Behind the Mind
Page 15
Q: Master, kindly detail for me the efforts you require I make in order to be free.
A: All effort is rooted in the body-sense. To one who does not identify with a body, what effort can be made?
Q: Master, I decided to raise my hand before I raised my hand. How is this point of view flawed?
A: It is flawed in that it is incomplete.
Before you decided to raise your hand, I decided to raise our hand. This "I" is not this body that you see before you.
This "I" is that which you don't see before you but is what you find already present when you arise from sleep.
Q: Master, please tell me more about the Absolute.
A: Other than to declare it the potentiality, the mind cannot consider the Absolute.
Therefore, all words amongst us begin from the point of manifestation, that is, Consciousness and the phenomena that appear in it.
Q: Master, what you are asking us to do needs peace and quiet. I have neither. What am I to do?
A: Whereas the body has needs, the individual has wants. There is neither want nor need for peace and quiet; once the obstructions are removed, you will discern that you are peace and quiet itself.
Q: Master, what is the need for awakening?
A: There is none.
Only sleeping requires awakening. That which never sleeps does not.
Q: Master Wu Hsin, what must be done to transcend this body and this mind?
A: Only see that the body and the mind happen to you, but that you are neither.
Q: Master, the world creates so many obstacles for me. What am I to do?
A: The obstacles are not in the world, but are in your mind.
The principal activity of the brain is to represent the world that is external to it. The principal activity of the mind is to protect the body.
All sense perceptions are filtered through the mind before they become experience.
In the pure mind of the infant, no interpretation occurs.
Whatever comes and goes is a mental creation only, an appearance, like the blue of the sky or the blue in the ocean. When one abides behind the mental, all that is permanent shines.
Q: I can see that the whole world is only a dream. Yet, somehow, my troubles persist.
A: You might see the whole world as a dream, but until you understand that the dreamer is integral to the dream and not apart from it, your troubles will continue.
Q: Master, can you describe this Conscious Life Energy to which you refer?
A: It is That out of which the self consciousness arises and into which it will ultimately dissolve.
At the latest, this dissolution occurs at death. Yet, it can occur before.
Q: Master, how many more years until my personal awakening?
A: There are no personal awakenings; there are only awakenings from the personal.
Q: Master Wu Hsin, how much time is required for all this?
A: You have always been what you truly are, and always will be. In this regard, no time is required.
Q: Master, I come before you with great humility and ask this question: is a teacher necessary?
A: What is required is unlearning. Is a teacher necessary for that?
Q: There are those who argue that all we need to do is to develop virtue in ourselves. What say you, Master Wu Hsin?
A: Is this "you" anything more than the mind, the body, and the memory of a stream of events in which this "you" played its role?
By contrast, the real you is that onto which all those appeared.
All the virtue in the world cannot help you to discern this.
Q: Master, what is renunciation?
A: To renounce is to recognize and discard all that is not necessary.
Q: Master Wu Hsin, what is your instruction?
A: What do you have to do to be what you already are?
The only instruction is to stop being what you are not and to give up all ideas of personal attainment.
Q: Master, once I have your wisdom and insight, will all my problems be solved?
A: You repeatedly cycle through three aspects of life, namely, the waking, the dream and the sleep states. The so-called problems of one do not carry into any other whereas you are present in all.
How real, then, can they be?
Q: Master, what is the purpose of realization and what must I do to attain it?
A: You already know its purpose, the alteration of the unsatisfactory state that brought you here in search of realization.
Doing? What doing? Who is doing anything? What does a flower do to smell fragrant? What must a lake do to reflect the moon?
Q: Master Wu Hsin, what am I?
A: What is prior to the first thought "I am" is what you are.
Everything comes and goes in It. Even consciousness, the birthplace of duality, calls it father.
Its expressions may be infinite, yet It unifies them all.
Q: Why is your body sometimes ill and frail?
A: Because you believe you have a body, Wu Hsin appears to you as having a body. You may revisit this question if you so choose once your body identification is gone.
Q: Master, why do you tell us that life is only a dream?
A: It must be only a dream because it is a story you have imagined about yourself as the acting protagonist. It is an object dreaming that it had subjectivity.
Q: What can you give to me, Wu Hsin?
A: What can you take and what can you offer in return? You ask for everything, yet offer little. If you want to bargain, let us at least make it a fair one.
Q: Master, when I die, what dies?
A: The owner dies. The owner of the cart, the house and garden, the family, the body and its feelings, the mind, the experiences, the owner of the personal narrative.
That is what dies.
Q: How long must I wait for the event of enlightenment to come to me?
A: There is no need to await an event to confirm what you already are.
The only enlightenment there is is the cessation of confusion and imagination.
Q: Master Wu Hsin, I have gone to many masters yet none have been able to solve my problems. Can you?
A: The problems belong to the individual with a body. Virtually all the problems are the body's problems. You are neither an individual nor its problems.
See this and your problems are solved.
Q: Master, is there such a thing as a natural state? If there is, what is it?
A: The natural state is the state you revert to when your attention is not directed outward.
Q: Master, it seems to me that I am nearer to myself when I am awake than when I am dreaming. Is this not so?
A: Distance cannot be used for reference here. What you are you are always. What you appear to be may seem near or far.
Q: Master, why doesn’t everyone come to sit with you?
A: Those that are not hungry don't go in search of vegetables.
Q: It is very difficult to give up this attraction to the bodily identity.
A: Indeed; as the attention moves away from the center, away from consciousness itself and toward the world, a distorting process is initiated. After several years, a reflected self arises in the infant and there is identification with it.
Wu Hsin declares that there is diversity in the world and a unity runs through the diversity. Where is the diversity when you are asleep?
Identify with the unity and let the world see to itself.
Q: Master, what is the practice for achieving the natural state?
A: Cease imagining; cease fixating the attention on whatever appears.
Q: What steps do you prescribe for one such as myself?
A: How many steps must you take to reach yourself?
Investigate how it is that consciousness of the world and consciousness of the body rise and set together. This points to the correct address.
Q: Master Wu Hsin, thoughts interrupt my meditation unceasingly. What can I do to stop thinking?
; A: You may hear your neighbors arguing. What difference does it make to you if you are disinterested?
Thoughts arise in endless succession. What difference does it make to you if you are disinterested?
Q: Master Wu Hsin, I have become lost in the whirlwind of my ideas. There is so much to consider. How do I sort through all this?
A: When you become entwined in the branches and leaves of the tree, you never get to the root. Without accessing the root, the seed is inaccessible.
What one sees keeps changing, but the Seeing remains fixed.
When the Seeing is gone, the world too is gone.
The end of Seeing is the return to the en potentia state. This Potential is unknowable.
Only the actual can be known.
Q: Master, What is holding me back?
A: When you refuse to open your eyes, what can you expect to see?
Clarity requires one to stop imagining.
Q: Master, must this work be so arduous?
A: No, it need not. What it makes it arduous is that you insist on dragging all your "there and then" into the here and now.
Q: Thank you, thank you, my beloved Master Wu Hsin for everything you have given me.
A: There is no need to thank Wu Hsin.
If you have a kilo of gold buried below your house, until you know it is there you appear to be poor.
Has the one who told you of its location made you wealthy?
Q: Master, what is the difference between us?
A: Relatively speaking, the difference is that your frame of reference is on what is lacking while mine is on the fullness of all things. From an absolute viewpoint, there are no differences.
Q: Master Wu Hsin, there are moments when I can see my god. Is this the highest?
A: In order to see your god, something had to be there to see; not a seer, but seeing. That is the highest and you are That.
Q: Master, what is gained from clarity?
A: Clarity is not a gain. It is a loss; a loss of seeking and searching, a loss of individuality, a loss of all acquisitions.
Q: Master Wu Hsin, where should I begin?
A: Beginning by questioning that which is habitual, that which is mechanical, in you.
Q: Master, I have been with you for many years, listened to every answer you have given to every question. Still, I feel no closer to my goal. What can I do now?
A: You need a hook to hang your concepts on, but Wu Hsin refuses to provide any. You expect that Wu Hsin's answers to your questions will create a mystical opening with clarity ensuing. Stop this foolishness.
Whatever concepts arise, see that you are none of them. The hopes you hang on Wu Hsin's answers then wither.
Q: Master, is there a most direct method to understand your teachings?
A: The direct method is to listen to the words of Wu Hsin and apply them to your life with total conviction. If you comply, you will cease pretending that what isn't, is superior to what is.
This will conclude the questioning.
Wu Hsin then offered the following instruction to the assembled:
It is only by theatre of the mind and its transient displays that the world shines.
Thus, the Knower of the mind holds true knowledge of the world.
The screen does not see what appears on it.
Images appear in the mind; what sees them?
One is aware of words spoken seemingly inside one's head; what hears them?
In other words, "What knows the mind?"
Now that you have heard, go …………….. and live accordingly.