An online community sharing the study and practice of Chan Buddhism

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By Chuan Zhi Shakya
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28 Sep 2022
By Peadar OGreachain
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New to Chan? Start here . . .

  • Introductory Topics
  • Challenges on the Path
  • Poetry
  • Teaching Stories
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
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 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 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 & 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
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 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 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 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 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 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 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 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
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 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 ...

Special Selections

  • Science & Culture
  • The Hua-Tou
  • Death & Dying
  • Advanced Topics
By Rene D. Seymour
So. I must admit. I WAS on Facebook. It seemed to be the happening thing, so I wanted to know what was happening about it. Before I knew how it worked, I posted all sorts of things, some funny, some ...
By Chuan Zhi
The universe, physicists tell us, has no edge, yet the mass, and other “stuff” like dark matter, are all more or less uniformly distributed throughout. Even stranger, if you take a long journey ...
By Chuan Zhi
The universe, governed by power and the law power obeys, conforms to a dualistic principal of yin and yang, eros and logos, shakti and Shiva. We cannot separate them. Only through spiritual labor can ...

Musings and Reflections on Chan & Living

Most read news

By Fa Zhao Shakya
Those of us who arrive at Zen have often had quite a path of discovery along the way. This is certainly true in my case. It began when I was 14, when a visiting teacher to my Catholic school gave a (once only) talk about some of the 'other' religions around the world. In the midst of this ...
By Fa Dao, OHY

What does it mean to be a spiritual guide? A Zen Roshi or Sifu? It means we strive to balance heart and mind;to live our Spirit. It means we have lived and learned and are still living and learning.That we are one in an ancient succession of teachers, offering to help others discover themselves.

...
By Fa Che Shakya, OHY

As a Dharma teacher in the West, in a small, rural town of 2500 people, Zen is virtually unknown. Perhaps there's a class or two at the university about 25 miles away. But outside of college elective courses, people out here break down into two categories: Catholic or Lutheran. When I moved here, ...

By Fa Zhao Shakya

I just love all creatures great and small. From Gorillas to Bengal Tigers and from Lungfish to bizarre Stick Insects, they all play a tremendous role in the various cycles of our planet. These wonderful creatures are also some of our greatest signposts in our observance of inter-connection and ...

By Fa Zhao Shakya

The genes that code for proteins in our human species are remarkably similar, often nearly identical, to those of many other species across the animal kingdom. It makes sense, considering that throughout our natural history human beings and other animals have shared the same environments and ...

By Fa Dao, OHY
Chan Buddhists, just like followers of other religions, want to do what's right. We strive to be righteous and to avoid self-aggrandizing actions and activities. It's imperative that we consider what it means to "do right" since we often fall into the trap of "doing wrong." We must identify and ...
By M. B.
In the moment, there is nothing.  But, as moments move in time, thoughts arise.  Emotions arise.  Existence arises. How are we to fathom this? The only time that truly exists is “now” yet we imagine otherwise.  If we were to live only in “now” would that not mean that we ...
By Chuan Kong, OHY
Have you ever wondered how it is that you always wake up in the morning as yourself and not someone else? As you awaken all the incidentals come crowding in: all the things you have to do today; all the places you have to be; what you are expected to accomplish, what you expect others to ...
By Yao Feng, OHY

An icy January morning, 6 a.m. It is not my habit to be awake at this hour, in this season, but I have an appointment to keep. Kilometers away from here lies the village where I will bid farewell to my mother's brother. Ninety-one years old, and he still has the courage to be taken for a ride in ...

By Fa Che
Fame is not experienced by most of us. Famous persons seem to be from another dimension, from another land, from somewhere where giants and wonders abound. Fame destroys many. Sometimes it creates saints. I saw a photograph of Ricky Martin bowing in gassho to a room of orphans on an Internet Web ...
By Fa Che
What Karma possibly exists on a national, or international level, among so many various nationalities, races, classes that would be engraved upon the earth like this tsunami from Sumatra?

We can only ask deeply what exergue encrypted somewhere, (where?), upon this colossal work of nature could ...

By Fa Gong Shakya, OHY

In Buddhism's adaptation to the concerns and climates of the post-modern West, much of what has been taken for granted as necessarily intrinsic to it has inevitably been questioned. Ancient Indian and exotic Oriental flavors react unpredictably on a Western palate, and for some, the taste does not ...

By Fa Gong, OHY

As "online Buddhists" we do well to understand that this very medium creates new opportunities for the ego to express itself, and it quickly finds new ways to dominate. When I first learned to drive I used to be amazed at how much more aggressive and anti-social people seemed to become when they ...

By Fa Liang, OHY

We can, each of us, experience Wu! -- that emptiness, that relief -- every time we give up our attachment. When we have a job to do, we simply do it - without grumbling, without daydreaming about all the other things we could be doing instead, without any sort of attachment whatsoever. When we meet ...

By Fa Dong Shakya
As anyone versed in Chan’s history knows, the hermitic life is a common one passed through by many of China’s most famous Chan teachers.  In fact, all mystical traditions commonly find their members, at some time in their life, retreating from society.  For the mystic, living a ...
By Fa Lohng (Koro Kaisan)

Among the most admired of Zen masters are those who have eschewed the temple life and opted instead for the life of a Mountain Ascetic. Asceticism is a cross-cultural, cross-religious and multidisciplinary practice. Like nearly all forms of spiritual practice, asceticism covers a wide spectrum of ...

By Fa Dong Shakya
The seeker trudges slowly up the mountain through the mists, not sure which path to take. He takes one path only to find that it dead-ends around a few large trees, forcing him to go back and take a different route. The weather, as he rises higher, becomes colder and the rains icier as the storm ...
By Yin De Shakya
I gave a talk recently at the request of a church group that was interested in my perspective on prayer and worship as a Zen Buddhist and an Atheist. I told them that even though I am a Zen Buddhist and an Atheist (in the conventional sense of the term), I do consider myself a spiritual person, and ...
By Fa Che, OHY
Sometimes a single unexpected event can change our lives forever. One such event happened to me over a decade ago … It was a normal, sunny day in Phoenix, Arizona. I was picking my daughter up from Kindergarten. My three-year-old son was holding my hand as we all walked back to the car. Few ...
By Chuan Li
Anyone who has spent much time reading about Zen has encountered the term "Self" many times over. Some may even conclude that Zen is all about Self. They would not be wrong. While some people think that Zen is about sitting in lotus position, contemplating the space between the end of a sentence ...
By Fa Gong Shakya
I have only a poor understanding of economics, though I have always had an interest in the political and philosophical values and assumptions that underpin the various processes involved. I remember being struck, when first introduced to the basic principles of Buddhism, how utterly ...
By Fa Chao Shakya
A compass is a navigational instrument with a magnetized pointer that aligns itself with the earth's magnetic field, always pointing north. We have used the compass for millennia to find our way. It's been used by seafarers, explorers, and travelers alike to help get from one place to another. When ...
By Fa Zhao Shakya

Among the great questions.... Who are we? Why are we here? and What purpose do we serve? Perhaps we should also ask, Why do we suffer? and, What can we do?   Listening to late night radio back in my twenties, I heard an English Buddhist monk tell a story of how he travelled all over the ...

By Chuan Zhi
Throughout known history there have been religions and there have been those who have been called to be their spokespersons. They are often given titles such as priest, shaman, shakya, lama, cleric, tulku, patriarch, pastor, abbot, cardinal, guru, pandit, and yogi, to name a few.
Regardless of title ...
By Fa Gong, OHY

A fundamental recognition of a maturing life is that rarely is it what we do that defines us, but rather why we do it. The history of jurisprudence reflects the same increasing sophistication; the accused should be judged on the intent of an action, rather than on outcome. Certainly, the people ...

By Chuan Zhi
We transcend our “fetters” if you will, go beyond them, rather than overcoming them. Overcoming implies a battle of some sort. Transcendence implies letting things fall away naturally … letting go. Transcendence is a natural progression though life. When it ceases, it is unnatural. Consider ...
By Fa Dao, OHY
Dependent upon whom one asks, Zen is either a school of Buddhism or a school of thought and ethical philosophy adjunct to Buddhism. While zen often teaches the folly of differentiation, hard definition and non-malleable mental categorization, it also teaches that all things should be understood by ...
By Fa Liang
Recently I took my boys outside for a walk. I told them that we'd be talking only about the things we saw, heard, felt, or experienced RIGHT THEN. We wouldn't be talking about other things, only about what was happening right in that moment. At first it was kind of awkward and I had to prod the ...
By Chuan Zhi
Acting is a powerful mechanism to draw out unconscious emotions because it gives us permission to; we are free from taking responsibility for them because, since we are acting, they are implicitly not us.  Yet true expression of emotion is fundamentally real and true however we look at it.  ...
By Yin Shan

With so many labeled human conditions in our world these days like Autism, ADHD, Bi Polar, Cerebral Palsy etc, one would wonder if Zen is only available to the so called ‘normals' or does it encompass our ‘disabled' friends and family as well?

The faults of others are easily seen, but one's ...

By Yin Zhao, OHY
I think it was Thomas Jefferson who said that if given the choice between a free government and a free press, he’d take the free press. T.J. knew the power of words. The Buddha did, too, and that, no doubt, is why he placed so much emphasis on Right Speech.

There’s not an easier way to wreck ...
By Fa Xing (Hadashi Sharishi)
I don't remember much about the fifth grade.  Oh, I remember a few faces, what the school looked like, and other such inane details, but I don't remember specifically what I learned that year.  All of my elementary school years kind of blend together in that regard. 

A Zen ...

By Chuan Zhi
Asceticism has come to be characterized in contemporary culture as an extreme form of religious practice; in particular, as a retreat from society, and as an even more extreme form of self-denial. We may conjure up an image of a monk sitting on a dirt floor, ribs protruding, eyes sunken, and beard ...
By Chuan Zhi
Before we can enter the domain of the spirit, we must exit the domain of self, that is, our ego-self. This requires nothing less than reinventing ourselves - creating a new understanding of who we are - an understanding apart from that formed from the accumulated impressions of ourselves over the ...
By Daniel Scharpenburg
Prajna is translated in several different ways. Sometimes it's knowledge. Sometimes it's wisdom. Sometimes it's transcendental wisdom. Sometimes it's insight. It's the sixth perfection, one of the tools cultivated on the Bodhisattva path. I prefer to leave it as prajna. Like Dharma and Buddha, I ...
By Chuan Zhi
Inevitably, in the course of the life of a Zen Buddhist, someone will ask us “What is Zen”?  The simple answer is, of course, it’s the mystical branch of Chinese/ Japanese/ Korean/ Vietnamese (choose one) Buddhism.  When I’ve explained it this way I usually get blank stares, and ...
By Paul Cochrane

The concept of miraculous coincidences is not at all new. The phenomenon has been recognized by many cultures, and in the distant past, was attributed to the acts of the Gods. In Greek mythology, the God Hermes, was represented as a playful "trickster" who was manifested in unexpected and humorous ...

By Fa Gong
In the past few years, I read many times the Chinese version of both the Vajra Prajna Paramita Sutra and The Sixth Patriarch’s Platform Sutra. Although I understood the literal meaning of “One should have a true mind which is nowhere attached,” I could not comprehend this ...
By Chuan Kong, OHY
Discriminating is a fundamental aspect of being human. Everything we do is a choice based on discrimination between one thing or another, or between one thing and a thousand others. The collection of choices we each make is unique to each of us. Sometimes our choices are based on our likes and ...
By Fa Gong Shakya
Buddhism is an ancient path of practice; to some a religion, to others a philosophy, and to many simply a practice of sane living. From the outside looking in, it can seem an evolutionary, and revolutionary, spiritual technology that seems to stand unique amongst religions in that it embraces the ...
By Fa Gong Shakya
A couple of weeks ago a friend came to me to discuss problems she was having in her meditation practice. She was quite distraught at what she felt was her hopeless progress, and she despaired she'd ever get the hang of it. When I asked about the problem, she said that no matter how hard she tried ...
By Fa Shen

The tools with which we are born and with which we come to know the world are our five sense organs - our eyes, ears, nose, tongue and skin. We often say that our eyes look out upon the world. But what intrigues me is that it isn't so much our eyes looking out as what is projected onto us, followed ...

By Fa Gong Shakya

In Buddhist literature we are often exposed to Mara, the sometimes wily, sometimes violent, sometimes beguiling tempter of Gautama on his way to Buddha-hood. Mara can be said to provide, essentially, a personification of that force which counters the evolutionary urge to enlightenment; it ...

By Fa Liang
Forgiveness is a three-dimensional road with its foundation built solidly in the bedrock of our spiritual nature. I wrote previously about forgiving ourselves - recognizing and accepting our own mistakes instead of hiding in their shadows, defending our mistakes as if they weren't mistakes at all. ...
By Peadar OGreachain

Waking from sleep, a fresh dream. How little the difference between conscious and subconscious. The dreaming mind is full of thoughts that make little sense, but the mind that’s awake is really no different. We’re caught up in chaotic thought patterns, running from one spike to another, ...

By Chuan Zhi

When we stop to analyze our daily lives, we discover how many of our activities are constructed to assuage a fear of being alone. We wait in lines at restaurants and take several hours to eat a meal that we could quickly have prepared at home. We go out to crowded malls shopping for things we don't ...

By Roshi Wendy Egyoku Nakao
Kalyanamitra is the Sanskrit word for spiritual friendship. This friendship is something much more than someone to hang out with, but rather connotes a person or even a thing that becomes our guide, a teacher, and serves to inspire us along our path to awakening. There is a common Zen expression ...
By Yin De Shakya

Each of us has a narrator in our head. An internal voice that we call “me”. And most of us assume that this narrator is real. We assume that it’s our true self. Some believe it’s the thing which inhabits the body and the brain rather than something that arises as a result of a body and a ...

By Fa Dao, OHY
Like the Buddha's Disciple Moggallana in search of his mother, I have entered the Preta Realm with a mission. oggallana entered this realm in an effort to save his mother. She had been reborn in this hell-realm as the result of greed. A spirit ever-hungry as the result of the greed-karma in her ...
By Yin De, OHY
A friend asked me to elaborate on how, as Buddhists, we should deal with concepts, words, and emotions that seem to go against what we're taught but still seem to be as "real" as they were before we came to Buddhism. He asked, specifically, about the concepts of hope and faith. He had been ...
By Fa Gong, OHY

How is it that the "spiritual" person, for whom we might assume humility to be an essential characteristic, so often presents as aloof and arrogant? It is bad enough that the "holier than thou" attitude which often flaws the religious character is common to monastics, priests, gurus, teachers and ...

By Fa Dong
A young monk went into the mountains, as is common in the Chinese Chan tradition. Living alone with no one to interrupt him, he sat in meditation, caring for little else than looking within. In quick time his beard grew. After six months he began the journey back to his monastery. By then, his ...
By Chuan Kong Shakya
"Get lost!” You can’t seem to get through life without hearing that at least once. The command usually means that you should exit, either literally or metaphorically, and the quicker the better. It’s especially hurtful when the person who says it thinks he means well. “Get lost!” The ...
By Yin De Shakya
Some Unitarian Universalists claim a belief in "God" in one form or another. Some consider themselves Agnostic and others happily call themselves Atheists. Some Unitarian Universalists are Buddhists, and some Buddhists speak of "Gods" and "Hell Realms". Some Buddhists avoid "the ‘G' word" at all ...
By Fa Liang, OHY

We are all human. If we are honest with ourselves we'll recognize that we all say and do things that cause pain to others as well as to ourselves. It's the feelings within that reflexively lead us to act and speak in hurtful ways. The fear, negativity, and blame we project onto others are really ...

By Fa Zhang Shakya

It is fortunate that many people who gain some acquaintance with Buddhism decide to engage in its practice. Yearning for enlightenment, they set about establishing a practice, and this normally leads them to read as much as possible about the topic, and, very often, to chose a teacher. Many find it ...

By Chuan Zhi

A true Buddhist isn't necessarily a person who attends Buddhist services and who observes Buddhist traditions... no more than these public acts define a true Christian or Muslim. Living out the life of the spirit, freeing ourselves from anger, lust, and ignorance are the private goals we need to ...

By Yao Xiang - Bulgaria
The gift of Faith is like a rare and precious jewel; but strangely, it is a gift that often remains hidden from the one who possesses it. Like Aladdin's treasure, it lies hidden behind a cave's strong doors until, in some unexpected moment, a magic sound - monks chanting in a temple or someone ...
By Fa Guang
How many times have you heard, "living in the moment?" The expression is fashionable now. I hear it everywhere, and see it within or on the back of at least sixty percent of the self-help and psychology books in every book store I visit. It's a "truism" I suppose, but it seems to me that it's so ...
By Fa Dao, OHY

The simplest of foods or the meanest of meals is a banquet if we appreciate it for what it is -- sustenance, a gift from the earth and the fruit of the labors of men and women. A simple noodle is fit for a king when we appreciate its texture and subtlety of flavor. Even crusty old Lin Chi ...

By Chuan Zhi
Disasters have a way of bringing people together, but Covid-19 has forced an odd kind of isolation upon us, one that’s both separating us from each other and simultaneously bringing us together, albeit in a virtual way.  We might imagine that the availability of social media has helped us ...
By Fa Zhao Shakya

As we sat across the table from each other, at our usual coffee shop overlooking the beautiful Australian east coast, I noticed the look of distraction on his face, a face I have known for over 10 years. He seemed perplexed and I could see he was looking for answers. With hesitation, he said, "I'm ...

By Fa Gong

What we typically label as simply "mind" is, in Pali, substantially more precise. Our broad concept might of mind could be translated in Pali as vijnana, or consciousness. Nowhere does it suggest in Buddhist teaching that we can or should "still our consciousness," but the idea Westerners typically ...

By Fa Dao, OHY
It was the 8th day of the 12th lunar month, the story goes, that Siddhartha Gautama, also known as Shakyamuni, awoke from a week of meditation to view of the morning star - Venus - and exclaimed, "That's it! That's it! That's me! That's me that's shining so brilliantly!" In that single moment he ...
By Chuan Zhi

When we achieve true restorative balance within ourselves we are happy and content, and can live without regret, remorse or guilt. We are at peace. The enlightened approach is to always be vigilant, to guard against committing sins - those violations of our Buddhist Precepts. But when we slip and ...

By Fa Che Shakya
With the smile, Chan had its beginnings. When reading the Sutras, one often reads that the Buddha smiled prior to answering questions posed to him. The importance of the Buddha's smile can be seen by the many statue depictions of it. The historical Buddha is often affixed with a calm, confident, ...
By Chuan Zhi

 Zen requires that we maintain our sense of awe and wonder, that pure curiosity about the things we see and experience, that search for meaning and significance that is so apparent in the works of ancient man. We cannot allow technology to dull our awe and jade our curiosity about the meaning ...

By Fa Dao, OHY
Speaking with a friend on the phone recently and asked about her practice. Just the general sort of conversational "how's it going" type of question. She answered "I'm wearing my practice like a loose garment." Not concentrating or striving or actively "Being Buddhist," she said. Sitting fairly ...
By Chuan Kong Shakya
Isn't it strange how often we're met with the problems of choice? Time and time again we find it necessary to unify our divided mind, to make a definitive decision, a right decision - and woe betide us if we get it wrong!

When a choice can result in consequences we may not have the power to alter, ...
By Fa Guang, OHY
The Internet has a peculiar way of grabbing us and taking us off course, often without us even being aware it's happening. Recently as I was searching the Internet for a particular book I came across a list of forum posts relating to religious beliefs. I don't generally take the time to read forum ...
By Chuan Zhi

Some Buddhists may say they believe in God, others may say otherwise, but the reality of God is independent of anything anyone may believe or disbelieve. Religions the world over testify to the universal urge for our mind to realize that which is greater than itself. How do we describe something ...

By Chuan Zhi

Buddhism is about the discovery of our own potential: it's about beauty, and about love. Buddhism embraces mankind's quest for knowledge in all its many manifestations: spiritual knowledge, scientific knowledge, knowledge of art and music, but most of all, knowledge of Self: knowledge of who we are ...

By Chuan Zhi
"All religions are the same" Chan master Jy Din told me in 1999 while visiting at Hsu Yun temple. What did he mean? When we examine religions, they all appear quite varied: different beliefs, customs, and ceremonies lead us to consider that they are, in fact, all not the same. So, what point of ...
By Chuan Zhi
“If you want to be free to be born or die, to go or stay as one would put on or take off a garment, then you must understand right now that the person here listening to the Dharma has no form, no characteristics, no root, no beginning, no place you abide, yet you are vibrantly alive. All the ten ...