and function, are interfused and non-differentiated." Solitary knowledge knows itself without being attached to anything (including itself), it is called knowledge of the solitary. According to the Yijing, "To know the great beginning is primal knowledge." Longxi explained that "One who is equipped with primal knowledge is strong, persistent, tranquil, and correct, because primal knowledge is the origin of all this." Knowledge free of thought and action is pure illumination through direct spontaneity, perfect in both action and stillness, beyond being and nonbeing. These three aspects of intuitive knowledge form the base teaching of Wang Longxi. Intuitive knowing is to be distinguished, according to Longxi, from the volitional ideas and passing thoughts which make up one's ordinary perception of the universe. In this way, one may abolish all ordinary consciousness in the intuitive knowing beyond all transient thoughts, ideas, good, and evil. In the emptiness of liangzhi, expressions of good may arise, but they will inevitably pass like an echo, leaving only the void of intuitive knowing. Direct Realization For Wang Longxi, the apprehension of Nothingness and intuitive knowing occurs by means of "the mind of the absolute present" (見在心, jianzaixin), saying that "When the mind is in the absolute present it will be free from the departing of the past and the coming of the future, and will be unified." The absolute present is the moment in the now which is beyond deliberation or thought, and is simply spontaneous action. Longxi distinguished between precosmic (先天, xiantian) and postcosmic (後天, houtian) knowledge. Postcosmic knowledge arises in the mind when there is still conceptual thinking (i.e., when the mind has not yet apprehended liangzhi). It is equivalent with making the will sincere, which Longxi characterized as Wang Yangming's teaching. Precosmic knowing is prior to conceptual thinking, pure knowing "which is Nothing as well as being, unexpressed as well as always expressing, beyond the distinction of good and evil, and the supreme good." The only thing to be done is to let the mind stand as it is in its right position, which is actually no position, since the mind is universal being, as well as universal Nothing. The introduction of these two methods of realization, one of which is direct (precosmic) and the other provisional (postcosmic), led to Longxi's synthesis of Chan Buddhism, Daoism, and Neo-Confucian thought as individual methods of apprehending Nothingness. Criticizing the faults of postcosmic teachings, Longxi noted