The Mind of Absolute Trust: Practicing with Preference

In this Wednesday Night Dharma Talk, Sensei Cynthia Ryotan explores the ancient Zen poem “The Mind of Absolute Trust” or “Xinxin Ming.” She unpacks how our preferences “chop up our lives and create suffering,” from minor choices like vanilla vs. chocolate to major political divisions that can feel “like a cleaver coming down.” Ryotan challenges us to examine our attachment to preferences, explaining how “that brutality, that harshness, that a cleaver can bring, come down in that moment [of preference] and can separate us from peace and ease and wellbeing.” Rather than living trapped in this cycle of separation and grasping, she explains that all our experiences are actually underpinned by oneness: “Just at the same time, the waters of the absolute are right here up at our chin level, and we could drink endlessly out of the absolute.” Ryotan connects these waters of ease and relief to our sitting practice, saying “this is why we do zazen, to put ourselves in the way of having these glimpses into the absolute.” Moving away from rigid dualism, she reminds us how we might find balance between these forces: “I have no control or extraordinarily little control over what happens to me in my life, but I have complete control over how I respond to it. That is our freedom and that is our liberation.” Ultimately, Ryotan and the poem “The Mind of Absolute Trust” are calling us to cultivate faith and trust in our ability to be nourished by the absolute while remaining in skillful service to our relative lives and relative world.