object:Song of Enlightment
class:Jianzhi Sengcan
subject class:Zen
subject:Zen
(529-613)
A Song of Enlightenment
Translated by Philip Dunn and Peter Jourdan
The Book of Nothing, published by Andrews McMeel Publishing, Kansas City, MO, 2002.
The Great Way is effortless
for those who live in choiceless awareness.
To choose without preference
is to be clear.
Even the slightest personal preference
and your whole world becomes deluded.
To perceive reality as it is
is to live with an open mind.
When the lens you look through
reflects your personal bias,
your view of reality is clouded.
Truth simply is.
The clouded mind cannot know it.
The Great Way is empty -
like a vast sky.
Silence the busy mind
and know this perfection.
Be seduced neither by the outer world
nor by your inner emptiness.
Reside in the oneness of things
where distinctions are meaningless.
Trying to still the mind
inhibits the experience of oneness,
for the very action of trying
is the busy mind at work.
Live in the Great Way
where action is stillness and silence pervades.
Deny the reality of things
and miss true nature.
Assert that emptiness exists
and it will disappear.
To experience reality,
stop using words,
for the more you talk about things
the farther away from the truth you stray.
Return to oneness and discover its essence.
Being dazzled by appearance you miss the truth.
Go beyond both appearance and emptiness
and find the unmoving center.
Pursue the confusion of your opinions
and the eternal mind is lost.
Rather than focus on knowing the truth
simply cease to be seduced by your opinions.
Duality appears in minutest traces,
carefully avoid the trap.
If there is even an inkling of right or wrong
the enlightened mind ceases to be.
Everything there is comes from oneness
but oneness cannot be described.
Holding any trace of it in the mind
is to deny the essence of emptiness.
When the mind is still,
nothing can disturb it.
When nothing can disturb it,
reality ceases to exist in the old way.
When you understand the relationship of subject and object,
thinker and thought -
and how they create each other -
you recognize that these are not two, but one.
Don't strive to know particulars
when what you want to experience is one.
It is beyond the nature of the mind to perceive
the reality it cannot describe.
Oneness has nothing to do with hard or easy
for it is beyond every opposite.
It cannot be found, it cannot be retained.
To grasp at it is to miss it entirely.
Not trying to go faster or slower,
be still, and let go.
Just let things be
for it is exactly as it should be.
Returning to your true nature,
spontaneity and essence are found.
This is the space that always exists
and that holds all within.
True reality is hidden by the practice of thought
but also in the denial.
Accept the reality of not naming things
and rest in the silence of being.
Use your senses to experience reality,
for they are part of your empty mind.
This empty mind takes note of all it perceives
and is guided by its sensing needs.
While the ignorant are bound to emotional choices -
attaching themselves to their ignorance,
the wise experience life through not reacting at all -
unswayed, uninvolved, unattached.
The need to name, the need to distinguish
are born of a clinging fear.
Remain unattached to every thought
and know the true nature of being.
Be inattentive and mind is an irritant
with dreams that disturb reality.
Why look for trouble and distress
when awareness is so freeing?
High and low, good and bad -
all duality disappears,
and all dreams abate
when the inner calm is met.
When the mind ceases all movement,
ceases judging,
ceases conceptualizing,
the deep cool essence of suchness
becomes a way of life.
When all things are perceived
with an open mind,
they return to their natural way.
Without any movement, without any description,
they are an undivided part of the whole.
True nature is impartial,
it has no causes or rules.
With the mind in undivided unity,
wisdom is radiated.
Trust in true nature,
keep your heart strong.
Pure mind is pure wisdom,
to part from it is foolish.
All is empty, all is clear,
no effort is made for none is needed.
When there is neither "self" nor "other,"
awareness simply is.
Meet doubt directly
with the words "not two"
and know that nothing can be separate and all is one.
There is nothing that is not included:
This is an eternal truth.
Absolute reality is beyond time and space,
Empty and infinite
existing as one,
opening before your eyes,
A vast presence.
The very small and the very large are equal,
boundaries and limits do not exist.
Being and non-being both exist,
for whether you see it or not
is of no consequence.
One thing is all things, and all things are one.
What is and what is not are equals.
Once this is realized
there is no need to worry about anything.
To live and to trust in the non-dual mind
is to move with true freedom,
to live without anxiety,
upon the Great Way.
Language contains no way to describe
the ultimate unity of Suchness:
Beyond belief, beyond expression,
beyond space, beyond time.
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