Engraving Trust in the Heart (Xin Xin Ming) Attributed to Seng Can, the Third Chinese Patriarch of Zen,

Translation by Sensei Kazuaki Tanahashi and Roshi Joan Halifax on January 14, 2012

The great way is not difficult
for those free of preferences.
Without attachment or aversion,
everything is transparent.

Missing the way by a hairsbreadth,
you separate earth and sky.
If you want to see the way as it is,
do not affirm or deny it.

Being divided by opposites
is the disease of the mind.
Not perceiving the heart of things,
ease and joy disappear.

The way is boundless.
Nothing lacking, nothing extra.
Grasping and rejecting
will not bring you there.

Do not pursue external conditions,
nor take refuge in asceticism.
Maintain a peaceful heart,
letting the way be invisible.

Stillness and motion return to stillness.
Stillness turns into motion.
If you are caught in either,
how can you know they are inseparable?

If oneness does not prevail,
opposites cannot flow freely.
Let existence hide existence.
Pursuing boundlessness is to betray boundlessness.

Too many words and thoughts
do not accord with the way.
Going beyond words and thoughts,
you return to the source and realize the way.

Awakening, even for a moment
takes you beyond thoughts of emptiness.
Ideas about emptiness change;
all of them are illusory.

Pursuing the truth is useless.
Just stop looking.
Do not harbor dualistic views.
Refrain from following them.

The slightest idea of right and wrong,
the mind is fragmented.
Two views come from one view;
don’t cling to even one view.

When the mind is undisturbed,
the myriad things are undivided:
no separation, no myriad things,
no birth, no mind.

Pursuing the subject, the object vanishes.
Chasing the object, the subject is obscured.
Object is object because of the subject.
Subject is subject because of the object.

How are they related?
Their source is the same.
With no boundaries, the two are indistinguishable,
each embracing the myriad forms.

Not discriminating between coarse and fine,
how can you be attached to either?
The great way is unperturbed,
being neither easy nor difficult.

Those with a narrow view are filled with doubt,
going in circles quickly or slowly.
When grasping overcomes you,
you are sure to go astray.

Yielding with ease,
the heart neither comes nor goes.
If your nature is in accord with the way,
you wander freely without fear.

Caught in thoughts, you betray reality.
Trapped in delusion, you miss the point.
Weary from what is not clear,
what is the use of being near or far?

Do not favor the single path
or disfavor the six sense objects.
The objects of our senses are not unwholesome.
They are inseparable from awakening.

The wise do not make things happen.
Fools are caught by doing.
Things are no more than things.
Don’t be deceived by attachments.

To reveal the mind with the mind
is not a great mistake.
Delusion divides stillness from turmoil.
Awakening does not pick and choose.

All things have two sides.
Mistakenly, you waver between this and that.
Dreams, phantoms, blossoms of illusion—
why try to grasp them?

Gain and loss, right and wrong—
let go of them right now.
When your eyes are not shut,
then all dreaming ceases.

If your mind makes no distinctions,
all things are thus.
Thusness is complete,
being free from all conditions.

Seeing all things as equal,
you return to suchness.
Bring to an end all causes
and let go of all comparisons.

Motion in stillness is not motion.
Stillness in motion is not stillness.
When neither happens,
neither is there.

In the ultimate freedom,
there are no doctrines.
When your mind merges with impartiality,
both making and being made disappear.

While doubts exhaust the pure heart,
genuine trust is plain and simple.
In it nothing remains,
and nothing is remembered.

Space illuminates itself.
not requiring mental effort.
In the realm beyond thinking,
thoughts and feelings are not measured.

In the dharma world of thusness,
there is no self, no other.
To explain it briefly:
just say, “Not two.”

Nonduality has no distinctions.
It leaves out nothing.
The wise in the ten directions
abide in the original source.

This source is timeless.
One moment is ten thousand years.
Time exists and does not exist.
The ten directions are right here.

The extremely small is vast.
It leaps beyond all limits.
The extremely large is minute.
You cannot define it.

Existence is itself nonexistence.
Nonexistence is itself existence.
If reality is not like this,
it will never continue.

Oneness is inseparable from all things.
All is inseparable from oneness.
If you realize this,
you go beyond thinking.

Trust in the heart is not-two.
Not-two is trust in the heart.
Words, unspoken,
go beyond the past, present, and future.