hsü Chinese term meaning ‘void’, ‘vacuity’, ‘the tenuous’. Hsü is not the absence of all things but a state in which things lack distinctions. For Chuang Tzu, hsü is the ideal state of mind, in which the mind is receptive to all things, perceives clearly, and responds effortlessly, as a clean mirror reflects the images before it. Hsün Tzu develops this ideal, characterizing a mind that is hsü (tenuous), unified and still. Extending later Taoist views, Neo-Confucians regard hsü as the original, inchoate state of the cosmos, out of which all things continually emerge and into which they eventually dissolve. Neo-Confucians distinguish hsü from the Buddhist concept k’ung (emptiness), which they see as denying the ultimate reality of the world. See also NEO-CONFU- CIANIS. P.J.I.