Verses on the faith mind

Sengcan (d. 606) is honoured as the Third Patriarch of Chinese Chan (Zen), the lineage said to descend from Bodhidharma. The historical record is sparse; tradition speaks of illness, of refuge, of quiet teaching during a difficult age.

The text attributed to him — the Hsin Hsin Ming, “Verses on the Faith Mind” — is one of the earliest and most loved Chan poems. It is brief, dense, and uncommonly clear.

Its central instruction is disarmingly simple: stop clinging to preference, and the Way becomes obvious of itself.

Sengcan belongs in the Library because the Hsin Hsin Ming names, in a few lines, the inner motion that most spiritual practice unintentionally reinforces — the silent preference, the subtle aversion, the search for the better state.

Inner Voidness returns to this poem the way one returns to a tuning fork. Not for new ideas. For accurate listening.

“The Great Way is not difficult for those who have no preferences.” The line is not a moral. It is a description of how the mind, freed from its small wars, finds itself already standing in the open.

What is asked is not indifference. It is the end of the inner courtroom.

The Hsin Hsin Ming rewards memorisation. A few lines, carried through a day, will teach more than a chapter explained.

Read in two translations side by side — the meaning hides in the space between renderings.

Pair it with sitting. The poem describes the inner ground that sitting begins to uncover.