HSIN-HSIN MING by Seng-ts'an

Hsin - Hsin Ming by Seng-ts'an

The Hsin-hsin Ming is a 146 line poem in traditional form, translated here as free-verse by Richard B. Clarke. In Chinese, the original has an especially compact and pithy style, suggesting line-by-line study as much as poetry. This classic of non-dual expression is traditionally attributed to the Third Patriarch of Ch'an Buddhism, Chien-chih Seng-ts'an.

Interestingly, for a Buddhist text, it contains no Sanskrit or Pali concepts, and is full of such Taoist pointers as non-mind (wu-hsin) and non-action (wu-wei). The title itself, although it sounds repetitious in Wade-Giles style Chinese, is three distinctly different words, and contains both a pun and a non-dual pointer at the mind and it's contents (or manifestation and the unmanifest).

Wayne has read from this booklet at many of his talks, and he particularly enjoys the unique translation of the opening line, "The Great Way is not difficult for those not attached to preferences."

Richard B. Clarke is a Zen teacher in Massachusetts. There are a couple of fine black-and-white illustrations by nanga painter Gyokusei Jikihara.

Published by White Pine Press 2001
pamphlet, 12 pages
ISBN: 9781893996144

two excerpts from Hsin-hsing Ming

Deny the reality of things
and you miss their reality;
assert the emptiness of things
and you miss their reality.
The more you talk and think about it
the further you wander from the truth.
So cease attachment to talking and thinking,
and there is nothing you will not be able to know.

Don't waste your time in arguments and discussion
attempting to grasp the ungraspable.

Each thing reveals the One,
the One manifests as all things.
To live in this Realization
is not to worry about perfection or non-perfection.
To put your trust in the Heart-Mind is to live without separation,
and in this non-duality you are one with your Life-Source.

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