Night 1 · Prologue · The week's question

Bring Me Your Mind

将心来

光曰：“我心未宁，乞师与安。”师曰：“将心来，与汝安。”曰：“觅心了不可得。”师曰：“我与汝安心竟。”

Huike said, “My mind is not at peace. Master, please put it at rest.” The master said, “Bring me your mind, and I will put it at rest.” Huike said, “I have looked for my mind, and I cannot find it.” The master said, “There. I have put it at rest for you.”

Record of the Transmission of the Lamp (Jingde Chuandeng Lu), Book 3. “Guang” in the Chinese is Huike, whose earlier name was Shenguang.

02 Tonight

It is late, and your mind is doing what it usually does at this hour. Nothing dramatic. It just won't stop. A sentence from the afternoon, a task for tomorrow, taking turns at the front of the line. You ask it to be quiet, and it keeps going.

03 How the ancients saw it

The Chan records tell this story, and like many early Chan stories it sits somewhere between history and legend.

Fifteen hundred years ago, on a winter night in the mountains of northern China, a man named Huike stood outside a cave. Inside, an old teacher sat facing the wall. It snowed. Huike did not go in, and nobody invited him. By morning the snow was up to his knees.

When the teacher finally turned around, Huike asked for one thing. He didn't ask for wisdom or a method. He said: my mind is not at peace. Please put it at rest.

The teacher, Bodhidharma, gave an answer that sounds almost rude. Bring it here, he said. Hand me your mind and I'll settle it.

So Huike looked. Nobody knows for how long. The record only keeps what he said when he came back: “I have looked for my mind, and I cannot find it.”

“There,” said Bodhidharma. “I have put it at rest for you.”

You may know Huike's night better than you think. Lying awake, the mind feels like one solid, faulty object, a machine stuck in the on position, and if someone could reach in and flip the switch, you would sleep. Try Huike's experiment for a moment. Go looking for the restless mind itself. You'll find a sentence from today's meeting. A tightness under the ribs. The hum of the fridge. A worry about Thursday. Each one arrives and passes. None of them stays still long enough to be the thing that needs fixing.

This series starts there. Each night brings a few minutes from the old Chinese books: Zhuangzi, the philosopher Wang Yangming, the Chan masters, and the poet Su Shi, who spent more sleepless nights in exile than most of us ever will. None of them is here to cure anything. They thought hard about the hour you are in, and they left notes.

04 One line for the pillow

Look for the restless mind. Notice what you find instead.

05 A quiet image to end on

Picture the cave. Snow falls past the entrance, slow and soundless, covering the path, the stones, the footprints of whoever came before. Nobody has to do anything about it. It keeps falling, and the mountain goes quiet underneath.

Words of the night