SIMPLY BY WRITING THIS I DEPART FROM THE TAO: Thoughts on The Hsin Hsin Ming

The exact year of composition of the Faith-Mind Verses is disputed, as is the authorship of the piece. Hsin Hsin Ming, The Faith Mind Verses, were putatively written by Seng-T’san, the Third Chinese Patriarch of Zen. His name in Japanese is Sosan; the name Seng-T’san means “Jewel of The Sangha.”

As the Third Patriarch, he succeeded Bodhidharma and then Eka, and was succeeded by his disciple Doshin, “The Mind of the Tao.”

His first encounter with Eka, around the time he was forty, is recorded as a pure koan:

Sosan: I am riddled with leprosy. Please absolve me of my sin.

Eka: Bring your sin here and I will absolve you.

Sosan: (after a long pause): When I look for my sin, I cannot find it.

Eka: I have absolved you. You should live by the Buddha, the Dharma, and the Sangha.

Little is actually known about Sosan. Of all the Ch’an Patriarchs he is the most mysterious. His date of birth is uncertain as his date of death, that being somewhere around the year 600.

What is known about Sosan is found primarily in the Records of Transmission of The Lamp, a collection of documents written about 400 years after Sosan’s death. Thus, even those records can be considered largely legendary. It is said that Eka transmitted the Dharma to him in the mid-500s, and that he lived in the mountains for several years thereafter, by way of avoiding a period of anti-Buddhist persecutions in China.

What is supposed is that he was deeply familiar with the Lankavatara Sutra, the Buddha’s teachings given in Sri Lanka, which posit that all perceived differentiation is a function of the human mind, and that there are in fact no such discrete differences---a kind of Unified Field Theory of Buddhism.

This core concept of the Lankavatara Sutra became a core concept of the Hsin Hsing Ming. It also fitted well with Taoist philosophy, which was developing in China at the same time. The Hsin Hsin Ming uses Taoist vocabulary, and is as much a Taoist work as it is a Zen work.

Taoism, Confucianism, and Buddhism deeply influenced one another in China. They share values, with all three embracing a philosophy which emphasizes moral behavior and mindfulness. Lao Tzu, the traditional founder of Taoism, and the author of the Tao Te Ching, was a rough contemporary of Confucius and Shakyamuni. Thus, Taoism had been established for approximately 1000 years before the writing of the Hsin Hsin Ming.

The Hsin Hsin Ming has numerous other names. In Japanese it is called Shinjinmei. In Korean it is called Sinsim Myong.

Hsin Hsin Ming is translated into English as “Trust Mind Inscription,” “Inscription on Trust in the Mind,” “Inscribed On the Believing Mind,” “On Believing in Mind,” “Words Inscribed on the Believing Mind,” “Verses On the Faith Mind,” “On Faith in Mind,” “Faith in Mind,” “Trusting In Mind.” “On Trust in the Heart,” “Trust in the Heart,” “Poem on the Trust in the Heart,” “Trusting In Mind,” “Song of Trusting the Heart,” “A Poetical Manuscript on Belief in the Mind,” “The Mind of Absolute Trust,” and “The Perfect Way.”

The number of different titles reflects the number of different translations. There is no one “right” translation. I prefer the translation given below:


The Tao 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.

The Tao is perfect like vast space where nothing is lacking and nothing is in excess. Indeed, it is due to our choosing to accept or reject that we do not see the true nature of things. Live neither in the entanglements of outer things, nor in inner feelings of emptiness. Be serene in the oneness of things and such erroneous views will disappear by themselves.

When you try to stop activity to achieve passivity your very effort fills you with activity. As long as you remain in one extreme or the other you will never know oneness. Those who do not live in the single Tao fail in both activity and passivity, assertion and denial.

To deny the reality of things is to miss their reality, to assert the emptiness of things is to miss their reality.

The more you talk and think about it, the further astray you wander from the truth. Stop talking and thinking, and there is nothing you will not be able to know. To return to the root is to find the meaning, but to pursue appearances is to miss the source.

At the moment of inner enlightenment there is a going beyond appearance and emptiness. The changes that appear to occur in the empty world, we call “real” only because of our ignorance. Do not search for the truth; only cease to cherish opinions. Do not remain in the dualistic state, avoid such pursuits carefully. If there is even a trace of this and that, of right and wrong, the mind-essence will be lost in confusion. Although all dualities come from the one, do not be attached even to this one.

When the mind exists undisturbed in the Tao, nothing in the world can offend, and when a thing can no longer offend, it ceases to exist in the old way. When no discriminating thoughts arise, the old mind ceases to exist.

When thought objects vanish, the thinking-subject vanishes, as when the mind vanishes, objects vanish. Objects are objects because of the subject; the subject is such because of the object. Understand the relativity of these two and the basic reality: the unity of emptiness. In this Emptiness the two are indistinguishable and each contains in itself the whole world. If you do not discriminate between coarse and fine you will not be tempted to prejudice and opinion.

To live in the Tao is neither easy nor difficult, but those with limited views are fearful and irresolute: the faster they hurry, the slower they go, and attachment cannot be limited; even to be attached to the idea of enlightenment is to go astray. Just let things be in their own way and there will be neither coming nor going.

Obey your own nature and you will walk freely and undisturbed. When thought is in bondage the truth is hidden, for everything is murky and unclear, and the burdensome practice of judging brings annoyance and weariness. What benefit can be derived from distinctions and separations?

If you wish to move in the Tao do not dislike even the world of senses and ideas. Indeed, to accept them fully is identical with true enlightenment. The wise man strives to no goals but the foolish man fetters himself.

There is one Dharma, not many; distinctions arise from the clinging needs of the ignorant. To seek Mind with the discriminating mind is the greatest of all mistakes. Rest and unrest derive from illusion, with enlightenment there is no liking and disliking. All dualities come from ignorant inference. They are like dreams or flowers in air: foolish to try to grasp them. Gain and loss, right and wrong, such thoughts must finally be abolished at once. If the eye never sleeps, all dreams will naturally cease: if the mind makes no discriminations, the ten thousand things are as they are, of single essence. To understand the mystery of this One-essence is to be released from all entanglements. When all things are seen equally the timeless Self-essence is reached. No comparisons or analogies are possible in this causeless, relationless state.

Consider movement stationary and the stationary in motion, both movement and rest disappear. When such dualities cease to exist Oneness itself cannot exist. To this ultimate finality no law or description applies.

For the unified mind in accord with the Tao all self-centered striving ceases.

Doubts and irresolutions vanish and life in true faith is possible. With a single stroke we are freed from bondage; nothing clings to us and we hold to nothing. All is empty, clear, self-illuminating, with no exertion of the mind's power. Here thought, feeling, knowledge, and imagination are of no value. In this world of suchness there is neither seer nor other-than-self. To come directly into harmony with this reality just simply say when doubt arises, ‘Not two.’ In this ‘not two’ nothing is separate, nothing is excluded. No matter when or where, enlightenment means entering this truth. And this truth is beyond extension or diminution in time or space; in it a single thought is ten thousand years.

Emptiness here, Emptiness there, but the infinite universe stands always before your eyes. Infinitely large and infinitely small, no difference, for definitions have vanished and no boundaries are seen. So too with Being and non-Being. Don’t waste time in doubts and arguments that have nothing to do with this.

One thing, all things: move among and intermingle, without distinction. To live in this realization is to be without anxiety about non-perfection. To live in this faith is the road to non-duality, because the non-dual is one with the trusting mind.

Words! The Tao is beyond language, for in it there is no yesterday, no tomorrow, no today.


I spent a lot of time---months, and very full, busy, distracting months---with this sutra, and I’m not claiming to have had any great breakthroughs with it. I’m saying a few things here and stating them as certainties, but like the date and authorship of the Hsin Hsin Ming, there are no certainties. So forgive me my assertions (which are not assertions). . .

This sutra seems to be the wellspring of Ch’an as it was cross-pollinated with Taoism. Is there any difference between them?---Is this a trick question?

The Tao is the natural flow of life. If we make no choices, but simply “follow the flow” we accord naturally with The Way.

Our choices impact the flow of our existence.

“Discrimination” is a learned illness that separates us from Enlightenment.
Seng-T’san it is said, had leprosy, but other translations only say “sickness.” A sick soul perhaps?

How do we live in the “relationless state” and continue to function? I’m not talking just about living in our modern world, either, where we are overwhelmed with choice, variety, and opinion. Even in simpler times or in less technological worlds, choices needed to be made. The gardener loves the earthworm but hates the plant louse.

That’s how it is.

Logic dictates that we cannot accept everything that is if we decide that what we like is superior to what we dislike. And yet, how do we like what we dislike?

This very selectivity causes us to be troubled and to misunderstand the nature of existence. This is the cause of our suffering.

The Faith Mind Verses point toward that change of perception that occurs upon enlightenment. From thoughts arise objects, subjects and discriminations.
Existence in the Tao means that subjects, objects and discriminations all become a singularity; but even this singularity needs to be discarded as a concept of the mind.

Discard all sense of separation we are told, and yet are warned not to reject the world of senses and awarenesses, but to embrace it, since the very discarding of it is a form of judgment and choices.

So what is the practical application of the Faith-Mind Verses? I’m not sure. There is a question to sit with.

What is “Faith”?

I don’t have any “intellectual” answers. I can sit here and discuss concepts, but analyzing the Hsin Hsin Ming into dust leaves me with nothing but dust.

Trying to “figure it out” is like trying to figure out “Beethoven’s Ninth” by discussing polyphony. We can talk around it all night long and get nowhere.

Just like the Ninth Symphony, the Hsin Hsin Ming is a song.

Just sing!

”Don’t think about it. Don’t try to figure it out. Live in the moment. Just live.”

A very wise man told me that when I was fifteen years old, and had just come through some very horrible personal difficulties that could have altered my life, or maybe ended it. What those problems were doesn’t matter. What matters is that the light broke through the clouds, the whole world looked different, and I was pitched arse-over-teakettle. When I tried to describe what was happening, he said, “Don’t. You’ll just confuse yourself.”

He was right. Of course, I went on to become a psychotherapist and then a lawyer, both jobs that require analysis, and I let my brain become a dissecting tool of ideas. That’s where my great difficulty comes from in practice---“What happens in Zazen?”

It’s really a dumb question. What happens? I could say, “Life happens,” but that’s not the answer. The answer is BANG!

The Hsin Hsin Ming needs to be grasped intuitively, not analyzed and not dissected.

“Merely by discussing the Tao we depart from the Tao.”

The Hsin Hsin Ming reminds me of the Sandokai in its recognition of the interlocking relationship of Relative and Absolute: “Listen those who would pierce this subtle matter. Do not waste your time by night or day.”

Or as it says in and of itself,

“Words! The Tao is beyond language, for in it there is no yesterday, no tomorrow, no today.”

What’s the point? Is there a point?

Why "Coexistence" is for Wimps

My Dharma practice has some subtle effects. After five years of consistent daily practice, I am starting to see some true changes in my relationship to life. A few days ago, I realized that I despise the "Coexist" bumper sticker that seems to be de riguer for proponents of the New Age, the terminally Politically Correct, and TwentySomething drivers of hybrid vehicles. You know the bumper sticker I mean. The word "Coexist" is spelled out by a series of symbols, including the Muslim crescent, the Christian cross, and the Jewish hexagonal star against a blue, star-speckled background.

I used to wonder where people buy them, but seeing one the other day, I suddenly wondered why people them. After all, "Coexistence" really isn't that advanced an idea. Human beings coexisted with Woolly Mammoths and Sabre Toothed Tigers for about 90,000 years before climate change and overhunting eliminated two of the three aforementioned species. Homo Sapiens coexisted with Homo Neanderthalis for most of that same era, and the only H. Neanderthalis of our present-day acquaintance now work for GEICO, along with a talking gecko who is more technologically advanced than the Neanderthals---Martin the Gecko learned how to drive, owns a cellphone, and dates hot blondes (don't tell me he isn't really Stanley!)

"Coexistence" implies a very un-Bodhisattva-like attitude of "You go your way and I'll go mine," in which the whole world gets turned into a gated community and the United Nations becomes a supra-Condo Board that settles disputes by fiat without ever resolving any underlying problems. Sure, I can "coexist" with people of different creeds and skin tones, but is that really what we need to do on this planet in the Twenty First Century?


It seems to me that "coexistence" has a strong element of disinterest in it (at best) and disdain in it (at worst), that allows us to focus on our differences, ignore our similarities, and condition our sharing of this planet's resources on points of thought that are fundamentally emotive. It's the ultimate in primitive "Us and Them" thinking. I can argue that White South Africans and Black South Africans "coexisted" peacefully, just as White Southern Americans and Black Southern Americans did for centuries, albeit under a pathological social system.

The same can be said of the Germans and the Jews in the prewar years of the Nuremburg Laws. I have to wonder: Had Hitler been satisfied with German/Jewish "coexistence, " had he gone no further, had he not predicated his Nazi Empire on the extermination of Jews everywhere, had he not started a world war, would Germany's Jews still be living under a cloud of repression today? It's likely.

Bare naked "Coexistence" has been the rule of Shari'a Law for centuries, where Christians, Jews, Zoarastrians and Buddhists were and are subjected to discriminatory taxes and restricted rights by dint of their socially subsidiary status. Likewise, under the Papal Bull Cum Nimis Absurdum of the Sixteenth Century, Jewish residence in Catholic Europe was proscibed to ghettoes.
The call for "Coexistence" is a call to recognize the insanely obvious fact that we all live on this planet.

Yes, there are people out there who haven't grasped the obvious yet. The Facebooker who rants against "That guy in the White House who mocks my Cristian (sic) beliefs" and wants to "scrap that piece of crap in New York Harbor" is giving vent to a worldview based on fear and scarcity, and has a lesson to learn from the blue bumper sticker, but at least his explosions are merely verbal. The Palestinian Authority spokesman who called on Israel not to retaliate against Hamas rocket attacks because "the violence will only lead to more violence and there will be no gain in the end" needs to listen to his own advice. "Coexistence" under such circumstances would be a healthy first step.

But only a first step. It will take more to make this planet a truly livable community. We've done well at technologizing ourselves, to the point that we've become enslaved to our iPods, and iPads, and cellphones, and email. We've done very well at ordering the physical world into neatly surveyed lots with nicely squared-off corners. We call this "controlling our environment." All the while, the environment is a roiling unmanageable seeming chaos of tornadoes and floods and wildfires and hurricanes and tsunamis and avalanches and things that grow here when we want them to grow there, a fecund, constantly shifting setting which we fear and try to tame. The more taming we do, the more the unforeseen consequences mock us. And that's all right.

I have no desire to live in a sterile, compartmentalized world. Look at a world map and take note of the profusion of proper geometric shapes and lines that make up our political world (even within the United States). Inorganic, our politics avails us nothing in understanding: "I dare you to cross over this line!"

I prefer my lines squiggly, the endless, organic lines of rivers and valleys and footpaths beyond the Lost Horizon. In a world of endless squiggly lines, I can visit with the angry Facebooker or the suicide bomber perhaps to understand what motivates him. Because the lines are squiggly, because they do not imply fixedness, there is the further implication that neither he nor I are fixed, and that the reciprocal application of the Precepts is part and parcel of who we are. "Who we are" in the unfixed universe is a concept question with a singular answer:
I can't "coexist" in the unfixed universe.

In order to live in the unfixed universe, I have to live and love compassionately. Doing so is the only means for my own survival. It is not enough to acknowledge "those people over there" because "those people over there" are fundamentally identical to "these people over here." Except for some minor details, I can't even challenge myself to find differences between us, because there aren't any. I can learn French. I can drink Tibetan butter tea, and I can give rise to children whose mother may look very different from me, but in whose blood the hemoglobin carries oxygen and whose DNA is made up of the same essential proteins as mine. Somewhere, ten thousand generations ago, she and I share a parent.

This is a radical step beyond, but one which I have to take, not if I want to understand life, but because I must. I owe it to myself. I am the endless squiggly line.

Somewhere in the picture below there's a navy blue dot among the 10,000 pictured. Consider this: That single navy blue dot represents all the diversity in the human genome that gives rise to our individual uniqueness.

Dharma Bread

Yesterday was a rarity in South Florida, where I live. Although (contrary to popular opinion) we do have a winter season, it is usually short and relatively mild, adding up to three cold weeks in Janfebruary when the temperature at night can thud into the low forties and the days are bright and cool in the fifties. Tourists, though rarely resident Floridians, have been known to hit the pool on Christmas Day.

A pre-Christmas cold snap this week drove nighttime temperatures into the mid-thirties, and daytime temperatures rose barely above fifty all week. Usually-forgotten winter jackets had their Days of Remembrance. I actually saw someone wearing a scarf and a watch cap, though layering probably would have been more effective.

And then there was Yesterday. The temperatures rose into the low seventies, a comfortable breeze sprang up without a hint of humidity, and a brilliant sun shone through a perfectly transparent atmosphere that seemed to cascade like a waterfall from an impossibly blue sky.

A good day to wash the car.

Let me explain: Most Floridians don’t wash their cars, they take them to be washed. A few extra bucks on the gas card at the next fill up will guarantee you a turn in one of the area’s ubiquitous automated car washes, where high-pressure water drives away the memories of miles that accumulate on the rocker panels and front grille, and a little wax goes a little way to restoring the shine you never realized you missed. A few bucks more will buy you hand detailing, as men named Jose and Naresh Armor-All the interior, Febreze the carpet and Windex the glass. Washing a car by yourself is so odd, it seems, that it attracts an audience of neighbors who walk their dogs past you in a rhythmic line, each one secretly wondering Why?

In my case, the Why? Is both easier and more difficult to fathom. Ever since a car accident left me dependent on using a quad cane to ambulate, walking has become somewhat of a mindfulness adventure as I carefully weigh each slow footfall. In truth, the accident was only the endgame of a slow loss of function that began when I first moved from New York to Florida and gave up transportation by foot in the face of the increased heat, the relentless humidity, and the greater, more boring distances that had to be traversed. Prior to moving to Florida, it was not unusual for me to walk from Washington Square to East 64th Street in Manhattan, a distance of about two miles, there to gladly collapse on a friend’s couch after conquering a fourth-floor walkup. And this with Cerebral Palsy that made every step worth two in muscular exertion.

Perhaps it was the Northern feel of the day, but I overcame my natural inertia and manfully hobbled out to the driveway, armed with bucket and dish soap, rags and an assortment of clean-and-shine chemicals that would make me recoil in fear if I really understood what their labels were telling me. With awareness of each muscle motion and of the pull of gravity, I managed to cross the rough ground to the outside spigot, turned it on, and hauled the garden hose around the side of the house, muttering very un-Zenlike imprecations at every bush and projection upon which the hose managed to hook itself during my slow passage there-and-back-again.

The word “pain” is really inadequate to describe what I experienced as I bent my back (and legs and arms) to the simple task of soaping down the car. Each movement brought shrill protest from my inflexible, ischemic musculature. My ankles ached. My archless feet protested. A few times I lost my balance, grabbing for the car for support, only to find myself sliding uncontrollably along the soapy surface like a beer on a bartop in a Western saloon.

As I worked, clumsily and carefully, I was reminded of the sixth of Mahatma Gandhi’s Eleven Vows, Sharirshrama, or Bread Labor. The Mahatma was firmly of the opinion that everyone needs to perform some useful body-labor, regardless of the nature of how they earn their “living.”

In the West, there is an ingrained prejudice against body-labor. People who earn their bread by the sweat of their brow are somehow seen as not quite as intelligent and less ambitious than professionals whose tool is their mind. The tool in the hand---or the act of picking and boxing fruit in the field---is interpreted as a sign of weakness, even dishonesty. Auto mechanics, plumbers, and migrant farm workers are not seen as lazy, but they are seen as shifty. In the popular mind, they are either creating new problems in order to assure themselves of future work, overcharging for their services, or getting something for nothing, whether they be “illegals” living off the public weal, or Union men costing innocent owners obscene amounts of money in medical benefits and paid vacations.

Bread-labor is the labor of struggle and pain, I reminded myself, the work of a certain day.

Many years ago, Denis, a close friend explored his entrepenurial spirit by opening a company that purveyed fine baked goods, pastries and fancy breads, to the exclusive Country Clubs of Long Island. On a violently rainy day, we were returning from one of the Hamptons-area clubs with a carrier full of samples, not, unsurprisingly, having made a sale to a hidebound Kitchen Manager, who did not even want to take the samples from us gratis.

A little disgusted and very disappointed, Denis and I decided to stop in to Captain Norris’ Bar on the long drive home. Captain Norris’ was only a few miles but a world away from where we had been. A haunt of the “Bonackers,” descendants of the original English settlers of eastern Long Island, Captain Norris’ was the home port watering hole for the commercial fishermen of the area, a notoriously rough-hewn bunch whose spoken English still holds hints of their Kentish origins.

Entertainment at Captain Norris’ was sparse: A dusty jukebox with dusty songs, and on Saturday nights, a fiddler who would stomp and holler next to the potbellied stove in the corner. A one-eyed tomcat prowled the premises, appropriately named “One-Eye.” We were visitors when we went there, tourists from the land of Suburbia, and while we were never made to feel uncomfortable, we were never truly welcome.

Except on this stormy day. A beer or two into it, we fell into a discussion about the local fishing, which, it seemed, had been very poor for some time; most of the men were cooped up in the bar this day, unable to fish, and each was quietly worrying about feeding his kids. Denis and I commiserated, telling the fishermen about our lack of luck in the Hamptons. Everyone agreed that the work was hard and the rewards few.

“We have a carrier full of samples they didn’t want,” we explained, and brought a pile of boxes into the bar, an assortment of Napoleons, petit-fours, marzipan, creamcakes, whipped-cream pastries in the shape of swans, and sourdough and multigrain loaves.

There was a moment of silence. “Can we take these home . . . to our kids?” the barmaid asked a little fearfully, as if she thought we would say no.

“Sure.”

What followed was nothing short of a bacchanalia. I remember one burly fellow, who laughed maniacally while cramming a swan full into his mouth, the cream slithering down his beard. “We’ve never seen stuff like this,” he told me, tears starting in his eyes. “Thank you. Thank you.”

No, I said, I thanked him. I thanked him for going out every day on an indecent sea that could swallow a man in the blink of an eye to bring me a meal. I thanked him for standing, legs braced against the swells, on a pitching deck in all kinds of weather, tearing his hands with hooks and lines so that I could sit and eat in a warm kitchen. I thanked him for the opportunity to give something back today, to repay his bread-labor with a little bread, perhaps a little sweetness.

What I remembered most of that day, though, as I flopped around my car struggling to clean the rims, was what the barmaid had said: “Can we take these home . . . to our kids?” Because, in the end, the glory of Sharirshrama is not merely in the doing of the work. It is in the compassion that compels us to work for others. By our work, we earn them their daily bread.