With palms together,

Good Morning Everyone,

HSIN HSIN MING

verses of the faith mind
by Sengtsan
Third Zen Patriarch of China (d. 606 CE)

Those who do not live in the single Way 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.

Master Sengtsan is teaching us not to think?  No. He is teaching that thought is only thought and that thought is not reality.  We should not be confused by names.  Because we have a name for something does not mean we know its true reality.  True reality is beyond words and phrases. Likewise, to say this also misses the mark.  Things are both this and that simultaneously.  We live in a relative and absolute world together.

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 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.

Accepting the world as it is, our lives as they are is both the beginning and the end.  If we are suffering in this world as it is, should we continue to suffer?  No.  We should look deeply into the nature of our suffering, understand it at its root.  Then cut the root and let it go.  Will we continue to experience pain?  Yes.  Will we suffer?  No.

Be well.