Xinxin Ming
Inscription on Faith in Mind《信心銘》
A reading guide and complete Chinese–English translation of the earliest surviving Chan poem — 584 characters, traditionally attributed to the Third Patriarch Sengcan, compressing the whole teaching of non-duality into one unbroken argument that never once pauses for a story, a dialogue, or an image.
- Chinese
- 《信心銘》, "Inscription on Faith in Mind" — traditionally attributed to Sengcan (僧璨, d. 606), Third Patriarch of Chan, though modern scholarship treats the attribution as uncertain rather than settled.
- Genre
- A ming (銘) — an "inscription," a short verse form originally meant to be carved or engraved, built here entirely in four-character lines, in the manner of the older Book of Documents and ritual bronze inscriptions it borrows its form from.
- Tradition
- Chan (禪) — read across every branch of the tradition, and, because it never names a school or lineage, claimed by none of them exclusively.
- Length
- 584 Chinese characters, 146 lines of four characters each — short enough to memorize, dense enough that a single reading rarely exhausts it.
- Structure
- One continuous argument, not a set of separate sayings — each line answers or complicates the one before it, building toward the closing claim that faith and mind, and the "two" of any kind at all, were never actually two.
- Difficulty
- ★★★★☆ to read — the vocabulary is plain, but the poem assumes a reader already oriented toward non-dual thinking; taken as doctrine to be parsed clause by clause, it resists paraphrase by design.
Why the Xinxin Ming
If the Platform Sūtra gives Chan its most famous story — a rice-pounder in the kitchen who out-verses the head monk — the Xinxin Ming gives it something the tradition otherwise rarely produces: a sustained, first-person, non-narrative argument. There is no dialogue here, no questioner, no monastery, no anecdote. Just one hundred and forty-six lines of four characters each, moving in a single unbroken line of reasoning from the opening claim — that the Great Way is not difficult for those who have no preferences — to the closing one, that faith and mind were never two things to begin with.
It is, by common reckoning, the oldest Chan poem to survive, predating the Platform Sūtra by roughly a century, and it is written in a form — the ming, a four-character inscriptional verse going back to bronze-vessel dedications and the older strata of the classical canon — that itself signals continuity with a much older Chinese literary practice rather than an entirely new genre invented for Buddhist use. That combination, a radically non-dual teaching delivered in one of Chinese literature's most conservative verse forms, is part of what has kept it central to Chan and Zen practice for over a thousand years, chanted and studied across every branch of the tradition without belonging exclusively to any one of them.
Who wrote it, and what we actually know
Tradition assigns the Xinxin Ming to Sengcan (僧璨, d. 606), the Third Patriarch of Chan in the standard six-patriarch lineage running from Bodhidharma through Huineng — the same Sengcan who, by legend, was cured of leprosy by the Second Patriarch Huike and later transmitted the robe and bowl to the Fourth Patriarch Daoxin. Almost nothing reliable survives about Sengcan's actual life; even his death date rests on inscriptional and later hagiographic sources rather than contemporary record. Modern textual scholarship has additionally raised doubts about whether Sengcan himself composed this specific poem, noting that the text is not securely attested until well after his lifetime and that its polished, fully developed non-dual vocabulary reads to some scholars as more consistent with a later period of Chan's literary development. This guide follows the traditional attribution, as the site's other pages do, while flagging the uncertainty honestly rather than presenting Sengcan's authorship as settled fact.
The argument in outline
Read straight through, the poem does not wander; it builds. It opens by locating the entire obstacle to the Way in a single habit: preference, the reflex of choosing and avoiding (揀擇). From there it works through a series of pairs — stillness and movement, the one and the two, subject and object, emptiness and form — showing, each time, that grasping either side of the pair, or even trying to unify them by force, only recreates the division it was meant to solve. Its central technical move, introduced roughly a third of the way through and returned to throughout, is that even "the one" is not something to hold onto: unity itself is a position that can still be clung to, and clinging to it just relocates the disease of preference rather than curing it. The poem's own resolution is not synthesis but release — "let it go, let it be natural" (放之自然) — arriving, by its final lines, at a formula it repeats three ways in a row: the one is the all, the all is the one, and faith and mind were never two things that needed joining.
How to actually read this text
Three ways in, from lightest to deepest:
- Read it once straight through, out loud if you can. Four-character lines were built for chanting; the poem's rhythm carries meaning that a silent, clause-by-clause reading can flatten.
- Track one pair at a time. Pick a single opposition — stillness and motion, or the one and the two — and follow only that thread from the opening lines to the close, rather than trying to hold the whole argument at once on a first pass.
- Sit with the closing lines. "The one is exactly the all; the all is exactly the one" (一即一切，一切即一) is worth holding in meditation on its own, not as a proposition to accept or reject, but as a question about what "two" ever meant to you in the first place.
A note on this translation
The Chinese text below follows the version preserved in the Jingde Chuandeng Lu (景德傳燈錄, "Record of the Transmission of the Lamp," compiled 1004), the standard received text, cross-checked against the Taishō edition (T2010) catalogued under Sengcan's name. Minor character variants exist across editions — for example 精麤 versus the simplified-orthography 精粗, or 慎勿追尋 versus 慎莫追尋 — none of which affect meaning; this page follows the Chuandeng Lu reading throughout. Unlike most other texts on this site, the Xinxin Ming does not carry an unbroken tradition of line-by-line doctrinal commentary from a single named historical figure the way, for instance, the Platform Sūtra is read here with Hanshan Deqing, or the Amitābha Sūtra with Ouyi Zhixu. Numerous modern teachers have lectured on it — Sheng Yen and Hsuan Hua both left extended talks on the text — but this page's reading notes are Ru-Yi Meditation Center's own, written to walk a reader through the poem's structure rather than reproducing or paraphrasing any one modern teacher's lecture. See also this site's general note on translation method.
Key Terms
The Translation
1. The Great Way Needs No Choosing
至道無難，唯嫌揀擇。但莫憎愛，洞然明白。
The Great Way is not hard for those who have no preferences. Only when you stop loving and hating does it appear, entire and clear.
毫釐有差，天地懸隔。欲得現前，莫存順逆。
Make the smallest distinction, however, and heaven and earth are set infinitely apart. If you want it to appear before you, hold no thought of for or against.
違順相爭，是為心病。不識玄旨，徒勞念靜。
To struggle between what you oppose and what you favor — this is the disease of the mind. Not seeing the deep meaning of the way, you work your thoughts to no purpose, trying to calm them.
圓同太虛，無欠無餘。良由取捨，所以不如。
It is perfect, like vast space, wanting nothing, excluding nothing. It is only because you keep choosing and rejecting that you cannot see its suchness.
The poem opens by naming the entire problem in its first line: not ignorance, not karma, not desire in the ordinary sense, but 揀擇 — choosing and rejecting, the reflex of preference itself. Its claim is exact and almost clinical: the Way does not become difficult through some large failure, but through the smallest possible bias toward one thing and against another, a bias so fine that "the smallest distinction" is enough to set heaven and earth apart. Loving and hating (憎愛) are named as the concrete form this preference takes — not exotic afflictions, but the ordinary daily motion of liking one thing and disliking another.
2. Neither Grasping the World Nor Refusing It
莫逐有緣，勿住空忍。一種平懷，泯然自盡。
Neither chase after entangling conditions nor dwell in empty acceptance. Hold to a single oneness of mind, and all such things vanish of themselves.
止動歸止，止更彌動。唯滯兩邊，寧知一種。
Try to stop activity by stillness, and your stillness only becomes more active. Stay in the two extremes, and how can you know they are one?
一種不通，兩處失功。遣有沒有，從空背空。
Failing to penetrate the oneness, you lose the working of both. Push existence away, and you fall into it; follow emptiness, and you turn your back on it.
多言多慮，轉不相應。絕言絕慮，無處不通。
The more you talk and think about it, the further you are from the truth. Stop talking, stop thinking, and there is nowhere it is not open to you.
Having named preference as the disease, the poem immediately heads off the most tempting cure: trying to force stillness onto a restless mind. "Stop activity by stillness, and your stillness only becomes more active" — because deliberately suppressing motion is itself a preference, just relocated. The same warning is given from the opposite direction a few lines later: neither "chase after entangling conditions" (grasping at the world) nor "dwell in empty acceptance" (retreating into a flat, indifferent quietism). Both are read here as two forms of the identical error, taking sides within a pair that was never really two things to take sides between.
3. Turning the Light Around
歸根得旨，隨照失宗。須臾返照，勝卻前空。
Return to the root and you find the meaning; chase the light and you lose it. One instant of turning the light around outweighs the emptiness you sought before.
前空轉變，皆由妄見。不用求真，唯須息見。
That earlier emptiness which seemed to shift and change did so only because of deluded views. There is no need to search for the truth — only stop having views.
二見不住，慎勿追尋。纔有是非，紛然失心。
Do not dwell in dualistic views; take care not to pursue them. As soon as right and wrong appear, the mind is lost in confusion.
This section introduces the poem's central technical move — "return to the root and you find the meaning; chase the light and you lose it" (歸根得旨，隨照失宗). "Chasing the light" here means following consciousness outward toward its objects, always one step behind whatever it illuminates; "turning the light around" (返照, a phrase that becomes a formal meditation instruction in later Chan literature) means letting attention fold back onto the very activity of attending, rather than onto what it happens to be attending to. The poem's claim is startlingly economical: a single instant of this reversal outweighs an entire prior effort spent cultivating emptiness as an object to be attained.
4. One Mind, No Fault
二由一有，一亦莫守。一心不生，萬法無咎。
The two exist because of the one — but do not hold on to the one, either. When the one mind does not stir, the ten thousand things are without fault.
無咎無法，不生不心。能隨境滅，境逐能沉。
Without fault, there are no things; unstirring, there is no mind. The perceiving subject vanishes with the object; the object sinks away with the subject.
境由能境，能由境能。欲知兩段，元是一空。
The object is an object because of the subject; the subject is a subject because of the object. If you want to know these two, understand that from the start they are a single emptiness.
一空同兩，齊含萬象。不見精麤，寧有偏黨。
In this single emptiness the two are the same, each containing the ten thousand forms. See no coarse and no fine, and how could there be any partiality?
Here the poem performs its most consequential move: having spent its opening third dismantling ordinary dualities, it now turns the same treatment on unity itself. "The two exist because of the one — but do not hold on to the one, either." Even "one mind" (一心) is not a position to plant a flag in; grasped as an object, it becomes just one more preference, monism replacing dualism without actually curing the underlying disease. The following lines work through subject and object (能 and 境) as a matched pair, each existing only in relation to the other — neither one, by itself, a solid thing to stand on.
5. Release, Not Effort
大道體寬，無易無難。小見狐疑，轉急轉遲。
The Great Way is broad in its very substance — neither easy nor hard. It is small views that hesitate and doubt; the more they hurry, the slower they go.
執之失度，必入邪路。放之自然，體無去住。
Grasp at it and you lose all measure, certain to go astray. Let it go, let it be natural, and its substance neither comes nor goes.
任性合道，逍遙絕惱。繫念乖真，昏沉不好。
Follow your nature and accord with the Way — wander free, and all vexation ends. Bind your thoughts and you turn from the truth, sinking into a dullness that is no good at all.
不好勞神，何用疏親。欲取一乘，勿惡六塵。
It is no good to wear out the spirit — what use is there in preferring this and rejecting that? If you want to enter the single vehicle, do not despise the six sense-realms.
六塵不惡，還同正覺。智者無為，愚人自縛。
Not despising the six sense-realms is itself identical with true awakening. The wise do nothing at all; the foolish tie themselves up.
A long, practical middle section, and the closest the poem comes to direct instruction. Its central verb is 放, to release or let go — not achieve, not force, not correct. "Grasp at it and you lose all measure, certain to go astray; let it go, let it be natural, and its substance neither comes nor goes." The section closes with a phrase that has become one of the poem's most quoted lines outside its immediate context: "if you want to enter the single vehicle, do not despise the six sense-realms" (勿惡六塵) — a direct rejection of any reading of this teaching as world-denying. The senses themselves are not the obstacle; aversion to them is.
6. The Root Delusion: Using Mind to Grasp Mind
法無異法，妄自愛著。將心用心，豈非大錯。
There is no separate dharma; it is only delusion that clings and attaches. To use the mind to grasp at the mind — is this not the greatest of errors?
迷生寂亂，悟無好惡。一切二邊，良由斟酌。
Delusion breeds stillness and disturbance; in awakening there is no liking or disliking. All dualities whatsoever arise only from measuring and weighing.
夢幻空華，何勞把捉。得失是非，一時放卻。
They are like dreams, illusions, flowers in the sky — why trouble to grasp at them? Gain and loss, right and wrong — let them all go at once.
眼若不眠，諸夢自除。心若不異，萬法一如。
If the eyes never sleep, all dreams cease of themselves. If the mind makes no distinctions, the ten thousand dharmas are of one suchness.
一如體玄，兀爾忘緣。萬法齊觀，歸復自然。
In the one suchness, the substance is itself mysterious; utterly still, all conditions are forgotten. Seeing the ten thousand dharmas as equal, one returns again to what is natural.
The poem names its sharpest image for the basic error here: "to use the mind to grasp at the mind — is this not the greatest of errors?" (將心用心，豈非大錯). This single line has been read by later Chan teachers as a warning against every method that treats awakening as an object the mind can go out and seize, no matter how refined the method. The section's closing lines — "dreams, illusions, flowers in the sky" — borrow directly from the stock Mahāyāna vocabulary for illusory phenomena found across the Prajñāpāramitā literature, applying it here specifically to gain and loss, right and wrong: not unreal in the sense of nonexistent, but unreal in the sense of not worth the grip we habitually keep on them.
7. Beyond Stillness and Motion
泯其所以，不可方比。止動無動，動止無止。
Erase the very reason for things, and no comparison remains possible. Stillness has no stillness apart from motion; motion has no motion apart from stillness.
兩既不成，一何有爾。究竟窮極，不存軌則。
Since the two cannot even be established, how could the one exist at all? Pursued to its final limit, no fixed rule remains.
契心平等，所作俱息。狐疑淨盡，正信調直。
Where mind accords with this equality, all doing comes to rest. Every trace of doubt is washed away, and true faith is set straight.
一切不留，無可記憶。虛明自照，不勞心力。
Nothing at all is retained; there is nothing to remember. Empty and bright, it illuminates itself, without any exertion of mental effort.
非思量處，識情難測。真如法界，無他無自。
This is not a place reached by thought — ordinary consciousness and feeling cannot fathom it. In the dharma-realm of true suchness, there is no other and no self.
A dense, almost mathematical passage working out the consequence of the poem's earlier move against dualism with full rigor: if stillness and motion are not really two, then "stillness has no stillness apart from motion; motion has no motion apart from stillness" — neither term can be defined except in relation to the other, which means neither, taken alone, has any independent reality to stand on. "Since the two cannot even be established, how could the one exist at all?" This is the poem's logic pressed to its own limit: not even oneness survives as a stable position once its dependence on "two" for its own meaning is fully traced out.
8. Not Two
要急相應，唯言不二。不二皆同，無不包容。
If you would swiftly accord with it, there is only this to say: not two. Not-two, all things are the same; there is nothing that is not embraced.
十方智者，皆入此宗。宗非促延，一念萬年。
The wise of the ten directions all enter this one source. This source knows no shortness and no length — one thought is ten thousand years.
無在不在，十方目前。極小同大，忘絕境界。
Whether present or not present, it is right before you in every direction. The smallest is the same as the largest, once every boundary is forgotten and gone.
極大同小，不見邊表。有即是無，無即是有。
The largest is the same as the smallest — no outer edge is to be seen. Being is precisely non-being; non-being is precisely being.
The poem's key term finally arrives in its own explicit language: "if you would swiftly accord with it, there is only this to say: not two" (唯言不二). What follows is a series of paired claims about scale and time built to demonstrate what "not two" actually means in practice rather than only in the abstract — one thought equal to ten thousand years, the smallest identical to the largest once every boundary is forgotten, being and non-being folding into each other rather than standing opposed. This is the poem's closest approach to the language later associated with Huayan's vision of mutual interpenetration, though the Xinxin Ming reaches it through non-dual argument rather than through Huayan's cosmological imagery of one world reflected in every atom of every other world.
9. Beyond Words
若不如是，必不須守。一即一切，一切即一。
Where it is not like this, there is nothing at all worth holding to. The one is exactly the all; the all is exactly the one.
但能如是，何慮不畢。信心不二，不二信心。
If only you can be like this, what is there left to worry over unfinished? Faith and mind are not two; not-two are faith and mind.
言語道斷，非去來今。
Here the path of words is cut off — for this is not a matter of past, future, or present.
The poem's final three couplets arrive at its most compressed formula, repeating essentially one claim three times from three angles: "the one is exactly the all; the all is exactly the one," and then, closing the circle all the way back to the poem's own title, "faith and mind are not two; not-two are faith and mind" (信心不二，不二信心) — the two characters of the title itself, 信 and 心, shown in these final lines to have been another instance of the very non-duality the whole poem has been arguing for. Its very last line then turns the argument on the poem's own medium: "the path of words is cut off" (言語道斷) — a poem built entirely of words arriving, by its own logic, at the limit of what words themselves can do, and naming that limit rather than pretending to cross it.
Resources
- 信心銘 · Wikisource — the public-domain digital edition of the Jingde Chuandeng Lu text this translation was made from.
- Taishō T2010 · CBETA — the Taishō canon edition, catalogued under Sengcan's name, at CBETA (Chinese Buddhist Electronic Text Association).
- Sengcan (僧璨, d. 606), Third Patriarch of Chan — the traditional, though not textually certain, attribution for this poem.
- Richard B. Clarke (trans.), Hsin Hsin Ming: Verses on the Faith Mind (White Pine Press, 1973/2001) — a widely read modern English translation, noted here only as historical context; this page's translation was made independently, directly from the Chinese.
Chinese source: Jingde Chuandeng Lu (1004), attributed to Sengcan, public domain. English translation and reading guide written for Ru-Yi Meditation Center. See also this site's note on translation method.
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