Relying on Heartmind
The Supreme Way is not difficult. When clinging and loathing are absent,
the Way is perfectly apparent, while even a hairbreath of difference
separates heaven and earth. There’s no need to seek the truth; just cease
cherishing opinions. The battling of likes and dislikes is the disease of the
mind. If we didn’t see things as fine or coarse, how could prejudice exist?
Heartmind has the totality of space: nothing lacking, nothing extra;
yet attachment and aversion make it seem otherwise. The Supreme
Way by nature is all-embracing, not easy, not difficult.
Misunderstanding the great mystery, people labor in vain for peace.
Holding onto thoughts denies reality, and you sink into a stupor of
resistance. Resisting thoughts perturbs the spirit! Why treat what’s yours as
foreign? Quibbling and hesitating, the more you hurry, the slower you go.
Holding onto things wrecks your balance, and throws you off course.
Every opposition under the sun derives merely from false thinking.
Like dreams, illusions, mirages before our eyes – why grasp at them?
Discontinue unnecessary speech and speculation, and the whole world
opens up.
Suppressing activity to reach stillness just creates agitation.
If you want to enter the One Vehicle, don’t disdain the six senses.
Dualistic constructs don’t endure, so take care not to pursue them.
The two exist because of the one, but don’t cling to oneness either.
The realm of true actuality harbors neither self nor other.
To reach accord with it when duality arises, say, “Not two!”
One is no other than all, all no other than one.
Let everything be, be genuine, and the essence won’t leave or stay.
The reliable heartmind lacks dualities; nonduality is relying on heartmind.
Here the way of words is cut – no past, no future, no present.
Excerpts from the Third Zen Ancestor, Seng-ts’an (d. 606)
