An online community sharing the study and practice of Chan Buddhism
Transition & Turmoil
By
Chuan Zhi
Whenever a religion enters a new region dominated by an ethnic culture differing from that of its originating source, a certain amalgamation of ideologies, ethicalities, as well as prevailing myths and superstitions of the newly introduced religion and the antecedent religions takes place. Buddhism is an especially interesting case, as it has spread world wide and taken on many different flavors ...
By
Chuan Zhi
A master serves several functions in a sangha: as a teacher and resource for practicing students, as a guide or "coach", as a leader or co-leader of ceremonies, as a disciplinarian, and often as an administrator. In addition, a master is usually responsible for the financial health of the temple, the spiritual health of the temple's constituency, maintaining a healthy public image in the ...
By
Chuan Zhi
Many people equate Zen training with gong-an (koan) study due to the fairly frequent use of this teaching technique in Zen monasteries. Koans are one of many different techniques that teachers have used over the centuries to help students break through the rigid mental framework that obscures the higher domain of Self. In China, the use of the gong-an dropped as teachers began to recognize that ...
By
Chuan Zhi
The context in which we view a thing has a great influence on our perception of it. It is a great influence on our perception of Zen.When we first learn about something it's with our senses and we know all too well that they can mislead, tricking us to believe that things are one way when they are, in fact, another. We enter a Buddhist temple and see a giant statue of the Buddha, smell the fine ...
By
Chuan Zhi
Buddhism is a complex religion, without a single voice, with many faces, and many representatives holding many different views. It's tremendously easy for a newcomer to get lost in the quagmire of beliefs, ambiguous language, customs, teachings, superstitions and myths that have produced a Matta-like painting of this unusual and expansive religion. Yet we must not allow ourselves to miss the ...
By
Chuan Zhi
While most of the world's great religions rely on the sanctity of words to convey the Truth of their religious doctrines, moral codes, etc., Zen Buddhism makes no such claim as it has no such written document or collection of documents. Instead, Zen Buddhism relies on the concept of Dharma Transmission to "preserve" the teachings of the Buddha. We conceive that the nature of Ultimate Reality is ...
Introductory Topics
By
Chuan Zhi
Everyone who enters Zen's Gateless Gate, has a story to tell. Mine begins one summer evening when I received a call from a friend who had recently moved to another state. "I found a Buddhist Priest ...
By
Chuan Zhi & Ming Zhen
If there is one word with which we can summarize the beauty of Buddhist thought, that word is Dharma. We cannot read a book about Buddhism without encountering this term, yet its definition is as ...
By
Chuan Zhi
Anyone who spends time around Zen people will hear references to "practicing." Whenever we're asked to explain what it is we're practicing, we make either vague comments about Buddhic Nature ...
By
Chuan Zhi
Suffering is integral to the Zen path. It is, in fact, a prerequisite. Zen is not an easy path and we must be highly motivated in order to travel it. In physics as in Zen, every action has an equal ...
By
Yin De, OHY
I'd like to talk about the Second Noble Truth of Buddhism - desire and craving, the cause of suffering. It's human nature to want more of what we like and to have better than what we have - not only ...
By
Fa Dao, OHY
We study the Sutras as a guide as we embark on our own spiritual adventures. They provide us strength in times of difficulties, give us solace in times of despair, and motivate us in times of apathy. ...
By
Chuan Zhi
When we allow ourselves to move far away from the center, we experience the pain and bitterness that the Buddha described in his First Noble Truth. The cause of that distress, he said, is attachment. ...
By
Chuan Zhi
In order to prepare ourselves for meditation, we must first begin to put our lives in order and act in accordance with what is right and good, both for us and for others. It is no simple task, for it ...
By
Chuan Zhi
How do we begin with Zen? We don't start climbing Mt. Everest from the third base station. We start at the very bottom, climb a bit, set up camp, wait for a few days to let ourselves adjust to the ...
By
Chuan Zhi
What is the nature of Self? In Chan, the answer is a spiritual one, dependent on self-reflection, and one that cannot come fully until we achieve a degree of spiritual awareness. In the secular ...
By
Fa Gong, OHY
What is a "precept"? We Buddhists are all very aware of the five precepts (ore more or less depending on what school we associate with) we have taken when we chose to become Buddhists. But it seems ...
By
Fa Gong, OHY
Consider our first multi-day meditation retreat. After a couple of days of discomfort, both physical and psychological, the rebellious ego begins to question the authority of the "strange Oriental ...
By
Chuan Zhi
Chan mystics are the ultimate thrill-seekers. We're willing to risk everything to open doors to the unknown, to lift our heads out of the sand to glimpse the worlds beyond. And it all begins with ...
By
Chuan Zhi and Fa Gong
As westerners brought up in different religious traditions and cultures, we won't ever have the same Buddhism as the Chinese, the Japanese, the Koreans, or the Vietnamese. Nor should we. Our psyches ...
By
Fa Gong, OHY
Right Speech is not just about morality, or even limited to wisdom teachings. It is also about Right Mindfulness and contemplative discipline, about identifying, labeling, and being mindful of ...
By
Chuan Zhi with special thanks to Drew Dixon
How do we keep our spiritual life alive? How do we keep moving forward? Embrace life in all its beauty and ugliness: treat all things with equanimity, seeing what is real and not what is superimposed ...
By
Fa Che, OHY
Buddhism brings many of us to understand that individualism does not exist and is a delusion: that there is no birth, no death, no self, no "I" that exists as an independent reality. We come to ...
By
Fa Lohng
The Great Way is gateless, approached by a thousand paths. Pass trough this barrier, you walk freely in the universe. One of the principal Zen texts from thirteenth century China is a collection of ...
By
Fa Lian Shakya
Plato wrote that when we're able to negate both being and non-being, we discover absolute nothingness, and that within that absolute nothingness we discover the absolute present - which is itself the ...
By
Fa Che
We all long to be home, to be safe and secure. Our lives however, feel anything but protected. We instead face the constant vulnerability of change and a sometimes quiet, but always persistent, ...
By
Fa Dong Shakya, OHY
In her bestselling spiritual memoir "Eat, Pray, Love", Elizabeth Gilbert tells a delightful story of a great Hindu teacher who led his followers in daily meditation in his ashram. The only problem ...
By
Fa Dao Shakya
Meditation is a key factor in Chan / Zen and Buddhism in general -- and yet we have no monopoly on the concept of meditation as a spiritual pursuit. Every religion has a tradition approaching ...
By
Chuan Zhi
The mystical realm of Chan cannot be discovered without the precondition of suffering. Some people think that this is a pessimistic view, or a perverted view, of a practice (meditation) that can be ...
By
Fa Lohng (Koro Kaisan)
Students who come to my weekly Dharma talks (or who meet regularly with me in private) are often confronted with my insistence that they view the world more holistically. This is typically ...
By
Chuan Zhi
Consciousness. We don't think about it, we don't act upon it. It's just there. We awaken in the morning and go to the bathroom and do those things, make coffee, eat a donut, take the dog out … and ...
By
Chuan Zhi
1) What Is Chan Buddhism? Chan’s origins are rooted in the very earliest spiritual traditions of ancient India, traditions that preceded the Buddha by millennia. The Buddha, some 2500 years ago, ...
By
Chuan Zhi
Attachment, we are told by all Buddhist sects, is the central cause of suffering. Not the kind of suffering we endure when we have a cold, or accidentally slam the car door on our hand, but the ...
By
Chuan Zhi
Meditation requires that we are first in the right state of mind and body. If we are "stressed out" we should first do something that will relax us, like exercise, gardening, cooking, taking a ...
By
Chuan Zhi
What does it mean to “seek refuge”? A refuge is a place where we can go for comfort, where we know we won’t be harmed. Where we can rest and recuperate from the hardships of life. It’s ...
By
Chuan Zhi
Chan (Zen) is often viewed in one of two ways: as a religious institution, characterized by its lore, rhetoric, canonical texts, monastic customs and beliefs, or as a mystical/ascetic tradition which ...
By
Fa Lian Shakya
"If you see with the eye of truth, there is nothing mundane that is not true. If you look with the mundane eye, there is no truth that is not mundane." Fa Lian Shakya offers her art and poetry in ...