The Poem That Has Haunted Me for Two Decades
By JūKen Zach Fehst
Almost twenty years ago, while living and teaching English in South Korea, I visited a Buddhist temple for a weekend stay, and stumbled upon a scrap of an English translation of an ancient Chinese poem called Xin Xin Ming. The title means something like "Faith in the Heart-Mind."
But at the time I didn't know the name, or anything else about it. All I knew was that a few enigmatic verses spoke to me in a profound way, and through the years I would sometimes remember them. Phrases like, "When doubt arises, simply say 'not two,'" or "Like and dislike are the dis-ease of the mind." I didn't know what they meant, but they stayed with me. I could feel the truth they contained, even if I couldn't quite touch it or explain it. They worked on me like an app running in the background, invisibly underpinning my experiences. I later learned that koan practice can operate in a similar way.
Later, I would find this poem popping up in my life in some interesting ways, both before and after I found myself on the Zen Buddhist path of practice. Years after I left Korea, I stumbled upon a version of it in Aldous Huxley's wonderful anthology of mystical writing, The Perennial Philosophy. I still didn't know what it was called (frustratingly, Huxley didn't name it), but I immediately recognized it. Later still, flipping through the chant book at the Chapel Hill Zen Center in North Carolina, where I lived at the time, I finally saw the title and the attribution. (The title was anglicized differently as Hsin Hsin Ming, and it is attributed to one of the earliest masters of what later became known as Zen, Seng Ts'an, considered the third ancestor in our lineage).
I went home and immediately printed myself a copy. Now, I keep the Xin Xin Ming close by, and reread it often. In many ways, it has been the most important text of my life. Its message, to me, is consonant with the Heart Sutra (which may have been composed around the same time), since like that text, it suggests in almost startlingly direct language that the path to liberation lies in not picking and choosing -- that is, in acceptance of non-duality.
But, see, I've already gone astray. Because the most startling message of the Xin Xin Ming is not that the path to liberation lies in not picking and choosing; it's that not-picking-and-choosing is liberation itself. Which is to say, when you manage for even a moment to be free from the constant sorting of each aspect of experience into like/dislike, favorable/unfavorable, and so on, that exact moment is nirvana. And we can go there as often as we remember to.
"The great way is not difficult for those who have no preferences," the poem begins. One of its final lines is, "One in all, all in one; if only this is realized, no more worry about your not being perfect." In between, we are invited and exhorted to challenge our presumptions about self and other, subject and object, and to -- right now -- touch the reality that is always here before we cover it over with our ideas about it.
After first encountering the Dharma and beginning to meditate while living in South Korea in 2006, Jūken Zach Fehst entered the path of formal practice in 2014 as a member of Brooklyn Zen Center, and received jukai at Clouds in Water in 2022. He has worked as an actor and writer, and is now a public high school teacher and musical hobbyist. He has an abiding interest in all forms of spirituality and religion, and holds a Master in Theological Studies from Boston University. He is currently in training to become a priest at Clouds.