Xuhuohuo: A Mind Vast and Vacant

After a Week of Silent Retreat, Still Don't Know

Jun 02, 2025

All images in this post are my photographs of travel in northwest China.

I’ve just finished a seven-day silent retreat at the Tallahassee Chan Center and will be here for another week before heading back west.

It’s always such a luxury to go on retreats, a vacation, really. A vacation from the past, from the future, from your body. From your mind, for your mind. I recommend them to everyone. (I mean this quite literally. Any chance I get, I recommend them to every single person possible.)

I always get a lot from every retreat, but most takeaways are hard to put into words. There is one key term that suffused most of the teachings over the week that is in word-form, though:

虛豁豁
xuhuohuo

This word describes the radical, open state of a mind that does not know. Doesn’t know what? The only real, big question there is:

What is this peculiar human condition?

A Mind that Asks the Big Questions

Every existential question points in the same direction. What is this body, what are these feelings, what is this mind? Where did they come from, where do they eventually go?

Asking these questions makes the mind receptive and ready for profound change.

The word xuhuohuo during our retreat came from the teachings of Song Dynasty (early 12th century) meditation master 大慧宗杲 Dahui Zonggao,1 a seminal figure in Chinese Buddhism. Dahui used this word to describe the state of mind that practitioners should cultivate in order to invite in existential doubt.

What exactly is the xuhuohuo state of mind?

Technically the word is a somewhat folksy version of the adjective xuhuo, but that original term is uncommon and hard to explain. (Heck, it might even take some puzzling out for a modern Chinese reader.) It’s a state of mind hard to maintain...and even harder to translate into English.

I mean look it’s gonna take an entire blog post folks.

The first half: not full but not empty

Get in, losers, we’re going deep into definitions.

The first character in xuhuohuo, 虛 (C: xū, J: utsuro) is a key, key term in Chinese aesthetics and philosophy.2 At its core, xu represents a simple idea: the opposite of “full” or “solid” 實 (C: shí, J: jitsu).

Picture a ball made of wood, completely solid, and gradually imagine the inside getting less and less dense. Once it’s pretty insubstantial but not totally void, that’s xu. A simple concept…with no English equivalent.3

My direct and very ugly translation would be “not full” or “not solid.” Similar to “drained of,” except without necessarily implying the thing was full before.4

Xu can describe many, many things, and spans the full gamut of value judgments from very positive to very negative.

Applied to the body, it expresses “weak” or “sapped.” (Not full of energy.)
To the mind, it describes an insecure or even guilty conscience. (Not full of confidence.)
To claims, it means “false.” (Not full of truth.)
To concepts, it means “abstract”, “fictional,” or “virtual.” (Not full of practical application.)
When speaking of actions, it can even mean doing something in vain or for nothing. (Not full of significance.)
And when describing someone’s character, it actually forms the basis of most descriptions of humility. (Not full of arrogance.)

In the word xuhuo, xu foregrounds its positive meanings of humility and insubstantiality while also carrying the complex perfuming of all its other connotations.

Not full but not empty, in practice

In this week’s retreat, a key practice we explored was the contemplation of mind as something ever-present, but always absent. We can know intellectually that the mind creates and mediates all of our experiences, sure, but that’s just a concept. Where exactly is this “mind”?

I walk slowly across the meditation hall, deliciously drawing out each placement of foot in front of foot. Once the breath is very slow and fine, when the body’s muscles are relaxed and weight drops towards the ground, each step starts from the toes, rolls downward through the arch, and finally back to the heel. I feel, with tactile realness, the slight give of the wood floor. The warmth of the foot as it grips the ground, a light coolness as it pulls away.

But…what is this experience of feel?

What is happening, in that moment, when the floor feels so real and so there?

The ancient teachers in our evening Dharma talks spoke of the mind as 妙存非有, wondrously persisting but not existing. Or as my teacher translated, “present yet absent”.

Like the invisible bonding agent inside a coat of paint, the salty taste of the sea. It’s there, it’s everywhere, without it nothing works. But I can’t find it.

Our experiences are xu. There is mind there, but its presence is insubstantial.

The second half: the big “wow”

With the easier target, xu, dealt with, now we’re on to 豁 huò. (You thought that was a slog? We’re just getting started.)

This word is an adjective that expresses an action, a movement…which makes it basically impossible to find an English adjective to do everything at once.

Huo is an old word5 with essentially only one relatively rare modern use: as a description of a sudden expansion, like a eureka moment or when a traveler emerges from a forest to see an enormous, sublime landscape.6

The basic idea of huo is “vast expanse” or “flash of understanding.” In the context of meditation practice, it gestures at the possibility of vast openness, unconfined by preconceived notions or habitual delusions.

How, then, to render into English? Words like “vast” or “cavernous” get the scope but not the movement. If we want to incorporate the action, the meaning can probably only come through as part of the verb it modifies. For example, huoran kailang, “(to suddenly) see the whole picture (in a clear light).”

An Immense Carpeting of Uncanny, in Practice

How, then, to translate the full word xuhuo?

We sat silently as the afternoon grew late. The temperature was dropping, and moisture hung heavy in the air. Sounds came at me from all directions, bird song, a cough, the purr of the HVAC. And, all of a sudden, it began to rain. Gently at first.

Each and every delicate drop rang in my ears.

But…what is this hearing?

I felt, so palpably, each drop resound like a bullet.

But…I cannot find where the hearing is happening.

I sat, engulfed by uncertainty and unfamiliarity. A vast expanse of not knowing settled over me like fog on rolling farmland. I opened, and asked, and opened, and asked.

Let’s try and see if we find the right words for this.

Putting the Pieces Together

If we combine huo with our old friend xu, we have tones of humility, of openness, of vastness, of sudden enlightenment.

And, in the background, shades of faintness, of broadening, of abstraction.

Perhaps even the siphoning of harmful energies? During the first two days of retreat, my head was still in my new apartment half a continent away, I wondered when so-and-so would reply to my email, lists of tasks unfurled and unfurled. As the days settled so too did my mind, and the wandering thoughts gradually lost their grip. Distractions and vexations, emptying into a newly yawning stretch of calm.

If we pick a translation of xuhuo that covers the core meanings and sounds good to the ear, we might arrive at “vast and vacant.” These aren’t bad qualities for a mind to have. But we’re missing the sudden whoosh that suggests a momentous change.

Foregrounding that image, we might instead go for something completely different and much more verbose, like “sudden broadening of perspective.” (Oops, not an adjective anymore.) But that approach doesn’t get across the clear sense that it was humility, a sense of not knowing, that precipitated the change of mind.

That’s why, if I had to choose only one aspect to convey, I’d pick the humility over the movement. As expressive and striking as huo is as an image, its raison d’être in this context is its result. A wide, open mind.

Personally, after this long process of wordsmithing, after exhausting all of the individual definitions and connotations…I generally find that my certainty about what a word does or doesn’t mean becomes…well, xu. Faint, insubstantial.

Words and words intersect, blur together, change into one another. That connection between a word and its meaning, the one that feels so strong and clear at first glance, begins to look weird and unstable.

Like foot and ground, ear and raindrop. At first blush, of course one perceives the other. The feeling is so strong and clear.

But the closer I look…where is that feeling? So, very, curious.

At the end of this post, I’m left with a faint aftertaste of confusion and wonderment. Don’t know how to translate the words, don’t know exactly what they mean. And still don’t know who, at the end of the day, is doing all this rumination about translation!

Ever Forward Through Vast Tracts of Don’t Know

Regardless of the precise meaning, Dahui used this word to convey a clear message. If we seek lasting and profound mental transformation, we need to first empty ourselves (xu) of our own baggage and lay ourselves massively open to change (huo).

Like most things in Chan, this vast vacant state cannot be a concept. It requires training and conditioning, sharpening and even wearing down the mind until that state of radical humility is embodied in our action and thought.

In retreat, we work over and over again to let the mind settle, so that our definitions, containers, and well-worn grooves all fall away, leaving a spacious expanse primed for renewal.

We got a glimpse of xuhuohuo this week, but ultimately, there’s still much questioning to do before we live and breathe it. Until then (and even then bro)….I don’t know.

What about you? What did you think of that translation? Is there another you’d prefer?

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