When one reduces and eventually eradicates this false identification with worldly phenomena, including the inner phenomena of thoughts and images, what is discerned is what was and is always already the case. The instruction of Wu Hsin to disciple Xu Fengqin directly calls for a dissociation of one's sense of identity from the panoply of spatiotemporal objects and events that rise and subside in the world that presents itself. In so doing, the I-me-mine complex dissolves and that which is antecedent to all becomes clear.

The real life of Wu Hsin is a historical puzzle that may well never be resolved. Long lost texts have emerged from more than two milennia beneath the soil in South China. Written on bamboo and silk and entombed in burial sites of sages of the Southern Region, the writings of Wu Hsin are indeed a treasure. In this volume, he takes his students on an interior journey, figuratively and literally. Leaving their mountaintop hermitage, the students send several months inside Water Cave, during which time the Master expounds a timeless wisdom in his inimitable style.