by Tian Shi
“Dwell in silence -------- Observe the Sacred Silence and discover your real Nature.”
-- Master Shi Wule – 45th Chan Patriarch
When I asked my friend, a monk in the Chinese Chan lineage, where I could stay for a meditation retreat in mainland China to escape life in Hong Kong, he did not exactly encourage me to pursue the idea. In fact, he subtly hinted that, as a foreigner—with all my preconceived notions—it might be difficult for me to find such a place. But I was stubborn. I kept reminding myself that, in ancient times, disciples would walk long winter months, trudging through deep snow and traversing mountain passes, just to receive a single instruction from their Master. I knew that Master Shi Wule was no longer in China, but I was determined to experience Chan at the very source of its lineage.
I could not help but rejoice when I heard that Master Xuge, the head abbess of Lei Feng Old Temple, had agreed to host me for an indeterminate length of time. My monk friend simply sent me a set of latitude and longitude coordinates on a map and said, “Go there”—without further comment. Don’t ask any question, just live. I already knew this was an entry into the Way of Chan. I investigated with another Chinese friend from Hong Kong, where this place was. He said it should be in the vicinity of Fuzhou, Jianxi. But that was all. And he even skeptically asked me, “Are you sure you will be able to make it there?” But I was sure- I had the faith and firm aspiration to stay somewhere in meditation, as my own Lama from the Tibetan lineage advised me to do. And it might as well be in Lei Feng. I had mostly practiced under the Tibetan lineage, and had only recently encountered Master Shi Wule and the Chan tradition.
Although I had lived in Hong Kong for many years, I had only been to mainland China a few times for business purpose in big cities. And most of times, I was accompanied and never left by myself. But going to rural China alone as a foreign woman was a very different story. First of all, I had no means of payment. Without a Chinese phone number, I had none of the highly advanced digital payment facilities that everybody there uses. China is a technologically very advanced country, virtually no one uses paper money anymore, and that was the only currency I had. Without a local number, I also had no internet connection. But above all, I could barely say five words in Chinese. That is to say in the back of my mind, in the worst of cases, I could as well disappear in this very big country and not find my way back.
Then as if sent by an angel, two days before my planned departure, another Chinese friend spontaneously offered to travel with me to Lei Feng. That was the kind of miracle that only a greater mind than mine could have fathomed, ensuring at least a minimum level of safety for my rather naive endeavor. So, the two of us hopped on the train from Hong Kong to Nanchang East station, traversed the entire city to West station, and took another train to Fuzhou. A very kind lady was waiting for us at the station in Fuzhou and drove us to Lei Feng Old Temple.
On the way to the Temple, the two ladies kept on chatting cheerfully, while I slowly sank into a gentle lucid oblivion. In fact, I had deliberately chosen to go to China because I knew I would not understand anything that was being said. And that, I hoped, would undercut my usual thinking pattern and minimize distractions by not being able to properly converse with people. This was part of my Lama’s instructions -if not the main instruction, to undercut the current of thoughts and dwell in the simplest, most uncontrived state of awareness possible. So, I was determined to navigate the next few weeks guided only by the compass of the heart, and gladly sending off my intellect into a deprivation tank.
From our evening of arrival, I was overwhelmed by the warm welcome we received. Everyone greeted us so kindly, and we began with the traditional tea gathering in the tea room, where we were served a fragrant pu’er tea accompanied by a profusion of sweets and salty seeds. That very evening, Master Xuge gave me the Chinese name Tian Shi “Angel”. Beaming in the light of so many smiling and grinning faces, I wondered how I could have ever feared getting lost in this country. Throughout the train journey, at various queues, and upon arriving at the Temple, everyone had been so polite, kind and respectful.
The Temple was primarily a monastery for nuns. Although the whole community shared meals, and performed all activities at the monastery, there were a few monks, lay men who came as volunteer workers who were also part of the group, but they slept in a different location. From the very next day, I wanted to follow all the daily activities also devoting as much time as possible to meditation. From my understanding, there is great openness in the means for cultivating the mind in Chan, as long as it involves pursuing an alchemical balance between concentration, relaxation, and the opening of the heart. Hence everything is suitable, and sitting meditation is not even the main focus. Actually, in any Buddhist school, anything and everything -from waking up to the next morning, sleeping time included, is suitable as a means to enlightenment. Though, my Tibetan lineage places strong emphasis on sitting meditation, text study and prayers.
In Lei Feng, about half of the community used music as the main form of cultivation. We were in the thick of the winter, and the weather was a constant downpour of rain, fog and mist. Yet, everyone dutifully practiced violin as their main instrument for over seven to eight hours a day -two hours in the morning, three in the afternoon and another three hours in the evening. All of this took place in a barely heated and dimly lit room, yet in a blissful atmosphere soaked with love and kindness. I could not help but stay there for my meditation sessions, ready to assume that all sounds are mantras, and drinking in nourishment for the heart straight from the purest stream of ambrosial love that was so present there.
My main way for cultivation was of course sitting meditation. But during my time at Lei Feng, I came to rediscover my love for traditional ink painting and playing the piano —two activities I had once cherished but abandoned after my father passed away ten years ago. In fact, I met there the person whom I now call my Master of Chinese painting. She arrived a few days after my friend and me, and I will always remember our first conversation, painstakingly translated thru an online app:
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“I heard you are a teacher of Chinese painting?”
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“Yes, I am an artist who paints with traditional Chinese ink.”
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“I would like to learn from you! I have some brushes and paper.”
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“I will teach whoever wants to paint! This is why I came as well.”
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“How long will you stay?”
Many lay people came to the Temple for various reasons, mostly to reconnect with their inner true nature, also to work as volunteers, staying for a few days or weeks. By that time, I had grown accustomed to seeing new faces come and go.
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“I may stay for the rest of my life,” she replied.
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“Wow really?”
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“Yes, I came to become a nun!”
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“Oh, but aren’t you here with your husband and daughter?” I asked, noticing she was accompanied by a man and a teenage girl.
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“I have divorced; I am a free woman now.”
Although I hadn’t planned to engage in lengthy conversations, I found myself captivated by listening to her. She had profound spiritual experience in both Taoism and Buddhism, and in particular, we discussed Huatou, a form of mental cultivation that uses short but striking questions like “Who is thinking of the Buddha?” or “Who is reciting the mantra?” The practitioner constantly focuses on these questions to turn the mind inward in search of itself by instilling great doubt. The Huatou method was developed in the 11th century by Chan Master Dahui of the Linji school, the same school as Master Shi Wule, to attract the attention of laypeople and intellectuals whose minds were accustomed to detailed thinking and filled with conceptualization. I was fascinated to learn that this was also a long-standing tradition in Chan—similar to some of the heart instructions of Padmasambhava, my own root guru.
As for meditation, the nuns, of course, also practiced sitting meditation—but throughout the entire night! Among the premises, there was a reconstructed old wooden house that had been relocated from another part of China. I was fascinated by it and even dreamed of replicating it in my home country, Madagascar. Besides the main room, the building was flanked by two long, narrow bedrooms, each containing a kang bed—a traditional heated brick bed. The bed was hollow inside, with several openings that connected to the outside kitchen, allowing heat from the kitchen stoves to pass directly underneath. How ingenious to survive the harsh winter cold in the mountains! There, all the women would gather to meditate together from 10 p.m. Some of the nuns remained upright until dawn—I, however, only managed to stay until 1 a.m., as I needed a few hours of sleep. Still, everybody would wake up again at 5 a.m. to join the first prayer session in the main hall.
That is life in Lei Feng: a succession of energizing prayers, sung out loud and rhythmically, offerings of smoke and food to the inhabitants of the land, the most delicious vegetarian meals eaten in utter silence, the sacred activity of washing of one’s bowls and chopsticks, morning chores, music, painting, English lessons I gave to the kids, meditation, walks of which a memorable 10k walk with four nuns under the starlight. The Temple is perched on a hill surrounded by a forest reserve, bamboo groves and paddy fields, with grazing cows and ducks swimming in muddy ponds, all of which reminded me of Madagascar. To the detriment of my planned meditation hours, I struggled to keep up with my initial schedule of sitting sessions and instead gently surrendered to the Way of Chan: living life in an orderly, concentrated way—focused on giving affection to people, tending to the smallest details of a seemingly ordinary existence, and thru just that being gloriously happy.
Prayers, meditation, and silent meals—on the surface, this may sound like the daily routine of any monastery anywhere in the world. And having attended many retreats over the years, I was no stranger to this rhythm. But there, I took the unspoken rule of don’t speak, just fully live. I should not even attempt to describe anything. And of course, this is not a secular mindfulness retreat we are talking about here, although it may seem similar on the surface. All of this is for the purpose of enlightenment, to benefit sentient beings within the bodhisattva framework, imbued with the understanding of karma, rebirth, and the two truths. The blessing of the lineage and devotion to the Master, a refined quality of practice from the place of heart, and the fact that Lei Feng has been a temple and monastery for over a thousand years, have imbued the place with an atmosphere that is beyond words—one that can only be experienced. That is why people come from all over China to spend some time in this place.
As an uneducated foreigner from the West, I had completely misunderstood the fate of Chan in mainland China. I had wrongly assumed that it had not survived the Cultural Revolution—simply because we, in the West, are unaware of its living heirs. As my own American Lama often says, we tend to believe that whatever we don’t know cannot exist. But there I was, at the very source of Chan, alive and thriving—one of the three great pillars of Dharma heritage stemming from the Buddha. Once Buddhist teachings spread out of India, they gave rise to the three main lineages: Theravāda, Chan, and Tibetan Buddhism. The weight of this gravitas, passed down from the Indian masters to the vast lands of China, was unmistakable.
Those were probably some of the fondest memories of my life—if I dared to hold on to anything from the past, which, of course, is not advised for a serious Buddhist practitioner. But there it is—the diary of what could be an ideal life.
Tian Shi
Toulouse – France / March 11th, 2025
*The original article has been written in English and intended for westerns, pls beware of any mistranslation when converting into another language.