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Introduction
Page One ... Page Two ...
Page Three ... Without Commentary ... Cleary Translation ... Shinjin-No-Mei D.T.Suzuki
A translation known as Faith Mind by Clark is a W.I.P.
as is the original Chinese
- HsinHsinMing
- HsinHsinMing
- (commentary R.H.Blyth)
- THE TRUTH HAS NO DISTINCTIONS;
- THESE COME FROM OUR FOOLISH CLINGING TO THIS AND THAT.
- There is the distinction between the wise man and the fool, a
- wise thought and a foolish one, but none in the Nature of Things.
- Here there is perfect uniformity, law and equality. Mountains and
- rivers, birds, beasts and flowers are all on undivided
- indivisible thing. Yet on the other hand, each thing is itself
- and no other thing, unique, irreplaceable and invaluable. Sameness
- and difference are also one thing, yet two things. At one moment
- we see the separate meaning of a thing, at another, its meaning
- as being all things; and at some most precious moments of all,
- incommunicable in speech but yet heard also through it, we know
- that a thing, a person, a flower, the cry of a bird, is both one
- thing and all things. Sameness and difference, and *their*
- sameness and difference are the same and yet different from our
- own non-existence.
- SEEKING THE MIND WITH THE MIND, - - -
- IS NOT THIS THE GREATEST OF ALL MISTAKES?
- Clinging to the search for the mind is the last infirmity of the
- religious soul, and the most self-evidently absurd, for why
- should we search for the Buddha that we have already, why seek
- to release ourselves from bonds that are only fancied?
- But it is the greediness of our searching which invalidates it.
- This is beautifully expressed in the following:
- There is a treasure in the deep mountains;
- He who has no desire for it finds it.
- ILLUSION PRODUCES REST AND MOTION;
- ILLUMINATION DESTROYS LIKING AND DISLIKING.
- The state of the ordinary man is one in which he is continually
- either peacefully contented by successful activity, or in the
- anxious throes of that activity, either winning or losing, having
- won or having lost. The enlightened man loses well and wins well.
- ALL THESE PAIRS OF OPPOSITES
- ARE CREATED BY OUR OWN FOLLY.
- Once Dogen was approached by a short-tempered man and asked to
- cure his short-temperedness. Dogen asked him to show his shortness
- of temper, but the man confessed his inability to do so.
- It had no real existence, any more than his patience. Both are
- created by our own folly and idle fancy. When our minds are
- full of something, not part of a thing, but all of it, when there
- is no vacancy for odds and ends of passion to occupy, we act
- without rashness or hesitation. What the Third Patriarch says is
- very much akin to the old proverb,
- "Satan finds some mischief still for idle hands to do".
- DREAMS, DELUSIONS, FLOWERS OF AIR, --
- WHY SHOULD WE BE SO ANXIOUS TO HAVE THEM IN OUR GRASP?
- These creations of the mind, so common and habitual that there
- seems to be some concrete reality behind them, are the
- protagonists of all tragic drama. Fixed notions of honour,
- propriety, faithfulness, conflict of necessity with the
- imperturbable, ineffable, and intangible truth ultimately
- destroys them. Rigidity versus fluidity, the name versus the
- nameless; yet in this very willingness to die for some impossible
- creed we see once more that just as the ordinary man, as he is, is
- the Buddha, so these delusions are, as they stand, the truth, and
- without them there is no reality. What is wrong is the anxiety to
- get hold of them or the anxiety to reject them. Error or truth,
- profit or loss, - - if we accept them readily, cheerfully, as in
- some sense ministers of God, remembering that even the devils
- fear and serve Him, these flowers of the air also have their
- beauty and value, for
- Every error is an image of truth,
- and in every illusion there beats the heart of mankind that
- aspires for the truth that error masks.
- But the mask *is* the face.
- PROFIT AND LOSS, RIGHT AND WRONG, --
- AWAY WITH THEM ONCE FOR ALL!
- What Sengtsan means here, is that we are to give up the false
- idea that profit actually profits us, that there is any
- individual self to suffer loss or gain. Forgetting all moral
- principles, we are to "Dilige, et quod vis fac". (Love, and as
- you please.) This abstention from choosing, from judging, does
- not mean that we do not choose as pleasant or judge as wrong.
- What is means is that God does it for us, God who is so often
- disobeyed, who turns the other cheek and forgives his enemies.
- When for example we give an order, as a teacher, or an official,
- it is to be given peremptorily without a thought of the
- possibility of its not being obeyed. But if it is not obeyed,
- there is no *personal* irritation and wounded vanity in the angry
- remonstrance w make. A law of nature, of human society has been
- broken and it is right that our emotion should be aroused by
- this.
- The doctrine that in all our acts we are to be vicegerents of
- Nature is a dangerous one, but every truth is dangerous, for it
- liberated universal energies that may easily go astray. Religious
- persecution, megalomania, political fanaticism are all misuses of
- what the Third Patriarch inculcates. But we know them by their
- fruits; by the defects, the distortions, the hatred of the
- dictators.
- IF THE EYE DOES NOT SLEEP,
- ALL DREAMING CEASES NATURALLY.
- Human life is a dream, not is its brevity and discontinuity, but
- in the fact that we see things almost always as related to our
- own personal interests. But we must "persist in our folly" to the
- bitter end, and say,
- My God, my God, why hast thou forsaken *me*?
- At such moments we wake and see things as they really are, in
- their suchness, the nails in the wood, the wood in the ground,
- the sun setting in the western sky, a mother weeping for her son,
- a man-less, God-less universe, each thing fulfilling the law of
- its being. When we wake from our sleep of relativity and
- subjectivism, nightmares of glory and disgrace, flattery and
- condemnation will cease of themselves.
- IF THE MIND MAKES NO DISCRIMINATION,
- ALL THINGS ARE AS THEY REALLY ARE.
- Things are all right, if only we will let them be alone,
- cooperate with them, take lead as heavy and use it as a plummet,
- take swords as sharp and receive the surgeon's knife, take pain
- as dreadful but nor as something distinct from ourselves, adding
- imagination to reality. Yungchia describes this condition in the
- following way:
- The moon reflected in the stream, the wind blowing through the pines
- In the cool of the evening, in the deep midnight, -- what is it for?
- It is all for nothing, for itself, for others.
- This is the suchness of things.
- IN THE DEEP MYSTERY OF THIS "THINGS AS THEY ARE",
- WE ARE RELEASED FROM OUR RELATIONS TO THEM.
- Things as they are, the coldness of ice and the sound of rain,
- the fall of leaves and the silence of the sky, are ultimate
- things, never to be questioned, never to be explained away. When
- we know them, our relations to them, their use and misuse, their
- associated pleasures and pains are all forgotten.
- WHEN ALL THINGS ARE SEEN "WITH EQUAL MIND",
- THEY RETURN TO THEIR NATURE.
- This "equal mind" of Matthew Arnold is that which speaks in the
- words of Marcus Aurelius:
- All that happens is as usual and familiar as
- the rose in spring and the crop in summer.
- NO DESCRIPTION BY ANALOGY IS POSSIBLE
- OF THIS STATE WHERE ALL RELATIONS HAVE CEASED.
- Metaphors and similes, parables and comparisons may be used to
- describe anything belonging to the relative, the intellectually
- dichotomised world, but even the simplest and commonest
- experience of reality, the touch of the hot water, the smell of
- camphor, are incommunicable by such and any means; how much more
- so the Fatherhood of God, the Meaningless of Meaning, the
- Absolute Value of a pop-corn, for in such matters, the unity of
- our own emptiness and that of all other things is perceived as an
- act of self-consciousness, and nothing remains to be compared
- with anything. In Chapter VII of the "Platform Sutra" we are told
- of Nanyueh, 677-744, and hid meeting with Huineng, the Sixth
- Patriarch, who asked him from whence he had come. "From Suzan",
- he replied, "What comes? How did it come?" asked the Patriarch.
- Nanyueh replied, "We cannot say it is similar to anything".
- At the beginning if Chapter IX of the same sutra, Huineng quotes
- form the "Vimalakirti Nirdesa Sutra":
- The Law has no analogy, since it is not relative.
- WHEN WE STOP MOVEMENT, THERE IS NO-MOVEMENT;
- WHEN WE STOP RESTING, THERE IS NO-REST.
- Neither rest or movement has any reality as such; they are two
- names of one thinglessness which cannot be caused to cease,
- because it is uncreated. There is a waka which says:
- When it blows,
- How noisy
- The mountain wind!
- But when it blows not,
- Where will it have gone?
- Blowing, not blowing, what is there but nothingness ...
- an invisible, intangible something-heard-and-not-heard?
- WHEN BOTH CEASE TO BE,
- HOW CAN THE UNITY SUBSIST?
- There is no more a unity than there is duality; relative and
- absolute are named of the nameless. Zen, that is to say, is a
- word that is used like an algebraic sign, for all that is
- nameless, all that escapes thought, definition, explanation, yet
- breathes through words and silence; is communicated in spite of
- our best efforts to communicate it. Actions are either good or
- bad; yet nothing is good or bad, but thinking makes it so. That
- is to say, things are both good or bad and neither; relative and
- absolute; or, if you wish, neither relative nor absolute, there
- is neither duality nor a unity.
- THINGS ARE ULTIMATELY, IN THEIR FINALITY,
- SUBJECT TO NO LAW.
- "No law" means no scientific, psychological, logical,
- philosophical, Buddhist, or any other kind of law. As
- D.H.Lawrence says, "Life is what one wants in one's soul".
- It is indeed an intellectual, rational conception, and applies
- only to the intellectual, rational aspect of things abstracted
- from the whole.
- FOR THE ACCORDANT MIND IN ITS UNITY,
- INDIVIDUAL ACTIVITY CEASES.
- When the mind is in accord with all creatures and with the
- Buddha, one with all things, its activity as an individual
- entity ceases. What Mozart was at the piano, Bach at the organ,
- Shakespeare with his pen, Turner with his brush, we are with out
- most trivial and personal affairs of life. When this is not so,
- when our acts are hesitant, our work repugnant, our life full of
- fears for the morrow and regret for the past, even the spider in
- its web, the violet by the stone give us that feeling of envy,
- a realization of our alienation from God that no pleasure can
- assuage.
- Some minds have a tendency to over-emphasize difference, some to
- make everything of a meaningless sameness. Both are wrong, the
- latter perhaps more than the former.
- To correct this there is a saying,
- A high place has a high level;
- A low place has a low level.
- ALL DOUBTS ARE CLEARED UP,
- TRUE FAITH IS CONFIRMED.
- Doubt and faith are concerned with one thing and one thing only,
- the Goodness of the universe. And this is tested by us most
- intimately and searchingly within ourselves. If at the outset we
- stipulate a personal Deity, individual immortality and so on,
- no resolution of doubt and establishment of faith is possible.
- We are to make no demands whatever upon the world. "Judge not"
- is the word here too. Standing apart from things and questioning
- them, praising and condemning -- this is the cardinal error.
- Living their life, dying their death, being cloven with the worm
- and shrivelled in the candle flame with the moth, is the only way
- to solve the mystery of the fruitless suffering, the problem of
- the waste of beauty and goodness.
- NOTHING REMAINS BEHIND;
- THERE IS NOT ANYTHING WE MUST REMEMBER.
- We are not bound by any "imitation of the Buddha". There are no
- snags, no undigested material, no fitting in with preconceived
- notions, no formula to follow in the way of our life or manner
- of death. We may be confirmed or baptized if we feel it is good
- for us, or die at the stake rather than submit to it. And we
- extend the same privilege to everyone else. No one need be
- converted to this or that religion. When we do wrong or make
- mistakes, we go on with renewed vigour to the next task; a faux
- pas cannot check us or make us dwell on it with self-torturing
- shame.
- EMPTY, LUCID, SELF-ILLUMINATED,
- WITH NO OVER-EXERTION OF THE POWER OF THE MIND.
- Empty means with nothing clogging the mind, no trace of
- self-interest. Lucid means seeing unreason as clearly as reason,
- reflecting ugliness as serenely as beauty. Self-illuminated means
- truth is not revealed to it from some outside agency.
- Over-exertion of the power of the mind is that of Othello,
- Mr.Tulliver, Mr.Dombey, and the protagonists of all tragic drama.
- There is nothing tragic or comic, but thinking makes it so, the
- thinking of the actors and the sympathetic thinking of the
- self-illuminated spectators, who see their self-interest and
- grieve for it, perceive the self-defacement and unreasonableness
- without the reflecting surface of their own minds being marred by
- it.
- THIS IS WHERE THOUGHT IS USELESS,
- WHAT KNOWLEDGE CANNOT FATHOM.
- This verse looks back to a passage in the "Lotus Sutra":
- This law cannot be known properly by thought and description,
- and looks forward to the reply of Yunmen to a certain monk, who
- asked, "What is this place where though is useless?", "Knowledge
- and emotion cannot fathom it!" To express this thoughtless,
- knowledgeless, emotionless state, in which thought and knowledge
- and emotion are sublimed into instinct of the highest order, we
- have such a phase as,
- The lotus blooms in the midst of the fire.
- But this is too intellectual in its denial and rejection of the
- intellect. Better in the following, from Thoreau:
- The weeds at the bottom gently bending down the stream, shaken by
- the watery wind, still planted where their seeds had sunk, but
- ere long to die and go down likewise; the shining pebbles, not
- yet anxious to better their condition; the chips and reeds, and
- occasional logs and stems of trees that floated past, fulfilling
- their fate, were objects of singular interest to me, and at last
- I resolved to launch myself on its bosom and float whither is
- would bear me.
- ("A Week on the Concord and Merrimack Rivers")
- IN THE WORLD OF REALITY,
- THERE IS NO SELF, TO OTHER THAN SELF.
- To say this is easy, to believe it intentionally is not
- difficult. It has an emotional, a poetical appeal which few can
- withstand. With a full belly, a bank balance, when all is going
- well, such a doctrine will be readily adopted. But when food is
- scarce, when a man has lost his job, in hours of boredom, when
- children die, and our own death is not far off, -- can we then
- rejoice with those who rejoice and mourn with those that mourn?
- In my own case, I must say that nothing makes me more contented
- with my lot than to see the sufferings of others, to find my
- children cleverer and prettier than those of my colleagues.
- How far indeed is this from the lines above.
- SHOULD YOU DESIRE IMMEDIATE CORRESPONDENCE (WITH THIS REALITY),
- ALL THAT CAN BE SAID IS, "NO DUALITY!"
- But even this "No duality!", no relativity, no choosing, no
- judging, is not to be elevated into a principle of living. It may
- be used as a touchstone of past conduct, or as an ideal for some
- possible future situation, but for living, which is the eternal
- present only, all that can be said is nothing whatever.
- WHEN THERE IS NO DUALITY, ALL THINGS ARE ONE.
- THERE IS NOTHING THAT IS NOT INCLUDED.
- When Thoreau lay dying, he was asked if he had made his peace
- with God; he answered, "We have never quarreled". In Thoreau's
- world, everything was included, nothing rejected and made into an
- enemy. When God lived for two years by Walden lake, Thoreau did
- not criticize, praise, or condemn Him. As St.Augustine says,
- To live happily is to live according to the mind of God.
(:"Retractions", i.1)
- THE ENLIGHTENED OF ALL TIMES AND PLACES
- HAVE EVERY ONE ENTERED INTO THIS TRUTH.
- This sounds rather depressing, as though ordinary people were
- excluded, but what Sengtsan means is that comparatively few know
- that they have entered into the realm of Buddhahood, where all
- men and all things without exception have their (unconscious and
- unwitting) being. Not a sparrow can fall out of God's care, nor
- can anyone, for all his hair-shirts and flagellations enter into
- His presence. It is only a question of becoming aware of our true
- condition, and this becoming aware is called "entering".
- TRUTH CANNOT BE INCREASED OR DECREASED;
- AN INSTANTANEOUS THOUGHT LASTS A MYRIAD YEARS.
- The bonds of time and space do not prevail against the Truth,
- the Way, the Buddha Mind. Long and short, here and there,
- a moment and eternity are all included in it, as names alone.
- Blake says:
- One thought fills immensity.
- THERE IS NO HERE, NO THERE,
- INFINITY IS BEFORE OUR EYES.
- Here and there are dualities and therefore obstructions to the
- life of perfection. Infinity is under our noses, our noses are
- infinitely long. Yungchia says:
- The Mirror of the Mind brightly shining, unobstructed,
- Passes transparently through everything in the universe.
- When this Mind is our mind, when we are not bored with here and
- longing to be there, when the life of things is breathed in and
- breathed out with every breath we take, when we live in the past
- of our world and into the unborn future without desiring to undo
- what is done, or avoid what must be, then we live a timeless live
- now, a placeless life here.
- THE INFINITELY SMALL IN AS LARGE AS THE INFINITELY GREAT,
- FOR LIMITS ARE NON-EXISTENT THINGS.
- This is a kind of *reductio ad absurdum* of the unpoetic,
- commonplace position, that great and small are mutually exclusive
- qualities. If the extremes meet, so does the middle and the
- rest. Limits and boundaries are man-made things, and what man has
- put together, man can put asunder. A doka which illustrates this
- is the following:
- Mount Fuji, --
- Good in fine weather,
- Good in the rain:
- The Original Form
- Never changes.
- Thoreau says:
- The shalowest still water is unfathomable.
- THE INFINITELY LARGE IS AS SMALL AS THE INFINITELY MINUTE;
- NO EYE CAN SEE THEIR BOUNDARIES.
- Lying at night in camp Thoreau speaks of:
- The barking of the house dogs, from the loudest and hoarsest bark
- to the faintest aerial palpitation under the eaves of heaven.
- WHAT IS, IS NOT; WHAT IS NOT, IS.
- There is the most extreme form of expression of the Mahayana
- theory that corresponds to the Christian doctrine (mystical, and
- strictly speaking heretical) that God is above all qualities, all
- predications, even of existence. The "is-ness" of things is a
- fantasy of life's fitful fever, -- but so is their "is-not-ness".
- Life is a dream, but so is the statement. This last fact is hard
- to catch. When we say that unreality is also unreal, in our
- normal moments, and especially when the mind is tired, this means
- nothing, or less than nothing. It irritates by its illogicality,
- and is repugnant because of the demand it makes that we are
- unable to supply. It is therefore necessary that we say such
- things, to ourselves or others, only then we are in a condition
- of mind to know what we are saying, otherwise by frequent vain
- repetitions we shall become as the heathen, unable to recognize
- moments of vision when they visit us. So for example, death is a
- fearful thing because of its irrevocableness, but at times, when
- perhaps least expected, or even unwanted, the realization comes
- to us that what has never existed, the individual soul, the ego,
- has not done and cannot go out of existence. What was born,
- immediately ceases to be. At every moment, neither existence nor
- non-existence can be predicated or denied, -- yet what a world of
- difference between a living child and a dead one!
- Consider the following sentence of Thoreau's, put into the form
- of a haiku:
- Over the old wooden bridge
- No traveller
- Crossed.
- This no-traveller, like deserted roads, empty chairs, silent
- organs, has more meaning, more poetry, solidity and permanence
- that any traveller. "No traveller" does not mean nobody, nothing
- at all; is means everyman, you and I and God and all things cross
- this old rickety bridge, and like the bold lover on the Grecian
- Urn can never reach the goal.
- UNTIL YOU HAVE GRASPED THIS FACT,
- YOUR POSITION IS SIMPLY UNTENABLE.
- Common sense is revolted by the above assertion that what is,
- is not, what is not, is, but in actual practice it is found to
- be the only valid one. The story of the monk who was praised
- for bringing a basket to catch the drips from the leaking roof
- illustrates this identity of what is and what is not. A bucket
- or a basket, there is no difference. One man's meat is another
- man's poison. A leaf of grass is a six-foot golden Buddha.
- Life is a perpetual dying. And if you keep to the so-called
- commonsense point of view (which is more elastic than supposed)
- you will find that your hard and fast divisions between right and
- wrong, profit and loss, useful and harmful, are inapplicable to
- all your problems and indeed to every circumstance of life that
- is deeply felt and profoundly experienced. So Blake says:
- Listen to fool's reproach! It is a kingly title!
- and Yungchia says the same thing, a thousand years before him:
- Let me allow others to speak ill of me, trespass against me;
- It is like trying to burn the sky with fire, only wearing
- themselves out.
- Listening to them is like drinking the Nectar of Eternal Life;
- All fades, and I am suddenly in the Wonderful World.
- ONE THING IS ALL THINGS;
- ALL THINGS ARE ONE THING.
- This expresses in an extreme form the state of Mind towards which
- things are constantly tending, called paradox by logic, metaphor
- by literature, genius or madness by popular consent.
- The humorist says, describing the beauty of a certain film actress,
- "When she comes into the room, the room comes in with her".
- Another step has been taken towards the region where:
- One sentence decides heaven and earth;
- One sword pacifies all sublunary things.
- When you have really seen one flower, you have seen not only all
- flowers, but all non-flowers. One principle, one life, one
- animate or inanimate manifestation moves and upholds all things,
- and thus it is said:
- One sight, and all is seen,
- Like a great round mirror.
- IF THIS IS SO FOR YOU,
- THERE IS NO NEED TO WORRY ABOUT PERFECT KNOWLEDGE.
- Worry in the great enemy. The search for enlightenment obscures
- and delays it. What is wrong is not the pain and grief suffering,
- but thinking about ourselves as sufferers.
- Therefore, when, if only temporarily, we see into the unity of
- the life of the multifarious things of this world, do not let us
- lose our firm conviction of this vision by thoughts of our sins
- of omission and commission, inconsistency of words and actions.
- Thoreau says of the cry of the cock:
- The merit of this bird's strain is in its freedom form all
- plainliveness. The singer can easily move us to tears or
- laughter, but where is he who can excite in us a pure morning
- joy? When, in doleful dumps, breaking the awful stillness of our
- wooden sidewalk on a Sunday, or, perchance, a watcher in the
- house of mourning, I hear a cockerel crow far or near, I think to
- myself, "There is one of us well, at any rate", -- and with a
- sudden rush return to my senses.
- ("Walking")
- It is the same spirit that breathes in the words of Miyamoto
- Musashi, great swordsman and painter:
- As far as I am concerned, I regret nothing.
- THE BELIEVING MIND IS NOT DUAL;
- WHAT IS DUAL IS NOT THE BELIEVING MIND.
- When we believe in *something*, this is not the believing mind.
- If we say we believe in ourselves, this again is a mistake, of
- experience or of expression. "The believing mind believes in
- itself", -- this, rightly understood, contains no error. The
- "Lankavatara Sutra" says:
- Believing in the truth of timeless life is called the Believing Mind.
- Clearer still is the "Nirvana Sutra":
- The Believing Mind is the Buddha nature.
- Here there is no danger of one thing believing in another thing.
- The Buddha nature is the true nature of every thing and of
- everything. The believing mind is this Buddha-activity. A Haydn
- minuet or the Lord's prayer, or a kitten catching at the falling
- autumn leaves is a clear thought of this mind, a harmonious
- movement of the Buddha nature. It is perfect because it is
- single, unique, complete, all-including.
- BEYOND ALL LANGUAGE,
- FOR IT, THERE IS NO PAST, NO PRESENT, NO FUTURE.
- Language is vitally concerned with time, with tense. The Way is
- timeless and breaks through language, but does not discard it.
- Silence itself is a form of speaking, just as the blank spaces
- between the marks of the printing are as much part of the
- printing as the letters themselves. The Way is timeless yet it
- cannot dispense with time. Eternity and time are in love with
- each other, continually embracing in a divine union, yet always
- separate to the purely human eye.
Introduction
Page One ... Page Two ...
Page Three ... Without Commentary ... Cleary Translation ... Shinjin-No-Mei D.T.Suzuki
A translation known as Faith Mind by Clark is a W.I.P.
as is the original Chinese