Written by Seng-t’san, the Third Chinese Zen Patriarch, around 600CE, the Hsin Hsin Ming is a beautiful Zen poem considered to be one of the very first, if not the first, Chinese Zen documents written. I hope to walk through some, if not all, of this profound Zen poem in this series I’ll call “A Hsin Hsin Ming Journey”. I hope it means as much to you as it does to me.
There are plenty of translations of the Hsin Hsin Ming available, but my favorite I’ve come across, and the one I’ll be mostly using in my posts, is by Richard B. Clarke, founder of The Living Dharma Center. I could begin this post by going into a biographical account of Seng-t’san and the circumstances around which the Hsin Hsin Ming arose, but I’ll leave that to you. I also don’t intend to work word for word through the poem. I am simply wanting to walk through the essence of the poem from a particular perspective as one who has realized in some way one’s own identity as existence, as the one ocean waving this way and that.
The Great Way
The poem begins:
The Great Way is not difficult
for those who have no preferences.
When love and hate are both absent
everything becomes clear and undisguised.
Make the smallest distinction, however,
and heaven and earth are set infinitely apart.
If you wish to see the truth
then hold no opinions for or against anything.
To set up what you like against what you dislike
is the disease of the mind.
When the deep meaning of things is not understood
the mind’s essential peace is disturbed to no avail.
Enlightenment, realization, understanding, awakening… All of these words typically bring to the minds of many something difficult, something hard to attain, something one has to strain and work towards, something super spiritual that is hard to grasp. I’ve heard many times people say something along the lines of they are “striving for or seeking enlightenment”. Yet, the Great Way is not difficult. It isn’t even something to attain by striving or hard work.
The word “way” is the same Chinese character used for the word “tao”. Tao is often translated as the “Way”. Many, like Alan Watts, prefer something like “the course of things.” I tend to use the word “existence” or “the flow of existence”.
The Tao, the course of things, existence, or if you prefer, enlightenment, realization, understanding, awakening…is, in fact, not difficult…
Reading the Poem as Existence
“…for those who have no preferences.” To have no preferences sounds incredibly hard! How can we go about life having no preferences?
There are two ways of reading the Hsin Hsin Ming. The first way is from the perspective of the ego. This is the way the Hsin Hsin Ming is mostly read and attempted to be understood. The second way of reading the Hsin Hsin Ming is from the same perspective with which Seng-t’san is writing the poem. Seng-t’san is speaking from the depths of his own being, from the perspective of existence itself. From this perspective you know that it isn’t the ego that is without preferences. It is existence itself that is without preferences.
Enlightenment, at its heart, is realizing yourself, your true identity, as none other than existence itself. That you are one and the same with the entirety of the flow of the energy of the universe. It is from this place of understanding that preferences dissolve like vapors. It is when reading from this place of understanding that the Hsin Hsin Ming becomes not something informative, but rather something profoundly descriptive of your own experience as existence.
No Preferences
Preferences are merely waves of the ocean of being. Likes and dislikes, love and hate, belong to the egoic illusion of separation. The ego believing itself to be a separate entity, believing itself to be a wave separate from the ocean, prefers one thing over another; hates this, and loves that; likes this, and dislikes that. And this is entirely human! There is absolutely nothing wrong with having preferences. In fact, when you come to realize your true self as existence itself, and you come to rest and flow from this deep understanding, you watch and recognize the preferences of ego at play. Just as you watch the waves of the ocean build and vanish away, you watch as the egoic preferences come and go. You’re feeling cold, you prefer warmth. This is human. You prefer coffee over tea in the morning. This too is human. The natural processes of biology and neurology at work.
Yet, the real you, the perspective from which you understand yourself as the ocean of existence waving in the forms of the illusion of preferences, feels no struggle, remains undisturbed, and moves through the course of things with the peace of having no preferences.
The Disease of the Mind
There is an inherent, underlying “essential peace” that most people never realize throughout their entire lives. They go through life without understanding the deep meaning of things, and therefore, the mind “is disturbed to no avail.” Anxiety and worry rule. Life is a constant struggle of dislikes and discontent as preferences cloud up and conceal the sky of reality.
When the smallest distinction is taken for reality, “heaven and earth are set infinitely apart.” I am here on earth, and heaven is way up there in space. Earth is here in this place of discontent, and heaven is the place I need to be. Heaven is the place of success, health, riches, sex, happiness, peace, a monastery, the Himalayas, even enlightenment or whatever one may imagine heaven to be, and it’s set infinitely apart from my supposed reality, and I have to get there!
So in order to get to heaven, I strive, become anxious, become depressed, and make myself absolutely miserable because I haven’t gotten to my destination. When I finally arrive there (whatever “there” may be), I’ll have peace. I’ll finally be content. This too, of course, is an illusion.
Heaven is Here
However, when the deep meaning of things is understood, the mind’s essential peace is undisturbed. Deep down in the depths of the ocean, the undisturbed calm persists. When you realize your identity as the ocean of being, heaven and earth become one. Earth becomes heaven, here and now. Heaven becomes earth, here and now. When you realize the oneness of heaven and earth, the desire, the striving, the preferences, and the anxieties that accompany them are uncovered as the illusions they are. “Everything becomes clear and undisguised,” as Seng-t’san puts it.
No Opinions
So, I ask, with the Hsin Hsin Ming, do you wish to see the truth? If so, can you hold no opinions for or against anything? Is it even possible? For you as an ego, a separate being striving for anything you may be striving for, no, it isn’t possible. If you read the Hsin Hsin Ming as simply an ego, a persona, a separate someone, then it isn’t possible. All striving is of the ego, whether it’s for things or enlightenment. However, when you realize that you, the real you, are already without opinions for or against, that you are already enlightened as your true self, that you aren’t striving for anything at all, because as existence itself what could you possibly be lacking or needing, then not only is it possible, but it’s already what you are.
It’s what you’ve always been, whether you realize it or not.
To Be Continued…
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Stay tuned as I continue the journey through the Hsin Hsin Ming. (Click here to read part 2.)
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