Once, during a talk, Louie Wing said, “Do not fall into ideas that there is really a difference between delusion and awakening or between your ordinary mind and your true mind. No matter what you are doing or not doing, it all comes from the vast, unnamable, fathomless void. Who is able to see and hear? Is it your eyes and ears? If you pluck out your eye or cut off your ear, are they capable of seeing and hearing? Who is it that breathes and digests food? Is it you? Can you choose to stop breathing? Can you cause food to pass through your body without digesting it?

These processes are the functions of the unnamable void, your own true mind.”

Henry asked, “How can I realize that these functions are my true mind?”

Louie Wing said, “Can you hear the sound of the traffic outside?”

Henry said, “I hear it.”

Louie Wing said, “Now, without giving that sound a name like ‘traffic’ or anything else, let yourself rest at the very place where your awareness of that sound manifests and tell me what you hear.”

After a few moments, Henry said, “The sound is clear, but I don’t know what to tell you without giving it a name.”

Louie Wing said, “Just continue to practice hearing in the pure and clear luminous awareness of your own mind and you will eventually awaken.”

Henry asked, “How will I know, and how will I be able to tell you about it?”

Louie Wing said, “You will know and be able to indicate it when ‘you’ and ‘I’ both disappear.”

~The Flatbed Sutra of Louie Wing