The great Way has no impediments;
It does not pick and choose.
When you abandon attachment and aversion
You see it plainly.
Make a thousandth of an inch distinction,
Heaven and earth swing apart.
If you want it to appear before your eyes,
Cherish neither for nor against.
To compare what you like with what you dislike,
That is the disease of the mind.
You pass over the hidden meaning;
Peace of mind is needlessly troubled.
It is round and perfect like vast space,
Lacks nothing, never overflows.
Only because we take and reject
Do we lose the means to know its Suchness.
Don’t get tangled in outward desire
Or get caught within yourself.
Once you plant deep the longing for peace
Confusion leaves of itself.
Return to the root and find meaning;
Follow sense objects, you lose the goal.
Just one instant of inner enlightenment
Will take you far beyond the emptiness of the world.
Selfish attachment forgets all limits;
It always leads down evil roads.
When you let go of it, things happen of themselves;
The substance neither goes nor abides.
If the eye does not sleep
All dreams will naturally stop.
If the mind does not differentiate
All things are of one Suchness.
When you fathom the realm of Suchness
You instantly forget all selfish desire.
Having seen ten thousand things as one
You return to your natural state.
Without meditation
Consciousness and feeling are hard to grasp.
In the realm of Suchness
There is neither self nor other.
In the one, there is the all.
In the all, there is the one.
If you know this,
You will never worry about being incomplete.
If belief and mind are made the same
And there is no division between belief and mind
The road of words comes to an end,
Beyond present and future.
Seng Ts’an (d. 606) was a Chinese sage, the Third Patriarch of Ch’an (Zen) Buddhism. This passage is published in Easwaran’s spiritual anthologies, “God Makes the Rivers to Flow” and “Timeless Wisdom.” The audio recording is by Eknath Easwaran.