What this concept is saying
物我一如 (wù wǒ yīrú, “things and self in one suchness”) is a Chan expression for a realization in which the conceptual division between “the world over there” and “the one experiencing it here” no longer hardens into two independently existing sides. Subject and object—能所 (néng–suǒ, the apprehending subject and the apprehended object)—are not forcibly fused. Rather, the names and fixed identities “thing” and “self” cease to be taken as ultimately obtainable realities.
This distinction matters. “One suchness” does not mean that a person, a tree, a cup, and another person become physically identical. Conventional differences continue to function: a cup can hold tea; a person can suffer; a red light still means stop. What falls away is the additional act of appropriation by which experience is divided into “a solid me” confronting “a solid world,” followed by grasping, resistance, comparison, and defense.
The *Recorded Sayings of Chan Master Dahui Pujue* (*Dàhuì Pǔjué Chánshī Yǔlù*, 《大慧普覺禪師語錄》) places the expression beside 心佛不二 (xīn fó bù’èr, “mind and Buddha are not two”) and explains it through three closely related formulations:
- “全物即我，全我即物”—“the whole of things is precisely self; the whole of self is precisely things”; - “不見有物我之名”—“one does not see even the names ‘thing’ and ‘self’ as established”; - “自然物我一如”—“things and self are naturally of one suchness.”
These statements do not enlarge the ego until it swallows the universe. If “everything is me” means “everything belongs to me” or “everything is an extension of my personality,” the subject–object structure remains completely intact; only the subject has become grandiose. Dahui’s second formulation supplies the corrective: even the names “thing” and “self” are not found as fixed realities. “The whole thing is self” and “the whole self is thing” therefore work in both directions, preventing either pole from becoming a metaphysical center.
Nor is “one suchness” a third substance standing behind subject and object. It is not a cosmic material, universal consciousness, or hidden entity called “Oneness.” To grasp such an entity would merely replace two conceptual objects with one larger conceptual object. The point is that the opposition itself is not established when neither side is reified.
The broken-stove story in the *Jingde Record of the Transmission of the Lamp* (*Jǐngdé Chuándēng Lù*, 《景德傳燈錄》) gives this teaching concrete form. A stove made of mud and tiles had been worshipped as a deity, and animals were being killed in sacrifice to it. The monk known as Pozaoduo struck the stove and asked, “聖從何來，靈從何起”—from where could its sanctity come, and from where could its spiritual power arise? The story says that the stove deity was thereby released from karmic retribution, but the monk denied that he had bestowed liberation upon it: what mattered was its 本有之性 (běnyǒu zhī xìng, “inherently present nature”).
The point is subtler than “the stove was only clay.” Calling it “only matter” would merely substitute one fixed label for another. The problem was the mind’s construction of an independently sacred object and the violence organized around that construction. The saying “本有之物物非物也”—roughly, “as the originally present reality, the thing is not a reified thing”—does not erase the stove before one’s eyes. It releases it from the conceptual enclosure that makes it merely an object of fear, worship, possession, or use.
The same story warns against taking either side of the relation as absolute: “禮即唯汝非我，不禮即唯我非汝”—if I bow, only you are affirmed and I am denied; if I do not bow, only I am affirmed and you are denied. Worship and rejection can both preserve the same dualism. One elevates the object over the subject; the other elevates the subject over the object. Neither has yet reached “things and self in one suchness.”
This is why the text praises Pozaoduo as one who “會盡物我一如，如朗月當空，無所不見”—had fully understood things and self in one suchness, like the bright moon in an open sky, illuminating without obstruction. Clear seeing is not blank sameness. Precisely because fixation has relaxed, the situation can be seen more accurately: clay is clay, devotion is devotion, killing is killing, and none needs to be concealed beneath the label “sacred.”
The *Jingde Record* extends this insight through 萬法一如 (wànfǎ yīrú, “all phenomena in one suchness”), 諸法平等 (zhūfǎ píngděng, “the equality of phenomena”), and “涅槃生死一如”—nirvāṇa and birth-and-death in one suchness. It likewise places beings and buddhas, wisdom and foolishness, ordinary and holy, delusion and awakening, on a nondual ground.
That language must be read at the right level. It does not say that wisdom and foolishness have identical consequences, that delusion needs no transformation, or that killing and compassion are ethically interchangeable. It says that none of these terms possesses a separate, self-grounded essence, and that awakening is not obtained by fleeing one independently real world called saṃsāra for another independently real realm called nirvāṇa. Distinctions still guide compassionate action; they no longer support hatred, self-righteousness, or metaphysical attachment.
Here lies the concept’s place on the path of liberation. Suffering is sustained not only by unpleasant circumstances but by appropriation: “this threatens me,” “this proves my worth,” “this person must complete me,” “this thought is who I am.” Practice first exposes these movements and restrains the compulsions they produce. Dahui’s ox-herding image describes this gradual training. Before the ox is tame, one must hold its tether so it does not trample the crops. Once training has matured, constant restraint is unnecessary: “四方放去休攔遏，八面無拘任意遊”—released in every direction, it roams freely without obstruction.
This is a progression from discipline to uncontrived freedom, not a license to behave impulsively. Dahui warns that practice must be neither hurried nor slack, neither anxiously manipulated nor absent-mindedly abandoned. “One suchness” is the mature functioning of a mind no longer captured by grasping, not a theory with which an untrained mind excuses its habits.
Life in practice: a walk-through
Imagine an ordinary commute. You are standing in a crowded train, looking at your phone. A message arrives from a colleague: “We need to redo the presentation.” Almost immediately, irritation appears.
First there is the concrete situation: a screen, written words, bodily fatigue, noise, limited time, memories of previous work, and the prospect of further labor. “Things” here do not mean only physical objects. They include the full field encountered as object: the message, the colleague as represented in your mind, the task, the train, and even the thought “this is unfair” insofar as it becomes something noticed.
Then an apparent subject takes shape: “I am the person to whom this is being done.” This “I” is assembled through bodily tension, memory, evaluation, expectation, and the impulse to defend a position. The mistake would be to map “thing” merely onto the phone and “self” onto an invisible soul inside the body. The actual division is functional: whatever is being apprehended occupies the “object” side, while the stance that claims, rejects, or judges it occupies the “subject” side. A thought can move between the two: first it operates as the judging subject; a moment later it is observed as an object.
Next comes mutual construction. The message becomes “an attack” because it is read from the position of an injured self. The self becomes “the exploited employee” because it is defined against the message. Each side appears to confirm the other. The more solid the offending object becomes, the more solid the offended self feels; the more solid the self feels, the more hostile the object appears.
To investigate 物我一如 is not to tell yourself, “There is no colleague, no deadline, and no problem.” That would be dissociation disguised as spirituality. Nor is it to suppress anger and manufacture a serene feeling. Instead, you look carefully: where is the independently existing “attack” apart from words, context, memory, interpretation, and anticipated consequences? Where is the independently existing “injured me” apart from bodily sensations, remembered history, self-description, and defensive impulses?
Neither side can be isolated from its conditions. The message still needs an answer, but the answer no longer has to be authored by a self defending its solidity against an enemy-object. Perhaps you ask what specifically must change. Perhaps you explain that the deadline is unrealistic. Perhaps you refuse unreasonable work. Nonduality does not dictate passivity; it makes a more proportionate response possible.
Now suppose you open a social-media app to escape the discomfort. The recommendation system presents a stream calibrated to retain attention. An image appears; desire follows. A comment appears; indignation follows. Soon it seems that “the algorithm is manipulating me.” There is truth in that conventional description: platforms are designed, incentives are real, and interfaces can shape behavior. But the inner division can still be examined.
The feed becomes an object promising relief, while the self becomes a deprived subject seeking completion. With the next provocative post, the feed becomes an enemy and the self becomes a righteous judge. Both identities are repeatedly reconstructed through contact. To be “turned by things”—為物所轉 (wéi wù suǒ zhuǎn)—is visible here as the loss of freedom by which each stimulus dictates the next movement of attention.
The Chan records contrast this with “心能轉物即同如來” or, in Dahui’s version, “若能轉物即同如來”—when mind can turn things, it is like the Tathāgata. This does not mean dominating the external world through willpower. Replacing “the feed controls me” with “I shall control everything” retains the same opposition. To “turn things” is to meet conditions without allowing them to fix the identity and direction of mind. You may close the app, continue reading deliberately, or respond to someone with care. The criterion is not which outward action looks spiritual, but whether grasping has seized the subject–object relation.
Consider also an argument with a partner. One sentence—“You never listen”—quickly becomes two solid camps: the accusing other and the misunderstood me. Each person then listens mainly for evidence supporting those identities. “Things and self in one suchness” does not erase interpersonal boundaries or declare that both accounts are factually identical. It permits a different kind of contact: their hurt is no longer merely an object obstructing my comfort, and my defensiveness is no longer an unquestionable sovereign speaking for “me.” Both belong to one conditioned event of relationship.
From there, responsibility becomes possible without self-annihilation. You can acknowledge harm without constructing “I am irredeemably bad.” You can resist mistreatment without constructing “the other is nothing but an abuser.” In cases involving danger, nonduality may require firm distance, outside help, or protection of the vulnerable. To deny danger because “self and other are one” is precisely to be trapped by a concept of oneness.
Dahui says that realization must function throughout “日用二六時中”—all through daily life—and that when things arrive, one should 酬酢 (chóuzuò, “respond and engage with them”) while remaining “不變不動,” not inwardly displaced by them. This is not immobility. The body moves, speech responds, plans change, boundaries are drawn. What does not move is the compulsive establishment of a self that must secure itself by possessing or defeating an object.
Thus “拈一莖草，作丈六金身；將丈六金身，卻作一莖草”—taking up a blade of grass as the great golden body, and turning the great golden body into a blade of grass—expresses free functioning across distinctions. The ordinary need not be excluded from the sacred, and the sacred need not be frozen above the ordinary. Yet Dahui immediately refuses to let the practitioner settle even there. The experience “I have attained nonduality” would recreate an attaining subject holding an attained object.
Why contemporary people need it
Contemporary life continually converts relations into confrontations between subjects and objects. Metrics turn attention into a commodity. Professional systems turn people into performance profiles. Consumer culture trains the self to seek completion through objects. Online platforms invite us to manufacture identities by opposing other identities. Even self-care can become a project in which one part of the self relentlessly manages another.
“Things and self in one suchness” addresses the structure beneath these pressures. It asks not merely, “Is this object good or bad?” but, “How are object and self being constructed together right now?” A promotion promises to make me significant; therefore its absence becomes humiliation. A partner is assigned the task of making me whole; therefore their independence feels like betrayal. A child becomes evidence of parental success; therefore the child’s difference feels like personal failure. Once this reciprocal construction is seen, care can be disentangled from possession.
The teaching also corrects a common misunderstanding of autonomy. Dahui contrasts being turned by things with being able to turn things, but genuine freedom is not insulation from influence. Human beings are conditioned and relational; language, institutions, bodies, technologies, and other people participate in every choice. Freedom consists less in becoming an unconditioned controller than in no longer being blindly compelled by the fiction of a controller defending itself against an alien world.
AI and algorithmic systems offer a useful—but limited—analogy. A recommendation model classifies a person through patterns of interaction, while the person’s subsequent behavior is shaped by what the system presents. “User” and “feed” are produced through an ongoing feedback loop rather than existing as entirely independent agents. This can help us notice relational conditioning. But the analogy must stop there: a computational feedback model is not Chan realization, and current science has not demonstrated the Buddhist claim of nonduality. Questions about consciousness, agency, and subjective experience remain philosophically and scientifically unsettled.
Ethically, the realization widens compassion. If self and world are not two sealed domains, another’s suffering is not merely external information. Yet compassion here is not sentimental fusion. Healthy conventional boundaries remain necessary precisely because actions have consequences. Nonduality removes the metaphysical wall; wisdom still distinguishes what heals from what harms.
Most importantly, the teaching redirects liberation into ordinary contact. One does not have to wait for the world to become quiet. Dahui’s instruction is to remain undisturbed while responding when things arrive: open, reflective, aware of their source and course—“放曠任其去住，靜鑑覺其源流.” Liberation is tested in email, fatigue, praise, criticism, family conflict, money, illness, and desire. If an experience of unity works only in meditation but collapses at the first insult, it has not yet become the “actual benefit” emphasized in the Chan records.
Common misunderstandings and clarifications
“It means that everything is literally the same.” No. One suchness is not uniformity. Functional, ethical, and conventional distinctions remain. Medicine and poison are not interchangeable; awakening and delusion do not produce identical conduct. Their equality means that neither possesses an isolated, fixed essence—not that discernment is abolished.
“It means the universe is my true, enormous self.” This is an inflation of selfhood, not its release. “全物即我” must be read together with “全我即物” and, above all, “不見有物我之名.” Neither a small ego nor a cosmic ego is established.
“It is the belief that mind creates physical reality.” The contrast between “being turned by things” and “turning things” concerns freedom in responding to phenomena. It is not a promise that correct thinking can control weather, disease, other people, or material events. Such a reading can become cruel by blaming sufferers for conditions beyond their control.
“If birth-and-death and nirvāṇa are one, practice is unnecessary.” The claim undermines attachment to two independently existing realms; it does not say that bondage and freedom are experientially indistinguishable. A person caught in compulsive grasping still suffers and causes suffering. The ox-herding image explicitly presents sustained training before spontaneous freedom.
“Nonduality puts good and evil beyond concern.” The opposite follows in mature practice. When self-protective fixation weakens, one can see harm more clearly and respond without using moral judgment to manufacture a superior identity. The broken-stove story itself involves stopping sacrificial killing. Its nonduality does not neutralize ethics; it exposes the reification that allowed violence to hide beneath sanctity.
“Not choosing means never making decisions.” When the *Jingde Record* says “不用揀” and asks “誰揀誰不揀”—no need to select; who is selecting and who is not?—it challenges the imagined independent chooser and the grasping that turns preferences into absolute divisions. Daily functioning still requires choosing food, work, medicine, and conduct. What ceases is compulsive attachment to a chooser who believes its identity will be secured by selecting one side and rejecting the other.
“Remaining unmoved means becoming emotionally numb.” Dahui pairs not being displaced with 酬酢, active response. Numbness cannot respond intimately; it withdraws. The unmoved mind is not frozen but unpossessed—capable of grief without becoming only “the grieving self,” anger without becoming hatred, and affection without converting another person into property.
“A feeling of unity is already full realization.” Experiences of expanded awareness, boundary-loss, or interconnectedness may be meaningful, but Chan tests realization in conduct throughout the day. Can one meet praise without inflation, blame without collapse, desire without servitude, and conflict without turning the other into a fixed enemy? Moreover, Dahui warns against resting in attainment. The thought “I have become one with everything” can be the subject–object structure returning in spiritual dress.
“One suchness can be adopted as a philosophical opinion.” The records repeatedly present it as 自證自得 (zìzhèng zìdé, personally realized and personally embodied). Language can point and practice can prepare conditions, but verbal agreement is not the realization itself. The ox must first be tended: attention steadied, conduct clarified, grasping recognized, neither hurried nor neglected. Only then can restraint mature into freedom without contrivance.
In the liberation path, then, 物我一如 is neither the starting slogan nor a final possession. It names the collapse of a basic architecture of bondage: a self imagined as independently real, facing a world imagined as independently real, trying endlessly to acquire, reject, or control it. When that architecture is no longer believed, the world does not disappear. It becomes more immediate. Other people do not become less distinct; they become less reducible to our uses and fears. Action does not cease; it becomes less self-enclosed.
The deepest meaning of “things and self in one suchness” is therefore not “I am everything.” It is that, in fully meeting this person, this message, this blade of grass, or this difficult moment, no fixed “I” needs to stand apart and possess the meeting. Things are allowed to be wholly present; the self is allowed to be wholly responsive; and neither is imprisoned within its name.