Tuesday, May 24, 2011

Will I get enlightened if I sleep with my Zen teacher?


















Nope! Only a zen fool ends up in bed with a foolish zen master!

Unless, maybe it could be karma?  Nope!!! "Even if causes and effects are destined to place one in danger, preventive measures can decrease or even avoid the suffering that would have otherwise occurred. The point is that cultivating virtuous and wholesome deeds can change the process of causes and conditions coming to fruition . Hence it is possible to change one's fate."....Master Sheng Yen in  Things Pertaining to Bodhi, pg. 57

These websites are essential reading (listening) for men and women.

http://dangerousharvests.blogspot.com/2011/02/genpo-roshi-falls-again.html
http://sweepingzen.com/2011/05/22/dharma-transmission-succession-a-sz-roundtable-discussion-podcast/
http://www.hoodiemonks.org/ShimanoArchive.html



There will be a class this Thursday.



 








Also check out these Chan sites of interest:
 

2. How to chan meditate:
 
3. How to chan meditate: Master Sheng Yen in Facebook

4. The Western Chan Fellowship at http://www.westernchanfellowship.org/


Call Adrian at 250 898 8201,
email adrian2@shaw.ca
Please notify me if you wish to be removed from the email list.


Tuesday, May 17, 2011

The Five Skandas are Empty
















"Sariputra,
Form is not other than emptiness.
Emptiness is not other than form.
Form is precisely emptiness.
Emptiness is precisely form.
So are sensation, volition, perception and consciousness."

In reference to the Heart Sutra, Buddha has already said that the five skandas were empty, yet he repeats his declaration that each of the five skandas...form, sensation, perception, volition and consciousness are empty. Buddha wants people to understand that true emptiness is total , encompasssing all physical and mental realms. The Buddha makes it clear that he is talking about ultimate emptiness---emptiness as reality---and not self-centered emptiness, analytical emptiness, or emptiness of only the self....There Is No Suffering, A Commentary on the Heart Sutra, by Master Sheng Yen, pg. 46.


The Prajnaparamita Heart Sutra

When the Bodhisattva Avolokiteshvara was coursing in the deep Prajnaparamita, he perceived that all five skandahs are empty, thereby transcending all sufferings.

Sariputra, form is not other than emptiness
And emptiness not other than form.
Form is precisely emptiness and emptiness precisely form.
So also are sensation, perception, volition and consciousness.
Sariputra, this voidness of all dharmas is not born, not destroyed, not impure, not pure, does not increase or decrease.
In voidness there is no form, and no sensation, perception, volition or consciousness;
No eye, ear, nose, tongue, body, mind;
No sight, sound, smell, taste, touch, thought;
There is no realm of the eye
All the way up to no realm of mental cogntion.
There is no ignorance and there is no ending of ignorance through to no aging and death and no end of ageing and death.
There is no suffering, no cause of suffering, no cessation of suffering, and no path.
There is no wisdom to attain, or any attainment.
With nothing to attain, Bodhisattvas relying on Prajnaparamita have no obstructions in their minds.
Having no obstructions, there is no fear and departing far from confusion and imaginings,
They reach Ultimate Nirvana.
All past, present and future Buddhas, relying on Prajnaparamita, attain Anuttara-Samyak-Sambodhi.
Therefore, know that Prajnaparamita is the great mantra of power,
The great mantra of wisdom, the supreme mantra,
The unequalled mantra, which is able to remove all sufferings.
It is real and not false.
Therefore recite the mantra of Prajnaparamita:
Gate, Gate, Paragate, Parasamgate, Bodhi Svaha.



















Also check out these Chan sites of interest:
 

2. How to chan meditate:
 
3. How to chan meditate: Master Sheng Yen in Facebook

4. The Western Chan Fellowship at http://www.westernchanfellowship.org/


Call Adrian at 250 898 8201,
email adrian2@shaw.ca
Please notify me if you wish to be removed from the email list.

Tuesday, May 10, 2011

retreat weekend on the 14th/15 of May
















Pure awareness is the primary practice of patriarchal Chan. Wisdom and compassion is the function of pure awareness. Pure awareness is only possible without the presence of self centered-ness, discrimination and attachments. If you cannot maintain pure awareness (and how many of us can!!), we can use either Silent Awakening or Huatou techniques to bring us back into a state of pure awareness.

Learn more about these methods this weekend. Please give me a call if you intend to attend. William Tsao is one of only 8 teachers worldwide accredited by Master Sheng Yen to teach both Silent Illumination and Huatou methods. We are really lucky in Courtenay to have the opportunity to be present to these teachings.

See Tidechange for more information. http://www.tidechange.ca/ (comox valley).








 












Also check out these Chan sites of interest:
 

2. How to chan meditate:
 
3. How to chan meditate: Master Sheng Yen in Facebook

4. The Western Chan Fellowship at http://www.westernchanfellowship.org/

Here are some photos from the teaching retreat  last weekend in Alert Bay, way up on the Johnstone Strait of North Vancouver Island:













Call Adrian at 250 898 8201,
email adrian2@shaw.ca
Please notify me if you wish to be removed from the email list.





























Tuesday, May 3, 2011

Solve the huatou and shatter the Great Doubt


Literally, huatou means "head, or crux, of a saying....that which occurs just before a thought arises in your mind. To practice huatou the practitioner recites the sentence or fragment in a questioning manner but without theorizing or analyzing in order to find an answer. If you tried to reason out the meaning of a huatou, this would be looking at the tail end of the thought, not the head. ...In practice, you must abandon concepts, knowledge, and previous experience until the huatou becomes the only thing in your mind, and you must eventually smash through the huatou itself."  from Master Sheng Yen in Shattering the Great Doubt, pg. 4.

Zenkei Shibayama, a Japanese Zen Master writes, "Like having bolted a red hot iron ball' describes the one who, with his whole body and soul, has plunged into the Great Doubt, the spiritual quest. All the emotions are exhausted, all the intellect has come to its extremity; there is not an inch for the discrimination to enter. This is the state of utmost spiritual intensification. When it is hot, the whole universe is nothing but the heat; when you see, it is just one pure act of seeing--there is no room there for any thought to come in. In such a state, Mumon warns us, never give up but straightforwardly carry on with your striving. In such a state no thought of discrimination can be present. "Illusory discriminating knowledge and consciousness accumulated up to now" refers to our dualistically working mind we have had before. No trace of it is now left. You are thoroughly lucid and transparent like a crystal. Subject and object, in and out, being and nonbeing are just one, and this very one ceases to be one any longer. Rinzai said, describing this state, "This whole universe is sheer darkness." Hakuin said, "It was like sitting in an ice cave a million miles thick." This is the moment when the I and the world are both altogether gone. This is exactly the moment when one's discriminating mind is emptied and cast away. When one is in the abyss of the absolute "Mu" in actual training, the inexpressible moment comes upon him--the moment when "Mu" is awakened to "Mu," that is, when he is revived the self of no-self. At this mysterious moment, he is like a dumb person who has had a wonderful dream, for he is fully aware of it, but is unable to use words to express it. The Absolute Nothingness ("Mu") is awakened to itself. This is the moment of realization when subject-object opposition is altogether transcended. To describe it we have to use such words as inexpressible or mysterious. "You will then be like a dumb person who has had a wonderful dream: he only knows it personally, within himself."...from Zenkei Shibayama in Zen Comments on the Mumonkan, pg. 28

















Also check out these Chan sites of interest:
 

2. How to chan meditate:
 
3. How to chan meditate: Master Sheng Yen in Facebook

4. The Western Chan Fellowship at http://www.westernchanfellowship.org/


Call Adrian at 250 898 8201,
email adrian2@shaw.ca
Please notify me if you wish to be removed from the email list.