“I Started with One Question, but Sud- Denly
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started with one question, but sud- “Idenly there were a hundred, each more perplexing than the last. They poured from my mouth in a torrent of doubt and despair: Would I be able to become a monk again? Which teacher should I go to? With Buddhist teachings as deep and vast as the ocean, where should I start? With innumer- able methods of practice, which method should I choose? “On and on I went, pouring out my heart, all my pent-up frustration and con- fusion. Finally Lingyuan sighed, lifted his hand, and struck the bed hard. “‘PUT IT DOWN!’ he shouted at me.” From Footprints in the Snow: The Autobiography of a Chinese Monk by Chan Master Sheng Yen, Doubleday, 2008 Autumn 2008 Chan Magazine Chan Magazine Volume 23,28, Number 4 Autumn, 20032008 Chan Magazine is published quarterly by the Institute of Chung-Hwa BuddhistBuddhist Culture, Culture, Chan Chan Meditation Meditation Center, Center, 90- 90-5656 Corona Corona Avenue, Avenue, Elmhurst, Elmhurst, NY NY 11373. 11373. The The magazine magazine is isa non-profita non-profit venture; venture; it accepts it accepts no advertisingno advertising and isand sup is- supportedported solely solely by contributionsby contributions from frommembers members of the of Chan the ChanCenter Center and the and readership. the readership. Donations Donations to support to support the maga the- magazinezine and otherand other Chan Chan Center Center activities activities may maybe sent be sentto the to theabove above address address and and will will be begratefully gratefully appreciated. appreciated. Please Your donationmake checks is tax-deductible.payable to Chan For Meditation information Center; about your Chan do- Centernation activitiesis tax-deductible. please call For (718)information 592-6593. about For Chan Dharma Cen- Drumter activities Publications please callplease (718) call 592-6593. (718) 592-0915.For Dharma E-mail Drum thePublications Center at please [email protected], call (718) 592-0915. or E-mailthe magazine the Center at [email protected],at [email protected], or orthe visit magazine us online at at:chanmaga - http://[email protected], or visit us online at: http://www.chancenter.org. Founder/Teacher Founder/TeacherChan Master Ven. Dr. Sheng Yen Chan Master Ven. Dr. Sheng Yen Editor-in-chief Editor-in-chiefDavid Berman David Berman Coordinator CoordinatorVirginia Tan Virginia Tan News editor PhotographyBelia Pena John Feng, Jerry Roach, Kaifen Hu Photography ContributingDavid Kabacinski editors (Chang Wen) Ernie Heau, Kevin Mathewson, Virginia Tan, Wei Tan, ContributingGuogu editors Ernie Heau, Chris Marano, Virginia Tan, Wei Tan Contributors ContributorsRikki Asher, Tina Kacandes, Jeffrey Kung, Rebecca Li, RikkiMike Morical,Asher, Berle Bruce Driscoll, Rickenbacker, Jeffrey Kung,Ayn Steele, Rebecca Tan Li, Yee Char - lotteWong Mansfield, (Chang Ji FaMike Shi), Morical, Chang BruceWen Fa Rickenbacker, Shi Wei Tan, Tan Yee Wong (Chang Ji) Administrator AdministratorChang Wu Fa Shi Guo Chen Shi Chan Magazine Autumn 2008 2 From the Editor 4 The Noble Eightfold Path 6 The first of four articles by Chan Master Sheng Yen Humanistic Buddhism in America 14 Thoughts on relevance by Prof. Chun-fang Yu “Summer Rain” 7 Poem by Frank Crazy Cloud The Wu That We Seek 8 Retreat Report by Harry Miller The Past 20 News from the Chan Meditation Center and DDMBA The Future 30 Retreats, classes, and other upcoming events Chan Center Affiliates 32 Cover photo by Kaifen Hu Autumn 2008 Chan Magazine 3 From The Editor We are said to be living in the Dharma-ending into the celebration of humiliation and loss age. I suspect that it would be wrong to take called, prophetically, “reality” programming, individual examples of bad behavior as proof in which, unlike our forbears, who identified of this, just as it’s wrong to take every bad with winners, we delight in the weakness and weather event as proof of global warming, ultimate failure of other members of our spe- but the evidence does seem to be piling up. cies—“You’re fired!”? Evidently the thrill of victory is nowhere near as entertaining as the Why, for example, should the disappearance agony of defeat in the Dharma-ending age. of a repressive government cause people who for generations had been living together quite And why should the previously noble profes- happily, patronizing each other’s businesses, sion of journalism have turned into a non-stop marrying each other for crying out loud, to team shouting match between—or among, I suddenly decide that their ethnicity is the should say, given their numbers—ignorant critical thing in their lives, and that the best opponents endlessly repeating poorly re- way to express the importance of that distinc- hearsed arguments about increasingly trivial tion is to do violence to all those of other eth- matters? Now, to be fair, there is an answer to nicities. I’ve read quite a few analyses of this this question: It seems that gathering actual now ubiquitous phenomenon—it’s the legacy news from the four corners of the globe is ex- of Hitler and who did what to whose grand- pensive, labor-intensive, and carries the con- father; it’s the legacy of Stalin and forced re- stant risk of being wrong, whereas gathering patriation; it’s the legacy of Ottoman atroci- opinions from a bunch of people who’ve been ties, of the Crusades, of the Great Schism of sitting around your studio drinking coffee all 1054...I’m not buyin’ it. No amount of sociol- day is relatively cheap and relatively foolproof ogy or history can explain to my satisfaction (in the sense that nobody ever accuses a pas- the act of cutting my neighbor’s throat and try of being flakey). So what we’d have to do, raping his daughters, an intimacy that has as a people, is demand to be informed, rather occurred repeatedly in the last two decades, than have our attachments sublimated, and and not among people who were starving or be willing to pay for the information. Maybe otherwise distressed out of their good sense, that’s too much to ask in the Dharma-ending but among people whose lives would other- age. wise have been at least okay. It’s evidently the Dharma-ending age. And maybe I am just indulging my election- year cynicism, and maybe it’s inappropriate Why should the humble game show, which for the pages of Chan Magazine. If so, I apolo- once took advantage of our perfectly under- gize. But I ask myself, every three months, standable if not exactly selfless desire to ex- before I send another issue to the printer, if perience great good fortune—“Let’s take a what I’m sending has any power at all to post- look at what you’ve won!”—have morphed pone the disappearance of the Dharma in this Chan Magazine Autumn 2008 4 Dharma-ending age, and the question always And so it is that I take this opportunity to refers me back to Master Sheng Yen’s teach- point my entirely subjective finger at the pro- ings on the Four Proper Exertions: To prevent liferation of that which seems to be hastening evil from arising; to cease evil that has al- the end of the Dharma in this Dharma-end- ready arisen; to give rise to the wholesome; to ing age, and at the disturbing pace at which maintain wholesome states that have already it seems to be crowding out that which was arisen. This requires that we be able to distin- wholesome, or at least harmless, and suggest guish between the evil and the wholesome, that we disinvest in the former and do what which in the Chan school means distinguish- we can to resuscitate the latter, and to invite ing between that which causes suffering and any of you who’d like to point out any of the that which ameliorates it, and it requires that innumerable bits of metastasizing evil or en- once we’ve made the distinction we pro-ac- dangered good that I have neglected to send tively support and participate in that which your observations to chanmagazine@gmail. is wholesome and withdraw our support from com. and participation in that which is evil. Photo by Kaifen Hu Autumn 2008 Chan Magazine The Noble Eightfold Path Part One by Chan Master Sheng Yen In the fall of 2003 and the spring of 2004 Master Sheng Yen gave several lectures at the Chan Meditation Center in Queens, New York, on the Buddha’s Noble Eightfold Path. This article is the first of four in which Master Sheng Yen discusses the Eightfold Path as a liberation pro- cess. The articles are part of Master Sheng Yen’s forthcoming book on the 37 Aids to Enlight- enment. The lectures were orally translated by Dr. Rebecca Li, transcribed by Sheila Sussman, and edited by Ernest Heau. Overview stand suffering? Actually, the Sanskrit “duk- kha” is conventionally translated as “suffer- After the Buddha became enlightened the first ing” but the term is nuanced and also con- sermon he preached to his disciples was about notes ideas of “unease,” “disquietude,” and the Four Noble Truths. The First Noble Truth, “dissatisfaction.” With that in mind, we can the Buddha said, is that suffering is a fact say that Buddhism recognizes three kinds of of sentient existence; the Second Noble Truth suffering. These are not three categories of is that the origin of suffering is people hav- suffering separate from each other, but rath- ing wrong views — that is to say, are afflicted er, they are three aspects of the experience of by desire, aversion, and ignorance; the Third suffering as a whole.