J-zine - Hui Ming Ching

Wisdom from Hui Ming Ching

Without beginning, without end,
Without past, without future.
A halo of light surrounds the world of the law.
We forget one another, quiet and pure, altogether powerful and empty.
The emptiness is irradiated by the light of the heart and of heaven.
The water of the sea is smooth and mirrors the moon in its surface.
The clouds disappear in blue space; the mountains shine clear.
Consciousness reverts to contemplation; the moon-disk rests alone.

The Secret of the Golden Flower. Richard Wilhelm/Cary F. Baynes, Kegan Paul, 1931

This passage is from Richard Wilhelm's translation of the Hui Ming Ching, The Book of Consciousness and Life. The Hui Ming Ching begins, "The subtlest secret of the Tao is human nature [hsing] and life [ming]". The quoted passage describes the final state of tranquility that is reached through meditation. C.G.Jung in his commentary to the passage wrote that it describes a state of detachment of consciousness from the world, and a withdrawal of it to an extra-mundane point, so to speak.

I am struck by the first two lines of this extract. They remind me, in a certain way, of the beginning of the Babylonian hymn to the god Marduk:

enuma elish la nabu shamamu	When there was no heaven, no earth
shaplish ammatum shuma la zakrat	No height, no depth, no name.

Emptiness is an concept that has both attracted and awed many minds throughout time. This passage uses it to describe a return to a state of primordial unconsciousness. The state of non-differentiation between subject and object.

The Golden Rule