Tianxin · 天心
Living School of Practice
The Way
The Way of Tianxin
There are many ways to understand life.
Some people arrive through art.
Some through animals.
Some through stillness.
Some through love.
Some through loss.
For many years, I believed I was walking many different paths.
Only later did I realize they were all leading toward the same place.
This is the story of how Tianxin slowly found me.
The Night Hope Returned
When I was nineteen, I had already left home.
While many of my friends were preparing for university entrance exams or beginning college, my life looked very different.
I rented a tiny room in Taipei and worked four different part-time jobs to pay for my rent, food, and evening language school.
Most nights, dinner was a cup of instant noodles—not because I liked them, but because it was the quickest and least expensive way to survive.
By the time I finished my last shift and returned home, it was often well after midnight.
Life was measured one day at a time.
One night, I arrived home around 2:45 a.m.
I lay down on my bed, completely exhausted.
Somewhere between wakefulness and sleep, I suddenly heard the sound of a car horn in the distance.
The street outside was usually quiet.
For reasons I still cannot explain, my awareness seemed to follow the sound.
Then, in the next instant, I found myself floating near the ceiling, quietly looking down at my own body lying on the bed.
I was nineteen.
I had never heard the words "out-of-body experience."
I had no idea what had happened.
What I remember most clearly wasn't what I saw.
It was what I felt.
There was no fear.
No anxiety.
No pressure.
Only an extraordinary sense of peace.
I felt incredibly light.
Completely free.
For the first time in a long while, I experienced a freedom untouched by the worries of everyday life.
That night gave me hope.
Not because I wanted to leave my body.
But because I discovered there was something within me that hardship could not reach.
For the rest of the week, I couldn't stop thinking about what had happened.
That weekend, I visited a friend who had studied Daoism and Chinese medicine for many years.
I described everything exactly as I remembered it and finally asked,
"What happened to me?"
He listened quietly.
Then he smiled.
"Because you have the heart of a child."
「因為妳有赤子之心。」
After a long pause, he added,
"In the Daoist tradition I learned, experiences like this are sometimes spoken of as part of advanced cultivation. Some practitioners devote a lifetime to seeking such a state."
I didn't know whether his explanation was correct.
I wasn't looking for proof.
What stayed with me wasn't the experience itself.
Nor was it his explanation.
It was those four words:
赤子之心. (" the heart of a child.")
That night gave me hope.
The words "the heart of a child" gave me a key.
At the time, I had no idea what either of them would come to mean.
I didn't know that hope would carry me through many of the difficult seasons still ahead.
Nor did I know that those four words would become a key—one I would return to again and again—unlocking a deeper understanding of life, of myself, and, many years later, of Tianxin.
The Question That Never Left
That experience answered almost nothing.
Instead, it gave me a question that stayed with me for the rest of my life.
awhat was it?
Where did it come from?
And why did it feel more real than anything I had experienced before?
I never tried to recreate that night.
I never chased extraordinary experiences.
Instead, I began quietly searching for understanding.
Learning Through Many Doors
That single question became the thread connecting everything that followed.
Art taught me how to see.
Animals taught me relationship without pretense.
Meditation taught me stillness.
Reiki taught me presence.
The Akashic Records invited deeper questions.
Spiritual Response Therapy revealed patterns hidden beneath everyday life.
Books, teachers, different traditions, and different countries each offered another language.
None of them gave me all the answers.
Each illuminated another part of the landscape.
Slowly, I realized I wasn't collecting methods.
I was learning how to see life from different windows.
Many Doors, One Path
With time, the boundaries between these paths quietly disappeared.
Art.
Animals.
Nature.
Healing.
Education.
Writing.
Symbols.
Relationships.
Each one asked the same thing of me.
Slow down.
Pay attention.
Tell the truth.
Meet life without turning away.
Different traditions described this journey in different ways.
I simply came to experience them as different doors leading toward the same place.
What Tianxin Means
People often ask me what Tianxin means.
Literally, it can be translated as Heavenly Heart.
But to me, Tianxin has never been a title, a method, or a philosophy to believe in.
It is a way of living.
A way of meeting another person before trying to change them.
A way of listening before speaking.
A way of caring for animals without projecting our own stories onto them.
A way of creating without fear of judgment.
A way of remembering that wisdom is measured less by extraordinary experiences than by the quiet choices we make every ordinary day.
Tianxin is not something we achieve.
It is something we return to.
Again and again.
Living the Way
Today, Tianxin lives through several different doorways.
Different expressions.
The same path.
Each begins with the same invitation:
Slow down.
Observe.
Listen.
Become curious again.
Not to escape life—
but to enter it more fully.
An Invitation
I do not believe there is only one path.
Some people begin with art.
Some begin with grief.
Some through the eyes of an animal.
Some through a question that refuses to leave them.
The doorway itself is not what matters.
What matters is whether it brings you into a more honest relationship with yourself, with others, and with life.
If it does,
perhaps you are already walking the Way of Tianxin.