Down to Zero

Taoist, Lao Tzu says:
“Desire-less, one may behold the mystery:
Desiring, one may see the manifestations.
Both are mysteries – Depth within depth – The threshold of all secrets”.
In a discourse on the I Ching, Wang Pi says:
“Symbols serve to express ideas.
- Words serve to explain symbols.
- For a complete expression of ideas there is nothing like symbols
– and for the complete explanation of symbols there is nothing like words.
– By examining the words one may perceive the symbols.
– By examining the symbols one may perceive the ideas.
– The ideas are completely expressed by the symbols and the symbols are explained by words. – Once the symbols have been grasped, the words may be forgotten.
– Once the ideas have been grasped, the symbols may be forgotten.
Therefore he who clings to words does not get the symbols and he who clings to symbols does not get the ideas. – Thus by forgetting the words one gets the symbols; by forgetting the symbols one gets the ideas.
The acquisition of the ideas depends upon forgetting the symbols and the acquisition of the symbols depends upon forgetting the words”.

I will venture, with respect, to add the following:
By forgetting the ideas, all ideas, one is still present and aware - naked awareness.
- Do we really need an idea of being present, to be present?
All ‘meaning’ is like an ephemeral series of connecting ‘lines’ between ideas or thoughts, ‘seemingly’ constructing a meaningful ‘reality’ for the individuated consciousness, which we commonly call 'me' or ‘I’.
- Such 'stuff' is like an 'agent', a representative but it is not the original 'presence'.
– However true understanding is not diverted through any such pattern of belief.
– When the ‘I’ concept is forgotten, then direct cognition is un-obscured and the pure senses and functions of presence are clearly 'no longer' ‘seemingly’ hidden within phenomena of body-mind or ‘world’.
In the profound ‘liberation’ of free flowing self realization, there is no ‘form’ called ‘I’.
– This is, of course, no benefit for the identified consciousness (person) and so a natural avoidance of emptiness is the ‘cause’ of a restless mind.
– The seeker occupies itself with constant seeking yet it longs for its own fulfillment. - Paradoxically its own completion by ‘finding’, is actually its own demise.
– How can a ‘seeker’ be a finder?
The transformation of the unsatisfied seeker into the satiated finder is the dissolution of that seeking desire and in that ‘space’ is the recognition of what has always been.
– A mirage contains no water, just as a ‘seeker’ contains no substance apart from an apparent ‘reaching or pulling’, a divergent motion away from what is naturally restful and complete.
When all words, ideas and symbols fade in the mind, all that is left is what was always there, pure seeing – pure knowing.
These pure functions only ‘seem’ to depend on concepts for the one that has seemingly given their true identity to a concept called ‘me’.
The effortless pure function of ‘seeing’ is not different from pure knowing – these (apparently relative) aspects are always present as presence itself. - Time appears in the time-less.
As long as you take yourself to be ‘a person’ in 'time' - how can these natural functions inform the mind of the true nature of things?