Faith in Mind

This was my Zen teacher’s favorite verse: Faith in Mind…”The Great Way is not difficultfor those who have no preferences. When love and hate are both absent everything becomes clear and undisguised.”

This is an old post from 2010, I’ve kept here in this moment because it reminds me of her.

I have been thinking about Zen. Zen and the Brain, a great book by Dr. Austin on the power of Zen, meditation and the brain.

In the end, he says, “Have we learned anything about meditation? If so, it will not be from applying EEG electrodes to the scalp, but from the deeper act of praciting the meditatiive mode ourselves and infusing it into the present moment. Finally each day practice starts to become life’s meditation, by one life within all life,” I thought this was so beautiful.

He ends with a more modern translation of the Faith Mind by Hsin Hsing Ming’s, a 140 unrhymed verse. It is my teachers, teacher’s favorite.

It is very funny that this verse is about preference and I did not like Austin’s translation because the first two verses he has “The great way is not difficult just avoid picking and choosing” because in Soto Zen I am learning that we do something other than “avoid”. So, I found a version that is closer to the version our teacher Susan Jion Postal gave us at the Zendo.

The Great Way is not difficultfor those who have no preferences.

When love and hate are both absenteverything 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 opinion for or against.

The struggle of what one likes and what one dislikes is the disease of the mind….

It continues, but I shall leave it alone.

To read more: lukestorms.wordpress.com/…/Verses on the faith mind of Sengstan (Sosan) 3rd Zen Patriarch, translated from the original Chinese by Richard B. Clarke, Zen teacher at the Living Dharma Centers, Amherst, Massachussets and Coventry, Connecticut.

Reflection: Read the text and write about how you experience this verse, and write your own version of how you experience the world.