Xinxin Ming

[bell ringing] The following Dharma talk was given at Boundless Way Zen Temple in Worcester, Massachusetts.

From the XinXin Ming, The Heart of True and Trusting by Sengts'an.

"Obey the true nature of things, and you walk freely and undisturbed.

Bound by thought, truth is hidden, and everything seems unclear." This poem or song by the third Chinese ancestor is full of instructions about how to live our lives as Zen practitioners.

But what if the adults had learned it from their parents and how many generations back? What if the model was wrong? Or what if the model was outdated? Now, this next story I'm about to share with you, before I go into the story...

I'm going to share a little piece from a book called the Xin Xin Ming, which is an old document.

It's about eight pages.

There's a lot of truth and wisdom in those eight pages, so consider this an introduction to the Xin Xin Ming, and it will probably come up on this show often.

I like to hold a lot of the truths that I find in this book to create my own model of the world and allow myself to sit in that.

So I will read it here from the book verbatim so that I don't mess it up.