6th Patriarch Hui-Neng on No-Thought

And the realization of the samadhi of prajna* is no-thought

"And what do we mean by 'no-thought'? The teaching of no-thought means to see all dharmas without being attached to any dharma, to reach everywhere without being attached anywhere, to keep your nature pure, so that when the Six Thieves* pass through the Six Gates*, they neither avoid nor are corrupted by the Six Realms of Sensation* but come and go freely. This is the samadhi of prajna.

Freedom and liberation constitute the practice of no-thought. But if you don't think any thoughts at all, the moment you make your thoughts stop, you're imprisoned by dharmas. We call this a 'one-sided view.' (William calls this mind no different than a dead tree.)

Those who understand the teaching of no-thought penetrate the ten thousand teachings. Those who understand the teaching of no-thought see the realm of buddhas. Those who understand the direct teaching of no-thought reach the stage of enlightenment."...from The Platform Sutra, The Zen Teachings of Hui-Neng, translation and commentary by Red Pine, pg. 25 and 187.

*samadhi of prajna: samadh to refer to the mind without a subject or an object
*Six Thieves: our six powers of sensation...hearing, sight, smell, etc
*Six Gates: ears, eyes, nose etc
*Six Realms of Sensation: shape, sound, smell, taste, feeling and thought
See http://www.thezensite.com/ZenEssays/Miscellaneous/Buddhism_by_Numbers.html

Read The Platform Sutra at https://www.bdkamerica.org/digital/dBET_T2008_PlatformSutra_2000.pdf

Also check out these Chan sites of interest:

1. chancommunity.ca

2. How to chan meditate:

http://chancenter.org/cmc/chan-practice/how-to-meditate/

3. Master Sheng Yen in Facebook

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

5. Other Buddhist centres in the Comox Valley:

http://www.dharmafellowship.org/hermitage/ 

http://www.sherabchammaling.com/biography.html

Call Adrian at 250 898 8201,

email adrian2@shaw.ca

Please notify me if you wish to be removed from the email list.

Zen Master Ta Hui: Present and Comparative Awareness

To Tseng Shu-Chih


30 "Yen T'ou said, "In the future, if you want to propagate the Great Teaching, it must flow out point by point from within your own breast to cover heaven and earth; only then will it be the action of a man of power." Not only did these words of Yen Tou's bring to light Hseuh Feng's basic capacity, but also they should serve for ten thousand generations as a standard for those who study the Path. That which flows out from one's own breast, as he calls it, is one's own beginningless awareness*, fundamentally complete of itself. As soon as you arouse a second thought, you fall into comparative awareness. Comparative awareness is something gained from external refinements; present awareness is something gained from before your parents were born, something from the other side of the Primordial Buddha. Power gained within present awareness is strong; power gained from comparative awareness is weak. If one's power is weak, he can enter the realm of enlightenment, but in the realm of delusion he always beats the drum of retreat---such people are countless."...from Swampland Flowers, The Letters and Lectures of Zen Master Ta-Hui (1088-1163), translated by J.C. Cleary, pg 57

*"Present Awareness" means the immediate direct apprehension of the real nature of things, without affixing names and categories, without assessment, without giving rise to discrimination, without holding to them as external, according to the Conscious Only Treatise......Turning against present awareness, you lose the essence of your own mind; pursuing comparative and wrong awareness, you falsely recognize external sense-objects. All day long you use mind to grasp mind, use illusion to take illusion as an object.

                                                     ++++++++++++++

The chef who orders the food at the Bethleham Retreat Center has requested that no more people be booked. The retreat is fully booked.

1. chancommunity.ca

2. How to chan meditate:

http://chancenter.org/cmc/chan-practice/how-to-meditate/

3. 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.

Ta Hui and the Moon, and upcoming retreat

                                                                                                                             
7   See the Moon, Forget the Pointing Finger (To Li Hsien-ch'en)
"A gentleman reads widely in many books basically in order to augment his innate knowledge. Instead, you have taken to memorizing the words of the ancients, accumulating them in your breast, making this your task, depending on them for something to take hold of in conversation. You are far from knowing the intent of the sages in expounding the teachings. This is what is called counting the treasure of others all day long without having half a cent of your own. Likewise in reading the Buddhist Scriptures: you must see the moon and forget the fingers. Don't develop an understanding based on the words. An ancient worthy said, "The buddhas expounded all teaching to save all minds; I have no mind at all, so what's the use of all the teachings?" If they can be like this when reading the scriptures, only then will people with resolve have some comprehension of the intent of the sages."...from Swampland Flowers, The Letters and Lectures of Zen Master Ta Hui (1088-1163), translated by J.C.Cleary, pg. 12

Also check out these Chan sites of interest:

1. chancommunity.ca

2. How to chan meditate:

http://chancenter.org/cmc/chan-practice/how-to-meditate/

3. 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.

Toni Packer: Is 'I' just a powerful thought? and upcoming retreat

“Thoughts generate tremendous energies to do something or not to do something, to get somewhere, to control or to inhibit action. Can there be insight into the power of thought? Where is the ‘I’ in all of this? Is it just a powerful thought?

What about ‘self-discipline’ and self-control’? To ask, “What is the ‘no-self’ that has ‘self-control’? is putting the wrong question, isn’t it? It is making a new entity out of the concept of ‘no self’. But no self is not a concept or an entity; it is a state of immediate, undivided awareness, presence. And in that presence the entire circuit of self-centeredness is illumined.  This is attention. Attention without self-center can illuminate self-centeredness. It sounds paradoxical, but only thought creates conundrums.

In open awareness without a self-center, things are simply seen for what they are—everything is happening on its own. Cleaning out the garage or not overeating cease to be problems. What needs to be done is clear and gets done, or it doesn’t get done. When the energy of clarity takes the place of resistance, action flows freely without effort.”…Tony Packer, The Light of Discovery, pg. 10.

Also check out these Chan sites of interest:

1. chancommunity.ca

 2. How to chan meditate:

http://chancenter.org/cmc/chan-practice/how-to-meditate/

 3. 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.

Retreat Information:

Dzogchen Commentary on The Chain of Thoughts, and upcoming 3 day retreat

"At the time of arising, thoughts support each other like a chain of friends. At the time of dissolving they dissolve evenly in the vastness of openness. The ultimate nature of all phenomena is simply this."

"When thoughts are arising, the text says they 'support each other like a chain of friends'. In old village style if somebody's house is on fire everybody rushes there with their buckets and the buckets are passed up the line. Somebody is filling the bucket and somebody is throwing it on the house but everybody is involved in the chain. That is to say the linked activity of the arising thoughts carries a sense of intentionality and purpose. Then when the purpose, which seemed so vital, is fulfilled the chain dissolves.

"At the time of dissolving they dissolve evenly in the vastness of openness." Each thought in turn vanishes into openness. No matter what impact they made as they arose, each vanishes in the same way.

"The ultimate nature of all phenomena is simply this."  One thought by itself has no meaning. Thoughts need to rest on each other to create the structures of meaning. This is the traditional Buddhist idea of dependent co-origination. If in meditation, you find that one thought leads to another you should not be surprised. That's what thoughts do. Thoughts have an automatic tendency to build up structures of meaning together. But they are each of them devoid of any inherent reality.....But imagine if thoughts didn't come back. What would you do?"...from James Low, Being Right Here, pg. 127.

Also check out these Chan sites of interest:

1. chancommunity.ca

2. How to chan meditate:

http://chancenter.org/cmc/chan-practice/how-to-meditate/

3. 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.

Master Sheng Yen: Body, mind and environment, and upcoming 3 day retreat

photo by Patricia Anderson

There is no such thing as the mind. The mind is what arises when the environment interacts with our body. The body, as well as the environment, is illusory. Therefore, the interaction that comes from it---mental activity----must also be illusory. Through mental activities we can perform virtuous or unwholesome actions, but Ch’an cannot be acquired through knowledge, learning, the Buddha’s wisdom, or through one’s own experience and wisdom. If you think the Buddha can bring you to Ch’an, then you are depending on external conditions. If you think your own wisdom and knowledge can bring you to Ch’an, then you are relying on internal conditions. You have to leave behind all dependencies. Only then can you enter Ch’an.” …Master Sheng Yen in Complete Enlightenment, pg. 245. 

Three day Chan retreat

Silent illumination and Huatou Methods

Cost: approximately $230 

Time: 10 a.m. Saturday November 12, 2001 to 2 p.m. Monday November 14, 2001

2 Overnight stays in single rooms

plus vegetarian snacks and meals provided

Place: Bethleham Retreat Centre 

http://www.bethlehemretreatcentre.com/

Bethlehem Retreat Centre

2371 Arbot Rd

Nanaimo, BC V9R 6S9

(250)754-3254

Fax: 250-753-6742

Pre-registration necessary with 

Adrian Symonds

1 250 898 8201

adrian2@shaw.ca

Register ASAP, maximum 15 people.

Check out what the buddhists, the philosophers and the neuroscientists have to say at Columbia University: a Multidisciplinarian Symposium on Consciousness... http://www.mindandreality.org/ 

Also check out these Chan sites of interest:

1. chancommunity.ca

2. How to chan meditate:

http://chancenter.org/cmc/chan-practice/how-to-meditate/

3. Master Sheng Yen in Facebook

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


5. Buddhism in Nanaimo: http://nanaimomeditationgroups.weebly.com/

Call Adrian at 250 898 8201,

email adrian2@shaw.ca

Please notify me if you wish to be removed from the email list.

Master Sheng Yen: What is the self?

"The Buddha elaborates further on the transient nature of the body and mind. The body is a collection of the four elements and the six sense faculties (eyes, ears, nose, tongue, body, and mind); and the mind is created by the interaction of the six sense faculties with the six dusts, or sense objects (what is seen, heard, smelled, tasted, felt and thought). Everything is in a continual state of change. Thoughts unceasingly come and go; the body and its environment unceasingly interact. Arising, perishing, birth, death—everything changes.

However, we all believe in existence: we exist, the world exists, the Buddha exists. But who is it that senses this existence? It is your self, separate and untouched by the feelings and thoughts of others. Only you have the unique idea of existence that is yours. Who is this self? This self is the mind, and the mind is merely an unending succession of thoughts. Between these separate thoughts there is nothing. Therefore, I ask, “What is the mind?”

The mind is an illusion. There is no such entity called mind. This is the correct view. But if this is true, then who is reading these words. Who is thinking these thoughts and claiming that there is no-mind, no-self? If I ask you to tell me if your mind is true or false, you will be in a quandary. You might say that the mind is true, or real, or enduring, but if your mind is following these words, then it is moving. If your mind is moving and changing, then it is not real, and if the mind is not moving, how can you read these words and think about what I am saying? On the other hand, if you say the mind is false, that it does not exist, then who is reading these words?" ...Master Sheng Yen in Complete Enlightenment 

Also check out these Chan sites of interest:

1. chancommunity.ca

2. How to chan meditate:

http://chancenter.org/cmc/chan-practice/how-to-meditate/

3. 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.