Ready, Aim, Fire: Welcome to No Dust

Where is freedom in a world growing more angry, polarized, and disembodied?

The Buddhism I study and practice is called Chan.¹ The methods of this and other related traditions are classified as “sudden” rather than “gradual” teachings.

My teacher uses a metaphor of learning to shoot an arrow to explain the difference between sudden and gradual.

A step-by-step approach to learning archery might go as follows. First, train your arm muscles. Practice stringing the bow. Perfect your stance. Carefully nock the arrow along the string. Drill with targets placed further and further away until your aim is true at the correct distance.

In the sudden approach, the student draws the bow, fits arrow to string, aims, and shoots at the bullseye in one motion. No preparation, no hesitation. Aim directly for the goal, immediately.

I don’t know about you, but in 2025, I don’t have the luxury of taking the long way.

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Three months ago, my life fell apart.

It started with a deathblow for the sector I worked in, followed by mass firings and the end of my career path as I knew it. The week after I was furloughed came the end of my longest and most serious relationship, one I had pursued to a new city one year prior. As I began to look for new housing, and new employment, the economy took a nosedive.

Amidst all of this upheaval, my habit of 30 minutes of seated meditation in the mornings had vanished into thin air. Was I also becoming a bad Buddhist, in the same way that my life seemed to be fraying at the edges? Weeks of lecture recordings piled up in my inbox, the relics of weekly sūtra study sessions I had not attended in months.

My formal practice was nonexistent. And yet, in this wrenching season of change, my Dharma practice came alive.

“Practice” was no longer a box to check in my morning routine. Every day, every minute, every moment, I was swept up in messy, complex, painful reality. Wrenching change, confusion, resistance, fear, pulsing through my body at all hours of the day. None of my old tricks worked. I couldn’t hide, couldn’t tell myself a different story, couldn’t distract myself.

My world stared me in the face and dared me to use the methods I had learned in retreats and from books. Right here. Right now.

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In this substack, you’ll find notes and reflections on my practice as it unfolds in daily life. The core of my writing will be translations of ancient Chinese texts. (When in doubt, go back 1000 years to find answers. Two or three is even better.) Some lessons will be Buddhist, some won’t. (Some will ostensibly not be Buddhist but will turn out that way anyway. Buyer beware.)

I’ll be applying these ancient teachings to all of the chaos I’m experiencing in 2025. Personal upheaval, economic shocks, political turmoil, technological disruption. Practice isn’t separate from democratic backsliding, or AI, or heartbreak, or unemployment.

Here you will find no life hacks. No Five Quick Tips to make your life more peaceful and calm. No shortcuts, no kid gloves, no training wheels. 良藥苦口, good medicine is bitter in the mouth.

Calligraphy that hangs in my room. It’s the third line of Huineng’s poem below: Because [the mind] is originally empty of all things

For now, you can call me Wuliao. This is my Dharma name, wùliǎo 悟了, meaning “Insight Completed.” However, most Chinese people would interpret it as the common word 無聊 wúliáo, meaning a person or discussion that is boring, silly, or empty of meaning.²

I am not Chinese. And yet, I have studied the language for over two decades, including intensive education on ancient and pre-modern literature and philosophy. I have lived and worked fully immersed in Chinese-language environments for nearly a decade, and in my free time have published multiple genres of translation. Suffice to say, you’re in good hands.

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The heart of sudden approaches in Buddhism isn’t necessarily the meditation methods themselves. It is the view of the world and oneself that undergirds all methods.

Put simply, it is the view that we are already free. No matter how constricted, uncomfortable, discontent, trapped we feel, at this very instant.

Perhaps the best articulation of this principle is a poem known to most educated Chinese people for well over a millennium. It is attributed to the 6^th Ancestral Master of Chan Buddhism, Huineng, the progenitor of today’s sudden teachings:

菩提本無樹

明鏡亦非台

本來無一物

何處惹塵埃

“Bodhi” is not a tree

The “bright mirror” is no decor

Because [the mind] is originally empty of all things

Where then, would dust collect?³

Huineng wrote this poem in response to another, which compared the body to a Bodhi tree and the mind to a wooden stand holding a mirror. From this perspective, we practice by assiduously polishing our mind-mirror. If we work hard enough, no dust collects and we remain clear-headed and bright-eyed.

What this means is, if we don’t work hard to brush away dust, we suffer. To this, Huineng said, no. There is no dust.

Our mind is naturally clear and bright. Free of obstructions, free of vexations. Naturally replete with wisdom and compassion. Open and patient. Always, already free.

Except, that freedom is not a concept. I can believe it’s here, sure. But really, where is it? Where is freedom, in a world growing more angry, violent, and unstable by the day? Where is freedom, amidst conflicts of our polarized political climate, in the messy complexity of our disembodying relationship with technology and AI?

Welcome to No Dust. I hope you’ll join me as I walk the sudden path to embody this freedom, here and now.

1. Chán 禪 is the root of most Buddhist schools practiced today across East Asia. This “Eastern Transmission”, as the Chinese call it, forms one of the three major traditions Buddhism around the world. (In Chinese parlance, the other two branches are the “Northern” Tibetan schools and the “Southern” Theravāda lineages.) You might recognize how Chan is pronounced in the languages of the countries it eventually spread to: Zen in Japan, Seon in Korea, and Thiền in Vietnam.

2. The “boring” wúliáo starts with the character 無, the wu/mu from the coolest kōans. When the time is right I’ll share the story and meaning behind the Dharma Name Wùliǎo.

3. Readers familiar with this poem might notice my translation differs from more common versions. Here and going forward, I often translate to capture meaning rather than to precisely render words. If readers have interest, I’m happy to talk ad nauseum about the practice of translation. But at least to start, I’ll keep more wonky academic details in footnotes like this for easy ignorance.