Concluding our look at famous teachings about meditation to support confidence in your search for the answer. The Faith in Mind Sutra is an amazing Chinese Buddhist Sutra by Bodhidharma’s student’s student from around 600AD. This link has everything about it. I pointed out the biographical note on the author, the introductory note by Maezumi Roshi whom I studied with in LA, the original text in ancient Chinese, an interesting translation by a professor from Yugoslavia, and the more common translation by D.T. Suzuki whom Rev. Gene Larr met with for tea when they were alive. Remember Bodhidharma brought Buddhism from India to China around 500AD and is famous for sitting facing a cave wall for 9 years, and even more famous for having created the 5 schools of Zen, Tea Ceremony, Kung Fu and Tai Chi while at Shaolin monastery. Like the Heart Sutra’s discussion of form and emptiness, Faith in Mind discusses non-duality. We use this term in a few different ways: 1) to describe the view of polar opposites like good/bad, hot/cold, love/hate, 2) to describe how we represent reality with words (reification) so there are both words and the thing they represent (e.g. finger and the moon it points to), and 3) to describe the experience of jhana (3rd, 4th, etc jhana to be specific). Also, this meaning is the same duality in quantum mechanics where there is an observer and an observed. When that goes away, you are not watching yourself breathing…there is only breathing. Faith in Mind is also about turning away from concern about circumstances. We often forget that meditation is not a vacation or spa treatment where we are supposed to feel better as a result. Meditation is fundamentally training. We are training ourselves to wake up and be our whole self. Then everything feels better regardless of circumstance. Faith in Mind tells us that we can trust our mind to awaken if only we stop striving with circumstances.