At the edge of a deep well look steadily into its depths until – the wondrousness.
- Look without thinking — the well is an outer symbol for the mind’s own depth. As you gaze, that depth is reflected inward; the outer well and inner depth become one.
- Persist: day after day, month after month. Do not stop before the wondrousness arrives. The practice IS the sustained emptying of thought.
- The ‘wondrousness’ — wonder-filled mystery, mind dissolved into sheer wonder — is both the indicator and the fruit. When it descends you are no longer thinking about depth; you ARE depth, and self-knowing becomes possible.
- Chuang Tzu on the bridge: Lao Tsu told him to wait there until the river stops and the bridge flows. He built a hut and stayed for months. One day it happened — the river stilled, the bridge flowed. No-mind had dissolved the fixed mental stance that assigned motion to one and stasis to the other. He ran to Lao Tsu, who said, ‘Now there is no need — it has happened.’
- Why the bridge can ‘flow’: motion is only relative to a fixed reference point; the mind arbitrarily assigns motion to the river and stasis to the bridge. When that fixedness dissolves, even the bridge’s constant atomic movement is felt — the example shows no-mind undoing a perception the mind had frozen.