一、这个概念在说什么
《古尊宿語錄》 (Gǔ Zūn Sù Yǔ Lù, "Recorded Sayings of the Ancient Worthies") is a Chan (Zen) anthology, and its treatment of "此心" is striking for what it refuses to do. The text never renames it. It does not become 本心 (běn xīn, "original mind"), 真心 (zhēn xīn, "true mind"), 自心 (zì xīn, "self-mind"), nor is it reclassified as 识 (shí, vijñāna, consciousness), 心王 (xīn wáng, citta, the "mind-king"), or 心所 (xīn suǒ, caitta, mental factors). It remains, stubbornly, "this mind" — 此心, two characters, with the demonstrative 此 (cǐ, "this") doing the heavy lifting. That demonstrative is a pointer, not a definition. It says: not the mind as a metaphysical substance, not the mind as a doctrinal category, but *this* mind — the one right here, in this very scene, in this body, in this moment's weather.
The text's method matches its refusal. It does not begin with doctrinal exposition. It places 此心 inside concrete situations — a springtime forest, a hermitage by a pond, an official walking with a cane, Fool's Stream flowing past — and lets the meaning emerge from the setting itself. This is a Chan gesture worth honoring: the concept is not separable from the situations in which it shows itself.
Four facets of 此心 emerge, all interlocking:
1. 自在 (Zìzài) — Inherent Freedom, Not Earned Liberty
须信此心能自在 — "You must trust that this mind can be free."
The verb 须信 (xū xìn, "must trust / must have faith in") is decisive. 自在 is not something achieved, nor a freedom contingent on circumstances. The passage places this claim inside a portrait of an official — the Jiangxi 漕 (cáo, transport commissioner), a substantial bureaucratic post — who still walks with a 藜杖 (lí zhàng, a walking stick made of thornwood, the cane of an elder), who opens old texts, and who is described as 随法界而在微尘 ("alongside the dharma-realm, present within a particle of dust"). The closing line, 外官作论总非尘 ("an external official's discourse is never dust [i.e., never trivial]"), refuses to write officialdom and discourse as hindrances to this mind.
The point is subtle and important: 自在这里 is not the opposite of being constrained. It is the mind's quality that does not depend on external conditions being a certain way. The Jiangxi commissioner can be an elder; the official role does not reach the elder. 自在 is what is already so, awaiting our 须信 — our willingness to trust it.
2. 任真 (Rèn Zhēn) — Entrusting Oneself to What Is Genuinely So
此心若似愚溪水，天下悠悠总任真 — "If this mind is like the water of Fool's Stream, then through all the vast and unhurried world, one can always entrust oneself to what is genuinely so."
The 愚溪 (Yú Xī, "Fool's Stream") is a deliberate literary allusion. Liu Zongyuan (773–819), the Tang essayist and poet, wrote the famous 愚溪诗序 ("Preface to Poems on Fool's Stream") about a stream the local world dismissed as useless — it could not irrigate fields, could not carry boats, could not be made to serve — and which he renamed 愚溪 and claimed as his own, precisely because it was unfit for the world's uses and therefore pure. The allusion carries: a stream the world calls foolish, that flows regardless, that does not exhaust itself.
任 (rèn) here is best read as "to entrust oneself to, to let be, to follow" — not "to force" or "to assert." 真 (zhēn) is "genuinely so, naturally real" — not a doctrinal absolute but the quality of a thing being what it is without distortion. The water-image connects to the previous line about 济用古今流不尽 ("aid that flows on, ancient and modern, never exhausted"). Together they form a single imagistic statement: this mind, like Fool's Stream, flows continuously, is not depleted by the world's demands, and can be entrusted to in any circumstance. 任真 is not a project of becoming more authentic; it is the mind not fighting with what is.
3. 亲近 / 狎 (Qīnjìn / Xiá) — Intimacy, Not Understanding
谁同狎此心 — "Who could share intimate familiarity with this mind?"
狎 (xiá) is a particular word: it names the easy closeness that comes from long acquaintance, the familiarity of those who have been together often. It is not knowledge, not comprehension, not even affinity in the emotional sense — it is the quality of being at ease *with*. The setting tells us where this intimacy lives: 林下春时 (lín xià chūn shí, "in the forest, in springtime"), with 野花不尽 ("endless wildflowers") and 巖檜冷森 ("cold, dense junipers on the cliffs") — both spring's lushness and the forest's austerity present at once.
The 谁同 (shéi tóng, "who could share this with") is not a question awaiting an answer. It is a pointing to the rarity — and the possibility — of being intimate with one's own mind. Most of us are acquainted with our thoughts, our moods, our reactions; very few of us are *intimate* with this mind in the sense of having sat with it long enough to be at ease.
4. 会得 (Huì Dé) — Encountering, Not Figuring Out
此心谁会得 — "Who can encounter this mind?"
会 (huì) here is closer to "to meet, to encounter, to find oneself face-to-face with" than to "to understand." The setting: 久息游方 ("long ceased wandering from place to place"), 庵居亲道 ("dwelling in a hermitage, close to the way"), 池中莲老 ("old lotuses in the pond"), 门前事新 ("the affairs at the door are fresh"), 寂寂似无人 ("so quiet as if no one is there"). And the answer-like closing image: 庭栢对长春 ("the courtyard cypress faces eternal spring").
This image is not a metaphor to decode. The text does not say "the cypress *symbolizes* something." It lets the cypress facing eternal spring *be* the answer. 会得 here is not a special event of awakening, but a quality of dwelling where one already is — quiet enough, settled enough, present enough that 此心 is no longer something sought. The cypress does not "attain" facing eternal spring; it simply faces it, season after season.
The four facets — 自在, 任真, 亲近/狎, 会得 — are not four separate doctrines. They are four sides of one pointing: 此心 is inherently free, flows naturally toward what is real, is to be lived with intimately, and is encountered where one already is.
二、生活里的走查
The most common failure in mapping 此心 to contemporary life is to treat it as an abstraction first and a situation second. The text insists on the reverse. Let us walk through several familiar settings, mapping strictly to the classical definitions.
场景一：早高峰通勤，耳机里播着什么，眼睛盯着手机
The 此心 is right here — in the body pressed against the subway pole, in the slight irritation, in the half-attention. But 谁同狎此心 ("who could share intimate familiarity with this mind") shows up precisely here, and most honestly. We are physically present to ourselves yet intimate with almost nothing about our own experience — we are intimate with the podcast, the news feed, the message thread. The springtime forest with endless wildflowers and cold junipers has been replaced by notification badges and curated feeds. This is not a moral failure; it is just what habitual attention looks like. The 此心 has not gone anywhere; its 自在 has not been revoked. The intimacy simply has not been cultivated. 须信 ("must trust") is what is needed first — a willingness to believe this mind is *here*, in the dull commute, before any special technique is applied.
A common mis-mapping here is to imagine that being present to 此心 means quitting the commute, or the phone, or the podcast. The Jiangxi commissioner did not resign to be free. 自在 is what allows him to be an official and an elder simultaneously. Likewise, the 此心 on the commute is not asking the commute to end.
场景二：一个被角色吞噬的中年人
Vice President, founder, primary parent, senior partner — contemporary life offers countless roles that try to fully consume a person. The portrait of the Jiangxi commissioner is directly addressed to this. He is shown *按行为江西漕* (officially serving as Jiangxi transport commissioner) — a substantial post — yet *still* walks with the cane of an elder (藜杖长者). The text is not advocating quitting the role. It is pointing out that the role never reached the elder. The 此心's 自在 is not at stake; it is simply not being noticed because the role is so loud.
须信 here is what cuts through. Not a new technique, not a meditation retreat — just a willingness to trust that this mind is free of the role, even while the role is being performed. Many contemporary people discover this in a small moment: walking out of a difficult meeting, the role still on them, and yet something underneath is utterly unconcerned. That "something underneath" is the 此心 the text is pointing at.
场景三：和亲近的人吵架之后的沉默
The argument is over. There is the residue — the self-conscious narrative: *I should have been calmer, I should have said X, I am failing at being a good partner/parent/friend.* Here 任真 is the operative facet, and Fool's Stream is the right image.
Water flowing around a rock does not perform being water. It does not argue with the rock about its shape. It does not exhaust itself proving it is calm. After an argument, many people try to "be authentic" — but 任真 is not authenticity as a project. 任 is *entrusting oneself to* a natural movement. The mind after the argument is already moving — toward self-criticism, or toward exhaustion, or toward resolution. 任真 is not imposing a different movement on top; it is the willingness to be moved by what is actually moving, without overlaying a second narrative of how one "should" be moving.
The common mis-mapping is to translate 任真 as "following your truth" — a phrase that imports self-help frameworks of personal authenticity. That reading tends to make 此心 into an inner essence to be expressed. Fool's Stream is not expressing an essence. It is flowing.
场景四：深夜刷手机，准备睡觉却停不下来
This is the most honest contemporary setting for 会得. The day is over, the room is quiet, the body is tired — and yet the hand keeps reaching. The hermitage scene (久息游方, 庵居亲道, 寂寂似无人) is precisely this kind of quiet. And the closing image — 庭栢对长春 ("the courtyard cypress faces eternal spring") — is precisely the alternative: not chasing, but being present to what is already here, including one's own tiredness, the room's silence, the always-renewing.
会得 is not "figuring out" the mind. It is encountering it — the way one encounters a friend one hasn't seen in a long while, who has been there all along in the same place. The late-night scroll is, in a strange way, the opposite of 会得: not encountering but evading. 此心 谁会得 ("who can encounter this mind") is asked precisely because the encounter is so easy to miss.
A mis-mapping to avoid: this is not a call for sleep hygiene, nor for "digital detox" as a productivity strategy. The cypress is not optimizing its facing of eternal spring. The pointing is toward a quality of dwelling, not a technique for better rest.
场景五：带一个正在崩溃的幼儿
The Fool's Stream image is helpful here. Water does not try to redirect a toddler's current. It flows around the rock. The parent who embodies 任真 in this moment is not performing patience, not suppressing their own frustration, not making a project of being a calm parent. Their mind is still flowing — just around the immediate difficulty. The toddler's storm is the rock; the parent's mind is the stream. Neither is asked to disappear.
A mis-mapping to watch for: 任真 is not "don't feel the frustration." Fool's Stream does flow around the rock, but it does flow — the current is real, the diverted water is real. Suppressing the feeling would be the opposite of 任真. What is asked is that the feeling not be at war with what is, not be overlaid with a second narrative ("I shouldn't feel this") that distorts the first.
场景六：长期独居或长期关系中，某种说不清的孤独
This is where 谁同狎此心 lands hardest. Loneliness is often described as the absence of others, but the deeper form is the absence of intimacy with one's own mind. People can describe themselves at length — preferences, history, traumas, aspirations — yet cannot actually be with themselves for ten minutes without reaching for distraction. 狎 names exactly what is missing: the easy, long-acquainted closeness.
The text is not offering a solution here. It is offering a recognition. The rarity of 狎 with 此心 is named in the very question 谁同 ("who could share this with"). For contemporary people, this recognition alone can shift something: the loneliness was never purely about other people.
三、当代人为什么需要它
Three contemporary conditions make this pointing particularly necessary.
1. The Exhaustion of Identity-Performance
Contemporary life asks for constant curation: professional LinkedIn, personal Instagram, the version of oneself in the family group chat, the version in the friendship group, the version at the conference. Each role wants a slightly different self, and the maintenance is endless. This produces a peculiar fatigue — not physical tiredness, but the tiredness of being a manager of selves. The 此心 in 《古尊宿語錄》, with its insistence that 自在 does not depend on external roles (the Jiangxi commissioner is still an elder), offers a counter-movement. Not another identity to perform, but a recognition that the mind was never actually bound to these performances. 任真 here is the relief of not having to *be* any version of oneself — the relief of water simply flowing.
2. The Crisis of Intimacy with One's Own Mind
There is a particular kind of unavailability to oneself that has become common — the sense of being slightly out of reach to oneself, of knowing one's reactions and yet not being *with* them. 谁同狎此心 names this exactly. Many contemporary therapies, contemplative practices, and self-help frameworks are, in effect, attempts to restore this 狎. But they often reach for it through complexity. The Chan pointing is simpler: 此心 is already here; the intimacy is what is being asked for, and it is a quality of dwelling, not a product of analysis.
3. The Need for an Alternative to Optimization
Much contemporary self-development is oriented toward improvement — faster, clearer, more productive, more aware. The 此心 pointed at in 《古尊宿語錄》 is not about improvement. 会得 is encountering, not becoming. The cypress facing eternal spring is not optimizing its facing; it is simply facing. This is not passivity; it is a different orientation toward time and self, one that does not measure itself by progress. For people exhausted by self-optimization, this reorientation can feel like setting down a heavy bag they did not remember picking up.
四、常见误读与澄清
误读一：把 此心 当成本心、真心、或自心
These are related but not interchangeable terms in Chan and broader Buddhist literature. 本心 tends to relocate 此心 to an "original" or primordial level, often implying a true mind behind a false one. 真心 sets up the same opposition, more explicitly. 自心 points to a self-related mind, which can slide toward a subject-object framework. 《古尊宿語錄》's stubborn use of 此心 (and only 此心) is itself a refusal of these moves. The 此 (this) is deictic — pointing to whatever is actually here, in this scene, in this body, in this moment. Treating 此心 as 本心 tends to make it something to recover or uncover; treating it as 真心 tends to make it something to purify; treating it as 自心 tends to make it something that belongs to a self. The text's pointing sidesteps all three.
误读二：自在 = 想做什么就做什么
This is a significant misunderstanding, common in translations and popularizations that treat 自在 as "freedom" in the liberal-individual sense. The Jiangxi commissioner passage makes the difference clear: 自在 is not the absence of constraint, nor is it the ability to do whatever one wants. It is a quality of the mind that does not depend on circumstances. The commissioner is constrained by his post, by his cane, by his age — and yet 此心 能自在. 自在 is therefore closer to "natural ease" or "inherent unconstrainedness" — a quality that can be present within constraints, not the removal of constraints.
误读三：任真 = 做真实的自己
This translation is everywhere in popular Buddhist-influenced discourse, and it imports a self-expressive, individualistic framework that the Fool's Stream image does not support. Water flowing is not "expressing itself." It is flowing. 任 (rèn) is closer to "to entrust oneself to, to follow" — a yielding to a natural movement, not an assertion of an inner essence. 真 (zhēn) here is not "my truth" or "my authentic self" but the quality of being what one is without distortion. Fool's Stream is not the authentic self of water; it is water being water, regardless of whether the world calls it useful or foolish.
误读四：会得 = 悟道 / 突然开悟
会 (huì) in this context is closer to "to meet, to encounter, to find oneself with" than to "to realize intellectually" or "to have an awakening experience." The hermitage scene ending with 庭栢对长春 ("the cypress faces eternal spring") is decisive: there is no awakening-event here, just the cypress doing what cypresses do. 会得 is therefore a quality of dwelling where encounter is already happening, not a peak experience to be sought. Mapping it onto "sudden enlightenment" tends to make 此心 into the object of a special achievement; the text's pointing is much more modest and much more radical — 此心 is being met right now, in the very scene being read, if the dwelling is quiet enough.
误读五：野花、庭栢、愚溪、莲、巖檜 都是装饰性的诗意
This is perhaps the deepest misreading, because it undoes the text's central gesture. 《古尊宿語錄》 does not offer abstract definitions of 此心 and then illustrate them with natural imagery. It refuses to offer abstract definitions at all. The wildflowers, the cold junipers, Fool's Stream, the old lotuses, the courtyard cypress are not illustrations of 此心 — they are the *settings* in which 此心 shows itself. To read them as decoration is to lose the very method. 此心 is not separable from the spring forest, the hermitage by the pond, the official walking with his cane. The text's refusal to define 此心 apart from these settings is what makes its pointing distinct from doctrinal exposition.
误读六：此心 是某种内在实体
Because 此心 contains 心 (mind/heart), Western-influenced readers often map it to "inner self," "inner essence," or "true self within." This mapping is misleading. 此心, as pointed at in 《古尊宿語錄》, is not a thing, not a substance, not an essence — even an inner one. It is something more like an activity (flowing like water, being free within circumstances) or a quality (自在, 任真) than a thing. The Fool's Stream image is again clarifying: water is not a substance-image but an activity-image. 此心 is closer to how things are than to what things are.
结语
此心 in 《古尊宿語錄》 is a Chan pointing that refuses to be domesticated into a definition. It stands in two characters, points with a demonstrative, and shows itself only in the settings where it is already happening — a forest, a hermitage, an official's walk, a stream. Its four facets — 自在 (inherent freedom), 任真 (entrusting oneself to what is genuine), 亲近/狎 (long-acquainted intimacy), 会得 (encountering) — are not separate doctrines but four sides of one pointing toward the mind that is here, regardless of role, regardless of circumstances, regardless of how the world names it.
For contemporary people, this pointing cuts against several dominant habits: the habit of identity-performance, the habit of optimizing self, the habit of being intimate with everything except one's own mind. The text does not offer a method to overcome these habits. It offers something simpler and more difficult — the willingness to trust (须信) that 此心 is here, in the commute, in the meeting, in the argument, in the late-night silence, in the toddler's storm. The wildflowers are still out. The cypress is still facing eternal spring. The question is not whether 此心 is present. The question, as the text puts it, is simply: 谁同狎此心? 此心谁会得?