by Wu Hsin
If one refuses hearsay, what does that leave as "the known"? Very little, it seems.
I am, you are, and this world is. Start there.
These three can be further reduced to perceiving and the objects of perception. Without adding a conceptual structure, allow this to be the point of departure for this investigation.
I was in deep, dreamless sleep. I was dreaming, I was awake: the "I" is present in all three.
Without calling on hearsay, what is this "I"?
Give this your full consideration for the balance of the day; more tomorrow.
Today, the Master began:
It needs to be acknowledged that there is a dysfunctional relationship with the body. That which you are has become enmeshed with it.
To use the term "your body" means that there is a relationship between an as-yet-to-be-defined you, and the object it possesses, body. They are not one and the same.
Your quill is an instrument for writing; it is not you. This body is an instrument for perception and action; it is not you.
It is only because you believe that you reside inside the body that you refer to a sapling as outside the body. If your viewpoint shifted so that you, too, were outside the body, the sapling would no longer be outside the body because the body is no longer the central reference point.
Ponder this; more tomorrow.
Today, the Master began:
When you perceive yourselves as a part of the universe, you must invariably feel apart from the universe. This calls for a correction in viewpoint.
Every operating assumption that you have is calling out for re-examination. In that process, you will discern where the flaws in your point of view lie.
You begin by creating a "me" which is followed by the world, a series of appearances which we label as "other than me".
Then, you appoint this me to godhead status, making it the arbiter of what is deemed right and wrong, what is good and evil, and how things are "supposed to be".
Through "I", you are the acting. Through "my", you are the owning.
You explain, translate, describe, label, define, and separate whatever you perceive every moment of your lives. In so doing, you create a tunnel reality.
This is grand narrative fiction.
Step aside and see how effortlessly and efficiently life functions. That is all that is required is to see things clearly.
However, this cannot occur as long as the seeing is performed through the crystal of the personal. This crystal is what brings distortion to What-Is.
When "me" goes, every "other than me" goes with it.
This is unitive consciousness, the end of distortion.
You continue to be alive and conscious. However, you are no longer self conscious
Ponder this; more tomorrow.
The Master began:
Wherever the mind may go, consciousness is already there.
Asking you mind to define what is real is like asking a cat to guard a saucer of milk. Knowing your mind helps to avoid your mind deceiving you.
Mind and world rise and set together. One cannot exist in the absence of the other. It can therefore be said that consciousness attending to objects is mind.
Realize that every mode of perception is subjective, that what is seen or heard, touched or smelled, felt or thought, expected or imagined, is a representation in the mind.
This realization frees you from the hold on you that it exerts.
Ponder this; more tomorrow.
Today, the Master began:
The past is not-now.
What is not-now has no existence. A thought about the past is referred to as memory; it is a thought about the non-existent, not-now, appearing now.
Likewise, a thought about the future is a thought about the non-existent appearing now.
You are; this is a constant. Can you access the memory of "I was"?
What can be said about those who spend their time attending to what doesn't exist? Are they not dreamers? The label is unimportant. Recognize imagination as imagination and be done with it.
Ponder this; more tomorrow.
Today, the Master began:
Wherever you go, you carry with you the sense of here and now.
This is what distinguishes any present experience from memory.
It reveals that space and time are in you and not the other way around.
Most people are not acquainted with the sense of their being but only with the knowledge of their doing.
However, Wu Hsin declares that there is an organism but no entity to do anything.
The end of separation is the separating yourself from what you are not.
That state in which you remain at any particular moment is then considered to be the waking state and more real than any other
What Wu Hsin is speaking about is not a state. It is That which knows each state: the absence of phenomena, the observing of phenomena and the interaction with phenomena.
The question that normally arises from this is: "What do I need to do to see this?"
However, such a question reveals a lack of understanding. For that which is always there, there is nothing to do.
Ponder this; more tomorrow.
Today, the Master began:
Weren't you a small baby, some years ago?
Where is the baby now? It is gone forever and it is impossible to bring it back. It, in a sense, died while you continued on to become a child, unaffected by its passing.
The child too is gone and you continued to become a teenager, then a young adult and now a full adult. Each died to give way to the next.
Soon the adult will give way to the aged. All these deaths keep succeeding one another. It is the natural course of the form's journey through the world.
Therefore, why fear this impending death? It is no different from the previous deaths. You have known them but you are not them.
Only the name and form die. That which knows the name and form continues.
Fight with all your strength against the idea that you are describable and death cannot touch you.
Ponder this; more tomorrow.
He began:
People seek what they don’t have. If they don’t have health, they seek health as if it is the ultimate thing.
If they don’t have money, they seek money as if it is the ultimate. If they don’t have love, they seek love.
When someone goes by this process of asking for what he does not have, they have initiated an endless cycle.
It seems to be taking you somewhere, but it does not really take you anywhere that really matters. Yet you tell yourself that if you don’t seek, if you don’t desire, you don’t go anywhere.
Whether you seek money, or love or knowledge, it's all desire.
The object of desire just changes the direction of your seeking, but it does not change the process of life. And the essence of life rests in its process, in how you are experiencing it right now.
To experience life in a better way, changing the objects of desire is not going to make much of a difference. It is the way we handle the process which is going to make the difference.
Then, one sees that what was really sought all along was the absence of desire
Ponder this; more tomorrow.
Master Wu Hsin began:
All pleasure and pain is mental.
The real Self transcends the mind and is therefore unaffected by pleasure and pain.
These are in and of the mind alone. The proof of this is that these are experienced only when the mind is functioning and not when the mind is still, as in deep sleep.
To be free from suffering the only means, therefore, is to become aware of one’s real Self by the investigation suggested by Wu Hsin.
Considering all the happiness you have ever felt, where is it now?
You say it is gone.
Yet when Wu Hsin asks "Gone to where?”, you fall silent.
When all tastes are eliminated from the mouth, what remains is the taste
of the mouth. When all thoughts are removed from the mind hungry for more and more thought, what remains is the taste of what is referred to as no-mind
Ponder this; more tomorrow.
Master Wu Hsin began:
The piling on of more concepts, this acquisition of additional knowledge, is not the solution. Adding to the known can never take one beyond the known.
At every moment of your life you know what you need to know. Take it to be sufficient.
True knowledge comes via direct apperception and this cannot be forced. It arrives in its own time
Now, be still.
Master continued:
Careful study teaches us that conscious existence continues even in the absence of mind.
It also reveals that peace is present in any moment when there is no thought.
Let there be no confusion.
The purpose of the investigation Wu Hsin proposes is not to establish some special state of mind. Rather, it is to be freed from all states of mind.
Now, be further still.
Master continued:
Once you have recognized the pure taste of tea, you can always enjoy it with sugar and lemon if you so choose.
Discern that the self consciousness or ego is the operative system of this organism. When attention attaches to it, there is enmeshment, entanglement, identification. Unattached, the attention is free.
It is the epitome of peace and you are That.
Now, be still.
Master continued:
The mind reverts to silence spontaneously after every thought. However, another thought comes so quickly, in a seemingly endless stream, that we miss this subtlety.
The mind is purified when it reverts to this silence.
The purification progresses from multiple thoughts to a single thought to no thought.
Now contemplate.
Master continued:
The problem is that the pull of the world is still quite strong for you.
When you realize that everything is in your mind, and that you are beyond the mind, there is a shift in the locus of attention.
The particular no longer holds sway over you; you are now Self-ward facing, and you rest in Being Awareness.
It becomes clear that I-am and the world-is are experienced simultaneously and the body is the instrument that connects the center, the seeing, with the periphery, the seen.
Wu Hsin will return again tomorrow.
Master began:
Where is the past located? Is it not in the mind?
Doesn't the same apply to the future? We can only find it in speculation, imagination.
As the past and future bookend the present, and both are mind only, is it that unreasonable to conclude that the present is likewise mind-stuff?
Later, more.
Master continued:
Enlightenment is one more concept to add to your collection, yet another idea regarding improving yourself, discovering yourself, or obtaining peace and happiness.
There is no awakening for That which never sleeps.
The knower and the known rise and set together while the Knowing never moves.
This Knowing, the true nature of what one is, resides outside the field of consciousness and cannot be known, as such.
Detach yourself from what you imagine yourself to be, from that which are not, and then see if anything else is required.
Ponder this; more tomorrow.
The Master said:
In order that they can be referenced, forms require names.
Prior to receiving a name and knowing oneself to be the name relating to the form, one did not know oneself. It is not prior to consciousness but it is prior to self-consciousness.
When the body awakens in the morning, the world awakens with it. Perceived by the senses and conceived by the brain, this totality seems real.
But this body in this world is temporal, transitory. It comes, it goes.
That which knows all comings and goings stands outside them.
There is no thing independent of It.
Ponder this; more tomorrow.
The Master said:
This sense of a separate entity is like a set of nested dolls. First "I", then "I am" arises, then "I am such and such".
Everything arises when "I am something" arises.
Yet, in the final analysis, the real world is beyond the reach of the human mind.
We experience it through the prism of our desires and fears which frames it as how it relates to the self.
Who goes to sleep and who wakes up? Or better stated, what goes to sleep and what wakes up?
Every morning when you open your eyes, the body wakes up, not you.
The wakefulness which you are is already there. This Conscious Being is the unity that runs throughout the diversity called world.
This world is a mere projection of the mind and the mind is the projecting instrument of Consciousness.
For today, this will suffice.
The Master said:
As you can't have cloth without thread, there can be no appearances in the absence of consciousness.
An individual is one such appearance, the infinite imagined to be a finite fragment.
Only one who establishes an observation post outside of the structure of the individual can have clear sight.
Failing to do this while hoping for clarity is like trying to draw water from a three meter well with a two meter rope.
Enough for today.
The Master said:
The trap is the human propensity to define oneself.........I am this, I am that.
It is a movement away from peace and contentment. True Knowledge is the rejection of the idea "I am some thing".
Being requires no such definition.
You can't use your mind to solve this problem because your mind is the problem.
When the mind is emptied, no longer craving the next idea or the next thought, where is the problem?
For today, this will suffice.
The Master said:
There is an Intelligence operating in all organisms, even organisms without brains, which manages the organisms' life.
What stronger case can there be than this Something unseen, unknown, is at work, functioning at even the subtlest level?
Understand that what is bound to happen will happen.
Events follow one another in endless sequence.
All is the functioning of consciousness through the instruments of consciousness.
There are no entities although there seem to be.
Ponder and meet tomorrow.
The Master said:
Everything one is conscious of serves to remind that one is Consciousness Itself.
Remind yourself often in a similar fashion; in time, it will become automatic.
That is all you will need for today.
Today, the Master began:
So many people are looking for a way, a means to see more clearly.
When Wu Hsin tells them that the way leads through yourself to before yourself; they shake their heads.
They want to add something to themselves, as if a lack needs to be filled. But, adding tin to gold doesn't make better gold.
What you seek is so near you, that there really is no room for a way. Most insist that isn't enough.
So Wu Hsin says that if there is any way, if there is anything that needs to be done, it may very well be simply to listen to the words.
What else is there to do? It is like eating. All you can do is to place the food in your mouth, chew and swallow. Everything that ensues is spontaneous, unconscious and automatic.