Wei Wu Wei
September 14, 1895 Felixstowe, Suffolk, England – January 5, 1986
Path: taoism his wikipedia
This page last updated on 7/6/24.
Are you still thinking, looking, living, as from an imaginary phenomenal centre?
As long as you do that you can never recognise your freedom.
As long as there is a 'you' doing or not-doing, thinking or not-thinking, 'meditating' or 'not-meditating'
you are no closer to home than the day you were born.
As long as we are identified with an object: that is bondage.
As long as we think, act, live via an object, or as an object: that is bondage.
As long as we feel ourselves to be an object, or think we are such (and a 'self' is an object): that is bondage.
Destroy 'the ego', hound it, beat it, snub it, tell it where it gets off?
Great fun, no doubt, but where is it? Must you not find it first?
Isn't there a word about catching your goose before you can cook it?
Even the intellectual understanding of the inexistence of our 'selves' is a rare and bitter attainment which few even attempt. And that is only the elimination round which qualifies us for access to Reality... Intellectual understanding should be not indispensable to a 'simple' mind, but, with our conditioning, it would seem to be an almost inevitable preliminary.
Everything cognised is just what is called 'mind',
And what is called 'mind' is just the cognising of everything.
Fear, desire, affectivity are manifestations of the pseudo-entity which constitutes pseudo-bondage.
It is the entity, rather than the manifestations thereof, which has to be eliminated.
Having found no self that is not other, the seeker must find that there is no other that is not self,
So that in the absence of both other and self,
There may be known the perfect peace of the presence of absolute absence.
I have only one object in writing books:
to demonstrate that there could not be anyone to do it.
If we clearly apperceive the difference between direct apprehension in Whole-mind and relative comprehension by reasoning in mind divided into subject-and-object, all the apparent mysteries will disappear, for that will be found to be the key which unlocks the doors of incomprehension.
In order to be effective truth must penetrate like an arrow - and that is likely to hurt.
It is necessary to understand that I Am, in order that I may know that I Am Not, so that, at last, I may realise that I Am Not, therefore I Am.
It is only with total humility, and in absolute stillness of mind
that we can know what indeed we are.
Let us live gladly! Quite certainly we are free to do it. Perhaps it is our only freedom, but ours it is, and it is only phenomenally a freedom. 'Living free' is being 'as one is'. Can we not do it now? Indeed can we not-do-it? It is not even a 'doing': it is beyond doing and not-doing. It is being as-we-are.
This is the only 'practice'.
On the phenomenal plane we seek pleasure and the avoidance of pain. On the noumenal plane we know the absence of both - which is Bliss.
One must know that one is not in order to be able to understand that we are.
Past and Future are a duality of which Present is the reality. The now-moment alone is eternal and real.
Reality alone exists - and that we are. All the rest is only a dream, a dream of the One Mind, which is our mind without the 'our'. Is it so hard to accept? Is it so difficult to assimilate and to live?
Spontaneity is being present in the present. Spontaneity by-passes the processes of the conceptual (aspect of) mind. Reintegration with Nature, which we are, is the recovery of spontaneity.
The identified man takes part; the unidentified looks on.
The notion that human life has greater value than any other form of life is both unjustifiable and arrogant.
The practice of meditation is represented by the three monkeys,
who cover their eyes, ears and mouths so as to avoid the phenomenal world.
The practice of non-meditation is ceasing to be the see-er, hearer or speaker
while eyes, ears and mouths are fulfilling their function in daily life.
The seeing of Truth cannot be dualistic (a 'thing' seen).
It cannot be seen by a see-er, or via a see-er.
There can only be a seeing which itself is Truth.
The seeker is the found, the found is the seeker -
as soon as it is apperceived that there is no time.
There is no becoming. ALL IS.
There is no mystery whatever - only inability to perceive the obvious.
There seem to two kinds of searchers: those who seek to make their ego something other than it is, i.e. holy, happy, unselfish (as though you could make a fish unfish), and those who understand that all such attempts are just gesticulation and play-acting, that there is only one thing that can be done, which is to dis-identify themselves with the ego, by realising its unreality, and by becoming aware of their eternal identity with pure being.
Truth is that which lies in a dimension beyond the reach of thought.
Whole-mind has no 'thoughts', thoughts are split-mind.
We are required to cease looking at objects as events apart from ourselves,
And to know them at their source - which is our perceiving of them.
We do not possess an 'ego'.
We are possessed by the idea of one.
We have only to eliminate the ego-notion by succeeding in the difficult task of understanding that it does not exist except as a notion.
We ourselves are not an illusory part of Reality; rather are we Reality itself illusorily conceived.
It is only the artificial ego that suffers. The man who has transcended his false 'me' no longer identifies with his suffering.
What do you have to do?
Pack your bags. Go to the station without them.
Catch the train and leave your self behind.
What is your trouble? Mistaken identity.
When you give a shilling to a beggar - do you realise that you are giving it to yourself?
When you help a lame dog over a stile - do you realise that you yourself are being helped?
When you kick a man when he is down - do you realise that you are kicking yourself?
Give him another kick - if you deserve it!
Whoever thinks as, from, or on behalf of, an entity which he believes himself to be, the more so if he tries to work on himself, by, with, or for such an entity - which is only a concept in mind - has not yet begun to understand what it is all about.
Why are you unhappy?
Because 99.9 per cent of everything you think and everything you do is for yourself -
And there isn't one.
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