Awesome Ancient Buddhist Nondual Poem "Hsin Hsin Ming"

[Adam M]

https://rupertspira.com/non-duality/blog/poetry-prose/hsin-hsin-ming-poem-alternative-rendition

 

Rupert Spira made a beautiful translation of an Ancient Buddhist Poem from China "Hsin Hsin Ming." A very elegant and lucid description of nonduality. 

 

Rupert Spira's Rendition:

"To be at peace and content is not difficult for those who have no preferences.
When likes and dislikes are not present, everything becomes clear and simple.
Make the smallest distinction, however, and you will be exiled from the realm of eternal happiness which is your home.

If you wish to be happy and at peace, then hold no opinions for or against anyone or anything.
To set up what you like against what you dislike is a conditioned habit of the mind. It is a recipe for unhappiness.
When we allow the appearance of things to veil their reality, our innate peace and happiness is disturbed to no avail.

Our essential being is perfect, like boundless space, which is complete in itself with nothing lacking. 

It is our rejection of what is present or our seeking of what is not present that determines whether or not we feel the peace and happiness that are our very nature.

Do not lose yourself in experience but do not turn away from any experience.
Be free from all experience but completely open to all experience, and your innate happiness will shine forth.

Do not think that the activity of the mind is a problem or that the cessation of its activity is necessary. To attempt to stop the mind’s activity is itself the mind’s activity.

Neither lose yourself in the mind’s activity nor engage in the effort to still it, but simply be knowingly the witnessing presence of awareness, and your innate happiness will emerge from the background of experience.

Your true nature of pure awareness transcends all experience and yet is immanent within all experience. To assert or deny either aspect is, therefore, to miss the nature of reality.

It is not possible to think of reality or to express it in words. To know the nature of reality it is necessary to know the nature of one’s own being, which lies behind all thinking and talking.

We invest our happiness in changing things only because we have forgotten or ignored our being. 
If we want lasting peace and happiness it is only necessary to return to one’s being.

Do not search for happiness; only cease allowing the thought, ‘I don’t want what is present; I want what is not present’ to run your life. 

The slightest like and dislike with respect to experience veils our innate happiness.

Do not reject appearances in favour of awareness, for it is infinite awareness itself that shines in and as all appearances.

When we stand knowingly as the presence of awareness, nothing can disturb us, and when a person or thing no longer disturbs us, we no longer see them as separate from us or as a source of happiness or suffering.

When we no longer divide our experience into good and bad, right and wrong, desirable and undesirable, the personal self vanishes, for it is created and maintained only by resisting, holding or seeking.  

In the absence of a separate subject of experience, the separate object or other dissolves and their shared being is revealed as the experience of love or beauty.

An object only seems such from the perspective of a separate subject of experience, and a separate subject of experience can only seem to exist in relation to an object.

As such, both the subject and the object are, in reality, a single, infinite and indivisible whole.
Knowing this, we make no judgements, and neither prejudice nor opinion obscures our vision.

To be established in peace and happiness is neither easy nor difficult: it is simply to know and feel oneself as the presence of awareness, with which all experience is known, in which all experience appears and, ultimately, out of which all experience is made.  

For one whose life is determined by resistance, holding and seeking, everything they do simply compounds their unhappiness. The more effort they make, the farther they are from happiness.

Ultimately, even the desire for enlightenment is the desire for something other than what is, and is, as such, the very activity of suffering itself. 

If, on the other hand, we simply abide knowingly as the presence of awareness, there will be neither resistance nor seeking and we will live free, undisturbed and fulfilled.

When our thoughts and feelings are governed by resistance, holding and seeking, we no longer see things as they are. 

We make distinctions and judgements only because we overlook the unity of being that underlies all people and things, and as a result become upset and exhausted. Nothing of value comes from it.

For one who is established in their true nature and, as a result, allows things to be as they are, the goal of life has already been fulfilled. 
Such a person seeks nothing, holds on to nothing and resists nothing and is, therefore, at peace and content. 
For one who is lost in their thoughts and feelings, life is a constant battle of resistance, holding and seeking, and thus they are rarely at peace.

Everyone’s essential being is the same. It is only when our essential being is qualified by experience that distinctions between people arise and thus conflict begins.

To seek our being with the mind is a mistake, for our being lies at the source of the mind; it can never be found as an object of the mind.

Activity and inactivity, like and dislike, good and bad, right and wrong, gain and loss all come from ignoring or overlooking the underlying unity of being, from which all people and things derive their temporary name and form. 

If we do not allow appearances to veil their reality, our innate peace and happiness will pervade all experience.
If we do not resist what is present and seek what is not present, experience will lose its capacity to veil its reality.

One who remains established in and as the presence of awareness will not lose their self in the content of experience, and as a result, peace and happiness will prevail. 

Such a one will not separate their self from any experience, and as such, love and beauty will shine in their experience.

It is our likes and dislikes which confer independent existence on people and things, and as a result our shared being is overlooked. 
To understand this is to be free from experience even in the midst of experience itself. In this condition, preferences simply no longer arise.

The peace that is the nature of our being is equally present in both activity and inactivity, and therefore it has no preference for either. 

In the absence of any distinction between activity and inactivity, we cannot even call it peace. Thus, it cannot be defined by words or restrained by any law.

One who is in touch with the peace of their essential being no longer negotiates experience from the vantage point of a separate self. Such a one is free. 

Our essential being is like empty space: nothing leaves a trace on it, nor does it hold on to anything.

For one who is established in their true nature, thoughts and feelings add nothing to their self nor remove anything from it, and thus they begin to quieten down. Everything simply is as it is.

In reality there is no separate subject or object of experience; there is no self and no other. 
This absence of otherness is love itself, from which nothing is separate and nothing excluded.

The recognition of one’s true nature is independent of the content of experience.
In this recognition, the relative value of things in time and space, whilst remaining, is outshone.

At every moment, experience is always a single, infinite and indivisible whole, for all such definitions would refer to parts of the whole.

Wherever we look it is all a manifestation of the same impersonal, infinite, intimate reality, which admits no boundaries, distinctions or differences.

This reality cannot be debated by the finite mind.
It assumes the names and forms of ten thousand things, without ever being, becoming or knowing anything other than itself.

To understand and feel this is to live a life of peace and joy. 
It is the origin, the path and the goal of the non-dual understanding.

It cannot be spoken of and yet all words speak of it. 
There is no path to it because it is that alone which is always and already present.
Turn towards that and it will take you into itself."

 

Thanks for reading ❤

[Bazooka Jesus]

??? Amazin'!

Did Lao Tsu write this on a roll of toilet paper while he was sitting on the loo?

[eputkonen]

Another version of the Hsin Hsin Ming by Seng-ts'an - https://bitly.com/hsinhsinming