A single sun,
Rising and setting,
Rising and setting.

If change is necessary,
Change will occur.
A wise man never worries about
Improving what-is.

One loses ones self in

Ones activities.
The end of enforced activity is
The beginning of discovery.

Real contact is made when

There are no persons,
No personalities,
No individuals to meet.

One is not part of the world.

One is the mother of the world,
Birthing it in every moment.

Life is never complex unless

One gets lost in the details.
This object,
The body, of itself
Contains neither pain nor suffering.
Pain and suffering require
A person to claim them.
Likewise, happiness and peace are personal.
All these come and go.
The constant, Unmoving remains.

When there are

No fixed standards defining
The way things ought to be,
Everything is fine,
Just as it is.

Within the realm of the known,

Everything is organized,
Qualified and classified.
Beyond the known lies
The realm of unending discovery.

Those who are free are

Little different from
Those who are not, except that
They are no longer controlled by
Habit and reaction.

Just as the skin is

Ones physiological border,
Thought is
Ones intellectual border.
To go beyond these borders is
The doorway to
A vastness beyond comprehension.

The discontinuous framework of

Being somebody
Ultimately depends upon
The continuous framework of
Being no thing in particular.

A common impediment to
Securing what is everlasting is
The pursuit of
What is momentary.

To live in a world of
Right and wrong,
Should and shouldnt, is to
Live in prison.
Those who are free
Naturally know what to do
In every moment.
The heart beats
Without a beater.
The hair grows
Without a grower.
Actions occur
Without an actor.

When the children leave home or

The crops fail,
It is not a happening to oneself;
It is a happening in oneself.

The basis of all action is thought.

Until one apperceives
Where thought comes from,
One remains in the dark.

To live as a personality is
To live in restriction.
The fullness of life cannot be
Constrained to the confines of a jar.

In order for insight to blossom,

It is not what one does that matters.
What matters is
What one stops doing.

The flower is not

Concerned about tomorrow.
It doesnt plan.
It doesnt worry about death;
Nor does it make effort to
Smell beautifully.
The flower teaches being,
Being what one is.

The calling is not to

Go beyond the mind.
The calling is to be, which is
Prior to the mind.

To live with anxiety,

That thought moving between
Now and what-if, is
To live life unnaturally.
The natural life is
A life of full consciousness in
The absence of thought.

Life is,
Existence is,
Before it can be name
Before it can be labeled.
This is the Ground from which
All else emerges.
 To return to the Ground,
To go Home, is merely to
Go back the way one came.

What is not natural

Cannot be permanent.
What is not permanent is
Not worth pursuing.

The extinguishing of
The sense of individuality is
A most worthwhile endeavor.
But, who is there
To do it?

There is no inherent need to think.

The need to think serves only to
Perpetuate the notion of a thinker.

These so-called searches are so barren.

It is like using a lit candle to
Seek out fire.
When what one is
Is clearly discerned,
The need for searching is extinguished.

The Silence of which

Wu Hsin speaks is beyond
The presence or absence of thought.
It is prior to both and
It is their foundation.
When one perceives
What is not silent,
The perception is from this Silence.

Teachers are pointers,

Markers, signposts;
Nothing more.
If one attaches oneself to a signpost
One can never continue onward.

The fear of death is really

The fear of becoming nothing.
Here, Wu Hsin asks:
What if you are already nothing?
To depart from this vast nothing
In order to be
A small something is
The folly of the individual.

Allow Wu Hsin to help you

Find this god that
You are seeking.
This god is everywhere that
You is not.
Dong Ma owned a beautiful rug which
He sent it out to be cleaned.
Because his vision was not clear,
He could never see the floor;
He only saw
The absence of the rug.

Because of the sun,

The light is.
Because one is,
The world is.
All manifestation is
The expression of its Source.

When there is no place

One has to be,
When there is no one
One has to be,
This is freedom.
When the false is
Seen as false and
Everything is accepted
As it is,
This, too, is freedom.

When one creates labels for oneself:

Husband, father, farmer, student,
When one assumes roles or
Judges and discriminates,
The whole is broken into pieces and
Authenticity is destroyed.
A fragment can never
Understand the Totality.
It is at best a partial, incomplete view.
Only from wholeness
Can Wholeness be seen.

What-Is is
Perceived without evaluation,
Through attention without effort.
When it is seen clearly,
Old modes are dropped
Like hot stones.

One is not really a dancer

If the only dance danced
Is the dance
One was taught.
Living is the dance danced,
Spontaneously.

When all intention is released

There is no reason
For doing anything,
 Nor is there a reason
For not doing anything.
What happens, happens
Purely through
The functioning of That.

All searching is
A movement away from
What-Is.
This What-Is is already present,
Already manifest.
Where need one go
To search for what is
Already there?

The Source of all things,

Makes manifest only two things:
Me and
Other than me.
See this clearly;
That is enough.

The notion of
A thinker of thoughts is
No more valid than
The notion of a digester of food.
Both are mechanical acts,
Absent any doership.
Those who apperceive this
Never lay claim to
Any thought as mine.
When there is identification with thought,
This very identification is
The impediment to understanding.

Any rumination on
The words of Wu Hsin is
A movement away from
What they point to.
The seed is planted,
The soil is ready,
There is nothing to do.

Does the sun know

When it rises and sets?
Does the ocean now
High tide and low tide?
First understand what it is
That is born.
Then the mystery is dissolved.

The mind is like

A cup that refills itself.
Emptying it is not sufficient;
It will only refill.
Once the cup is shattered,
The task is complete.
Volume Three: In the Shadow of the Formless
Forward
You hold in your hand a most unique tutorial on the subject of being. In one sense, it is unique in that the subject of how-to-be does not receive much attention. In
another sense, its uniqueness rests in the simplicity and clarity in which the subject is presented.
These lost writings of the ancient Chinese Wu Hsin are completely devoid of compromise. They challenge the most fundamental assumptions we make about
ourselves and our world and, when viewed from openness, are truly transformative.
In Volume Three, In the Shadow of the Formless, Wu Hsin continues his great treatise with some surprising statements. For example:
One inherent error is
The preference for
The song of the future over
The seeming blandness of
The present moment.
Another error is
Using the mind
To try to understand
The words of Wu Hsin.
The mind is a tool
Unsuited to this task.
The proper tool is silence.
The seed is in the ground;
The sun will shine;
The rain will fall;
Nothing need be done.
Nothing need be done. After all the words have been read, after their meaning has been pondered with new concepts possibly added, nothing need be done. How
hard this is for the Western mind to accept. What do I need to do to get it? is the usual question. Here, Wu Hsin provides the disconcerting answer Nothing need be
done.
Behind this statement lies the even more disquieting question Who is there to do anything? Therein, the reader is returned to one of the central themes of Wu
Hsin, that is, that there really is no such thing as an individual:
There is a belief of separateness,
That you are separate from the rest.
There is nothing you can do
To rid yourself of this belief because
You is the belief.
Stated in modern terms, the philosophy of Wu Hsin could be summed up in this manner:
There is thinking and there is functioning, distinct from thinking.
Thinking reflects the programming for survival, for continuity, which manifests through the psychosomatic apparatus. A reference point is created via the thought me.
This me is the sum or totality of all fears: the fear of pain, the fear of loss, and ultimately, the fear of absence. Most of the thoughts regarding me are repetitious, an
extraneous feedback loop in the nervous system.
Interestingly however, thought is not born in the brain any more than a radio creates sound. It is merely transmitted through it.
Functioning occurs through the workings of consciousness and the life-force. Functioning is effortless and natural. Cells are replaced, wastes are eliminated, what
needs to be done gets done. There is an aware-presence-energy.
Giving attention to thought perpetuates the programming. Giving attention to the functioning, the aware-presence-energy, facilitates the de-programming.
The "I/me" is latent in the apparatus at birth, as the flower is latent in the seed. The preliminary programming is installed genetically.
At some point between 18-24 months, sufficient memories, both pleasant and unpleasant, have accumulated thereby triggering the "I/me" or self consciousness to
arise. Seeing itself as separate and insecure causes the activation (boot) of the programming as a means of protection. It is perpetually modified and adjusted
(upgraded) by the experiences of the apparatus and is further tweaked by the moment-by-moment adjustments made by the endocrine system.
From that point forward, the hardware (soma) receives the input from the environment. It is processed by the software (psyche) which provides the output
([re]action). There is no individual, as such, doing anything. Everything that happens is the cause of everything that happens.
There is no center to infinity.
I strongly doubt that Wu Hsin would want readers to take him at his word. Instead, he would ask that each investigate the matter deeply within oneself. Search for
the individual, locate the operating center.
This is the lasting challenge of one of the most profound teachers of all time
Text
Using the flutists flute
Does not make one
A flutist.
Wu Hsin has no tools,
No method to render.
He speaks of how it was for him,
Not implying that it will be
Likewise for another.

Wu Hsin has no intended outcome in

The offering of these words,
Just as water is unconcerned
Whether or not
It quenches thirst.

All individuals die.

Only those
Who are no longer individuals
Live forever.

One inherent error is

The preference for
The song of the future over
The seeming blandness of
The present moment.
Another error is
Using the mind
To try to understand
The words of Wu Hsin.
The mind is a tool
Unsuited to this task.
The proper tool is silence.
The seed is in the ground;
The sun will shine;
The rain will fall;
Nothing need be done.

You believe that

There is nothing more than
Your God.
Wu Hsin says
There is nothing more than
Your God and
I am that Nothing.

The reconciliation of
The feeling of separateness with
The reality of unity is
The enlightened view.
That which provided
The feeling of separateness
Takes it away.
 There is nothing to be done.

What is derived from effort

Relates to the physical realm only.
What is derived from effortlessness, is
True knowing.
Not a knowledge of things, but
A knowing of What-Is.
Just as a spider
Spins a web out from itself,
So does each man spin his world
Out from himself.
Seeing this is
The beginning of the end.

Everywhere one looks,

One sees aspects of
A single unity.
How can the seer, therefore,
Believe itself to be separate?
Is not the one who sees
Merely another aspect of
That which is seen?

Although feeling lost is an illusion,

It is the first step in
Finding That which can
Never be lost.
Being is the seed of manifestation in which
All actions happen.
Just as a forest of trees is
Contained in a single seed,
So all of life is in
The seed of being.
Who, therefore, is doing anything?

Different instruments produce

Different sounds constituting
The melody of life.
The incense stick is lit.
It burns until
It is completely finished.
What remains is
The lighter of the stick.
He who sees the stick in himself and
Understands what Wu Hsin has said,
Has done very well.

Thoughts are like

The promises of politicians and
Should be treated accordingly.
What is this body but
An animated corpse?
The investigation of the animator
Yields the knowing of which
 Wu Hsin speaks.

The music is latent in

The flute just as
The child is latent in
The mother.
See that you have
Brought your world with you.
Then, let it go.

Giving attention to What-Is and

Not giving attention to
What appears to be, is
The key to opening
The prison door.

There may be many receptacles that

Hold the river water.
Yet, the quality of the water
Remains unchanged.
To identify with the receptacle is
The only error.

All seeking is for

The cessation of pain.
When the seeker is gone,
The pain is gone.

Trace your good luck

Back to its source or
Trace your bad luck
Back to its source and
You will discover that
The Source is the same.
From the One
Comes the Many.
As a baby nurses at
Its mothers breast,
One must nurse at
The source of lifes sustenance
So that one may discover
The essence of being.

Being natural is
Being sacred.
Movement away from there is
Movement toward unhappiness.
The position is quite simple:
The One manifests as
The Many.
The water taken from the river is of
The same quality as
The water in the river although
It may appear in
A different vessel.
If one sees oneself as
The center of everything with
The power to shape things
To suit ones desires, then
One has become
Ones god.

A dog does not know

He is a dog.
He only knows
He is.
If only man
Could be so fortunate.

Identification with a body is

The birth of the person,
The individual.
The personality then acts
To protect the body from
That which is
Other than itself.
When this false identification is
Seen through,
That which one truly is
Manifests and shines.

Deep understanding,
True understanding is permanent.
The pickle never
Returns to being a cucumber.

Until the boundary between

Inner and outer dissolves,
All changes are only minor.

In the cessation of duality,

Oneness is revealed.
There can be no
Being one with
There is only being.

In ancient times,
Before there were individuals,
There were no problems.
Then, the individuals
Turned this against that and
Problems arose.
Identification with a body is
Merely a habit,
Taught to the child
Early in its life.
Breaking this habit is like
A chick breaking its shell.
What a wondrous world awaits.
To depart from a vast no-thing
To become a small some-thing is
The pinnacle of foolishness.
Living spontaneously leaves
No time to think.
This is true living.

Choice is an illusion.
The individual having choice or
Not having choice is
Also an illusion.
What is an illusion?
It is when things are not
As they seem.
Once a realignment occurs,
One watches
What is happening
Without believing that
One is making it happen.
The body does what it chooses;
It wakes without permission,
Gets ill without permission.
Dies without permission.
All of this is to say,
A role is played;
Nothing more.

Those who have re-cognized

Their true condition
Welcome whatever comes, thereby
Living life to its fullest.
The person is
A phenomenon in time.
Being is eternal.

Devotion to a teacher is
Far less important than
Devotion to a teaching.
True stillness,
Stillness without someone
Trying to be still, is
The solvent in which
All individual conditioning
Can be dissolved.
What remains is a neutrality,
An acceptance of What-Is.

That which is often

Referred to as Emptiness
Could as easily be
Referred to as Fullness
Insofar as it contains
The potential for every thing.
Problems no longer appear
 When the maker of the problems is
No longer part of the process.
That is to say that
The solution to all problems is
The removal of
The creator of all problems.

How many eyes are required to

See the appearance of Being?
To change the world
One need only change
The color of the glass
One looks through.

All there is is
This manifestation and
Its perception.
This is the soup with
All the water boiled off.
Any identification with objects
Cuts off access to subjectivity, that is,
To the perceiving of
The wholeness that is inherent.

Life is its own purpose.

That which perceives
Perceives the totality and the void.
This perceiving is prior to both.

Wu Hsin is but an appearance;

Appearing to speak,
Appearing to convey concepts.
In fact, this here is
Only an object.
One in a world of objects.
It is through this object that
What-is is made known.
There is no specific way that
Things are supposed to be.
Something may be right one day and
Wrong the next.
Seeing things as they are,
Without judging,
Without labeling, is
A quality of those
Who live naturally.

Before there is a clear understanding,

When the bell above the door rings,
One opens the door.
After the clear understanding,
When the bell rings,
The door is opened.
The tyranny of the personal is that
It robs one of
 The glory of being.
Confined to its cage,
The canary can never fly,
It can never soar.

What is life other than

The Absolute functioning
Through Its instruments,
Resulting in this, which in turn,
Results in that.
In this fashion,
The web of causation is spun.
What happens after death?
The answer is simple:
The foreground no longer
Intercedes with the background.
Although not truly a return,
It is a return to that condition
Prior to birth.

The body is here to do

What its nature requires.
It has nothing to do with
Anyone in particular.
When all intention is abandoned
What remains is silent awareness
Out of which emanates
Spontaneous living.

The fixation on objects, of which

Thought is one of many, is
The sole impediment to
Perceiving What-is.
Those who realize this are
No longer the bodys accomplice.
A full bowl can have
No further utility.
Only when it is emptied,
Can it be put to use.
The Great Harmony is
Preceded by the emptying.

To the blind,
The world is darkness.
To the deaf,
The world is silence.
The world is therefore
What the senses make it.
In turn,
What is sensed is
Filtered by the mind and, as such, is
What the mind interprets.

The self-perpetuating mechanism

Referenced as the individual is merely
 An artifact of memory.
It is like a top
That spins from its own inertia.

Do not seek progress as

Progress exists only in time.
The goal stands
Outside of time.
Believing in an independent entity is like
Believing that the wind
Blows the air.
The air is blown;
The blower cannot be found.

Who is Wu Hsin other than

A bronze mirror in which
To see oneself clearly?
One cannot see
The whole world by
Looking through
A hole in the door.
Attaching certitude to
A limited view
Perpetuates all misconception.

One's lamp may be

Different from Wu Hsin's lamp,
But the light is the same.
In naming,
The namer and the named
Become separate.
This is the beginning of the confusion.

Through the filter of

The personal
One can never see things
The way they are.
One can only see things
The way one is.
One may dwell on these matters for decades, but
Until insight triumphs over thought,
No lasting change can occur.
In the search for the Ultimate,
The intellect is as useless as
A lamp at noon.

Being is irrefutable;
None can make the claim
I am not.
Do not remain
A prisoner of imagination and hearsay.
Inquire into
The validity of your beliefs and
Realize the foundation of all things.
The separate self is
Only a function,
Similar in this regard to digestion.
Wu Hsin asks:
Why identify with it and
Live as a fraction of fullness instead of
Fullness itself?

What is true can shine only

Once what is false
Has been disrobed.
A thorough examination of
One's assumptions and beliefs is
All that is required to see that
There is no map for
The way things are
Supposed to be.

Awareness is
The Source of the world.
In its absence,
Who is aware of what?
Objects are dependent upon this awareness
For their existence.
Awareness depends on nothing.
It is self-sustaining, primal and
The underlying foundation of all things.
The quality of knowing to which
Wu Hsin speaks is demonstrated by
The answer to the question
Are you alive?
No thought,
No thinker is required.
The response is spontaneous.

What one is
Is without direction.
Therefore, all going
Takes one away from it.
In the absence of all movement,
In stillness,
It arises of its own.
Where is the world
In the absence of
That which observes it?

The light of the fire

Casts shapes and shadows
Onto the wall.
It is the fascination
With the images that
Causes the forgetting of
The wall that supports them.
The face and
Its expression
 Are not separate,
Are not two.

Once the timeless perfection is seen

For what it is,
What can one want to add?
What can one want to take away?
That of which Wu Hsin speaks is not
An altered state.
It is the natural condition.
What most people perceive is
An altered state.

To become re-established in the natural,

May bring about a profound change or
It may be as subtle as
A knowing that one knows that
Something is different.
Wu Hsin cannot say
What to look for or
Where to look as
This naturalness cannot be
Named nor localized.
Solitude is a reflection of
The condition of the mind.
One can be in the forest,
Yet it can be said that
One is not in solitude or
One can be in the busy market and
Be in complete solitude.

One's Source is not

External to oneself.
It is the foundation upon which
The notion of one's self is constructed.
Tear down the structure and
The foundation remains.
To find the I
Within every my, is
The key that unlocks
The Great Gate of Understanding.

The power of the will alone cannot

Bring one to the goal.
Only the One Who
Brought you to here can
Take you to there.
Being a person is
Only an idea.
It serves to mask
The underlying essence
In the same way that
Clouds obscure the sun.
When this idea is seen through,
What remains is brilliance itself.
Living is the reaction to stimuli, to
People, events, and thoughts.
To examine the reactor is to
Inquire deeply into
The root of being.
That which contains the mind
Cannot be known
Via the mind.
In pristine silence,
This primal lucidity makes itself known.

Wu Hsin has no desire

To instill either fear or hope.
Instead, the sole purpose is to
Portray matters as they are, and
Thereby provide the ultimate freedom,
The freedom from concepts.
In order for understanding to flower,
One must forget everything,
Ceasing to set one thing
Against another.
Becoming an empty slate upon which
Writing appears and disappears.

All problems are created by the mind and

Related to the body.
In the absence of either,
Where are the problems?

Everyone is a single thought away from clarity.

Drop that thought and
See what remains.

The end of the tyranny

Created by the false sense of
A center controlling all that
Appears to happen is
Like a sun-filled dawn following
Weeks of rain.
One must not forget that
Wu Hsin's words are mere pointers
To something greater, and not
The Greatness Itself.
Just as one cannot drink
The word water,
One must not substitute these words for
The direct experience of What-Is.

Pei owned a bird that

He wanted to set free.
He opened its door but
The bird did not move.
Wu Hsin told Pei:
A caged bird is not freed merely by
 Opening the door.
Until the fear of the unknown subsides,
Until the desire arises
To fly away,
The bird remains where it is,
Preferring the known
To the unknown.

Taking away,
Taking away.
When everything has been
Taken away,
What remains is
The Ground that supports
The totality.
Seeing the Ground is
Being the Ground.

Man is ensnared by
What he does no clearly see.
He becomes like the waterwheel,
Spinning, turning,
Purely mechanical.
See yourself as that in which
Worlds arise and set.
You are the unmovable background in which
All movement is perceived,
The weaver of all tapestries.
What can exist without you?
Answer this and
All other questions are finished.

That which is false

Cannot withstand
The light of investigation.
The examination of
Ones most central belief,
The existence of an acting me , is
The portal beyond.

This life is like

The wind;
One cannot know it directly.
It can only be known
Through its expressions.

While Wu Hsin has grown older,

While his body has changed,
Presence remained unaltered throughout.
To take the changeful
For the changeless, is
The primary delusion.

To be fully accepting of
What-Is in every moment,
 Eliminates fear and anxiety,
Expectation and desire.
This is the natural way to
Set all things right.

Once there is the apperception that

One is but an instrument of
The Source of all things,
One can do what one pleases and
Live in whatever manner one chooses.
To relinquish the focus on
I was, and
The focus on I will be and
To remain fixed on I am,
The very seat of being,
The fundamental presence, is to
Return to the beginning,
To the Seed of Life
That one has never truly been left.

Digestion is a process.
Thinking is a process.
Just as there is no digester, likewise
There is no thinker.
Thoughts appear.
Inquire onto what
Do they appear.
Being, expressed through the mind, is
I am.
This is the undeniable root.
Anything added to I am is
A movement away from It.

To understand that
Ones true nature is
Imperceivable and inconceivable, is
The deepest understanding.
One who achieves this
Does not seek the good nor
Shun the evil.
What comes, comes; and
Sees clearly that, in time,
Everything comes.
There is no one choosing to hear.
There is no one choosing to smell.
There is no one choosing to think.
There is no one choosing to choose.

Yanming Wei at last found peace.

There was nothing
He was attached to,
Nothing he was detached from.
He lost his opinions and
Found his way.
Cognition is prior to
Recognition.
The former arises in Being,
The latter is personal,
Arising from the mind as memory.
Whereas cognition is pure,
Recognition is tainted by
The supposed self-centre.
The world cognized is
A beautiful, wondrous world.
The world recognized is
Filled with alternating joy and sorrow.
It is not the mind that
Comes to this understanding.
It is the knower of the mind
Who knows this.
The moons eclipsing of the sun
Never negates the existence of the sun.
It merely masks it.
Likewise, the personal eclipses
The divinity that
Resides in every man.
Its presence is felt in
The absence of
The seeming separate self.

Relinquish everything
That has been acquired and
Return to that state that existed
Prior to the first acquisition.
Now, tell Wu Hsin:
Who are you?
In the single instant,
Absent any thought,
There is the clear revelation that
Nothing is wrong.
The return of thoughts herald
The return of problems.

Nature and its natural functioning are

The beginning and the end of all things:
Creation, Sustenance and Cessation.
The me is merely a distortion;
A personalizing of the impersonal.
When one discovers the truth of this,
All stories and dramas then
Become empty of meaning.
The past is dead, yet
The memory of the past
Lives on in
Someone with a past.

Ultimately, the liberation of which

Wu Hsin speaks is the understanding that
One is not a spectator in the audience
 Watching the actors perform.
One is a part of the play.
In so doing,
The notions of inside and outside are
Transformed into a single totality.

To some, the words of Wu Hsin are like

A spark in a container of cotton.
Others are wet cotton;
The spark has no effect.
Neither Wu Hsin nor
The spark nor
The cotton can be faulted;
What-is, is.

Going out precedes returning.

When one has had
Their fill of the world,
One turns away and
Begins the return to
The abode that they never left.

To live in unity,
There cannot be any one who is
Separate from any other.
All else is deception.

For your search in this darkness,

Not even Wu Hsin can be one's lamp.
One must shine one's own light
On every belief
To come to the truth.

In the beginning,
There was Potential.
When the Potential,
By its very nature,
Becomes the actual,
Space is born.
Time is born.
Duality is born.
The world is born.
One is born.
This is the crux of
Unitive understanding.
To be open to discover this,
One must relinquish
One's death-grip on
All mental possessions.
Each being is
Moving toward the intended outcome of
Their inherent nature.
There is action
But no actor.
There is no greater misfortune than
Misunderstanding.
To perceive That which makes the tongue speak but
Cannot be spoken by the tongue, is
The great good luck.
There is no greater fortune than
Understanding.

Fear is the attempt

To control the present moment.
When it becomes clear that
There are no others to fear,
Fear dissolves.

With perfect insight that

Time is only the relegation of
Objective experience to
Past, present, and future; to
Recollection, consciousness, and anticipation,
One lives naturally,
Reacting spontaneously and appropriately
To every calling.
What is the mind
But a succession of thoughts,
Like beads on a string?
Deep understanding of
The workings of the mind is
The cutting of the string.
To understand that the mind is
The great divider,
Dividing function, seeing, into
Seer and seen, is
A great leap forward.

When the confusion between

Beliefs and the actual is reconciled,
The world is seen in a new light.
The sole function of the mind is
To change, to alter, to modify
What-Is.
To reside prior to mind is
To reside in What-Is.

The way of Wu Hsin is

Through yourself to
Beyond yourself.

Don't tell Wu Hsin

What you have relinquished.
It doesn't matter.
All that matters is
What you continue to
Hold on to.

Wu Hsin claims nothing as

 His own.
When one understands oneself to be
The ground from which
All things grow,
When there is no separate I,
How can there be any mine?

Functioning comes before thought.

Seeing precedes I see
In the same way that
Being precedes identity.
To focus on the latter
At the expense of the former is to
Miss the mark.

Being-Awareness is every where

It is every when and
It is every thing.
All else is overlay.
The removal of the unnecessary
Allows what is primal to shine.
Dark clouds, mist and thunder
Have no effect on
The sun.
Seeing that you are That is
True freedom.

They live in this present moment,

In the absence of the past.
Lacking a past,
They lack personality;
For what is personality but
A reaction to the past in the present?
Yet, in the absence of personality,
Can these be called persons?
Thoughts, feelings and perceptions may
Spontaneously appear.
Then, they subside.
Claiming ownership of them is the error.
Allowing them to arise and set without
Making them one's own is
The portal to peace.

The solution cannot be

Found in time.
How much time is required to be
What one already is?

Sometimes, the shortest distance between two points

Runs through hell.

Wisdom is the meeting of What-Is

With the same passion as
Ones entertainment of what should be and
What shouldnt be.
A cessation of confusion,
Equating different with separate,
Takes one to clarity.

Everyone is aware but

Only the wise are
Aware of being aware.
To these, thinking and digestion
Function in the same manner,
Without attention or interest.

Inside the bucket,

There is space.
Inside space,
There is the bucket.
Where then, is outer?
Where then, is inner?

Reality for the individual is

Made up of context, not content.
The characters on the scroll
Have different meanings to
Different readers.
The fire that is
Bad for the forest dweller
May be good for the forest.

What-Is is needless as
It already contains everything.
The mind cannot know any thing
Any more than the ear
Can know the heard.

Of all the renunciations,

Renunciation of the belief in
A separate, doing-self is the highest.
The common man seeks to
Straighten crooked trees and
Aid the growth of shorter ones.
The wise sees all the trees and
Fully accepts each as it is.

To remove a diseased tree from the soil,

One does not attack the branches
Nor the leaves.
One goes directly to the root.
To remove the spell of individuality,
Wu Hsin attacks the root of it.
In the end, it is revealed that
All seekers seeking are merely
Shadow boxing.
Simply be.
Within pure being,
All the actions that are necessary
 Already reside.
They arise naturally and spontaneously,
Unaided by any one.

From within the cage of imagination,

False views arise.
When seen as false,
These views dissipate,
Leaving only pristine clarity in their place.
Life makes one conscious,
Wu Hsin makes one aware.

Those who seek

To control events
Can never be liberated from
Bondage to events.
To know that one is, is natural.
To know what one is,
Requires thorough investigation.

Whatever comes,
Must go.
What-Is is permanent,
Beyond all comings and goings.
Whereas you are focused on the structure,
Wu Hsin is concerned
Solely with the foundation.
Whereas structures rise and fall,
Foundations remain.
Whereas all experience is transient,
The ground of experience is
Immovable and permanent.

To be what one is
Requires no practice.
The mind cannot discern
What is beyond the mind.
However, what is beyond the mind
Knows the mind intimately and
Supports it in the same way as
Silence is the support of all sound.

Wu Hsin's advice is simple:

Let there be nothing that
You want to know;
What you need to know,
You'll come to know.
What is common to every experience is
Awareness of the experience.
You are That.
The rest is imagination.

There is a belief of separateness,

That you are separate from the rest.
There is nothing you can do
 To rid yourself of this belief because
You is the belief.

Understand fear to be
Estrangement from the Source.
Understand desire to be
Longing for the Source.
One can then see how
Returning to the Source is
The elimination of fear and
The satisfaction of desire.
And what is returning to the Source?
It is the recognition that
One is the sun and not
The clouds that obscure it.

Phenomena are merely phenomena.

They arise and set continuously.
Labeling a phenomenon me is
The root problem.
When the attention is turned to
That which is primal,
All imaginations lose their hold.
What remains is pristine,
Unstained and ever-present.
Wu Hsin calls this Home.

One truly does not know

What one is and therefore
Takes oneself to be
What one is not.
The end of imagination is
The end of illusion.
The core of being
Requires no effort.
What is there
That must be done to
Be aware?

One is nothing that

One is conscious of.
Yet one creates it all.
When the structure is dismantled,
The foundation is revealed.
Wu Hsin can point to the sky;
The seeing of the stars is
One's own.

Great effort is required to see that

Clear sight is not
The result of effort.
Overlooking what is obvious is
The common obstacle.
To see what has been
Shining in plain view is
 The simple remedy.

So much time spent,

Seeking what one is.
So much better is it to understand
What one is not.
Then what remains is pure and
What one is.

Movement is inherent in
The very nature of the mind.
That is to say,
Thoughts appear.
To believe that
One can stop thought is
Tantamount to believing that
One can make a tiger bleat.

Correct one's jaundiced eye and

Nothing will appear to be yellow.
The I in I think is as real as
The it in it rains.

How can it be that

So many would choose
The doorway to
A public discourse on heaven over
The doorway to heaven?
Separating oneself from
One's beliefs
Results in the ending of the beliefs and
An ending of the separate self.

Clear seeing is
Understanding that one is not
A fragment of the whole;
Nothing more and
Nothing less.
Once freed from all opposing pairs
Such as good and bad,
Desirable and undesirable,
What one does
Can never be wrong.

The body, the mind and the intellect

All grow, become mature and decay.
However, That which sees this
Remains unmoved,
As it ever was.
One can easily see
Oneself in the world.
But only those who can see
The world in oneself are truly free.

To be what one is
 Requires no effort.
One is present,
One is aware,
Therefore, one is.
No authority,
No teacher,
Can give one
What one already is.

Taking an illusion to be real is delusion.

Recognizing an illusion
As an illusion does not
Dissipate the illusion.
It dissipates delusion.
This is lucidity.

There is never enough time

In the present moment
To have a thought about
The present moment.

Difference does not mean separation.

Fingers may appear different, but
They are not separate from
The hand, which is not separate from
The body.
When all is seen as
A single, coherent unity,
Fear must dissolve because
There is nothing
Apart from oneself to fear.

The only thing that is

More difficult than
Looking for a grain of rice in
A pile of straw is
Looking in the wrong pile.
Where are you looking for
What you are seeking?
If it is outside yourself, you are
Looking in the wrong pile.

The actual arises from

The potential;
The manifest arises from
The Unmanifest and,
In its appropriate time,
Returns to It.
Mortals call this Life.

It is correct to say
I am nowhere.
Likewise, it is correct to say
I am now here.
To arrive at the taste of the mouth,
Requires the elimination of
All tastes in the mouth.
Likewise, to know what one is
Requires the elimination of
All that one is not.

The Cave may have been dark

For ten thousand years.
No matter.
Shine a torch inside it and
All darkness disappears.

The mind cannot be

The arbiter of
That which is
Beyond its jurisdiction.

One need not wait

To become
What one already is.

From the unified view,

There is nothing that is mine,
Just as there is nothing that is
Not mine.

The more one thinks about

What-Is,
The more one veils
What-Is.

They come and ask Wu Hsin

What to do.
What is to be done?
By whom?
Being the very heart of Being
Can be the only reply.

The individual desires liberation.

But, liberation from what?
Liberation from the pain of
Being an individual.
Can you not see why
Wu Hsin laughs so hard?

A central misunderstanding of
Those who visit Wu Hsin is that
They believe that
There is something to attain to.
How can one attain to
What one already is?

Confusion is a mental state based on

Viewing events through the lens of
 Unexamined assumptions.

What can be simpler

To understand than this?
One lives in the house, but
One is not the house.

Everything ultimately returns to

The Infinite.
Water evaporates,
A body dies;
There is no difference.

To live naturally,
To be in that Natural state,
Requires no effort.
Effort is only required
To be something in particular.

All practices are performed by

The individual.
When the individual is
Understood to be a shadow,
Not a separate and distinct entity,
The need for practices drops off.
Investigate the reality of the shadow and
It must disappear.

The fear of death is

The penalty for accepting
The idea of individuality.
When the particular is seen to be
No different than the universal
The fear of death is gone.

Pang Yi stared out across

The expanse of the blue ocean.
He decided he wanted to
Have some for himself; so
He went to the shoreline with his bucket.
Yet, regardless of his efforts
No blue water went into his bucket.
Man lives with illusions.
Knowing illusions to be illusions is
The way out of illusion.

The heart beats.

The body excretes.
Thoughts come.
Thoughts go.
All there is
Is the functioning.
All else is story.

Do not become
 More enamored with the path
Than with the goal.

To believe that Wu Hsin has

Something to give is an error.
To believe that one
Needs to get something is
Yet another error.
There is nothing to be given
Nor anything to be gotten.

Seeing illusion as illusion

Does not dissolve the illusion,
Only its power.

Although clouds may appear,

The sun is not fazed.
They come and they go;
The sun remains.
My child, you are the sun itself.

Immortality, that is,

Eternal life, can only be realized
Through daily death.
In so doing,
That which cannot die is revealed.

The desire to
Acquire some esoteric knowledge
Can hold great power.
But esoteric knowledge will never
Take one to the place that is
The support of all knowledge.
Such support does not
Reside in the unknown.
Rather, it resides in the unknowable.

Never allow concepts to

Substitute for direct insight.

When no energy is directed toward

Perpetuating a story about an individual
The individual vanishes.

What school must one attend to

Learn how to be oneself?

My dear, what you are looking for is

Right in front of your eyes.
What you are looking for is likewise
Behind your eyes.

All supposed problems are of the mind.

What is mind?
Mind is the collection of thoughts.
 Where are the problems when
They are not thought about?

All manifestation is in
The realm of the opposites:
Good and bad,
Hot and cold,
Beautiful and ugly.
Before these arise is
Ones natural Home.

The image in the mirror may

Appear to have a life of its own.
This is only an illusion.
In the mirror of pure awareness,
Forms may appear to have lives of their own.
This, too, is an illusion.

Lao Bing tried to

Drive his fencepost into the ground with
The use of his whip.
Wrong tool!
Do not use the mind to
Comprehend the words of Wu Hsin.
Wrong tool!

There is only pure functioning;

There is no functioner.
The heart beats;
There is no beater.
The lungs breathe;
There is no breather.
Seeing this clearly is emancipation.

Fruit does not ripen itself.

Therefore, what is there to be done?

Although there is seeing,

That which sees
Cannot be seen.
Wu Hsin calls this
The Great Mystery.

Why bemoan what one was,

What one might have been,
While ignoring what one is
In every moment?
Is this not
The heart of unhappiness?

When thought is stopped,

Being goes on.
Thoughts come,
Thoughts go.
Being, the root,
 Does not move.
You are That.

Ruthless examination of ones assumptions

About oneself,
About who one is,
About what one is,
Removes all the falsehoods that
Undermine clear sight.
What remains is what had been
Overlooked from the beginning.

Oneness has no reference point,

No center.
What is it that can
Stand outside of everything?

Understanding is everything.
When the cause of the problem falls away,
The effects of the problem do likewise.

Why visit Wu Hsin when

What is sought is within?

Winter never wishes

It was summer.
Remove all resistance to What-Is.
This is completion.

Light is there,
Darkness is there.
What holds them?
In what do they reside?
The solution to this mystery is
The solution to your own mystery.

A thought appears, lingers and then disappears.

Where did it come from?
Where does it go?
There is a birth, a life, and then a death.
Where did it come from?
Where does it go?

The only salvation that one needs is

The salvation from ones own imagination.

The personal is
Merely an appearance.
What the person perceives is
Also an appearance.
The perceived and the perceiver are
Not separate;
They are the flavor of perception.

There is a primal
 Source of light by which
Everything is seen.
Those who have understood, know that
They are That.

The sound of the gong

Fills the entire space of the room.
In the same manner,
Consciousness fills
The entire space of space.

You come before

Anything that can be observed.
Discern this fully and
The world cannot hold you.

Experiences can be described in

Thousands of ways.
But, who is it that can
Describe the Experiencer?

Lan Xi sought wisdom.

His first teacher taught him
You are the screen on which all appears and disappears.
Lan Xi was not satisfied.
His second teacher taught him
You are the screen on which all appears and disappears.
Lan Xi was not satisfied.
His third teacher said,
First you must serve me for ten years.
Only then will I teach you
And so it was that
For ten years, Lan Xi served the teacher,
Cleaning the dung from the animal stalls,
Sweeping the floors,
Cooking the meals and
Washing the clothes.
At the conclusion of the ten years, Lan Xi said:
I have fulfilled my commitment and
I am now ready to receive your teaching.
Very well said the teacher.
You are the screen on which all appears and disappears.

What substance can a belief have

Once its falseness is seen through?
Once all the falseness is seen through,
What remains is What-Is.

When the light of consciousness is

Cast onto that which is called life,
It creates a shadow that
Runs parallel to life.
This shadow is the thought I-am.
The movement of life is
Therefore shadowed by
 The movement of thought.
One must not forget that
That which runs parallel can never
Touch that to which it runs parallel.

The mind caught up in seeking

Misses what is obvious.
The vastness in front of ones eyes is
No different than the vastness
Behind ones eyes.

Every thing is simply

Primal energy
Appearing in a form.
You are no different.
Seeing this clearly
Nothing is right or wrong.

The known may come and go, while

Knowing remains, unchanging.
Thoughts appear on this Knowing.
The concept of a thinker is
Added afterwards.

One cannot carry any scripture through

The doorway of liberation.

Make no distinction between

The awareness of presence and
The presence of awareness.
There is none.

The word is not the thing.

One cant drink the word water.
Exercise extreme caution not to
Confuse one for the other.

How many more years can you

Ignore what is basic and
Remain preoccupied with this passing show?

The salt is
Already in the sea water.
The core of what the individual is,
Is in place before the individual arrives.
That which is impersonal
Appears as the personal.
The central fixation
Must be dropped:
There is no individual.

I am is a translation of
The sense of pure being.
It is distorted when
It becomes personal.
One cannot stand solidly on
Ones own feet until
Ones crutches are discarded.

How can the indescribable be described?

Wu Hsin can only say that
The Knower of Being comes first;
All else follows from That.

The disease is a simple one to diagnose;

Its primary symptom is
The continuous belief in the erroneous.

It is only
The sense of a separate me
That is born.
The dissolution of this sense is
Its very death.
One need not die
To achieve this.

Life pulsates.
Everything is happening but
There is no one to
Whom it is happening.

What-Is is.
It has always been.
It will always be.
There is nothing that
Needs to be done.
There is no place to go.
There is nothing to get.
Clarity is not about adding;
It is about taking away.

Rainwater flows through

Old pathways in the soil.
It is natures habit.
Believing in a doer-entity is
Merely another habit.

Reading the calligraphy,

One forgets the parchment
On which it is written.
The parchment is prior to the writing.
A subtle shift in perception
Brings the parchment to the foreground.
Then, everything is clear.

Seeking the extraordinary,

It is easy to overlook
The ordinary.
Yet, that which is ordinary is
 The foundation and support of all things.

The present instant,

Now,
Resides outside of time.
It is not quantifiable.
It cannot be measured.
It cannot be grasped.
It is the meeting place of
All events.

One who identifies

With the body,
Dies with the body.
One who does not, is
Immortal.
For such a one,
There is no rebirth because
There has been no birth.

The mirage of an egg cannot be

Shattered by any mallet.
Likewise, the mirage of a separate self
Cannot be shattered by any individual.
The individual is, itself,
The mirage.

Peace and stillness are found at

The center of the vortex.
One receives the product of
Where one resides.
Do not live in
A noisy neighborhood if
Quiet is desired.

Thoughts are merely stories,

Stories about a me or about
An other-than-me.
They come,
They go.
They are unimportant.
Seeing this,
The focus on content can be dropped,
Revealing the clear Being-Seeing-Knowing
That has been there all along.

Because its wants are fewer,

A well cared for dog is always
Happier than its master.

Wu Hsin has no prescription to

Make life filled with
More pleasure and less pain.
Life is the pulsating amalgam of both.
This cannot be changed.
 To resist this is
To suffer needlessly.

Although thoughts appear in the present,

Their content is always about
The past or the future.
These are mere stories that
Serve to distract from
The knowing of What-Is.

Ones image of oneself is

Referred to as I or me.
But that is all it is,
An image.
It cannot plow the fields.
It cannot cook the rice.
What plows the fields,
What cooks the rice was
Before all Is and mes.
You are That.

With the personal as

The reference point,
Life is viewed as if
Through a keyhole.
With the personal
Out of the way,
The fullness is clearly discerned.

Being is the great mystery.

It cannot be found since
It is no thing; yet,
It can be felt since
It is in every thing.
Presence is acknowledging
What is here,
Right now.
Being-Presence is directing the attention to
This very instant and
Not becoming distracted by thought.
Gaining mastery over thought
Does not eliminate thought.
It merely strips it of all of
Its hypnotic power.
Then, every moment is fresh and new.

On can never get enough of

What does not satisfy.

There are no situations

Separate from the Totality.
All situations are
Aspects of this Totality.
The view from the Totality is
Always different from
 The situational view.

Seekers of Oneness,
Ignoring the obvious:
Wu Hsin newly presents that which is
Infinitely ancient.
Be still and understand this.

Complete Understanding is comprised of

Both Understanding and
Living the Understanding.

To trust in
What one thinks one knows
Leads one astray.
To trust in
The source of knowing is
The course to be taken.

True freedom is
The absence of all agendas.

There is only one error:

Giving attention to the content and
Ignoring the space that
Supports the content.
With a slight shift in viewpoint,
All is aligned.

Wu Hsin will not give you

What you want.
Wu Hsin only gives
What you need.
Then, the mysteriousness leads you to
Where you must go.

The mind is an excellent tool

For identifying differences.
It is a poor tool
For identifying Oneness.
Why use a mallet when
The task requires an ax?

So much more energy

Would be available if
It werent squandered on
Maintaining a self image.
Over time, all these myselfs
Change, then disappear.
That which has never changed,
That which will never change, is
The fertile soil for exploration.

All appearances are

Mere movements of energy in
 The field of consciousness.
What one is, is
The knower of the field.

Out of the fullness of emptiness,

Everything arises.
Everything returns.
Wise men understand this as
The play of life.

There is no need to
See,
Get,
Realize or
Find out any so-called truth.
Must one see,
Get,
Realize or
Find out that one is?
That one is, is
The primal truth.

There is nothing to practice.

All practices are like
Painting a rose so that
It will smell better.

Smoke may fill the sky, but

The sky remains unaffected.
Once it is recognized that
One is the sky,
Events in the sky
Lose their hold.
Wu Hsin is the wind that
Blows away the smoke.

Fighting with the mind

Strengthens the mind.
Seeing through the mind to
What is prior to it,
Takes all its power from it.

Balance is always attained effortlessly.

Effort impedes that attainment of balance.
Wu Hsin advises:
Dont get in the way.

One need not analyze darkness

In order to dispel it.
Light the lamp of clarity and
All darkness is dispelled.
If the question How arises,
One has not understood.

The only difference between

 A teacher and a student is that
The student believes that
There is a difference whereas
The teacher knows there is none.

Right here,
Right now, is
All that there is.
Everything else is
A creation of the mind.

Time cannot be used to

Find the timeless.

The natural life is not

A life without warts.

Lao Wei came to Wu Hsin and said:

Master, I have become a cat.
Wu Hsin replied No, Lao Wei,
You are not a cat.
You are a human being
Lao Wei then asked:
Then how did I become a cat?
There are always some
Who refuse to see.

Giving up a little,
One gets a little.
Giving up a lot,
One gets a lot.
Giving up everything,
One gets everything.

Those who possess true wisdom are transparent.

With nothing to protect,
With nothing to defend,
It is easy to see through them.

When life is lived

Without distinctions,
Nothing can go wrong.

Amidst the totality,

There is infinite uniqueness.
Yet, nothing is separate.
Just as the finger is unique to the hand,
The hand unique to the arm,
The arm unique to the torso.
The torso unique to the body and
The body unique in the world,
So, too, all beings are unique within
One continuous wholeness.
The only have-to is that
One has to be.
 Once established in being,
All else unfolds naturally and effortlessly.

Nothing is to be gained by
The study of shadows.
To discern the substance
Underlying the shadow is wisdom.
The world appears simultaneously with
The one who sees it.
The former cannot be,
In the absence of the latter.

Manifestation is named forms

Floating in empty space,
Observed through time.
Yet, the observer,
Residing on the outside,
Remains wrapped in mystery.

Ask yourself this:

Over the course of your life,
How many identities have
You created for yourself?
Where are they now?
How long do you believe that
Your present identity will last?
Where does it go when it is finished?

Where is the boundary between the silence and

The peal of the temple gong ringing; or
Between the cresting wave and
The vast ocean?
All there is is
Arising and falling within
The Great Unity.

The most efficient means to

Destroy any problem is to
Ignore the problem.
In the absence of the energy
Required to sustain it,
It withers and dies.

As one cannot be taught

How to fall asleep,
One cannot be taught
How to awaken.
Slumber happens,
Awakening happens without
Any one doing any thing.

There is no chaos.
It is only thought that
So names it.
Prior to naming,
 Prior to labeling,
Where is the problem?

Conception and gestation is progressive

Whereas birth is sudden.
Likewise is the birth of understanding.

Within the world of things,

Ones true nature is as
The knower of all things, and
Not as a thing itself.
When all thoughts,
Emotions and
Sensations are set aside,
What remains is the Essence.

The belief that Wu Hsin is special,

Perpetuates the hope that
One can also be special.
This, too, must go.

All things appear as

They truly are to those
Who are not blinded by self interest.

How can one lose

What is infinite?
Where would it go?

To know that
The mind is empty is good.
To know the knower of
The empty mind is better.

Everyone is only a single thought

Away from perfection.

There is breathing.
There is seeing.
There is functioning.
Where is the need
For a me to allow all that?

Whatever can be gained

Can be lost.
What cannot be gained is
What is already present,
Here and now.
Realign with this and nothing else.

Thinking imposes itself on silence as

Unwelcome relatives impose themselves on family.

The mind is the Great Divider,

Taking each from the Undivided to
 The divided.
The mind cannot contain the Undivided.
The Undivided contains the mind.

The world is the food that

Satisfies the hunger of feeling separate.
When the feeling is
Seen to be erroneous,
The hunger subsides and
The world loses its power.

Pure attention attends.

It is the ability to perceive
What arises in every moment
Without reacting to it.

Having no aspirations is
The gateway to freedom.
To relinquish control over
Ones experiences,
To allow them to be
Just as they are, is
The invitation.

Using concepts as
One uses a net,
To capture ideas, can never
Produce the ultimate understanding.
To realize that which cannot be captured,
That which cannot be contained, is itself
The ultimate understanding.

Those who come to Wu Hsin with

The desire to obtain something are
Sure to be disappointed.

What is permanent within

The transient?
Finding this,
The seeking ends.
The seeker ends.

The unexpected is
Bound to happen.
That which is anticipated
May never arrive.
Who is to say?
All is solely because
One is.

For those who have apperceived,

All action is spontaneous,
Action without reaction.
Action without an actor.
The rain is falling.
The grass is growing.
The crows are calling.
Where is the effort in this?
The desire to arrive somewhere,
Of a destination for a me
Shackled to time,
Impedes the realization that
All there is is this singular moment.
Right here,
Right now.

There is nothing to change.

The mind and the body
Continue to do
What they do.
The one who knows
The mind and the body is unmoved.

The sense of being this or that is

The final outpost before
Arriving at Being Itself.
It is now time to
Leave this outpost behind.

Yes,
This too.

As a young boy,
Wu Hsin would often travel in
The back of the oxcart.
In the heat of the afternoon,
He would often see
What appeared to be water on the roadway.
As he drew closer to it,
It vanished and
He therefore understood it
To be merely an illusion.
To this day, when traveling,
Wu Hsin still sees
The water on the road.
But knowing it to be an illusion,
It has no power and
Garners no attention.

All attempts to change

This moment into something else,
Can only occur in the next moment.
Full acceptance of what
Appears in this moment is
The style of sages.

If It cannot be found
Where one already is,
Where does one have to
 Go to secure it?

To liberate oneself from false notions,

False ideas and
False concepts,
Shatters the shackles that
Keep one small.

One is the space in which

The world appears.
There is nothing left to say.

Wu Hsin is not dispensing recipes.

There is no cook.
There is only cooking.

Breaking a habit begins by

Acknowledging the habit.
Until this occurs,
There can be no change.

No matter how many things

Seem to be wrong,
There are many more that are right,
Just the way they are.
When nothing is ever wrong,
One joins
The company of the wise.

Insights may arise.

Yet, no one,
No thing, makes them arise.
The arising is a spontaneous event.

In a room filled with objects,

There is more space,
More emptiness, than
There are objects.
This space is the support of everything and
To ignore it is
To ignore It.
One is that That,
That It, in which
Everything rises and sets.

The knowing that

There is an Unknown that
Cannot be known, is
The dawn of wisdom.
To kiss this Unknown is
To be truly in love.

When seeing is divided into

The seer and the seen,
What-Is is lost.
Do not desire cloudless skies.
Clouds appear,
May stay for some time and
Then the clouds evaporate.
The sun holds no preferences.

The body is
The screen on which
All images,
All sensations,
Appear and disappear.
One is not the screen.
One is the Knowing of the screen.

To believe that
Thoughts have power,
To believe that
Thoughts are true is the source of suffering.
The only power in thought is
The power one assigns to it.
True knowledge is not
Derived from thought.
It is derived from
The inner wellspring that one is.

One is not a
Part of the whole.
One is
The Source of the whole.

Second hand knowledge

Conveyed by a third person is
Hearsay only.
Throw away all the books,
All the stories, and
Return to the Essence
That has never gone anywhere.

There are no solutions

Out there.

The caged bird wont fly away

Even if the door is open.
Wu Hsin can open
The door to your cage, but
There are no guarantees
Pertaining to a desired outcome.

As the sky is
The unchanging context
For the weather.
Silent emptiness is the
Foundation of all things.
To be perfect is
To see the Perfection.
It is this Perfection in which
The body, the mind and the world
Arise, linger and set.

Once there is surrender to

Never finding out
Who one is,
Who one is becomes obvious.

Mans primary function is to

Create unhappiness for others.
This ceases when
It is understood that
There are no others.

Everything happens at the same time.

That time has a name:
Suddenly.

When the mind is not

Preoccupied with thought,
The transitory is no longer
The center of attention.
Then, a deeper intelligence takes over, and
Everything is exactly as it should be.

Every thing is only energy,

Sometimes seemingly harmonious,
Sometimes seemingly disharmonious.
Those that know the energy are not
Concerned with harmony or disharmony or
Labels of any kind.

As soon as an idea arises of

How it should be or
How it should have been or
How it will be,
The center is lost.

Can a man seek his own hands?

You are your own mountaintop.
All seeking is
A movement away from there.

In seeing,
Both the seer and the seen are experienced.
Identification with the seer is
An error of the mind.

What is clear and present cannot be

Observed by the senses.
It can only be pointed to.
Wu Hsin does nothing else.
The world is known
Through the mind, but
The support of the world cannot be
Known through the mind because
It is prior to the mind.

Ones life is lived

Not by beliefs, but
By inner convictions.
This is the Knowing from which
Wu Hsin speaks.

All desires are lies in that

They promise a lasting payoff.
Desirelessness is the truth in that
There is nothing to be gained and
Nothing to be lost.

It is only by
Removing all of the water-plants that
The full scope and majesty of
The water can be discerned.
The impediment is
The preoccupation with the plants.

Those who are clear accept both

The diamonds in the necklace and
The garbage on the street.

All sentient beings must see

Where the sentience has come from.
The Being-Sentience must be,
Before the appearance of sentient beings.
This is the original state.

The sunlight hits the crystal and

Rainbows of color appear.
Yet, what difference can be found between
The sunlight and the rainbows?
Is the latter not the former?

When the desire to become

This or that is set aside,
Being flowers.
In that, what is revealed is
What one really is:
The watching of
What one believes oneself to be.
This is not an awakening for any me.
This is an awakening from any me.

The known arises,

The unknown remains hidden, yet
Both are merely events
 Occurring in the Unknowable.
This Unknowable can be given endless descriptions,
But it can never be seen.

Everything is merely
Perceived.
It is only later that
The perceiver stakes his claim and
Labels, categorizes, and judges.
First there is existence and presence.
It is only later that
My existence and presence arrives.
Since one cannot be
What one perceives,
What is one really?

All needs are provided through

The process of the natural functioning.
All wants are for and from the individual.
Wants are attended to by the functioning only
Insofar as they align with the functioning.

When clarity is present,

There are never problems.
When clarity is absent,
There are always problems.

There is a single Source of every thing.

Happiness and sorrow do not
Arise from different places.
The location of this Source is
The Great Mystery.

It is only a madman who

Searches for something that
He hasnt lost.
Where does one have to go
To find what is already here?

Self consciousness creates the individual.

This self consciousness or I-thought
Births all separation.
Prior to self consciousness,
There is no individual.
There is no central point of reference.
There is only Being, Awareness, Presence.
This is the natural state,
One of integral perception.

True understanding manifests with

The cessation of the question
Whats in it for me?

Wu Hsins lodestone always

Points in the same direction:
 Here.

The natural ones are momentary, transitory.

What they were,
They are not now.
What they will be
They are not now.
Against this ever-changing background,
They have no fixed center.
With no fixed center,
Nothing is personal.

When everything is allowed

When everything is invited,
Without judgment or discrimination,
How can peace not prevail?

When the smells from the kitchen

Overtake the awareness,
Reading the menu loses its appeal.
Likewise, one cannot learn to swim
While remaining dry.

Taking the mind

Upstream to its source,
Resolves confusion and
Clarifies what has been obscured.
It is here that I am is
Transformed into there is.

The wise have abandoned all imaginings.

Imaginations of the past are gone.
Imaginations of the future are gone.
They are thrust into
The present moment where
Everything that has happened
Seeded what is happening.
They are now living without
A formula for living.

That which registers all feelings,

That which registers all sensations,
That which registers all perceptions,
That which registers the entire content of the mind,
Wu Hsin names the Registrant, and
This is the true core of what one is.
It is no thing, and, as such
It cannot be known.
It can only be experienced by
No one in particular.
If you must ask Wu Hsin
When will I know that I understand?
Wu Hsin can only reply:
Not yet.
Belief is a poor substitute for understanding.
To begin to question ones beliefs is to
Begin to understand.

When both the acceptable and the unacceptable

Become acceptable,
Living is effortlessly easy.

Seeing oneself to be
The knowing of all things and
The source of all things,
Upon which all things depend,
What is the further use of ones gods?

There is nothing to become.

Scrutinizing the moon

Reflected in the lake
Limits the understanding of
The moon in the heavens.

Over the course of time,

The body changes.
The identities change,
The images of ones self changes.
Yet, something remains unchanged throughout it all.
It is mistakenly referred to as me;
Yet, it is not that.
It is That through which
All mes are known.

The end of the individual is not

The end of greatness.
It is the end of smallness.
Wu Hsin calls this
The Great Breaking.

Thinking is the emphasis of

Content over process.
Consciousness is the emphasis of
Process over content.
Attention is the bridge between the two.

Once the understanding is

Complete and clear,
There is nothing to do except
To watch.

Being is one.
Ways of being are infinite.

Only the wisest understand that

The word me is a verb and
Not a noun.
They no longer
 Walk through life with
Eyes half opened and
Hearts half closed.

Do not chase experiences;

They come and they go, like
Shadows cast on the wall.
Instead, chase That which experiences.
Catch It and
One arrives at
The home one never left.

Regardless of the number of voices,

They all emanate from
One tongue.

Do not become enamored with

The words of Wu Hsin.
The value in
The words of Wu Hsin is that
They reveal the
Limitations of words.

Wu Hsin does not recommend

Doing anything at all.
Wu Hsin does not recommend
Not doing anything at all.
Both are a movement away from
What-Is.

The light that

Looks through these eyes today
Is the same light that
Looked through them
Sixty years ago.
Understanding that one is that light is
The apperception of infinity.

The observer spends a lifetime

In conflict with the observed.
This is resolved when
The observer is also the observed and
The two dissolve into the observing.

That which is ever-present must be

Prior to all things that come and go.
Rigorous scrutiny reveals that
This is what one is.

It is said that
Those with integral vision are
Filled with emptiness.
Those with dust in their eyes
Cannot see this.
Isnt it humorous that
People spend their entire lives
Trying to become a better story?
When the story is recognized to be
Just a story,
The energy directed toward
Maintaining the story dissipates.
Then, there is nothing that
Can be pointed to and claimed:
This is what I am.

Eyes are not required for insight.

All these dramas are like

The blowing of the wind.
In time, it ceases.
Outside of time, it never was.

Those who are shining

Have no location in space.
Rather, space is located in them.

Weeds have their place too.

Being is the seed from which

All worlds,
All gods and
All forms sprout.
It parents every thing.

All problems are

Born in the mind and
Delegated to the body.
To see through this is to,
Realize ones true luminosity.

Those with integral vision have

Cast off all definitions,
All labels, of
Who they are.
In truth, these only apply to
The body and its actions.
At the core, they are
That which cannot be defined.

The only difference between

A silver coin and silver dust is in appearance.
In essence,
There is no difference.
Fools dwell on appearances
Whereas masters live in essence.

The past is in memory.

The future is in imagination.
All that there is, is this instant.
 Dont lose it to inattention.
Once it is gone,
It is gone.

Every action is a movement of energy.

The wave on the ocean is not
The movement of water.
It is the movement of
Energy through water,
The movement of
The Animator through the inanimate.
To see this clearly is to
Understand the workings of the universe.
When there is understanding of
The workings of the universe,
There can be no
Resistance or opposition.
When there is no
Resistance or opposition.
All that remains is peace.

To have the courage to

Question ones certainties, is
True courage.

How can we speak of a center

When the center is everywhere?

Do not add Wu Hsins words to

The catalogue of concepts.
Wu Hsins words dont
Point to adding;
They point to taking away,
And taking away,
And taking away.

All thoughts are like

Smoke in the sky;
Here one minute,
Gone in the next.
Why assign importance to them?
Is the smoke important?

The seeing happens before

The I see can be said.
The I see is merely
A skewed translation of
There is seeing.
All Is and mes are
Translations of the mind which
Skews the impersonal into
Something personal.

There is no owner;
No one to claim:
 My body or
My thoughts.
There is no owner of consciousness.
Consciousness owns everything.

The unfoldment of the Infinite is

From I to I am to
I am this object in space and time.
The perceiving assumes the roles of
The perceiver and the perceived.
Nothing is added,
Nothing is taken away.

Only a wise one

Recognizes everything as a lie,
Including the recognizer.

Just as the answer

Contains the question,
The student contains the teacher.

There is no way out.

There is no way in.
No way is necessary.
To discover that which is
Outside of time,
Requires nothing bound by time.

Those that are truly religious are

Untouched by the temples, the prayers,
The rites and the dogma because
They discern that what is truly religious is
Prior to all these and
This is where they come to rest.

Chasing after transcendental experience is

Merely another escape.
When What-Is is fully embraced and accepted,
What needs to be added?

To empower the transitory is

To become its slave.
The seeing through the transitory is
Its mastery.

As long as the mind is,

The body and the world are.
The support of all these is
Before all these.
The natural ones call this Home.

One cannot suggest that

Sugar and sweetness are separate.
Nor can one suggest this regarding
Man and his god,
 Regardless of how it may seem.

From unitary wholeness,

What needs to be done,
Comes up to be done.
This is the natural functioning.
To believe that
There is some one
Doing something,
Obscures What-Is with
What seems to be.

True wisdom dawns with

The rejection of conventional wisdom.

The Ultimate Ground of Being is not

Amenable to dissection.
While one may seek to
Explore the unknown,
One cannot know
The Unknowable.

Where does Wu Hsin call Home?

He resides in the space between
The nothingness from which he emerged and
The infinity that envelops him.

The investigation of confusion is a key.

By being clear about confusion,
One becomes cleared of confusion.

My child, you are only

What you imagine yourself to be.
What you truly are is unimaginable.

The true mystic does not confuse

What-Is with
What appears to be.
Knowing he knows nothing,
He is the incarnation of non-interference.

To run from what appears is

To be fearful.
To embrace whatever appears is
To be wise.
Those living at ease do not
Attempt to manipulate the world.

Ignorance always requires support.

Pristine knowing,
Clear sight,
Stands free.

Wu Hsin is the termite;

You are the chair.
All that is needed is
Someone to explain that
No one is needed.

Once it is seen that

One is not
A fragment of the whole, but rather
Wholeness itself,
The dramas that previously
Held so much power
Can no longer be found.

The One Substance is

The mother of all things.
She has many names,
None of which can touch her.

What is sought is
Directly in front of the eyes, and
Directly behind the eyes.
There is nowhere it is not.
When the false boundaries called
In front and behind are
Seen as false,
Life loses all difficulty.

Movement cannot be known when

There is no movement.
Yet, movement can only be known
From the background of no movement.

The end of the path is

The understanding that
No path is necessary.
Then, one walks freely.

Whereas the perceived is in constant flux,

That which perceives is immobile.
On which of the two the attention rests
Determines the point of view.

Thinking has value in the

Organizing of the known, but
It is not the tool with which
To approach the Great Mystery.
The Great Mystery can only be
Approached from silence.
It is, in fact,
The silence itself.

That which perceives

The thinking and the feeling, is not
Identical to them.
This is the source of much confusion.
The problems that appear in the mind are problems
Because they appear in the mind.
Viewed from outside of the mind,
They cannot be located.

True knowledge requires no

Confirmation, affirmation or verification
From any outside source.
True knowledge is the knowledge that
There is no outside source.

That which is ever-present and obvious is easily missed

When the attention rests on the transitory.
Returning is therefore a re-turning toward
The base of all things.

Certainty is finite;
If everyone claims it,
No one can have it.

When it is fully apprehended that

Thinking is not the instrument that will
Take one to Understanding,
What is there to think about?

The only difference between

A wise man and others is that
The wise man is no longer
Hoping for something to happen.

It is a misunderstanding to believe that

One is not already
What one wants to become.
To see this clearly,
Brings becoming to an end.

Those who chase two rabbits

Catch neither.

The direct perception into What-Is results in

The loss of the desire to control time.
The wanting to extend the duration of happiness ends.
The wanting to shorten the duration of sorrow ends.
The fixation on what comes and goes ends as does
The preoccupation with longevity.
This rejection of time heralds
The onset of immortality.

To see a beginning in every ending and

An ending in every beginning is
To see eternity.

Every day, become, at the least

One gram lighter.
Water is not wetter in
One location than another.
There is no need to go there
To obtain what is also here.

One step closer to

The attainment of peace is
The cessation of asking
Why?

When the words are few,

The silence is great and
True listening begins.

Clear sight is not an effect,

A result or a consequence.
There is therefore
Nothing to be done to cause it.

Every effort adds another veil.

When one is comfortable with not knowing,

When one can live in seeming chaos,
The perfect order of things reveals itself.

What could be more simple than to

Look in at whats looking out?

The mystery of the Great Mystery is not

What it is, but
That it is.

Fullness is
The purpose of emptiness.
The great gift is to see that
One is not a thing among things, but
The space in which all things are contained and
From where they emerge.

One must say Yes

Even to ones
Inability to say Yes.

Allow everything to be as it is,

Not seeking to improve it or
Correct it or
Remove it.
Then, what can be wrong with this moment?

Do not confuse
A man who is tired of sleeping with
One who is awake.

Humility is not a trait of character.

 It is an insight into the actual;
It is a knowing that
One knows nothing.

The unmarked path

Extends from then and there to
Here and now.

Wu Hsins potion is
Comprised of equal parts of
Perceiving everything and
Identifying with nothing.

Nothing can be added to

A bowl that is already full.
Emptied of everything,
Fullness is welcomed.

Only fools believe that their god

Lives in their temple.
Where the god is not,
One is not.

Because one is no thing in particular,

One can never know what one is.
One can only know
What one is not.
This is good enough.

Investigating the validity of the assumptions is

Easier than resolving the problems.

When one is ready to have

Everything one thinks one knows
Turned upside down and,
Inside out,
Then, as if by magic,
Wu Hsin appears.

Nothing brings satisfaction.

Nothing brings happiness.
Nothing brings contentment.
Nothing brings clarity.
Do nothing.

Change your mind,

Change your world.

Wu Hsin sees things as they are.

He does not try to control them.
They continue forward while
Wu Hsin remains at the center.

To dwell in what is personal

Impedes the realization of
 The universal.
Understand that everything personal is merely
A collection of events
Happening to a centralized object,
A point of reference.
One is not the object.
What one is, is
The knowing of the object.
The pure functions of seeing,
Tasting,
Smelling,
Touching,
Hearing and
Thinking
Are not owned by anyone.
Yet, everyone claims them as their own.

The primary desire is

The desire to be.
This births the world and its contents.

That which remains unaffected by

The dissolution of the universe and the heavens is
The primary principle of being.
It is from this that
All arises and all returns.

Foo was a wise man and

Many came to sit with him from
Different provinces and different lands.
What was it that made Foo wise?
Foo was able to see through the limited to
The Unlimited.
He never saw individuals;
He only saw everything in everyone.

The only thing

One ever sees is
Ones own world.

What is not needed

Drops off,
If it is not clung to.

To pursue depth is to
Desire the infinite.
To pursue width is to be
Ensnared in the world.

Many fear Wu Hsin.

Although he is old,
He can kill inside you that which
You so dearly hold to.

Life is not a search for wholeness.

 It is the expression of it.
When this is apperceived,
Nothing need be changed.

Visions may come.

Unique experiences may occur.
When they are completed,
Remember to clean the pig stall.

One shackles oneself

To ones beliefs.
When the beliefs are removed,
The shackles are removed.
This is freedom.

The natural state contains

Nothing that has been acquired.
When all the acquisitions have been dropped,
What is natural shines through.

Ones thoughts organize the world so well that

One is no longer able to see it.

Clarity brings simplicity.

What complicates is discarded.
Those who sleep on the floor never
Fall from their bed.

Wisdom blossoms in direct proportion to

Ones awareness of
Ones own ignorance.
Seeing that one is not
As wise today as
One thought one was yesterday,
Makes one wiser today.

Seeking relief is not the same as

Seeking a cure.
The former is transient whereas
The latter is forever.

Go and stand in the water.

Immerse yourself in it,
Feeling its coolness.
Knowing its wetness.
In this manner,
One comes to understand its nature.
One can never know it
Seated in the oxcart.

See that you are mistaken.

You call it night merely because
You have turned away from the sun.

The only one who can

 Tear down the wall is
The one who erected it.

Those who do not see clearly believe that

The sun wipes out the stars.
Those who know What-Is
Do not mistake illusion for reality.

Loneliness is the
Byproduct of feeling separate.
Those who see that
They are not separate,
Never experience loneliness.

When the noise ceases,

Silence remains.
When thoughts of the past or future stop,
The present moment remains.
When thinking stops,
Clarity remains.
It is the emptying that
Allows the Silent-Clear-Presence to unfold.

Once the pure taste of tea is known,

The tea may also be
Taken with milk or sugar.
Once knowing is clear,
Involvement in the world
Presents no problems.

The seeing continues while

That which sees remains unseen.

The solution to all problems is

To see who it is
Who has them.

Were yellow to appear on

A background of blue,
It would appear to be green.
Yellow can only be yellow when
It appears on a colorless background.
You are that background.
You are That.

Wu Hsins words are always brief.

Talking about eating
Doesnt satisfy the hunger.
These words merely point
To the restaurant.

Afterward
While reading the writings of Wu Hsin, there may arise the tendency to process them through ones mind..thinking about them, so to speak.
Wu Hsin makes it repeatedly clear that the mind is the wrong instrument to use for the discovery of What-Is.
 Instead, treat this content as a singular, cohesive planting of the seeds, the shining of the sun and the falling of the rain. Simply leave it alone and allow the working to
occur.
No study or discussion groups need to be formed. No opinions need to be exchanged. Within the backdrop of silence, there is nothing that needs to be done by
any one.
Volume Four: Recognition of the Obvious
Forward
Trying to grasp the teachings of Wu Hsin is like trying to grasp the wind in the palm of your hand. While they are as refreshing and fragrant as a fresh breeze, they
can also be as devastating as a wildfire.
Wu Hsin doesnt provide answers to the questions of life because life is its own answer. It is what-is. It moves, it flows, it breathes itself into and through
everything.
Instead, the writings of Wu Hsin expose, without compromise, the fundamental misconception that there is something called an individual that needs to find
something else outside of itself. Admittedly, the sense of being a separate individual feels very real and affects every part of that apparent experience. Wu Hsin makes it
abundantly clear; however, that this is a state of contracted energy, a sense of having lost something unnamable.
It would therefore seem that the source of all unhappiness is the individual not getting/finding what it wants. Yet, this is not the problem. Wu Hsin ponders:
All suffering is personal.
In the absence of the person,
Where can suffering alight?
No amount of effort can ever bring anything other than more me searching for that which the me doesnt have, the end result only serving to reinforce the reference
center: me.
In Volume Four, Recognition of the Obvious, Wu Hsin illuminates that all hopes of attainment, all efforts at becoming, ultimately avoid that which me most fears
its own absence.
This message is so simple it totally confounds the mind. Almost instantaneously, the mind says Yes, butwhat about this, what about that?
There is no 'yes, but'. You can't say 'yes' and continue with 'but'. If the 'yes' is a real 'yes', that releases the thing into nothingness and it is finished. If you say 'but',
you are giving continuity to that dead structure of thought, past experience and future hope.
Wu Hsin puts it this way:
What is keeping one from being in ones natural state?
One is constantly moving way from oneself.
One wants to be happy;
One is dissatisfied with ones experiences of life.
One wants new ones.
One wants to perfect oneself,
To change oneself.
Trying to be something other than what one is, is
The going away from oneself.
It is the resistance to What-Is.
The desire to alter this you, is
The only energy that sustains it.
In the absence of this energy,
You cannot continue;
Then, the natural state shines effortlessly.
Appearances notwithstanding, it is really as simple as that. What is unnatural may obscure what is natural. But it doesnt negate it.
When you look at an Escher picture, it may all of a sudden seem to turn inside out. Nothing has changed in the picture, but something has shifted in your perception
of it. At this point you could say everything has changed, or nothing has changed.
To see through these things, requires investigation. This is the real gift of Wu Hsin, the challenge to investigate the validity of all concepts and all beliefs. It is here
that the seeing through takes place and the clarity occurs. Yet, this clarity also has its price:
One cant have a piece of It.
It is all or nothing.
One must make room;
It requires a lot of space.
Everything must go.
Text
The first thought is I.
It is the root-thought,
The foundation upon which
All else is built and from which
All other thoughts have their origin.
The arrival of the I-thought and
The arrival of the world
Occur simultaneously.
Neither exists without the other.
This is Wu Hsins open secret.
Those that make it their own
Move beyond struggle and strife,
Pleasure and pain.
To discard this is to
Throw away the diamonds with the ice.

Awareness is the primal constant.

On it, worlds are built and
Individuals are imagined.

Clarity is the great neutralizer.

Thinking is not the natural state.

Perceiving thought is the natural state.
The pure perceiving is prior to
The imposition of a perceiver.

There are some

Who are afraid of
Stepping outside of their huts,
Afraid of what theyll find.
More are there
Who are afraid of
Stepping outside of their minds.
Afraid that theyll find nothing when
They look back.

One can feel miserable on

A beautiful beach.
One can feel ecstatic
While in jail.
The outer need not
Dictate the inner.
When the wall between the two dissolves,
That which sources both is revealed.

When man wants to

Run away from the potential
Contained within him,
He creates his god to aspire to.
Wu Hsin declares:
They are not two.
The personal world is
A reflection of the person.
What madness it is
To fault the reflection!
Can an image be changed without
Changing the face?

It is only ideas that

Create the notion of separation.
When it is seen that
Everything rises and sets in you,
What can you be separate from?

The vision of unity is

The end of all things personal.
There is no event that
Delivers this unity vision.
Who could it occur to?
With nobody here and
Nobody there,
Everything is as it should be.

All disappointment,
All disillusionment is
An invitation to investigate
Who is disappointed;
Who is disillusioned?

The work of this moment is

Watching the work of this moment.

Focusing on the plot of the book

Does not bring one
Closer to the author.

Where the where is not,

When the when is not,
I am.

In every experience,
The expression is
The objective part, which is changing.
The background is
The subjective part;
The unchanging field.

That which is by its nature restless

Can never find peace.
Peace of mind is
The minds fantasy.

When it is seen that

An empty cup is receptive and
A full cup cannot receive,
 Those with wisdom choose emptiness.

To be natural
Requires no learning.

Stop pretending that what isnt is

Superior to What-Is.
It isnt.

Either one is
Responsible for everything or
One is responsible for nothing.
The end result is the same.

Wang asked Wu Hsin:

When shall I achieve this clarity?
Wu Hsin replied,
When the when is dead.

Ignorance is the
Ignoring of what is
Clear, present, and obvious.
If the cloth fits, wear it.

As soon as your god is assigned attributes,

It becomes merely another object in
A world of objects.
Only the non-objective god is
The true subject.

The desire for salvation is

The elixir of fools.
The only saving one needs is to be
Saved from ones imagination.

The way the world appears is

Dependent on which side of the window
One is looking from.

If the person is
Merely an appearance, then
Who cares?

Until one becomes clear about

The true source of happiness.
All looking for it is folly.

The past is only a memory.

The future is only a hope.
All that matters is the present:
This-Here-Now.

Whatever one perceives is not ones own.

It is merely an appearance in
The field of knowing that one is.
Do not argue that
Your god is indifferent to you.
It is not indifference.
It is merely non-compliance.

The body changes but

The I that claims its ownership does not.
The mind changes but
The I that claims its ownership does not.
The personality changes but
The I that claims its ownership does not.
It is solely of this I that
Wu Hsin speaks.

Eons could be spent

Talking about the seeming differences.
But they are not as they seem.
Seeing this is the
End of talking about it.

All methods bind.

Those who are free
Hold to no system,
No regimen.

The release of habitual activity,

Habitual reactivity,
Frees the individual
From the self-referencing center,
From the individual.

There are no answers to be

Found out there.

Perceiving sees everything whereas

Labeling only captures
A limited canvas.
The mind is the great labeler.

Before the body,

Before the mind,
Are you not there?

Fragments trying to understand

That which has no fragmentation is
A great comedy.
The birth of me is
The birth of other than me..
And so the game begins.

What makes the wise wise?

Nothing more than seeing
The One appearing as the many.
Seeing through the appearance is everything.
Seeking ends when the fish
Understand the folly of
Searching for the ocean.

Embrace, my child, that which

You seek to avoid;
The fear of absence.
Absence of concepts,
Absence of ideas,
Absence of anyone to have them.
To be fully present therefore requires that
One be fully absent.
This is the Great Emptying.

Wu Hsin gives you the key.

Either you use it
To open the door or
You put it in your pocket with
All the other keys
You have accumulated.

Seeing through the haze of the personal,

Ones actions are no longer reactions.

To differentiate between
The guests and the host is to
Understand the distinction between
What comes and goes and
What is permanent.

When one becomes water,

Ones thirst is quenched.

Wu Hsin did not come from somewhere.

He is not going anywhere.
He is timeless, prescient being itself.
When circumstances require his appearance,
Wu Hsin appears.
Give up all ideas of
What you believe yourself to be,
Then, you are he.

One is not born with an identity.

Identity is acquired.
In the absence of all acquisitions,
True being shines.

There is great frustration in

Trying to locate
That which is non-local.
Many refer to this as searching.
Yet, one need not go anywhere
To find the Great Immediate.
Mark your territory.
Construct as many signs as you wish declaring
This is Mine.
They are nothing but mist, because
The one who declares is also
Nothing but mist.

Insight is the eradication of confusion.

No longer equating the way things seem with
The way things are,
Life is the ever-fresh awareness of being.
In this, the shadow cannot be
Mistaken for the substance.

The sense of feeling separate

Need not be rejected.
It, too, is part of the Oneness.

The difficulty with trying to

Remove false perceptions is that
One is creating them in every moment.
In openness, the drive to interpret is stilled and
Clarity arises to the forefront.

There can be knowledge of changes.

But, there cannot be
Knowledge of the Changeless.
Knowing the Changeless is
Being the Changeless.

Looking in at
What is looking out,
Ends all seeking and
The seeker.

There are no conditions that

Must be satisfied in order for
Insight to arise.
Nothing to do,
Nothing to become.

Holiness is not wholeness.

The events of the world

Do not impact Wu Hsin.
He is neither happy nor sad.
His happiness has a different aroma;
It is latent in his very being.

Ultimately, one does not get free.

Instead, one realizes that
One is freedom itself.

All suffering is personal.

In the absence of the person,
 Where can suffering alight?

The character in a book cannot

Write the book in which he appears.
Investigate whether you are
The author or the character.

As heat is inherent in fire, so too is

Knowing inherent in being.
This is the Knowing from where
I know erroneously arises.

Wu Hsin tells you nothing that

You dont already know.
He only reminds you of that which
You have forgotten.
You may experience Wu Hsin as
Outside of yourself, yet truly
This is not the case.

In the absence of
The addiction to content,
The mind is restored to
Purity and clarity.
Seeing, hearing, tasting, smelling,
Touching, feeling and thinking
Continue to operate without
Anyone to initiate them.
Natural functioning occurs with ease.
Life continues its flow.

When matters are seen clearly,

It is no longer important if
All the pieces fit.

More.
More peace,
More beauty,
More harmony,
More pigs,
More rice,
More.
More is not the answer.

Nowhere to go,
Nothing to do,
Nothing to get.
What could be simpler?

The whole house is on fire.

You can only take
What you can carry.
The lighter you travel,
The farther you go.
Clarity does not provide answers.
It dissolves questions.

No new systems,
New methods need be created.
Sweeping away the hindrances is enough.
It is then that the awareness of being,
Of being aware,
Radiates and illuminates the landscape.

This I that one thinks one is, is

Merely a survival mechanism for
The form it is associated with.
The unstained apperception of this
Facilitates the return to
What is prior to all Is.
It is here that resting in being occurs.

Try as one may,

One cant squeeze
A restless mind into
A peaceful space.
Recognize mind for what it is and
For what it is not, and
Neutrality is effortlessly established.

Understanding has been

Clouded by misunderstanding.
The sun remains present in both
The absence and the presence of the clouds.
To see through the clouds is
To see the sun.

To be present and aware is not a state.

It is the ground from where
All states arise.
You are That.

Beliefs can be as formative as

A fortress wall.
Unless the wall is torn down or surmounted,
One cant reach the other side.

Trust neither scripture nor the sage

To provide the truth.
All truth must be self-investigated and is
Therefore, self-generated.

If you must search,

Search for what
Needs to be given up.

In open vibrancy,
The sight of a flower is as marvelous as
A vision of a god.
Mu Ding held no ideas about
What perfection was; for him,
Every moment was therefore perfect.

No beginning.
No ending.
No birth.
No death.
No time.
No space.
Nowhere to leave.
Nowhere to arrive.
Home.

The fundamental nature of things is

Unitary wholeness,
Oneness.
Separateness is a seeming,
An appearance,
Nothing more.

Peace is present in every moment.

Remove the shroud of thought.
Where can peace not be found?

To attempt to retain what was or

To attempt to attain what might be is
The source of all suffering.

To find your self,

Explore your self.

Religions arise to address

The sense of being separate and apart.
Once this sense is seen to be erroneous,
Where is the need for religion?

With lucidity,
Both the chaos and the randomness
Become quite orderly.

Every moment spent in

The absence of presence is
A moment irretrievably lost.

Know what you are not and

Be what you are.

All pursuits,
All searches,
Takes one away from the natural state,
That state in which one always is.

All are here, yet

 You ask Wu Hsin
How to get here.
Why, then, are you
Disappointed by his silence?

What is keeping one from being in ones natural state?

One is constantly moving way from oneself.
One wants to be happy;
One is dissatisfied with ones experiences of life.
One wants new ones.
One wants to perfect oneself,
To change oneself.
Trying to be something other than what one is, is
The going away from oneself.
It is the resistance to What-Is.
The desire to alter this you, is
The only energy that sustains it.
In the absence of this energy,
You cannot continue;
Then, the natural state shines effortlessly.

Why does one communicate with oneself?

Why is there thought?
If one does not communicate with oneself,
One is not there, absent.
Ones absence is the primal fear.

One is either the personal or

The awareness of the personal.
No act of volition can take one from
The former to the latter.

The need for time is

The need for practice.
The time bound can never
Yield the timeless.

Those who let the intelligent energy

Express itself in its own way are
Those who Wu Hsin calls clear.
There is nothing they need do.
There is nothing they need not do.

Those who ask Wu Hsin

The meaning of life
Need to first become alive.
There, the question and the questioner
Dissolve in the aliveness.
The purpose of the flower is to flower.
The purpose of man is to flower.
No difference.

Whatever one does

To free oneself from oneself is merely
More of oneself.
Stop talking and thinking.
Therein, nothing can remain unknown.

To pursue appearances is to
Ignore the source of appearances.

The entryway to the Unknown is narrow.

One must set aside all acquired knowledge so that
One may gain access.

It is only when one is awake that

One can know one was asleep.

To obtain this Understanding to which

Wu Hsin refers,
One must discard everything
One finds along the way.

Choosing that which is safe,

That which is predictable, is
The surest way to go nowhere.

Let us be clear:
One doesn't know what is good;
One knows only what is good for oneself.
What is bad for the field mouse is
Good for the satiated owl.

It is preferable to
Investigate ones assumptions than it is to
Attempt to solve ones problems.

One thinks oneself to be the dancer.

In fact, one is the dancing.

Wu Hsin can no more help one

Find ones god than he can
Help the bird find the sky.

Take hold of any sentence Wu Hsin speaks.

Shake it well until
All the words drop off.
Drink deeply from that which remains.

Silence is not the absence of sound.

Silence is the absence of you.

Can throwing white paint at the sky

Make the sky white?
Those who are vibrant and clear are
Unaffected by appearances in the world.

Change your clothes.

Change your name.
 What you are is untouched.

The journey of self-discovery ends with

The discovery that there is no self.

True courage brushes aside

Everything experienced,
Everything felt, and
Everything known.
The soil is then ready for
The arrival of the unknown.

No labels are applicable.

No categories can be referenced.
The words of Wu Hsin cannot be
Contained within any container.
If one constructs a box to put them in,
There has been a misunderstanding.

One wants to be different,

Sometime in the future, from
What one is today.
Full acceptance of What-Is is
The end of the future.

You have arrived.

Soon, you will leave because
What you chase after
Cannot be found here.
It is not an object.
How then, can it be found,
Here or anywhere?

The tricks played by

That which demands continuity can be very subtle.
When continuity loses its importance,
That which demanded it exists no longer.

Understanding is the end of questions.

If one understands,
One is quiet.

One cant have a piece of It.

It is all or nothing.
Make room;
It requires a lot of space.
Everything must go.

Who cares about death

Once there is recognition of the
Falseness of the individual?
Seeing the falseness is the death.

The words of Wu Hsin will

No longer matter when
 One becomes fully attentive to
His silence.

Everything is falling.
To attach oneself to anything neither
Halts nor slows ones descent.

What one needs comes when

One doesnt ask for
What one doesnt need.

To be certain of the immediate

Precludes the attainment of the Ultimate.

Why are so many

So willing to exchange
Peace for thoughts?

The final step is

The giving up of
All steps.

Nothing new need be

Added or found.
Dig away the earth and
The pit is no longer hidden.

To live in authentic wakefulness is to

Do one thing at a time and
To do it totally.

One cant search for

Something to acquire while
Dropping all acquisitions.
When it is seen that
The searching does not bear fruit,
The dropping can begin.

Wrong ideas obscure What-Is.

Loosen their hold and
Living becomes natural and easy.

Make room for understanding.

But remember that
Making room isnt
Bringing something in from elsewhere.

One is not in the world;

The world is in oneself.
The parchment is not the writing.
Yet, without it,
There is no message.
The world is because
One is.
The floodgates of insight
Open of their own accord.
No one to do it;
Nothing to be done.

The sword can never understand dueling;

Nor can the fire-pit understand cooking.

An elegant structure has been built.

Until it is torn down,
Nothing changes
And never confuse being
An instrument of change with being
An agent of change.

What effort can succeed in

Stopping the shaking of the reflection of
The tree on the lake?

Harmonious and disharmonious are

Merely points of view whereas
Friction is a natural occurrence.
Being neither good nor bad,
It transcends opinion.
What happens isnt the problem
Analyzing what happens is the problem.

Individuality implies ownership:

My thoughts,
My fear,
My body.
Seen clearly, there are thoughts.
There are fears,
There is a body but
There is no one they happen to.

Chin Ho was called a simpleton.

He did not see right and wrong.
He could not judge good from bad.
He smiled too much.
The simple life is not
The life of a simpleton.
Yet, this simplicity is too complex for
Comprehension by many.

Pursuing anything that

Comes and goes cannot
Yield integral perception.
It is the seeing through what
Comes and goes that
Yields integral perception.

The apperception of What-Is can

Only be achieved by
The elimination of
 The obstacles to What-Is.
Wu Hsin cannot describe What-is.
He can only describe what is not.
The elimination of what is not is
The Great Unlearning.

The source of all unhappiness is fragmentation.

Breaking the whole into parts,
Pitting one against the other,
Feeling apart and alone.
No restoration is required.
When it becomes obvious that
The fragmentation is erroneous,
It loses its power.

There is no middle ground.

Reject everything or
Accept everything.
The result is the same.

There exists an inherent tension between

That which is personal and
That which is impersonal.
The desire to transcend the personal
Arises from the impersonal.
Since that which is personal would
Never agree to its own demise,
Who will bring about the transcendence?

Whereas me is always changing,

I never changes.
Whereas me is always feeling threatened,
I is never threatened.
When one becomes unselfconscious,
There is no one
Other than I.

When the world is viewed from neutrality,

Without fragmentation and
In the absence of a self centered perspective,
There arises an appreciation of
The beauty and perfection of What-Is.

True peace is without cause.

Likewise, true happiness is without cause.
Conditioning these on any thing is
A movement away from them.

There is a single requirement:

Dont run away.

Freedom from all content is

The precursor to
The knowledge of content.
You are That.
Do not add even a single concept.
One must be emptied.
Only when one is empty of
The emptiness too,
Can the fullness manifest.

Monolithic structures are built to

Provide a ground beneath ones feet, to
Provide safety and solidity.
These structures are not real.
Seeing this, how real are safety and solidity?

Unity is the release of

The superstition of plural spirits.

Seeing the finite is not enough.

Seeing the infinite in the finite is
Seeing without a seer.
Here, the seeing is being.

Those who refuse to be what they are will

Remain what they are not.

Hell is living on the periphery.

It is where fixation on stories is
The preferred substitute to living.

Most have difficulty seeing clearly because

Their heads are in the way.

For all, life has a beginning,

A middle and an end.
However, it need not necessarily
Occur in that order.

Causes produce effects which are

In themselves, new causes.

What one comes to Wu Hsin to get,

One does not get.
Wu Hsin only gives
What one already is.

When true emptiness is met,

Face to face,
Everything is lost.
What remains is what one is.

Flow around obstacles.

Dont confront them, unless
The obstacle is oneself.

Before desiring to become something else,

Inquire fully into what you presently are.
 What is seen is that
There is nowhere to come from and
Nowhere to go to.

The immediacy is that there is presence-awareness.

All else that ensues is a story.

When one is enamored with the means,

One becomes forgetful of the ends.
Once the cart has arrived,
One doesnt continue to sit in it.

Call it emptiness or
Call it fullness.
It doesnt matter.
Its achievement rests on
Giving up ones relationship
With ones erroneous viewpoints.

Dont look at Wu Hsins finger.

Look at where it points to.

Right here,
Right now, is
All that there is.
Immersed in thought,
One misses it.

When one changes,

Everyone changes and
The world changes.

One must not confuse

What is innate from
What is acquired.
Divide the two,
Reject the latter and
Be.

The personalization of the functioning is the error.

There is thinking with no thinker.
There is doing with no doer.

Words.
At the spoken level,
They are sounds.
At the subtle level,
They are thoughts.
At the silent level,
They are gone.
It is in this silence,
From this silence, that
All arises.

The need for gods decreases as

 Awareness increases.

To be dissatisfied,
One must think about it.
To be unhappy,
One must think about it.
To find out what one truly is,
One must inquire prior to thought.

See things as Wu Hsin sees them and

Your hands will be in the earth while
Your head is in the sky.

The body is insentient.

It cannot speak.
It cannot see.
It cannot think.
That which energizes the body,
That which initiates all action,
You are That.

Wu Hsin is little more than

An open window through which
A cool breeze blows.
Nothing more.

Once the true center is perceived,

There is no longer a need for enemies.

The lack of concern for progress is

The only sign of progress.

All unhappiness is
Sourced from unexamined beliefs.

The landscape toward clear neutrality is

Littered with identities and labels.

This heavy garment,

This personal identity,
Seems to protect.
It is merely a second skin,
One step removed from the infinite.
Take it off and
Move beyond all need for protection.

In the transpersonal life,

The middleman is removed.
Life is lived directly.

Cling to no method,
No path and,
No teacher.
The rope that rescues one from the raging river
Can also be used to hang oneself.
As the voice requires its distinctive tone,
Being requires a distinctive way of being.
Wu Hsin calls this you.

There is no need to
Go beyond the mind.
Seeing through it will suffice.

Wu Hsin does not speak about religion.

What is religion but
The transformation of
The song of liberation into
The dogmas of limitation?

The Great Mystery cannot be understood.

It is the answer to the question:
What color is the wind?

Emptiness,
Silence,
Stillness.
This is not a void to be feared but
A sanctuary to be sought.

The cage door is open right now.

Wu Hsin cannot walk through it for you.

First, you will strive to get it.

Then, you will strive to keep it.
Once lost, you will strive to reclaim it.
This is the wheel of striving.
Its grip is tight, but
It is you that must let go.

No action is self-generated.
The source of the action remains unseen,
Cloaked in its mysteriousness.
Observation of it is enough.

Many days of silence are required to

Recover from the futility of words.

When the unacceptable is

No longer accepted,
Wu Hsin is sought out.

Spontaneous living is
Devoid of musts.

The two sides of the stick are

Awareness on the one side and
The habitual and mechanical on the other.

Whatever it is:
 Happiness or unhappiness,
Joy or sorrow,
Comfort or discomfort,
Let it be.
It arrived without permission and
It will go in like fashion.

That which perceives the world cannot be

Found in the world because
It is the world.

Death for the caterpillar is

Birth for the butterfly.
Form yields to form.
And so it goes.

Deep wisdom is not derived from experience.

It is derived from seeing clearly
The limitations of experience.

The pure I becomes the thought

I am, which expands to
Become I am this.
This is the Great Unfolding.

Deep looking produces

Deep seeing.
Then, one moves from competing to
Cooperating with everything.

To be free,
One must untie oneself from
The seeming independent entity called me.

Throwing away reactions,

One lives responsively,
Doing what is needed
When it is needed.

There is nothing to manage,

No persons,
No situations,
No things and
No one to manage them.

The common man is blind.

He cannot see
The nothingness that birthed him.
Nor can he see
The infinity that envelops him.

Being requires no declaration,

Neither affirmation nor validation.
Who is it who declares
I am not?
Mu Lais house was ransacked by burglars.
A beautiful rug was stolen.
It took Mu Lai many days before
He could see the floor.
Before that, all he could see was
The absence of the rug.

How can one experience life when

One is so busy becoming?

Acceptance of What-Is cannot be

Created by the will.
The recognition of this is
The acceptance itself.

Those who dont know,

Believe.

One need not use

The candle of another.
Ones own light is sufficient.

That which gives rise to all forms is

Formlessness itself.
To create a picture of it in the mind is
Like catching a moth;
The body is held but
The beauty of the flight is eluded.

Until one is willing to question that which

One is afraid to question,
There can be no movement.

The word fire cannot burn.

Nor can the word water be consumed.
When ones vision is unobstructed,
There is no confusing
The description and the described.

Being and becoming cannot walk together.

Seeing things as they are,

In the absence of interpretation, is
The end of the trance.

Nothing to accumulate.
Nothing to acquire.
Nothing to gain.
Remove the non-essential; then
The essential essence itself shines.

Heaven and hell are only

Lodgings for individuals.
When the fiction of individuals is seen through,
 Heaven and hell lose all meaning.
Nothing to do,
Nowhere to go;
Now or later.

Once the silence is established,

True listening can begin.

The natural state is not an effect.

It has no cause.
It shines through
All causes and effects and
Precedes them.

Transcendence is not
The disappearance of the transcended.
It is the natural refusal to
Attend to the transcended.

In the Great Awakening,

There is perfect
Adaptation and response to whatever comes.
The life, as such, is lived.

Timeless, spaceless, imperceptible being is

What one is.
Temporal, finite,
Sensorially perceptible phenomena are
What one appears to be.
This is the entire matter.
Yet, do not seek to grasp it or
It will be lost.

The Ultimate Subject is revealed in

The cessation of objectification and identification.

The mind thinks.

But it does not know.
Before the thinking mind,
Perceiving senses,
Doing body,
Happy or unhappy person,
The knowing stands.

In seeing things as they are,

Where is the need for managing,
Controlling or manipulating?
To live naturally is to
Live without an agenda.

Hell is life on the periphery.

Fresh understandings are obtained by

Questioning ones unassailable beliefs.
Clearer and clearer one becomes until
 One is clarity itself.

One cant learn to swim from

The luxury of ones armchair.

The recognition of what is

Fundamental in oneself
Saps the power from the notion of
Being an individual.
Management and control of externals ceases.
Living continues.

All that one has is this moment and

It is quite enough.

In the absence of right and wrong,

What can be the problem?

The effort to be made is

The same effort one made to
Grow from a fetus into
What one appears to be.

To lose the personal is to

Gain the totality of the universe.
This is living in ease,
Absent any need for improvement in character.

The Knowing of which Wu Hsin speaks is not an activity.

It ever was and is and has never changed as
The support of all activity.

Wholeness has never been broken;

It only seems that way.

The mind cannot do anything except

Extend the frontiers of its own ignorance.
One cannot use the mind to
Transcend the mind.

The I that claims ownership of

The body, mind, and senses is
The true Subjective.
It points back to ones true nature.

Deep peace resides at the center.

Excursions away from the center are
Excursions away from peace.

One need not wait to be

What one already is.
Keeping the attention fixed on
What is permanent,
One can never stray.
The setting of a goal is
The death of spontaneity.
Being aware of being aware is enough.

Dont believe in
Anything you are asked to believe in.
Question everything until
All that remains is to
Question the questioner.

All experience occurs in the field of time.

As such, the timeless can never be experienced.
All searching for experiences can now end.

Taking the actions of Totality to be ones own is

The error in viewpoint.
As long as one is mesmerized by the tree,
The root cannot be understood.

Live in accordance with

Ones inherent nature.
What more can one do,
When, in truth, there is no doer?

It is only resistance that impedes acceptance.

As the dam impedes the rivers flow,
Resistance impedes the flow of What-Is.
To drop all resistance is
To embrace What-Is,
Just as it is,
Without it having to be
Other than it is.
All of life is then welcomed.

What one thinks one is, is

The result of inattention.
With attention, one attains
Clarity of thought,
Charity of feeling,
Purity of action and
The understanding of
The true nature of things.

Questioning how to live

Misses the mark.
It is better to inquire
What is it that is living?

Let us be clear;
The mind is merely
The name of a function:
Thinking.
In the absence of thought,
There is no mind.
One perceives objects through the senses.
One perceives the senses through the mind.
One perceives the mind by oneself.
It is only this oneself that is to be sought.
It is not hard to find.
Its fragrance is everywhere and
Pervades every thing.

The unsatisfactory nature of the world

Must be acknowledged.
The futile attempts to
Make the unsatisfactory satisfactory
Must be acknowledged.
Only then, can alternatives be considered.
Of these, the best alternative is
The acceptance of What-Is.
In such acceptance,
All notions of satisfaction and dissatisfaction vanish
What remains is peace.

Here and now is

All that there is.
It is What-Is.
The rest is imagination.

The way outward into the world is with

The emphasis of objects.
The return inward from the world is with
The emphasis on the Subject.

Since one can perceive

Ones body, senses and mind,
One stands separate from them as
Perceiving itself.

To attempt to capture
The true essence of Wu Hsin is to
Try to observe the unobservable.
It is here that words fail.
The senses fail.
The Knowing of it is all.

All notions of individuality are

Notions of ownership:
My body,
My thoughts,
My feelings.
Even when the error is apperceived,
It is apperceived by no one.

The first step is to

Tear up the map.
This is the departure from
The known to the unknown.
All there is is
Never not here,
Never not now.

One gets further lost in

All destinations other than
Here.

One is either cramped or

One is open.
Whereas there may be degrees of cramped,
There are no degrees of open.

To free oneself
From oneself requires
The investigation into
The reality of this self.
From here arises freedom.
Freedom from this and that,
Freedom from yes and no.
Freedom to be
What one has always been,
Before one was someone.

The notion that

Something needs to be added is
A subtle form of postponement.
It feeds the idea of becoming
In the space where no becoming is required.

There must be no waiting for

Something to happen.
This something is happening in every moment.
To wait for it is to miss it.

From the personal point of view,

The world is external to the personal.
When this dissolves like ice in water,
It is seen that nothing is external.
Everything is contained within the unified whole.
There is no separate person.
One is because the world is.
The world is because one is.
Arising and setting together,
Where is the boundary between them?
Use the mind to attain the
Point of understanding that
The answer is not in the mind.
Therein, the searching ends.

The sum of all thoughts form another thought, me.

From there springs
A series of thoughts,
Reactions to thoughts,
That are thoughts themselves and are in essence
 Preferences, rejections, wishes and longings.
The cycle of this complex is endless.
Its transcendence resides in
Returning to the condition
Prior to the first thought.
This is the clear space that the wise know.

Even assigning It a name is too much.

It is said that
Wu Hsin is greedy.
He gives nothing and
Takes everything.

Where is the location that

Inside becomes outside?
Where does here become there?
What distinguishes you from
Other than you?
Show Wu Hsin the markers,
The signposts and the boundaries.

Being is being as one is,

Being as one was and
Being as one will be.
No difference.

Life cannot be understood unless

One takes the time to observe it.
This observation must
Begin with and from the reference point:
Me.

So much is found after

The cessation of seeking.

The essence of Wu Hsins words cannot be

Captured by the mind.
This is like trying to
Capture sunshine in a box.

One is not any thing in particular.

All one really is is
The denial of everything that
One is not;
The Eternal Constant.

Failing to see the essence,

The pot but not the clay,
The bangle but not the silver,
The writing but not the parchment,
One remains ensnared in appearances,
Taking the way things seem for
The way things are.
Union is only necessary
When separation is imagined.
When separation is seen to be imaginary,
The need for union drops off.

Let there be no confusion between

Being an instrument of action and
The author of action.
In so doing,
The natural state remains unobscured.

Others see differences between

Themselves and Wu Hsin whereas
Wu Hsin sees none.
Others believe that
Wu Hsin has what they lack.
Wu Hsin laughs at this.

One may read scripture until

The day one dies, yet
One can never drink water from
The map of a lake.

Many there are who

Believe in making sacrifices to their gods.
To these, Wu Hsin notes that
The highest sacrifice is
The sacrifice of ones absolute certainties.

The need to see magic births,

The appearance of magicians.
When even the miraculous is
Understood to be normal and ordinary,
What-Is is clearly discerned.

Wu Hsin offers no hope,

No payoff,
No methodology and
No escape route.
Only the bravest are willing to
Confront their own absence.

Those looking for answers must

Look where the answer resides.
You are That.

Let us not confuse beliefs with facts.

Your god is a belief.
You are is a fact.
Hold to the facts.

Dont deny existence to

What cant be imagined.
Dont assert existence for
What is already imagined.
 This is the creation of spaciousness wherein
True seeing occurs.

One knows that one is.

One knows not what one is.
When it is seen that
What one is is no thing,
The seeking and the sought are no more.

The wise have investigated the remainders:

The clarity that remains
When the mental chatter ceases.
The silence that remains when
The external noises ebb.
The presence that remains when
The past and the future are forsaken.
It may be said that
They recede into the background.
In truth, they comprise the Background.

One stands at the threshold,

A single thought away from perfection.

Outside of the cage,

One is not someone who is free.
Rather, one is freedom itself.

Whatever appears before you

Cannot be you.

The vista, the viewpoint expands.

Suddenly, there is no elsewhere,
There is no there.
There is only Here onto which
Things come and go.
The Here remains.
Occurring right now,
It is a singular, undivided tapestry.

Words are the great trap.

If the mind becomes ensnared there,
One can never get free.

Insight arrives unbidden.

It is sired by neither prayer nor ritual.
In silent spaciousness,
It shouts its message.

One is never apart from ones destination.

When the questioning of the dream begins,
Awakening is not far away.

The mind, the body, and the world are

Objects appearing in awareness.
When this is comprehended fully,
 Everything that need be known is known.

One is not found anywhere.

Yet, one is still there.
This is the Pure Subjectivity of which
Wu Hsin speaks.

One need not think

To know that one is.
No effort is required
To be.
It is only within
The realm of the personal that
Doership is required.

None need abide in what seems to be.

Disregard the words of Wu Hsin;
Investigate.

What does the tongue taste without It?

What can the ears hear without It?
The foundation of everything is
A precondition for everything.
To rest in the foundation of everything is
To become everything.

The movement of the flag

Reveals the action of the wind.
As it always is,
The Unseen supports the seen.

That which is very near is

Missed by preoccupations with
Things that are farther away.

The world is not external.

The body is mere clothing on the Clothed.
Seeing this is seeing all.

When the poisonous tooth is

Removed from the serpents mouth,
The serpent can be played with like a childs toy.
When the world is seen through, then
The world can be as it is seen yet
No problems arise.

The position of those living naturally is

The refusal to allocate any energy toward
Making things right or wrong.

Everything is important for only as long as

One is important.

How happy was Wu Hsin to realize that

There is no permanent happiness
 Found in the world.

Wu Hsin can neither teach one

How to fall asleep nor
How to wake up.

What happens after ones death is not different from

What was happening before ones birth.

The lotus flower is produced in water.

It lives in water, yet
It is untouched by the water.
The same is said for the wise,
Living in the world.

The book says This is salt.

Wu Hsin says This is salt.
Yet, one still does not know it
Until one tastes it.

To reach the end of ones journey is

To reach the end of oneself.
This ending is not different from
The instant prior to the beginning.

All habitual assumptions must be examined.

Peck, peck, peck.
The chick breaks free of its shell.

Clear the dust from the eyes.

Then it can be seen that
The entire world is merely
The Totality appearing as the particular.

The mind is the tool of choice to

Change What-Is into
What one thinks it should be.

Things act on other things.

Conditions yield to other conditions.
Wu Hsin takes his stand outside it all.

Completeness cannot be
Improved by adding or
Diminished by removing.
Completeness remains.

Listening to the songs of the mind

Distracts one from What-Is,
Life.
Those with clear sight know this.
The mind may continue on, but
It has lost its hold on them.

There is no location for nowhere.

 There is no location for everywhere.
You are That.

Personal understanding is a distortion.

It takes What-Is and
Filters it through
The sum of personal experiences.
This is no different from
The refraction of light.
There is an appearance of light, but
It is not the true light.

Wu Hsin is aware of thoughts.

Wu Hsin is aware of sensations.
Wu Hsin is aware of the objects.
Wu Hsin is aware of the world.
Wu Hsin is aware.
There is awareness, prior to Wu Hsin.

Going out precedes returning.

In due course, all return.
First out, then in, then
Neither in nor out.

Understanding the Mystery is

The acknowledgement that
The Mystery will always be a mystery.

The origin of all troubles,

The repository of all troubles, is
Ones own imagination.
In stillness, there are
No troubles to be found.

The only sin is not to know and

Not to know that one doesnt know.

To relegate oneself to being

Merely an individual human is to
Confine oneself to a prison cell.
The entire universe calls out to
Those with ears that can hear it.

However one believes things are,

They are different from that.

Many lamps.
One light.

Deeply enmeshed in the concept of ones self,

One can never know ones self.
One can only know what
One takes ones self to be.
To truly know ones self,
One must stand outside and look within.
Tsu Ma was free.
Attached to nothing,
He roamed,
He explored.
Never becoming,
Only being.
He was like the wind,
Ungraspable, uncontainable.

As the tree is latent in the seed,

As the fire is latent in the wood,
All things contain their future.

Nothing need be done.

Nothing need be undone.
One remains as one is.
Wu Hsin calls this the natural state.
It is the end of
Millions of beginnings and of
Millions of becomings.

The fish in the ocean

Imagines itself to be
The fish on the dinner plate.
A change in the viewpoint brings about
A change in the experience.

Ones taste of tea is ones own only.

Likewise, ones world is ones own only.
Beyond this,
Outside of ones this and ones that,
There is the invitation of Oneness.

One can speak about

Silent mind or chattering mind.
But who speaks about the source of mind,
What resides behind the mind?
Silent mind or chattering mind are conditions.
Wu Hsin speaks only of the Unconditioned.

The actuality is always now.

Individuality dies with

The death of the body.
Yet, individuality can die before
The death of the body.
Wu Hsin calls the latter freedom.

One cannot choose to wake up from

Either ones dreams or
Ones imaginings.

Before pain arrives,

That which knows the pain is present.
 When pain arrives,
That which knows the pain is present.
After pain has gone,
That which knows the pain is present.
The pain is transient;
That which knows the pain,
The Knowing, is not.

Pi Dan was an expert on

All things inconsequential.
He was knowledgeable of the world, but
Of his true nature,
Of what resided at his core,
He knew nothing.

Ones mind is both friend and foe.

It creates the distortions yet has
The potential to see through them.
However, it is limited.
Mind cannot take one
Beyond mind.

People need words until

Direct experience speaks louder.
Then, silence prevails.
It is for this reason that
Wu Hsin writes.

To say I live is a distortion.

There is life.
Activities may change in every moment, but
That which supports the activities
Remains changeless.

Clarity cannot be quickened.

It is already there.
It is only the veils,
The mists of thought that
Tend to obscure it.

Empty of everything,
How easy it is to be filled.

At the moment of ones birth,

Death begins its pursuit.
Those who perceive themselves as not born,
As that which is eternal, are
Never caught up in
Deaths net.

Reject thinking.
Reject not thinking.
This is naturalness wherein
The particular becomes the universal.
In true wakefulness,
There is no fear.
The prerequisite of fear is an other;
In wakefulness, this is absent.

Dont take life personally.

The sun has no care for
What passes through the sky.

The I in I saw,
I remembered,
I felt, is not the person.
It is the voice of
That which moves the person and
Sustains the person.
It is That.
You are That.
In That,
Ones marriage to the me is finished.
The me may remain but
Its falseness is now seen through.
When the false loses its hold,
It becomes like
The ash of a burnt rope;
It is there, but
It has no substance.

A shadow is insubstantial to
The one who casts it.
When it becomes clear that
Any one is merely a shadow,
The attention returns to
The Source and rests there.

Lacking labels,
Lacking definition,
One is boundless.
To reduce oneself to
The span of a lifetime and
The volume of a body is
The summit of ignorance.

Understanding is not necessary.

The end to misunderstanding is sufficient.

This ever-present intelligent energy is not an experience.

It is not bound by time.
It is the underlying support from which
All experience emerges and dissolves.
To realize this as ones very nature is to
Move beyond the world.

True happiness does not come and go.

True peace does not come and go.
What comes and goes is what
 Obscures true happiness and true peace.

Whereas the world is observable,

Whereas the person is observable,
That which observes cannot be found.
Those who have found
That which cannot be found have
Transcended both the world and the person.

Within the natural order,

There are opposites but
No opposition.
All opposition is sourced from
What is not natural.

A thought arises and it is perceived.

What makes it my thought?
The bird sings and it is perceived.
Does one make it my song?

Entranced by the beautiful flowers,

One misses the root which is
Clear and evident.
With the trance broken,
The fullness reveals itself.

Doubt everything, even Wu Hsin.

Investigate;
Discard all that is acquired and false.
What remains is illumination itself.

Wu Hsins recipe:
Add no thing.
Take away every thing.
Bake until done.

Identity is an acquired idea.

One is what one was
Prior to the acquisition.

Beyond the mind,

All distinctions cease.

Lucidity is the full knowing of

Both what one appears to be and
What one truly is.

Not unlike the sun,

One is that which illuminates all.
Not unlike the mirror,
One is that which reflects all.

With the onset of imagination,

Space is filled with objects and
Time is filled with events.
 The absence of imagination
Empties space and time so that
True peace may be perceived.

Awareness itself is vastly

More important than its content.
As such, turning away from the content,
From the objective,
Turning toward the subjectivity, is
The posture of the wise.
It is only the fool who seeks
The source of things in things.

What effort is required?

The same effort that
The already wealthy man uses
To become wealthy.
What can be gained can be lost.
What cannot be gained,
Because it already is,
Can never be lost and
Requires no effort.

Eternity is available in a single instant.

Turn away from ones preoccupations.
Eternity presents itself.

Having rejected acceptance and

Having rejected rejection,
A clarity manifests which
Allows the world to be as it is.
There are some who would
Call this peace.

When the preoccupation with identification falls away,

What is seen is that
Life is not a search for wholeness;
Rather, it is the expression of wholeness.

The easiest of all things is to be

What one already is.
In that, there is nothing to attain
Nothing to gain and
No effort required.

When the seeing is unimpeded,

The totality of perfection is recognized to
Include the totality of seeming imperfections.

What is false need not be remedied.

It merely needs to be seen as false.

When all the stories have been discarded,

What becomes evident is that
One ends where one begins,
 In the infinite expanse of the Absolute.

The world and

The awareness of the world is like
Clothing and nakedness:
The nakedness is always present;
The clothing simply obscures it.

A deepening of understanding requires

A shallowness of understanding.
There is no deepening to deep understanding.

What one is is this pristine awareness.

All that appears on it, in it, is
Merely passing through.
Why give it importance?

The cage of being fractional

Can be replaced in an instant by
Seeing the expanse that one truly is.
All one need do is stop and look.

Inadvertence imprisons.
Attention liberates.

As the statue is already present in the granite,

So too, what is sought is already present.
As the carver cuts the stone,
Carve away the obstructions and
The sought appears.

There is no goal.
If there is no goal to be attained,
What need one do?

Prior to all form,

Prior to all names,
There is some thing,
Which is no thing that
Perceives all names and all forms.
You are That.

In the same tree,

Leaves, flowers, berries and branches,
All different from one another, are seen.
Are they not one
Because their root is the same?
Are they not all tree?

Sam Fu used to think that he thought.

Upon investigation, he discovered that
Thoughts arise in the expanse of awareness and that
There is no thinker thinking.
Sam Fu now watches the show as
A spectator in the audience.
 He may laugh.
He may cry.
He carries on his normal activities.
Yet never forgets That which facilitates and is
The support of these activities.

Some ask that It be explained.

What can be said about It other than
It is neither this nor that.
It is That from which
This and that emerge.

What Wu Hsin knows is valueless.

All that is valuable is
Ones own knowing.
Although Wu Hsin may take one to the river,
He cannot make one swim.

There is no conflict when

There is no division between What-Is and
What one believes ought to be.

What is this journey if not

A return to that place before
The creation and the creator?

One is and
One knows that one is, without
The need for mentation.
It is from this ocean of awareness that
All else emerges.

The totality of space has no center,

No circumference.
It is here that one finds Home.
It is here that all desires for heaven fade.
It is here and
It is now.

As all property belongs to the emperor,

All names and forms belong to
That which perceives them.
They may be called knower and known.
Deeper still, they are the twin aspects of Knowing.

All attainments are deceptions.

What will come will go.
What can be gained can be lost.
What has never left,
Never leaves.
Turn to this and
Be free.

A crow sat on a coconut tree.

A coconut fell.
 Mind creates a relationship between
The coconut and the crow;
There is none.
To see through the mind is
To see through distortion to
The pristine clarity that is always there.

The Eternal Constant requires no saga.

From It, all sagas are birthed.
Confusing this Eternal Constant with any saga is
The fountain of all unhappiness.

What is this That of which

Wu Hsin speaks?
It is That from which
Every thing arises, on to which
Every thing appears and to which
Every thing returns.
It is That, and
Between this That and ones self,
There is no difference.

Dying daily removes fragmentation.

An integrated life then ensues.

Only the wisest of men says

I dont know.

When everything is unlearned and

All habits are rejected,
What one always was shines forth.

True observation can only

Occur from outside of the observed.
All else is partial.
Standing apart from oneself,
One discerns oneself.

So many ask Wu Hsin for

A way to gain clarity.
If one stays where one is,
If one does not move,
What way is necessary to
Remain as one is?

One cannot see ones face in muddy water.

When the mud is removed,
The face is clearly seen.
This mud is identification:
Identifying with a name,
Identifying with a story,
Identifying with a form.
When these are the preoccupation,
The essence is obscured.
No one is happy.
How can anyone be happy when
They source their happiness outside themselves?

Whatever arises,
Ones essence is already present to greet it.
Its beginning has never been observed.
When the attention shifts
From what arises to its greeter,
The world view shifts and problems cease.

Cast away all anchors and all tethers.

Allow drifting to take hold.
One will go to where
One needs to go.
Those who trust in this
Live in fullness.

The Great Teaching has no words.

The silence that was before the Great Teaching and
The silence that comes after the Great Teaching is one.
The silence itself is the Great Teaching.

What is available in this moment

Requires no tool or method to reveal it.
No lit candle is needed to find the sun.

When it is explained that

The price for the infinite is the finite,
Most buyers balk and run away.

There is no one who is more silent.

There is no one who is more peaceful.
There is no one who is more awakened.
There is no one.

Begin from Being.

Begin from Consciousness.
Begin from Being-Consciousness.
Dont move from Being-Consciousness.
This is the most observable fact.
All else is overlay on to it.
Seeing the overlay as overlay,
One remains undisturbed.

Xin Do lost his pouch in the town of Ba.

He went to search for it in the town of Dinquo.
When asked why he would search in Dinquo for
That which he lost in Ba, he replied:
Ba has no streetlamps;
Dinquo is better lit.
Why search in the mind for
What is not contained in the mind?

For a thing to be found,

 It must have a specific location.
That which is everywhere
Can never be found.

In pure being, one is nobody.

It is only in tainted being that
Somebody appears.

What distinguishes the natural man from the rest is that

He has touched the Immovable in that which is moving,
The Unseen in all that is seen and
The Timeless within time.
He rests in its bosom and is
A stranger to worry.

The favorite pastime is watching the world.

Only a rare one will choose to
Watch the watcher.
They alone reflect true knowledge.

That which is ever present is also

That which is ever prior.
It is the foundation and support of all things.

The habit of going outward for

Sensation and stimulation
Obscures the pure essence of
What one is.
At its source,
The spring brings forth this purity.
One need only stop to drink it.

All fixations are blockages of natural energy.

Thoughts come; they go.
Fixations impede the flow and
Peace is lost.

To speak of solutions presupposes

The existence of problems.
If one claims that there are problems,
Wu Hsin replies that the primary problem is
The addiction to distraction and
The primary distraction is I.

The only appropriate time

To question every assumption is
Now.

Peace is here.
Fullness is here.
Knowing is here.
To find problems,
One must leave here and
Go there which is
The source of all problems.
A distinction must be made between
Searching and exploring.
One searches for what is not present.
One explores through what is present.
Ones essential nature never goes anywhere.
It is ever present.
It can never be searched for.
It can only be explored.

Lucid harmony cannot co-exist with the personal.

While the person may continue,
The personal must go.

Nothing is wrong with the world other than

The notion of you.
Stepping out of this,
The world is then viewed as perfection itself.

Nothing has happened.

Yet, the seeming happenings continue on in
An endless stream until it is seen
That the appearance is merely an appearance.

Wu Hsin must be left behind.

He cannot be dragged along or
Carried on ones back.
His work is done and
It will bear fruit.

The mind does not see.

Nor does it hear, taste, or smell.
It labels and interprets.
It discriminates,
Setting this against that.
What sees, hears, tastes, and smells?
All words are inadequate.

This quietness has no relationship with activities or

The absence of activities.
This quietness is the cornerstone from which both
The presence of activities and
The absence of activities appears.
In being this quietness, one may be active or inactive.
It is of no consequence;
The quietness remains unmoving.

Hold on to This that has no shape,

No form.
It is so close that it is missed.

Only objects are subject to time and space.

When the viewpoint is clarified that
One is no thing,
Freedom from time and space is evident and
 One discerns that
Nothing binds or limits ones true nature.

The notions I am this body and

I am this mind are mere shadows.
When the light that creates them is seen,
All their power is drained.

What is born and dies is the me, only.

That which perceives both events was
Never born and never dies.
It has neither beginning nor end.
As such, it has no past and no future.
You are That.

If the writing slate is

Already filled up,
Nothing new can be written upon it.
Wipe it clean and
Let us begin.
Volume Five: No Great Future Attainment
Forward
There really isnt anything to add to what I have written in the previous Forwards.
In this final volume, Wu Hsin continues his onslaught on the seemingly known while providing new insights into the mystery called Awareness.
One aspect that does not receive a lot of attention is that the reader should approach Wu Hsin with unwavering trust. Set aside all notions of what is already known
and evaluate this message on the merits of its resonance with the reader. The math teacher is not questioned that 2+2 =4; it is taken as a priori. The same attitude is
required here.
Otherwise:
Wu Hsin may talk for years on end.
However, he can never convince a blind man of
The beauty of a rainbow.
Text
Ignorance disguised in new vocabulary does not
Make for understanding.

This life that is taken so seriously,

What is it really?
Is it anything more than that small dash between
The date of birth and
The date of death?

What constitutes the sense of I am this is

Constantly changing while
What constitutes the sense of I am is unmoving.
The shift in the attention from
The former to the latter is
The perfume of lucid sight.

When objectification ceases,

Time ceases,
Space ceases,
The need for these media ceases.

Is life better understood by

Looking at it more closely, or by
Stepping back further from it?
Standing back from the seeming seer is
The distance needed to bring perspective.

A wise man never overcomes adversity.

He circumvents it.

Wu Hsin and you were both present at

The birth of the sky.
He remembers,
You do not.

Anything in time cannot be eternal.

That which stands outside of time is
Eternity itself.
Hearing its call is
The end of time.

A thought appears.
Is there someone thinking or is it
Only the echo of a knock on the door
Reverberating through an empty house?

Despite how it seems.

A roosters crowing does not cause
The sun to rise.
Lucidity discriminates between
The apparent and the real.
Bridging the gap between
Your gods will and your own is
The revelation of What-Is.

Security is the freedom from

The need for security.

Clouds appear and disappear,

The sky remains unfazed.

Individual effort to affect circumstances

Obscures lifes magic.

The one one knows,

One is not.
When the one not-yet-known is known,
No further knowing is required.

The propriety of any action

Exists only in
The mind of the actor.
It may be deemed appropriate by some and
Inappropriate by others.
It may be deemed appropriate today and
Inappropriate tomorrow.
Wu Hsin does not squander his time judging.

There is no going within to

A within that cannot be located.
Imaginations cannot be ended with
More imaginations.

A flawed perspective breeds

A flawed view.

One never sees things as they are.

One sees things as one is.

All beliefs are woven;

True knowledge is bedrock.
Small doubt precedes small clarity.
Great doubt precedes great clarity.

All objects, whether

Physical or mental are
Pointers to that which perceives them.
To see this is to be this.

If one is not
Trying to get to some place,
One cannot become lost.

There is a beginning and an end to

All things objective.
That which perceives them has no beginning
 Nor any end.
Being birthless,
It is deathless.

The arrival of clarity is

The losing of
What was never ones own.

The body is insentient.

No different than a stone.
That which perceives via the body is not
The body.
It is that which enlivens the body.
It is both the witness and
The substance of all experience.
It is That.

Thoughts are not the problem.

Ownership of thoughts is the problem.

The individual and the world are

Co-created moment by moment in imagination.
Appearing together and
Disappearing together in
That which never appears or disappears.

Wu Hsin has no teaching.

Wu Hsin points to what Wu Hsin is,
What one is, and
The absence of difference in the two.
In this, all teachings are contained.

The ones who have been

Seeking for the longest time are
The ones who refuse to
Let go of the seeking.

The power of the ocean is

The support of every wave.
Can there be any wave in
The absence of the ocean?

The vision of the mind is

The vision of the world.

What distinguishes
A wise man from the common man is that
The wise man does not need tomorrow.
He doesnt even want it;
Now is enough.

The world appears in your light.

With the light in abeyance,
Nothing is.
The character in the play is over
Once the play is over.
The spectator in the audience continues
Once the play is over.
The latter taking itself to be the former is
Part of the play itself.

All that has been learned until now,

Read until now,
Heard until now,
Seen until now and
Thought until now,
Has not produced the desired results.
Reject it all and
Investigate what remains.

No experience can provide the elixir.

That which occurs in time cannot
Take one to the timeless.

Smaller than the smallest,

Larger than the largest,
One is.
Onto this,
All appears, lingers and departs.

The wise treat the personality like a shadow;

It follows them along
Yet, it is no bother.

Wu Hsin does not provide answers.

Wu Hsin removes questions.

When the attention shifts from

That which is not permanent to
That which is permanent,
Disturbance can find no entrance.

One is the stonemason that

Constructs ones own prison.
One can tear it down.
This is initiated by
Dismantling ones most basic certainties.

When the energy that fed it is

No longer provided,
Falsehood dies of neglect.

Understanding is not birthed by

A mental process any more than
Blue sky is created by
A clearing in the clouds.

The world comes in to being with

The division into I and other-than-I.
 Returning to that point prior to the division is
The restoration of unity.

Separate is not something one is.

Separate is something one does.
With its cessation,
Lucidity is unveiled.

There exists a core concept upon which

Everything else is constructed.
This core concept is me or I,
The notion of a distinct entity that
Stands apart from the world.
It is only when this is seen as false that
What is true, What-Is, may shine.

The most subtle,

The most obvious is
The easiest to overlook.
The paper is forgotten when
The parchment is read.
The pristine awareness is forgotten when
The face of the god is seen.
Without this pristine awareness,
What faces are seeable?

Cleaning the dust from the mirror requires time.

Throwing away the mirror requires no time.

Supremely ordinary and obvious,

Clear as the space immediately in front.
With no process at all and with
No imaginary division,
It remains open as it always is,
What-Is.
Who dares divide the indivisible?

That which is not permanent is not

Worthy of pursuit.
To dispel the beliefs in what one is not is
More than enough.

There is some pleasure to be had by

Scratching an itch.
But it is far more pleasurable
To have no itches at all.

Wu Hsin destroys everything;

All ideations, all notions,
All beliefs and all concepts.
From the charred ruins of this edifice,
Ones true nature beckons.

Pursue with the fullest energy

That which you already are.
 There is nothing to become.

What is freedom other than

Freedom from ones own preoccupations?
It is the freedom from that which
One has tethered oneself to:
Me.

There may be many messengers but

The message is one:
Refuse to be what you are not;
Be as you are.

Wu Hsins words are not

A conversion from one set of ideas and beliefs to
Another set of ideas and beliefs.
They point to the liberation from all ideas and beliefs.
Within this emptiness,
The fullness of life calls.

It is so near.
It is so obvious.
As to see the sun
Requires no candle,
So it is to see this nearness.
One need not know
What it is to know
That it is.
By that which one knows one is;
One is That.

The center of observation is

Open and unbiased.
It is all pervading intelligent energy.
All movement away from the center is
Movement toward contraction and limitation.

To tell ones story requires time.

To perpetuate ones story requires time.
To obliterate ones story requires no time.

Direct cognition is available here and now.

All that is required is
The release of the stranglehold on
Ones erroneous beliefs.

The parents,
The teachers and the society have
Induced this trance called me.
To be clear of it,
Challenge and inquire into its reality.

What time brings about,

Time takes away.
The exploration of
 That which does not require time
Culminates in the realization of the timeless.

Words can only bring one up to

The limit of words.
To go beyond,
All words must be left at the shore.

Neither peace of mind nor

A piece of your god are
Attainable in anything external.
What one truly is contains everything.
What is said to be external is not
What it seems.

The dog stops chasing its tail

When it tires of it.
To find what has never been lost,
One must tire of searching for it.

While one has aged,

What is it that hasnt aged?
You are That.

Either be attached to everything or

Be attached to nothing.
There can be no middle ground.

Leave the world for a while.

It can always be returned to.
Explore that which cant be returned to,
From which there was no departure.

Hunting for the thorn while

Ignoring the rose has been tried.
The result is failure.
Turn the attention to the essential.
Not moving,
The rose recognizes itself.

Whatever appears neither defines nor alters

What is already there.
Why treat it like a precious gemstone or
A temple statue to be fixated upon?

The content of the foreground

Obscures the pristine nature of the background.
It is the fixation on the former that must go.

However solid ice may be,

It never loses its true nature, that being water.
The Source is always
Present in the appearances.

As a dog holds onto

 The scent of its master in order to
Track him down.
Follow the notion of I back to its source.
There flowers the understanding that
One's true identity is
The substratum out of which the world and
All its names and forms
Appear and disappear.

All experiences, or their lack, are

Mediated through the notion of individuality.
This is the obstruction to the clear seeing of Presence.
It rises from the Presence and
One either feels the Presence through it, or
One is aware of its absence.
Regardless, the Presence is there all the time.
It never comes, never goes, never moves.

The notion of seeking arises because

The recognition of What-Is is absent.
It is the What-Is that is
What is sought.

A peaceful mind
Brings heaven to earth.

Everything comes and goes

Except that onto which
Everything comes and goes.
This That is what
One truly is.

All attempts to succeed are

The evidence of failure.
In the absence of the need to succeed,
One cannot fail.

One must leave a room before entering another room.

Each has assumed that
They are located in a body.
Until the location changes,
Nothing of substance changes.

The fruit ripens quickly

When fertilized with
No thing in particular.

The undefined cannot be restricted.

That without limits can never be defined.

At the first moment of clarity,

The desire to improve the mirage ceases.

Looking deeply into the nature of things,

Finding no thing is what is found.
 Phenomena appear, linger and go.
There is no permanency.

There exists a Great Equanimity that

Regulates and balances all things.
The recognition of this lessens
The work of each individual until finally,
There is no work and
There is no individual.

Clear sight requires the dropping of

All points of view.
Absent a center of reference,
Things are seen as they are.
The world takes care of itself.
The work gets done.

The whole world may perish.

That which one is, endures.

The man who is wise

Knows himself in all things and
All things in himself.
He apperceives no essential difference between
The arising of the perceived and its perception.

As the sun is not soiled by

The smoke in the sky,
The lucid ones experience everything
Yet remain unmoved.

Embracing nothing.
Rejecting nothing.
One stands outside the totality.
Watching, watching.

Wu Hsin declares:
What belongs to me,
I am not.

Appearances offer strong distractions.

One must swim against the current to
Return to the Source.

The kingdom continues

After the king is gone.
Onto fertile land,
Many things may sprout, flower, and then wither.
The land remains unfazed.

The person is the seemingly ongoing

Narration of separateness and is
The very movement away from
The oneness it declares it desires.
The road ends where it began.
Seeing that there is nowhere to get to,
One does not move.
That which does not move is
The ground of all movement.

Let the focus remain on

What is here and now.
The rest is not worthy of consideration.

One is in
Whatever one sees;
The very fabric of the universe.

Wu Hsin does not doubt

That if one meditates
Long and
Hard and
Correctly,
There will be results
Of one sort or
Another.
But until meditation
Eliminates the meditator
The goal has not been achieved.

The source
Of every thing
Cannot be
Any thing.
Why, then, search
For what cannot
Be found?

No actor
Can change his role
On the stage
According to his preferences.
Wu Hsin laughs
When you speak about
Your plans.

My child,
Your very effort
Is the hole you are trying
To climb out of.
Your desire to be free of
All your perceived limitations is
What threw you into it
In the first place.

One of mans strongest desires

Is to change the quality
Of What-Is.
If only he would realize
 That What-is is
The present expression of
What-Is-To-Be
And that
This picture has already been painted.

Seekers want Wu Hsin to give them signposts,

Markers that will tell them they are
Making progress.
Some are little more than
Collectors of signposts.
To all, Wu Hsin says that
The clearest evidence of progress is
The total disinterest in
Progress.

Anything that can be gained

Can likewise be lost.
Only the eternal is
For always.

A thought arises..
I know not where it came from
I only know what it came through.
There is a response to this thought
Because I am
What I am
And then an action occurs.
At what point in this process
Was the notion of my action born?

In every moment
Wu Hsin is doing
Exactly what he is supposed to be
Doing.
He knows this because
He knows that
He is not
Doing anything.

Despite what you believe

Life is not
The opposite of death
Birth is
The opposite of death
The two form
One whole.
Life is what is
Prior to birth and death,
As one totality.
Prior to this totality
Is the potential for this totality
As is inherent
In its nature.
One lives in the house but
Is not the house.
To mistake the house for oneself
Is the only impediment to Understanding.

Man creates his god

To reconcile his powerlessness.
This god is prayed to and beseeched
To grant mans wishes.
If the prayers are successful,
It is the gods grace; if not
It is the gods fault.
Liang Po asked Wu Hsin:
Who created the man who
Created the god?

See the world as a process with

Enormous activity and
No independent actors.
It is a story unfolding, yet
A story already written.

Poison cannot poison

Itself.
Who is there to
Seek to know
The Unknowable?

The distinction between

There is and
I am
Is the distinction between
The Subject and
Its object.
When the mirrors image is
Understood to be nothing
Other than the face,
All fears and doubts
Are vanquished.

Right and wrong

Happiness and sorrow
Love and hate are all only
Interpretations,
Subject to reversal
In any moment.
Why embrace the changeful
At the expense of
The Changeless?

Wu Hsin wrote before that

The sky is never
Affected by smoke.
Why do you concern yourself with
What others are doing or
 Saying?
They are only drawing
Images of fish
On the surface of the water.

To expound on the state of

What-Is is like speaking about
The taste of the tongue.

Neither action nor inaction

Can result in tranquility.
Only the deep understanding of
Tranquility
Can result in
Tranquility.

Everything occurs
Exactly as it is intended.
As such,
There are no mistakes.
Why are you seeking
Forgiveness?

The highest motivation that

Wu Hsin can provide is
To tell you that
You are not what
You seem
To be.

Two men from Guo come to

Listen to Wu Hsin speak
About spontaneity and
How it is
The natural way.
They tell Wu Hsin that
They understand and that
It is their intention
To be spontaneous.
Intending to be
Spontaneous,
They havent heard
A single word I say.

Tell me please
Who is it
Who places
All the burdens
Of the Supreme
Onto their own shoulders?
Who is it
Who so distrusts the Supreme
As to believe that
They can handle matters better?
Thank you for bringing
 This joke to Wu Hsin.

Prior to here and there

Prior to now and then
Prior to me and not-me
Prior to this and that is
My abode.

True knowledge is not

The knowledge of things
Instead, it is
The knowledge of What-is.
It is knowledge
In the absence
Of a knower
Knowing anything.

Moving beyond the notion

Of myself
And not myself
One arrives at the home
Of unanswerable questions:
Who is it that sees?
Who hears?
And finally
Who is it who wants to know?

Can you define

The limitations of
Your heart?
Can you place the totality of
The world
Inside it?
Can you accept
All things
As they are and
Allow whatever movement
Is required
To occur?
Can you be peaceful?
Can you be
The embodiment of
Peace itself?

Up cannot exist
In the absence of down.
Backward cannot exist
Without forward,
Nor beauty without ugliness.
Accepting this as an aspect of
The nature of the world
Allows ones preferences to soften
And for peace to flourish.

People come to Wu Hsin

 Seeking instruction
On how to return Home.
What directions can I offer you
To the place you have never left?

The moment before movement is

Filled with emptiness.
It is the beginning of
The beginning.
Containing the potential for
Everything,
It is limitless.

If given the choice

Between one thousand gold coins
And Total Understanding
Wu Hsin tells you
To take the coins and
Enjoy them.
There is no one
To enjoy Total Understanding.

Life is an impersonal process.

The rivers flow
The grasses grow and
The sun shines.
Every being is
A component in the process
But not its director.

The greatest gem you own is

Your attention.
Wu Hsin says
Dont throw it away on
The past or
The future
At the expense of the present.

Doctrines, dogmas,
Processes and methods that seek
My ultimate understanding
Only worsen matters
As they imply that
You can find
What you have lost.
If you are diligent and
Are willing to sacrifice,
Then you are worthy
Of its return.
Wu Hsin tells you to
Cancel the effort and
Call off the search.
You cannot recover
What you have never lost.
There is nothing to attain
 Except the understanding that
There is nothing to attain.

Upon the release

Of the need
To be either this
Or that
Comes an opening
To the splendor of
What-Is, the Real.
All storylines dissolve.
The dramas end and
The wind of peace
Blows across the countryside.

Death surrounds you.

It walks beside you
In every moment.
Death is the end,
The end of this and
The end of that.
Every moment dies.
Everything that has a beginning
Ends in death.
Running from death,
Denying that everything must
Come and go,
Is the prerequisite
For unhappiness.

The world of Wu Hsin is

A world without distance.
We measure distance between
Two separate points:
Here and there
You and I.
Remove the sense
Of separateness and
Distance loses all meaning.

This moment is unique.

It has never happened before
Nor shall it
Ever happen again.
Remove your attention from it and
It is gone
Forever.

Can fire burn itself?

Can water know thirst?
Your search for the
Final Answers asks
Questions like these.
Until the realization dawns that
Each is pure Subjectivity,
 Our time together is
The chatter of women.

Every being is born twice:

First, there is
The emergence from the womb,
Second, with the emergence of the
Notion of me.
Then, the trouble begins.

Anxiety is a contraction in
The fabric of being.
If all is one and
There are no others,
What could there be
To be anxious about?

Let us build a huge fire and

Fuel it with all concepts,
Judgments and ideas.
Once the fire is burned out,
The world will be seen as
A perfect place.

The shape of change is

A circle while
The initiator of change is
Shapeless.
Resting in the circle is
Acceptance.
The masters know this while
The people do not.

This world offers

So many distractions
That it is difficult
To perceive
The magnificence of
What is ordinary.
The simpler things get
The more beautiful
This life becomes.

Wu Hsin says that

The most effective way
To avoid deep understanding
Is to seek it.
The very busyness that
You enfold yourself in is the impediment
To your hearts
Deepest desire.

The Master to seek is

One who
Has nothing to give you,
 Who likewise
Gives you nothing to do,
Who promises neither
Special experiences nor
To take you
Anywhere in particular, and
Who is disinterested in
Your adoration.
Are you brave enough
For this one?

The past is
An impression,
A footprint,
A belief,
A memory.
The future is
A projection,
A presumption,
A conjecture.
Neither can be truly
Accessed or known
With certainty.
Between the two
Lies the splendor of
The present,
Available to all
Who are willing to release
Their preoccupation with
The past and the future.

All there is
Is Everything
Of which man is
A tiny cog.
That this cog
Wishes to understand everything
Provides Wu Hsin with
Endless entertainment.

Arrogance,
Pride,
Greed,
Envy,
Avarice,
Jealousy.
You bring them
To Wu Hsin and ask that
They be taken away.
I cannot.
The only one who
Can take them away
Is the One
Who put them there.
The essential confusion is between happening and doing.
In time, everything is happening.
Yet, there is no individual doer
Doing anything.
It is all
Being done.
It is all happening.
Clear seeing of this is
All that is required.

Just as every drop of the ocean

Contains the taste of
The ocean,
So, too,
Every being
Contains the taste of
Pure being,
Before being anything in particular.

You say you are

Afraid of dying
May I suggest that
You are
Afraid of living,
Afraid of life?
If this were not the case,
Why do you spend
So much time
Regretting the past and
Worrying about the future?
The past is dead
The future is
Yet to be born and
You cannot control it.
If you drop these imaginations, then
This moment takes on a
Whole new brilliance.

The underlying essence is

Obscured by
Names and forms.
The roots are forgotten
Amidst the beauty of the garden.

The wave and

The ocean
May appear separate.
The subsidence of the former reveals
That all there ever was
Was the latter.
You are Immanence Itself.

Others have given you

Methods and ways
To find the Formless.
 Stop for one moment and
Think, my son:
How can the Formless be found?
Others have given you
Methods and ways
To achieve Oneness.
Stop for one moment and
Think, my son:
Is not the achievement of Oneness
Preconditioned on the assumption of
Two-ness, of
Duality, of
You and not-you?
How can you merge with
What you already are?

Balance is achieved using

Equal parts of
Positive and negative
Or in the absence
Of both.

Oneness with Everything

Requires surrender to every thing and
Trusting in everything.

For this moment to be

Exactly as it is
Requires the cooperation
Of every aspect of
The cosmos.
Change any and
This moment is transformed into
Some other moment.
When the cosmos cannot
Be stuffed into a box or
Understood,
Man calls it chaos.

During times of adversity,

Man will initiate
Negotiations with his god,
Asking that What-Is be made subservient to
His personal will.
By altering even one,
The many are recast.
This is not seen by the supplicant
Who instead chooses to believe
His prayers have been answered
When, in fact, they have merely been
In alignment with
What was intended.
In truth,
All prayers are answered;
Sometimes, the answer is No.
There are many signposts
Along the way and
Even more
Worshippers of
The signposts.

Sacredness is not reserved

Only for the things
Deemed acceptable.
Sacredness imparts its stamp on
Everything and everyone:
The saint and the sinner
The profane and the profound.

The one without expectations is not

Disappointed.
The one who doesnt plan
Cannot attain a goal.
Acceptance of what comes is
The prescription for steadiness.

An increased sense of peace and balance is

The byproduct of
No longer believing
The thoughts that appear.
They are like smoke.
Wait a moment;
Theyll be gone.

Desire is a gift.
It causes a noticing of
What is perceived to be lacking.
Noticing is the key to be
Free from desire.

A life lived in cant know,

Dont know,
No need to know, is
A weightless life,
A life of light-heartedness and
Effortlessness.

Wanting any condition to last,

Attaching contentment to it, is
The basis for unhappiness.
Happy in its presence,
Unhappy in its absence.
Accept that everything
Comes and goes.
It is the nature of
The world.
Transcend the attachment,
Transcend the world.
A lifetime can be exhausted
Enumerating all the variables
Outside of ones control.
So what?

Power is not acquired

By grabbing it.
It is acquired
Through releasing.
This is not the power of gaining;
It is the power of alignment.

The best meditators are

Always successful because
They arent seeking anything.

Man is the embodiment of action;

Doing not doing is
Not an option.
Upon the arising of clear sight,
All ensuing actions are correct.

Discarding concepts is
The direct path to the attainment of
Clarity.
When all concepts are gone,
What remains is boundless vision.

Those with true knowledge

Understand that space is not empty
But rather the container and
Support of everything.

Its not outside.

The arrival at that place

Where nothing is excluded
Marks the end of
The journey.

Where is the puzzle,

Where is the confusion,
Where is the conflict,
Outside of whats inside
Ones head?

The workings of Nature are

Not complicated.
Explaining the workings of Nature
Births the complication.

One does what

One does and
One gets what
One gets.
 Only the musings of
The mind
Create a relationship
Between the two.
Yet everything that came before was
A precondition of
What is now.

Involvement with minutiae is

Devoid of riches.
Stand back and
Perceive the larger picture.
Stand farther back and
The sweetness deepens.
There is no end to this.

Just as the heart

Continues to beat,
The mind
Continues to think.
Can one stop the heart
While life continues?
If the cessation of thought is temporary,
Its efficacy is minimal.

The world is a unified whole.

The personal world is
Only a point of view.
While the eradication of termites
Might be good for the home dweller,
It is less favorable
For the termites.

There are no other

Places to go to.
The only place is Here.
Attempting to go There
Because Here is undesirable is
Like trying
To bite ones teeth.

The cessation of involvement is

The opening of
The great gate.
Upon doing so,
All is perceived without judgment,
Perceived to be as it is.

A deep dissatisfaction
With things external is
The impetus for the turning away,
The turning within.
Until then,
The mesmerization with the circus goes on.
What is amusing to Wu Hsin is that
 The audience fails to understand that
It, too, is part of the circus.

Some are emperors,

Some are clowns, and
Some are beggars.
In the end,
The role is relinquished and
Each returns to where
All is one and where
All of this is
A part of That.

The sage doesnt have

All the answers.
The sage doesnt have
Any more questions.

A drunkards sudden ability to

Give up drinking is
The result of confluence:
The drunkard was willing
To give up the drinking and
The drinking was willing to
Give up the drunkard.

To worship Wu Hsin is
Merely the exchange of one idol
For another.
A transference from
Yourself to myself.
Nothing is accomplished except
The creation of
The illusion that
Something is accomplished.

We must draw the distinction

Between pulling weeds and
Tearing roots.
Weeds grow back like
The arms of a starfish.
When the root is torn,
The plant is finished.
To uproot identification is
The finest gardening.

One cannot look at the mystery.

One can only look from the mystery
Because one is the mystery.

Strip away everything that is

Not necessary.
Stabilize there, then
Strip away everything that is
Not necessary.
When the need to
Control life is relinquished
Forcing ceases and
The natural flow returns,
Like melting snow from
A mountaintop.

A breeze comes and

The trees sway.
Prior to the breeze,
All is stillness.
The mind is a breeze;
Follow it back to its source and
Become still.

Empty the sack and

The burden is lightened.
So many concepts..
To what end?

Because of the sun, the light is.

Can the light and the sun
Be separate?
Because one is,
The world is.
Can the world and oneself
Be separate?

There is a small bird

Living behind the skin.
Upon hearing its song,
Worries and the world
Lose their importance.

Its been here from the beginning,

Kept hidden by a diaphanous veil.
Removal of the veil
Allows everything to be seen
Clearly.

When Wu Hsins words succeed,

Headaches dissolve.
He speaks of a silence without edges.
He speaks of a silence that is not manufactured.
It is a silence that
Contains everything,
The sky and
The busy market.

The potential becomes the actual in time.

A daughter lies waiting in
A pregnant mothers womb while
Motherhood lies waiting
Within the daughter.
Everything happens.
There is no problem with that.
Problems arise when what happens
Happens to a you.
The understanding that
Nothing happens to you
Releases the habitual creation of
The story to which
Man is enslaved.

Wu Hsin may talk for years on end.

However, he can never convince a blind man of
The beauty of a rainbow.

To surrender all that

One is not,
One must first know all that
One is not.
Until then, do not
Speak to Wu Hsin of surrender.

Most get entangled in the branches and the leaves

Instead of seeking out the root.
The root points back to the seed and
The seed is the source of all.

As the eye cannot see itself,

One cannot witness what one is.
One can only be witness to what one isnt.

With the assignment of form,

Limitation is birthed.
Prior to form is
The abode of the Limitless.
Its doorway is the cessation of imagination.

The inability to see

The fragrance of a flower does not
Negate its existence.
Much of the richness of life
Resides in the Unseen.

All that appears is

An expression of
Unitary, ever-present, being awareness.
There is nothing beyond Oneness.

Most coming to Wu Hsin are disappointed.

They come seeking a ladle and
He gives them a needle.
Wu Hsin does not confirm concepts.
They are shattered here.

Those looking to find

 The key to Oneness,
Receive mixed news from Wu Hsin.
First, there is no key to Oneness.
Last, the door has been left unlocked.

When one doesnt know,

One believes.
Ones primary belief is
Believing that one knows.

In the absence of any

Great attainment in the future,
The saga of seeking must draw to a close.

Who has experiences other than

That which awaits the experiences?
Before all experience, there resides
A vast ocean of knowingness.
You are That.
That which is when
There is something to perceive and
That which is when
There is nothing to perceive.
Likewise, you are That.

Paths and practices are necessary for

The mind that requires busyness.
Neither is necessary to see
What is clear, obvious, and ever present.

The rejection of separation

Furthers separation.
Everything is included in wholeness, including separation.

All beliefs,
That of past and future,
That of me and other,
Pull one away from What-Is.
The investigation of all beliefs
Pushes one back.

Fulfillment is the result of emptying.

How dare you claim to be writing the book

When, in fact,
You are a character in the book?

When the thought of a thinker is absent,

Thought is seen as
The mere appearance that it is.
With its power diminished,
It cannot linger.

For a single instant,

Let us suspend
 The idea of an individual you.
Within that single instant, then
Where do you have to go?
What do you have to attain?

When Wu Hsin has been understood,

All holy books become like a childs toys.

What is Wu Hsin?
I am that which remains when
All of what was claimed as mine is removed.

When the seeker is seen as

A construction of the mind,
Seeking ceases because
The story of the seeking ceases.

What one believes oneself to be,

A person in a body,
Was born and will die.
This is the image that
Appears and will disappear.
What one really is was there before the birth, is
Equally available during the lifespan, and
Will continue there after the death.
It is that in which all the images appear.

What is real and true

Lies beyond names and forms,
Words and thoughts,
Divisions and boundaries.
Wu Hsin can take you to the entryway;
Only you can enter.

The greatest illusions are

The methods one employs to
Dispel illusion.

All there is, is This, and

This is everything.

Take whatever you like.

The only thing that stops you is
The idea that something stops you.

Moving away from the notion that

You are having experiences,
What is then seen is that
You is just another experience.

So much of
What seems to be so is only so because
It has not been thoroughly investigated.

To listen to Wu Hsins words is

 To hear the mouth of the Void.
Those who pay attention will understand.
They will see that eternity is not everlasting time.
It is the timelessness in which
Everything bound to time appears.

It is strikingly odd, is it not, that

All come to Wu Hsin,
Immersed to their necks in water and
Wanting to learn
How to get wet?

This body is insentient.

As such, it cannot know anything.
It is the sentience that
Arrives, stays a while and departs that knows.
You are That.

Tethered to what is personal,

One cannot approach the infinite.

That which is whole never dies.

Parts die, leaving Wholeness untouched.

To live without a past,

To live without a future, is
To live in this present instant.
This living is being.

Wu Hsin cannot guarantee that

Meditating will bring peace.
However, Wu Hsin can guarantee that
Doing nothing will bring you Life.

Lucidity is not something you possess.

Lucidity is what possesses you.
It is not the fulfillment of expectations;
It is the freedom from expectations.

Finding does not come from seeking.

Finding comes from relinquishing the search.
Relax and soften.
It will shine when it shines.

With his eyes fixated on the horizon,

Chao missed the beauty of the rose on the table.

Returning to the Source from where one emanates,

No death can be found.

This, as it is, does not

Need anyones help to improve it.

Clarity arises effortlessly when

The I and the want are removed from
 I want clarity.

Acceptance does not lead to lucidity.

Acceptance is lucidity.

Pain may arise;

Dont worsen it with resistance.
Pleasure may arise;
Dont diminish it by grasping.
Allow all to be as it is.

I am that which remains after

The body goes.
I am freedom,
Free from the need to be free.

The hardest work

One can do is
The separating of oneself from everything.

Life continues exquisitely on while

You remain preoccupied with you.
In this, so much of life is missed.

Trusting that whatever brought you here will

Take you there is
The end of all effort.

All there is is this appearance and

That to which it appears;
They are not two.
Everything else is conceptual.

There is no new knowledge to be acquired,

But old assumptions will fall away.

Have the confidence to doubt yourself.

What is it that knows when

There is a cessation of thought.
When the unstruck gong is heard,
All is complete.

The source of everything is

Located everywhere.
Every thing, then
Points back to It.

All words,
Even Wu Hsins words,
Can be faulted.
Silence is faultless.

Everything is moving on
The surface of the Unmoving.
Does one hold convictions or
Do the convictions exert the hold?

That which is never ceases.

That which is not never is.

The goal of seeking is never attained.

Instead, the seeker dissolves.

Happiness is lost
Once man succumbs to ideas.

Where does one have to go to

Observe what comes and goes?
One is that to which
Everything comes to present itself.

When you were in the womb,

Nature took care of you and
You did nothing.
Why do you assume that it is any different today?

Prior to the thought of separateness

There is no separateness.

The illusion, what isnt, is

Part of What-Is.

Controlling events is not possible.

As such, the best strategy is
To allow life to reveal itself
At its own pace.
This is the Strategy of No Strategy.

Yesterdays sun has set;

Today, there is another.
Why chase after yesterdays sun
When the warmth on ones face is now?

True knowledge can be attained only

When the absolute authority
Granted to the mind has been rescinded.

When it is clearly seen that

Happiness is the absence of desire, then
It is understood that
The desire for happiness is
The impediment to happiness.

Man believes that

He has separated himself from
The rest of manifestation and can
Exercise domination over it.
This is the source of endless amusement to Wu Hsin.
The fulfillment of desires never
Fulfills the promise of desires.

Whereas it is important to
Question the validity of
What is seen,
It is even more important to
Question the authenticity of the seer.

There is nothing to get.

When one becomes sufficiently
Exhausted from looking for it,
One gets it.
There is nothing to give up.
What requires giving up will be
Taken in due course.

To be conscious of change
Proves the changelessness of consciousness.

It is the beingness that

Observes all of manifestation.
Only the wise observe beingness.
To remain fascinated with the stalk,
Keeps the root hidden.

One finds Reality when

One returns to
What is real in oneself,
The light that illumines all perceptions.

Lucid living is
A life in equilibrium.
When the portals of perception are clean,
Infinity is revealed.

One walks upon a very fine edge;

The power to discern
Contains within itself
The power to delude.

The mind is confusion;

It is distortion.
It cannot reflect What-Is.
It can only taint it.
It is a mirage,
An illusory bridge between
Awareness and its instrument.

Everything rises and falls away.

The source and the terminus are a single point.
The wise call it Home.

The world never satisfies for long.

 Why, then, return to it for satisfaction?

What needs to be known is not

What the mind thinks.
What needs to be known is
That by which the mind thinks.

Mind as mind knows no peace.

Mind at peace is no mind at all.

All experience is objective.

That which experiences is the subject.
You are That.

The observation of the mind is

The beginning of
The end of the mind.
Until one becomes self-reflective,
False appearances always hold the upper hand.

Whereas Wu Hsin does not teach,

Those that listen to Wu Hsin learn.

Immortality is not dependent upon ones ability to

Extend ones personal illusion indefinitely.
It is dependent solely on ones ability to transcend it.

Being is Reality.
Being this or that is not.

Ones view of the world is the same as a dream.

It continues to seem real only as long as
One remains asleep.

The mind moves.

Only the Unmovable can understand it
In the same way that
Only the Unchangeable can
Understand change.

Any path will seem difficult to

One who holds expectations.
In the absence of expectations,
Where is the difficulty?

Wu Hsin closes
In summary:
There is a single source,
The Source or
Another name of your choosing.
This world is a mere
Emanation from the Source,
The potential manifesting from
The pure Potentiality,
An appearance
Comprising tens of thousands of things.
Beings are but one of the
Tens of thousands of things.
Sentient and discriminating
Through whom
The Source functions.
This functioning,
Beings have named
Life.
Each being,
According to its nature
Performs its allotted tasks
During its time.
Ones nature is not chosen, controlled
Nor decided upon.
It is as it is intended to be.
One goes through
Ones life
Choosing between the dualities;
Good and bad
Happy and sad
Loving, hating
Interacting with a seeming other.
This is Life,
Alternating between two banks of
A flowing river.
Believing in their individuality,
Beings suffer as they strive to
Protect themselves from
A world that is in flux every moment.
How can they resist the changes of
The ever-changing?
It is a journey
Doomed to fail.
Embracing change is
Embracing What-is
In every moment.
It is saying yes
To Life,
Not Life as one would have it
But life as it is.
It is understanding that
There is no one
Doing anything
Other than
The Doer
And that each is an actor
On the stage.
The script is written
The sets arranged.
Watch the play,
Enjoy it.
Laugh, cry,
But never make the story
Your own.
Postscript:
Have no worries about
Being apart from Wu Hsin.
Wu Hsin is not leaving.
Wu Hsin is not going away.
Where would Wu Hsin go?
Never not here,
Wu Hsin is Now
Here
Always.