LU K UAISI YU (CHARIESLUK) The Secrets of Chinese Meditation The secrets of Chinese meditation : self BL1478.6 .L8 1972 BL 13209 Lu, K'uan Yu, NEW COLLEGE OF CALIFORNIA (SF) BL Lu, K'uan Yu. \ 1478.6 The secrets of Chinese^ L8 meditation. 1972 #6010 DATE BORROWER'S DUE NAME ROOM NUMBER KC 6 Si i/^U #6010 BL 1478*6 LUf K'uan Yu» 1898- L8 The secrets of Chinese medita-tlon : 1972 self-cultivation by mind control as taught in the Ch» an Mahayana a«5* Taolst schools in China / Lu K'uan Yu (Charles Luk). New York : Welsert 1972. 240 p. : ill. ; 22 cm. Includes bibliographical references and index* #6010 GiftXWhitmeyer $3«50« !• Meditation (Zen Buddhism) 2« BuddhisiB—China. 3. Meditation (Taoism) !• Title c 06 DEC 84 818313 NEWCxc . MEW COLLEGE ^^^ VALENCIA Sl^ I, CA 9WM SAN FRANCISCO. 1415) 626-1694 1 THE SECRETS OF CHINESE MEDITATION By the same author CH'AN AND ZEN TEACHING Series I Series 11 Series III NEW COLLEGE ^^^STREET 777 VALENCIA CA a«l« SAN FRANCISCO. 1418) 626-1694 The body of Ch'an Master Wen Yen, founder of the Yun Men sect at Yun Men monastery, Kwangtung province, China. (Died in 949) LU K'UAN YU (Charles Luk) THE SECRETS OF CHINESE MEDITATION Self-cultivation by Mind Control as taught in the Ch'an, Mahayana and Taoist schools in China SAMUEL WEISER New York 1972 First Published by Rider & Co. 1964 This American Edition 1969 Second Impression 1971 Third Impression 1972 © Charles Luk 1964 ISBN 0-87728-066-5 All rights reserved. SAMUEL WEISER, INC 734 Broadway New York, N. Y. 10003 Printed in U.S.A. by NOBLE OFFSET PRINTERS, INC. New York, N.Y. 10003 To the memory of CARL GUSTAV JUNG and LOBZANG JIVAKA humble whose encouragement has sustained my Buddhists the efforts to present to Western Dharma as taught in my country CONTENTS Preface ii 1 Self-cultivation as taught in the ^urangama Sutra 15 2 Self-cultivation according to the Ch'an (Zen) school 43 3 Self-cultivation according to the Pure Land school 81 4 Self-cultivation according to the T'ien T'ai (Tendai) school 109 5 Self-cultivation according to the Taoist school 163 6 Authentic experiments with Buddhist and Taoist methods of self-cultivation 191 7 Physical and spiritual culture according to Chinese yoga 205 Conclusion 215 Glossary 219 Index 233 ILLUSTRATIONS The body of Master Wen Yen frontispiece 1 Sakyamuni Buddha i6 2 The late Ch'an Master Hsu Yun in 1959 48 3 The three Holy Ones of the Western Paradise 80 PREFACE We take refuge in the Buddha, We take refuge in the Dharma, We take refuge in the Sahgha, We take refuge in the Triple Gem within ourselves. The Buddha Dharma is useless if it is not put into actual practice because if we do not have personal experience of it, it will be aHen to us and we will never awaken to it in spite of our book-learning. An ancient said: Self-cultivation has no other method. It requires but knowledge of the way. If the way only can be known. Birth and death at once will end. Therefore, in our self-cultivation, we should first know the way, and the Buddhas and great masters have taught us the appropriate methods in the sutras and treatises. The purpose of this volume is to acquaint readers with various methods of meditation as practised in China so that they can choose any one of them for their self-cultivation. At first we hesitated to present versions of Chinese texts on successful practices and on experiences of dhyana as we have been criticized for being unduly optimistic about the future of II 12 PREFACE the Buddha Dharma in the West. Fortunately, a learned reader of ours, Mr. Terence Gray, who recently paid a short visit to the Far East, has written us : *I myself beHeve that even if it were true that the East is weary after a thousand years of efforts, those of the West are as fresh today as were the dis- ciples of Hui Neng.* He has also kindly sent us a copy of Mr. D. E. Harding's Httle book entitled On having no Head^ in which the author relates his personal experience of dhyana. We are grateful to Mr. Gray for the encouraging news and to Mr. Harding for his book and have thus been emboldened to present in this volume different methods of meditation with the accounts of satisfactory results achieved by some practisers. The Buddha Dharma has no room for race and nationahty and nothing is more misleading than the groundless contention that Westerners are not fit to achieve enHghtenment. In their former Hves many were virtuous men and women who practised the Buddha's Teaching but failed to attain enhghten- ment; their good karmas have caused them to be reborn in countries where propitious conditions prevail so that they can resume their self-cultivation. Those who have been reborn in the West are capable of understanding the holy Teaching and wiU certainly achieve satisfactory results in their present life. Therefore, racial discrimination should be cast away for Lin Chi said: 'There is not a Hving being who cannot be Hberated.'^ Buddhism is in decline in the East because of the division of the Dharma into different schools contradictory and hostile to each other. There are people who, instead of practising the methods taught in the sutras and treatises, indulge in endless discussions which are empty and give no practical results. Others only learn to recite the sutras by heart without striving to understand their profound meanings. Many are those who worship the Buddha, recite sutras and repeat mantras in the 1. The Buddhist Society, London, 1961. 2. See Ch'an and Zen Teaching, Second Series, Rider (1961), p. 113. PKBFACE 13 hope of reaping merits for themselves and their families, with- out knowing that the World Honoured One teaches us to keep from illusions but not to cHng to merits which are also illusory. We are urged by Him to forsake the cult of ego, then what merit do we earn when we cease to be selfish? What merit can a thief win when he stops stealing? There are also those who, in their study of Sanskrit and Tibetan, pass their precious time in practising the correct pronunciation either by pressing down the tongue or by putting it up against the palate or between the teeth, not reahzing that philology has nothing to do with self- cultivation. Our modern students of sutras and treatises, in- stead of studying their profound meanings, seem to be more interested in obtaining historical, linguistic and geographical data which have nothing to do with the Buddha Dharma which is beyond space and time. During the last few years, in spite of my secluded hfe, I have met «ome of my readers in the West and have received very encouraging letters from others, and I have come to the con- clusion that many Occidentals are now mature and digest quite well the Mahayana and Ch'an Teachings. At least half a dozen of them have related their personal experience of the state of dhyana, amongst whom are two British readers in America. My optimism about the future of the Dharma in the West is, therefore, not groundless. To prevent disbeHef in the involuntary movements de- scribed in Chapters 6 and 7, I have given a sixty-five-minute demonstration of them to two British Bhikkhus, the Ven. Khema and the Ven. Aruno who are graduates of Oxford and Cambridge respectively and who happened to be in Hong Kong. The Ven. Aruno is Mr. Harding's son. Before their arrival, I gave the same demonstration to Mr. Hugh Ripman, a British banker, Mr. Paul H. Beidler, an American engineer, Dr. Huston Smith, professor of philosophy, Massachusetts Institute of Technology, Mr. Holmes Welch, author of The Parting of the Way, Madame Maurice Lebovich, a French painter, and a few well-known Chinese Buddhists, including 14 PREFACE Mr. K. S. Fung, chief delegate of the Chinese Buddhists of the Hong Kong-Macao area at the Sixth Congress of the World Fellowship of Buddhists at Pnompenh, Cambodia, in 1961. All brackets are mine. UPASAKA LU k'uAN YU Hong Kong. THE SECRETS OF CHINESE MEDITATION V- : SELF-CULTIVATION AS TAUGHT IN THE SORANGAMA SOTRA According to the Buddha, we all have inherent in ourselves the Tathagata's wisdom which is unknown to us and which we cannot use because of our ignorance. We are also taught how to control our wandering minds so that our self-nature can return to its normal condition by which is meant a passionless, still and imperturbable state, free from aU external influences, in which our immanent wisdom can manifest and function in the normal way, that is the way of the absolute, beyond all relativities and contraries. Therefore, when discussing self-cultivation, we cannot stray from the Buddha Dharma for the World Honoured One taught us how to get out of sarhsara for ever, whereas the highest achievement by other rehgious doctrines is only a temporary transmigration to the happy realm of devas from which, when the benefit of our good karma has been enjoyed to the full, we wiU be sent down again to the lower worlds of existence. For this reason, Yung Chia urged us not to seek happiness in sarhsara and wrote in his Song of Enlightenment With force expended, a spent arrow's hound to fall and cause Distasteful things to follow in the next incarnation.