Wu Hsin - Behind the MInd: The Short Discourses of Wu Hsin

Translation by Roy Melvyn

Copyright 2012 Roy Melvyn

Summa Iru Publishing

Boulder. Colorado

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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.