Who am I when I continuously chant N?

By Simone Claridge · True Better You

This question entered my awareness two months ago. And my first response was this:

It has not felt like a question I need to answer. More like a quiet presence sitting nearby. I know it is there, even when I am busy with something else. Then a moment arrives—a conversation, a small change in my behavior, something I notice in the middle of an ordinary day—and the question seems to answer itself.

That is one of the qualities of this practice. The understanding does not always arrive while I am trying to understand.

Yesterday, I was in an office hour with someone from the community. We were talking about N-Tone and the ways it has changed us.

Neither of us had set out to change those things. They seemed to be happening alongside the practice, almost quietly enough to miss.

She had noticed some shifts in herself. I had noticed some in me.

One stands out.

I used to begin a task, reach a point where I needed more information, and set it aside. Then another thing would catch my attention, and another after that. Before long, five things were open and none of them were finished.

Everything was active. Nothing was complete.

I knew this pattern well. I could recognize it while it was happening, but recognizing it had not been enough to change it.

I was not practicing N-Tone in order to become more organized. I was not trying to correct this particular habit. And yet, over time, something began to move underneath it.

Now I often find myself staying with one thing until it is done. There is less reaching for the next thing before the present one has finished.

The change did not come as a decision. It appeared after many mornings of returning to one simple sound.

For two years now, I have hosted a morning practice—one hour every day, from 8 to 9 Eastern.

Before anyone enters the Zoom room, they prepare by setting the qi field. They find stillness, connect, and allow the observer to settle into itself. Then they join the practice.

We enter muted. There is no need for cameras, and there is no conversation. Grandmaster Pang Ming’s recordings begin, and we chant together without speaking to one another.

At the end, I guide everyone into another kind of stillness. The chanting continues, but silently.

Mingjue saying N without sound.

This daily returning has become a place where I can notice what is moving in me without immediately trying to name it or fix it.

Over time, I have come to understand something about why this practice can be so direct.

Most sounds carry meaning. A word points toward an idea, a memory, an image, or a story. The mind follows the meaning into its reference framework—the collection of experiences, beliefs, associations, and patterns through which we understand the world.

N is different.

It is a single sound without a concept attached to it. There is no story inside it for the mind to follow. Nothing particular to remember, explain, or build upon.

Grandmaster Pang Ming chose this sound deliberately. After investigating Buddhist practice, Confucian culture, and older systems of practice, he was looking for a simple and direct way for people to recognize their own pure awareness.

He called this Yiyuanti.

In simple language, Yiyuanti is the whole field of awareness at its source—the awareness beneath the thoughts, feelings, and personal stories we usually take ourselves to be.

Teacher Wei explains that many sounds, including spiritual sounds, can become part of the reference framework. The mind learns them, stores them, and uses them to create more thought.

N gives the mind very little to hold.

The sound is there. Then there is the space around it. Slowly, attention can begin to settle into something quieter than the usual movement of thought.

Wave is water. Wave shows water.

In the same way, N is a movement of Yiyuanti. The observer says N, and through that simple movement, the observer may become clearer to itself.

Teacher Wei also speaks about the time when N is no longer only something we say aloud. Even when the sound is not being spoken, there can still be a knowing of N. The sound becomes a state.

N is in the whole time-space.

N is the pure Mingjue state—the clear, awake awareness that is already here.

So the question returns:

Who am I when I continuously chant N?

Perhaps I am the one who knows N.

Something in this daily returning has changed the way I move through ordinary things.

I finish more of what I begin. I am less pulled toward the next task before the present one is complete.

I have also started taking breaks.

That may sound small, but it is almost stranger for me to admit than the unfinished tasks were. I do not always have to push until something is completed or until I am tired enough to stop. Sometimes I simply notice that it is time to pause.

These changes were not part of a plan.

They seem to have become possible as more of me became available.

This is what I am beginning to recognize: the practice may not be about producing a particular result. It may be about what becomes visible when the noise is no longer filling every space.

The reference framework still exists. My history still exists. The things I have survived and the things I have been told to want are still part of my experience.

But they are not the whole of me.

There is something quieter here, something that was present before those stories began.

I do not need to manufacture it. I only need to keep returning.

We made a song from this question. Let it carry you there.

I have evolved since then and new depth has arrived. I'll continue to share it with you. I'm happy to hear your experiences, comments, or questions. What has shifted in you, in ways you did not plan?

Every morning, a group gathers to chant N together—from 8–9am EST.

There is no teaching and no performance. You do not need to turn your camera on or speak. You can simply enter the field and practice with us.

We come as we are. We come to notice what is already here.

And we stay conscious in it.

→ Join the Daily N-Tone Session

With Mingjue love and warmth, Simone

With gratitude to Grandmaster Pang Ming, Teacher Wei, and Teacher Xu, whose teaching this rests on.