Wu Hsin - “Nothing appears as it seems”

Wu Xin (无心, aka Wu Hsin)

It is widely believed that Wu Hsin (the name itself means No-Mind) was born during the Warring States Period (403-221BCE), postdating the death of Confucius by more than one hundred years.

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 Hsin‟s style reflected his sense that words, too, were impediments to the attainment of Understanding; that they were only pointers and nothing more.

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.

 

zen statue by alex algo

 

 From: The Lost Writings of Wu-Hsin: Pointers to Non-Duality in Five Volumes, translated by Roy Melvyn

 

 Wu Hsin