Sosan’s “Hsin Hsin Ming” or “Trust in Mind” distills the essence of early Zen into a teaching on non-dual awareness. At its heart is the insight that reality is fundamentally undivided, while the mind habitually splits experience into opposites such as good and bad, self and other, motion and stillness, being and non-being. These divisions are described as mental constructions, not features of reality itself. Suffering arises precisely from clinging to such distinctions and from the judgments that accompany them. The poem therefore points toward a way of seeing in which these opposites are recognized as empty constructs, and the underlying unity of all things is allowed to reveal itself.

A central theme is the relinquishment of preferences and aversions. The famous line about the Great Way not being difficult for those without preferences encapsulates this: liberation is obscured when the mind is caught in liking and disliking, acceptance and rejection. This does not advocate passivity, but rather freedom from compulsive grasping and rejecting. When the mind no longer interferes with experience through constant evaluation, it returns to its natural functioning. In that natural state, everyday activities unfold in harmony with what is called the Great Way or universal Dharma.

The poem also speaks of “mind” as an original, complete nature that does not need to be improved or supplemented. Trusting in mind, in this sense, means relying on an inherent wisdom and clarity rather than on proliferating concepts and theories. Discriminating thought and elaborate views are portrayed as incapable of grasping the Way; they only multiply confusion. The text thus encourages a kind of non-striving: enlightenment is not treated as a distant goal to be chased, but as the recognition of what has always been present when interference ceases. Seeking, in the usual grasping sense, becomes an obstacle, while non-interference allows this original mind to manifest.

Practically, the poem functions as both instruction and meditation guidance. It invites a return to a “not-knowing” that is free from rigid conceptual frameworks and preconceptions. In such a state, things are met directly, as they are, without the filter of judgmental thinking. This direct, uncontrived awareness is what the poem calls trusting in mind: a quiet confidence in the mind’s inherent completeness, in which dualistic grasping falls away and intrinsic peace becomes evident.