An online community sharing the study and practice of Chan Buddhism
Omnium-gatherum
By
Chuan Zhi
All world religions offer this spiritual solution to the problems that confront all humanity, this Path to salvation. Those who choose other hateful solutions have left their religion's Path. Yet, as we lament their misguided decisions and terrible acts, we must remember to feel compassion for the sinner even as we condemn the sin. Understanding karma as we do, we must pity them for their ...
By
Yin De, OHY
Afriend of mine has a habit of asking me; "How Zen is that?" whenever I seem to react with any degree of emotion, particularly when I am angry about something. A year or so ago, when one of my neighbors learned that my shaved head wasn't a fashion-statement and that I was a real-life Zen Buddhist priest, he approached me, saying, "Hey, I hear you're Zen. That's so cool. Now I know why you're so ...
By
Yao Feng - Greece
"Mitsos," my car, has that rare gift of making familiar things seem new. No matter how many times he's taken the same road home, he negotiates the dirt and gravel with a kind of joy. Like a horse headed back to his barn, he doesn't need anyone to steer him. But today was different, even for him. This was not going to be an ordinary storm. A legion of small clouds, marshaled from the Peloponnesus, ...
By
anonymous
There are people whose hearts are dead. They puzzle at the world, wondering why things are as they are. They don't understand. They fail to see that the world is made of heart because only heart can see heart. The mind, alone, is senseless to the sensibilities of the heart. The heart is the only source of beauty, of joy, of creativity and understanding. The mind relentlessly circumvents the ...
By
John O'Donohue
Silence is the sister of the divine. Meister Eckhart said that there is nothing in the world that resembles God so much as silence. Silence is a great friend of the soul; it unveils the riches of solitude. It is very difficult to reach that quality of inner silence. You must make a space for it so that it may begin to work for you. In a certain sense, you do not need the whole armoury and ...
By
M. Scott Peck, M.D.
Just as there are discernible stages in human physical and psychological growth, so there are stages in human spiritual development. The most widely read scholar of the subject today is James Fowler of Emory University, the writer of Stages of Faith: The Psychology of Human Development and the Quest for Meaning. But I first came to an awareness of these stages through my own personal experience.
...
By
Yu Ling Bo, China
Venerable Master Jy Din Shakya, also known as Wei-miao, was the first official voice of Chinese Chan/Zen to enter the West. He arrived in Hawaii in 1956, by order of his master, the Venerable Hsu Yun (Xu Yun) also known as De-qing and Yan-che. His simple directive to Jy Din: "spread the Dharma to the West." Prior to Master Jy Din's arrival, the West had known Mahayana Buddhism solely through the ...
By
Chuan Zhi
In 2013 I began writing a book about Chan Buddhism. Six years later, after dozens of rewrites, it was published. I titled the book Exploring Chan because exploring has always been my relationship with this subject. The more I have learned about Chan, broadly speaking, the more I have realized there is much more to know about it. So I write as a fellow explorer on a jouney of discovery. ...
By
Chuan Zhi
All dharmas are originally nonexistent. To think that they exist causes attachment. If they do not exist, to say perversely that they do is also attachment. One neither thinks of these two, nor does one incline to what is between them. It is for this reason alone that they are not on either side, nor in the middle, they neither exist, nor do they not exist. Why? All dharmas are empty; they are ...
By
Chuan Zhi
If you love the sacred and hate the secular, you'll float and sink in the birth-and-death sea. The passions exist dependent on mind; have no-mind, and how can they bind you? Without troubling to discriminate or cling to forms, you'll attain the Way naturally in a moment of time.
— Linji
Linji's warning cuts close to the bone for anyone drawn to spiritual practice. We come to Chan because we ...