Karma Cleanse

Food for thought.

Picture from facebook:
Practicing the Presence through Mind and Meditation

Soul or Body

 "Begin to see yourself as a soul with a body rather than a body with a soul."  ~Wayne Dyer
The two have such different results.
Knowing the soul is the true self, which should control the body allows us to see things in different perspectives.

Dream Big

This reminds me of Shifu's quote : "有願就有力" (Roughly translated: when you have wish/vision, you have power"  )
And it's so true. When clearly knowing your goal and direction, you are filled with energy. Heaven and earth will move to help you fulfill your dream.
I found a lot of Albert Einstein's quotes echo with what the Buddha taught. Just the 'wording' is different. ( What did you expect? With a different language and different culture, not to mention different time frame.)  

Picture from Facebook: True Activist

[Sharing] Doctor tell Patients to Meditate

http://www.naturalnews.com/

For smiles.

But truth saying, doctors are prescribing meditation to patients. It makes sense!
naturalnews.com
abcnews.go.com/

Picture Source: True Activist

Chan and Purpose (Jue Miao Miao Ming)

Chan is a spiritual practice.

It’s not about releasing stress.  It’s not about improving your mind so that you can do better at work, or improve your interpersonal relationships.  It’s not about healing your body and making you feel more comfortable.  Chan is a spiritual practice.

Chan can be compared to a cake.  The cake has a very delicious, very nutritious, and very wonderful filling in the center, surrounded by very delicious cake with wonderful icing on the top.  If you focus on releasing stress, healing the body, and clarifying the mind, you are only tasting the icing.  You are missing the cake, and you never get close to even realizing what a wonderful filling it has inside.

Chan practice is challenging. It’s not a wonderful, peaceful, go-to-this-nirvana feeling every time you sit.  Anybody who has ever tried Sitting Chan has experienced pain in their legs.  It is very difficult sometimes, even excruciating.  Mental practice can be just as challenging; just as difficult.  

You need more to sustain you, to be able to get through this practice, than just superficial benefits.

It’s not that you won’t realize these things.  It’s not that you won’t witness these things.  It’s just that you don’t practice Chan to get these benefits; you get these benefits because you practice Chan.

There are many reasons why people come to Chan practice.  They may have a lot of stress in their lives, their job or study may be difficult.  They want some release from their stress.  They want to find a calmer, more peaceful place.  Perhaps they have other challenges in their lives that they look to Chan practice for a solution to.  They may want to have more self-esteem and self-confidence from which they can develop interpersonal relationships that are deeper and more valuable.  Or maybe they have some physical problem that they want to try to find solution to.  Finding resolution to these problems through Chan practice is a very difficult path, if your only motivation is to find a solution to a problem.

A Japanese sensei of Zen once asked me “Why do you sit and do the seated meditation?”

I gave the answer that I thought she wanted to hear: “I want to find a peaceful, calm place. I want to relax and I want to be released from the stress of my job.”

She looked at me and said “This sitting meditation, very difficult, very challenging. You should go sit on your back porch and drink a beer. You will find this peaceful place.”

As important as these problems may seem, in relationship to what Chan practice can provide you, they’re actually very, very insignificant problems.  Chan practice is interested not in releasing or relieving some temporary problem in this temporary body.  It is interested in evolving your spirit to be something greater than it was.  If we see ourselves as a spiritual being that has existed long before this body and will exist long after this body, then, there is an opportunity to evolve, to grow, to become something greater at the end of this life than we were when we entered it.

Chan practice is challenging.  When we sit, the body hurts, the legs hurt, the back hurts, and the knees hurt, everything becomes very painful, and we need something to sustain us through that part of the practice.  What you will find is that when you sit, and you breathe, at some point in your practice, you’ll find that you surpass this physical discomfort, that miraculously in the middle of the meditation, you’ll realize: it didn’t hurt today.  The pain is gone, and there is something deeper, some deeper place that you went to, in this practice.  The pain is no longer there.  And you have evolved also, you have realized, you have witnessed surpassing the body.  And this becomes the model that you carry forward.

But surpassing the body is just the first step; it just gives us some foundation, because you’ll find when you surpass the body, now you get to deal with the mind.  And the mind is infinitely more challenging to resolve and surpass than the body was.  The mind will raise a million different distractions and will create reasons why you’re wasting your time, why this is boring, why it hurts, why you’re not really getting the benefit.  The mind will find many, many reasons to try to find a way to release itself from the challenge of being trained and eventually surpassed.

If we follow the practice, and don’t try to short-cut, without trying to do too much too fast, we can use the witness of surpassing the body. There’s a model for surpassing the mind.  We’ll find once you surpass conscious mind, you’ll get to deal with sub-conscious mind.  Everything that you’ve done in your life that was painful, that was difficult, that was challenging, that you still hold inside that you haven’t released, you’ll have to go through and re-live that again.  Feel it with the same clarity, the same emotion, the same hurt, the same challenge, until you’re able to release it from the sub-conscious.  All of the accumulated karma that you bring into this life, all that you create while you’re here, you’ll have to purge and purify, and cleanse and cultivate that also from your being.

When you resolve and surpass body, and when you resolve and surpass mind—conscious mind and subconscious mind, you’ll find that, there’s no-longer separation between these aspects of self. That the wisdom of the body and the wisdom of the mind and the insight of the spirit are not separate things competing for time, trying to compete for your attention as you sit. You’ll find that the separation between them dissolves. And this is when you’ll have the opportunity for deep insight into the self, to be able to see who you are.

You strip all of these things away, and see what your true nature is, to truly achieve enlightenment within this lifetime, true happiness and peace inside that’s not dependant on circumstances or situations, but evolves of itself from within you.

This is what’s achievable from Chan practice.

桑吉與禪 G and Chan

桑吉與禪
G and Chan

各位師兄姐好，我的名字是 葛帝明那斯‧桑葛艾拉；也可以叫我 "桑吉"，或者 簡稱"G"，來自立陶宛。今天我想跟各位分享我的故事，我是如何輾轉地認識到禪、其他佛教思想、陌生的國度，和最重要的 — 發現自我。

Dear fellow practitioners, my name is Gediminas, 桑吉, or just "G", from Lithuania.
Today I would like to tell my story about my twisted road that let me to discover Chan, other Buddhist doctrines, foreign countries, and the thing that matters the most – to discover Myself.

雖然我的心得可能很主觀，甚至就周六來說，我會帶您去晚上的 Luxy ；比帶您去早上的禪修道場，來得機率要高一些。但是既然沒有人是完美的，而我們的禪宗上師，也開示了 "禪的平等性"，那麼有時候；聽聽他人的說法，可能也是不錯的。

Well, honestly speaking there is more chance that I will lead you to Luxy (night club in Taipei) on Saturday evening, then to a meditation center on Saturday morning, but… since no one is perfect and as our Chan Master said – "In Chan everyone is equal", therefore sometimes it might be good to listen some other opinion from an outsider, even if that opinion will be a little bit subjective.

一切的佛法因緣，都開始得很不自然，或者說，當我還是青少年的時候，我就被迫往這條路上走。在我體內有些力量，驅使我做出改變，而若您想知道這些力量是什麼的話，它叫做 "Insanity" (抓狂)。

Everything started in a very strange way, or I should say – I was forced to start my journey when I was a teenager. Forces that initiated this change lied inside me, and if you would like to know the name of those forces – it is "Insanity".

當有些青少年開始經歷一些非常尖銳的情緒，他們會做一些瘋狂的事情，例如說逃學離家、酗酒吸毒、或是其他一些脫序的行為。我沒有那種 "勇氣" 用逃離父母，或甚至自殺的方式，來向別人證明些什麼。所以在面對我抓狂的毛病時，我把它視作一個很親近的 "好朋友"，我選擇了宗教，作為解決之道。

When teenager feels some very sharp emotions, they become capable of doing crazy things: running from home, alcohol and drugs, quitting school and other kinds of destructive behavior. However I wasn't enough "brave" to run away from parents or try to commit suicide in order to prove something to someone. Therefore my solution to my dear Insanity, which is still very close and "good" friend of mine, was religion.

我從非常簡單、在歐洲容易接觸的方法入手:：基督教。但是，我找到的問題卻比答案更多，還有太多的神祕之處，過於模糊不清。後來當我接觸到東方的文化，我馬上就被它的深度所吸引，我也發現某種新的東西，一種厚實的基礎，而萬物從此而生。孔子、老子與道、日本禪，這些事情逐漸引導我正式地認識到藏傳佛教。

I started from very simple things that were very easy to reach in Europe – Christianity in which later I found more questions than answers and too much mysticism that made it very vague and obscure. Later I started finding the East and all its culture, and I immediately got fascinated by the depth of it. I also was able to find something that was new to me, and that thing was a Solid Foundation on which everything else started evolving. Confucius, Dao and LaoZi, Japanese Zen - all of these things led me to my first real and crucial meeting with Tibetan Buddhism.

雖然藏傳佛教除了持咒之外，也有許許多多的神祕之處，但是這次我並未感到害怕或是不安。我甚至有種回家的感覺。我們打坐時觀想 --- 我們試著相應的那些神，我都覺得他們像是多年的老友，到這裡來幫我打發我這個抓狂的老毛病。

Yes, besides a lot of chanting in Tibetan Buddhism there is also lots of mysticism, but this time I wasn't uncomfortable or scared of it. I felt like at home and all those deities that we were meditating and trying to merge with in our spiritual level, seemed like my old friends who came here to help me to get rid of my beloved friend ( Insanity ).

有很長一段時間，我對於能夠在藏傳佛教找到的一切，都很滿意。我相信若是事情的演變有所不同的話，我現在應該還是全心全意地修行密宗。但是，誠如我們的生命無常又混亂，改變是必然的，而有時候我們必須調整自己來適應新的環境。

對我來說，生命中最重要的事，就是讓我們能夠遇見某些人，他們能夠帶我們走向自我實現之路。既然我已經兩年多沒有見到我之前的上師，我感到與我那 "密宗的背景" 有點脫節了。當時我有點不安，不確定我做的一切是否正確? 還是或許我該做些改變，來實現我所有的潛能。

For quite a while I was very satisfied with the things that I was able to find there, and I'm sure if circumstances were a little bit different, I still would be practicing it till now with all my heart. But, as usually in our chaotic life, changes are inevitable, and sometimes you need to tune yourself to new environment. The truth is that I'm sure that one of the most important factors in our life is to be able to meet some people who can lead us to our path of realization. And since I didn't see my previous master for more than two years, therefore I felt a little bit out of touch with my "Tibetan Roots". I just wasn't sure – do everything I do is right, or maybe I should change something in order to be able to fulfill all my potential.

就是這個時候，我開始認真地考慮參加其他佛教的團體。而第一個浮現在腦海的，就是我們禪修的道場。剛開始，我感到很不自在，對於自己和其他師兄姐也沒有什麼信心。禪坐對我來說非常難，我以前自己試著禪坐的時候也並不順利。這是為什麼剛開始禪修的時候，我表現得很沒禮貌、充滿懷疑、又悲觀。前幾次，我甚至想從此不再繼續來我們的會館禪修了。

That's when I started considering more and more seriously to join other Buddhist groups, and the first that came to my mind was Chan Meditation Center. At the beginning I felt very awkward and I didn't have a lot of confidence in myself and in other people. Sitting meditation was a tough task for me, and my previous experience trying to master it by myself wasn't path strewn with roses. That was the main reason, why I was so skeptic, rude, pessimistic about it. After first few times I even wanted to quit our meditation center.

那時候，我不確定我是否真的能夠在這裡找到我想要的一切。我也不確定這些師兄姐，是否真的很認真的看待修行。他們是真心想要修行成佛嗎? 還是只是暫時的流行罷了? 他們真的感受到他們所說的一切，還是只是為了滿足自我來說說而已? 更重要的是，道場是租的，而這表示我們都應該要分擔租金，而我當時並不寬裕，所以我決定要觀望看看。

At the time I just wasn't sure – can I really get everything that I want? And I also wasn't sure – are those people very serious about what they do? Are they real practitioners whose goal is to become Buddha or it is just a temporary fashion? Do they really feel everything they are talking, or just want to satisfy their ego with those Abracadabra? On top of that – Buddhist group was renting one meeting place which meant that all of us also will have to share the rent, and since at the time I wasn't very rich, I've decided to "wait and see".

感恩我們有耐心的 佛菩薩，以及其他師兄姐，沒有放棄我。漸漸地我成為了班上固定的成員，而我漸漸地也開始從我的修行上得到正面的回應。當然這並不容易，我們的會館並不是什麼便利商店一樣的唾手可得，也不是隨隨便便玩票性質的休閒娛樂。所以當我離開了之前在桃園的工作，回到台北以後，我才更有機會能時常利用閒暇時間來到會館。

But thanks to our Patient Lord Buddha and our fellow practitioners who didn't give up on me, I started to be a regular member of this group, and little by little I started receiving positive feedback from my practices. Of course this come back wasn't so easy, and our meditation center isn't some kind of 7/11 where you just come by, or drop by just accidently or just for fun. So my return was gradual: at first I came back to Taipei (because before I had a job in TaoYuan) which made it easy to "drop by" whenever I had some free time.

另一方面，我開始上我們 師父的周六課程，而這是我真正的轉捩點。我開始對自己更有信心，也對我們的 師父有信心。我相信這兩件事是最重要的。因為如果不相信上師，就沒有人能夠指示我們該往哪個方向走。如果沒有自信，就算有人告訴你方向，你也無法到達。現在我上了 "圓滿禪修班"，也無疑地期待著這個挑戰和機會。

And second, on Saturdays I've started attending our Shi-fu's classes which was my real turning point. I've started getting some confidence in myself and in our Shi-fu which I think are two most important things. Simply because without trust in Shi-fu – there is no one to show you direction where to go, and without self-confidence even if someone shows you the way – you won't be able to go there. Now there is a second "session" of Shi-fu's Classes that I've already started to attend and I'm definitely looking forward to this challenge.

當然還是會有起起伏伏的時候。我從我們 師父那兒，得到的最初的回應，就是麻掉的腿和無法忍受的痛。但是我想，佛菩薩也不是一日就成就的。一開始，我也面臨到很多問題，但是我慢慢的自我要求，把自己推向更大的目標和挑戰。

我第一個大的挑戰，是我們周二的禪修班 (大專團的精神班，中文授課)。頭兩次我真的嚇到了，而腦中只有一個念頭: "快跑吧 ! "。 第一次坐足40分鐘，實在是我人生中最大的折磨。而當我以為下座了 (其實還沒)，我睜開眼睛，卻看到我身邊的師兄們，都結了一個跟我不一樣的手印 ! 您能想像嗎? 我是課堂上唯一的老外，也可能是唯一做得跟大家都不一樣的一位，甚至可能根本做錯功法了! 當時我真的是既憤怒又傷心，而課堂上卻沒有人告訴我，我做得跟別人有一點不一樣!

Of course there are always ups and downs: the first feedback that I got from our Shi-fu was numb legs and unbearable pain, but Lord Buddha also didn't become enlightened in one night. At the beginning I also encountered lots problems but little by little I started "raising stakes", and pushing myself to bigger goals.

One of my first big challenges was our Tuesday meetings - and first two times I was so terrified of it that the only thing that was on my mind was "RUN Away"! First 40minute session was one of the most elaborate tortures that I've saw in my life, and after it ended (actually I was very naïve to think that it already ended), I opened my eyes, looked around and I understood that everyone else was holding a different mudra then me! Imagine – I was The Only Foreigner there and probably the only person who was doing everything wrong! At that time I was furious and sad – not even I had to bear all that but also at the end I even had to find out that I was doing it in some other way, and probably even a wrong way! And nobody even told me that I was doing something a little bit "different" than others!

那時候，我真的很討厭所有的師兄姐、我們的 師父、甚至所有的華人! 但是誠如我剛才提過的，改變是必然的，而這份厭惡感，卻轉成了我對於禪修的熱誠。

At that time I hated all practitioners, our Shi-fu and all Chinese People! But as I said before – changes are inevitable and this hatred was also meant to be transformed to my passion for Chan.

後來，這份熱誠，協助我戰勝我自己的恐懼。它讓我對於自己和對於其他人產生新的感受、新的目標、新的感想、以及新的信念。現在我的目標是「一日一禪定」。雖然改變是必然的，而某些日子會比其他日子更好，或者有時候；我的體能狀態讓我沒辦法做到我的 100%，但是我知道，黑暗之後；總會有嶄新的一天，也會有嶄新的光明。

所以我的故事，還沒有結束…。

Later my passion helped me to conquer my fears, it brought me new feelings, new goals, new insights, new belief in myself and others. My goal now is to practice every day, and despite the fact that changes are inevitable and some days are better than others and that sometimes I had some physical problems that didn't let me to do all my 100%, but now I know that – After dark there is always a new day and a new ray of sun.

Therefore my story isn't finished….

【禪法印心，光耀生命】

《大安敦南禪修會館》，每周一晚上7：30~9：00，舉辦《英文禪修體驗班》，讓有心修禪的外籍人士，有機會接受禪宗正法啟迪和身心靈洗禮，歡迎參加。

每半年定期舉辦三天兩夜的《禪修體驗營》，全程英文授課，協助外籍朋友貼近內在本有的智慧，確立正確的禪行觀念。

今年暑期的營隊時間為 6/29(五)~7/1(日)，詳情請洽: EnglishMeditation@gmail.com

English Meditation Class is available every Monday evening 7:30~9:00 at "Taipei Chan Meditation Center" for international friends who are interested in spiritual advancement through Heart Chan meditation and practices.

The 3-day-2-night retreat held twice each year is also a great opportunity to get in touch with our intrinsic inner wisdom.

The upcoming Summer retreat will take place 6/29~7/1 (Friday~Sunday). For more info, please e-mail EnglishMeditation@gmail.com

After the Retreat (by David)

After the Retreat (AR)

In many ways I wish that AR (After the Retreat) marked as significant a milestone in my life as A.D. or B.C. do for the world. Unfortunately, this is not the case. As much as I may like to be able to report that my life was instantly and mystically transformed post retreat – sadly, it has not been. However, my life and points of view have been altered.

The chance to escape and focus on myself, without a constant stream of interruption and diversion, is a precious and staggeringly rare thing and the retreat, with no phone, email or contact provided this.

We moved to Taiwan six months ago primarily so that our eleven year old son, Connor, can learn Mandarin and the culture attached to it. Behind this overt motivation however was a half-expressed hope that transplanting our lives may also let us find alternative methods of living our lives to the one we were living - A life filled with worry over ensuring we earned more than the people around us, where we lived, what car we drove and endlessly obsessing over getting Connor into the 'best' school.

The truly terrible thing about this kind of materially obsessed life, as has been noted by many before me, is that you can literally never win. After obtaining your goals and desires you simply realise that there is more that you 'need' or that someone else has. Think you have enough handbags? Prada has just released a USD$2 million handbag. Think you have a good cover for your iPad? Hermes has one for USD$1200 or if you are truly 'successful' then a New York jeweller has a diamond-encrusted one for USD$4 million (and they cannot keep up with demand).

Fortunately, within a week of arriving, we went on a full day meditation to a nearby temple with the English meditation group.

Versus a materially obsessed life, it seems to me that seeking enlightenment (or at least bringing more happiness into my own and other people's lives) is something that is not only more worthwhile, but actually easier to achieve.

The journey towards self-actualisation also appears to be a much nicer and more rewarding journey than one of constantly seeking new things. The people that I have met at every meditation event, including the retreat, are the kinds of people that it is a joy to be around. I believe that meditation, in promoting a focus on the 'now' and being centred, brings out the best in interactions between people and this positive interaction quickly becomes a virtuous cycle. This is the main idea that I have taken away from the retreat.

Every day I try to meditate, usually with my son, for at least thirty minutes, before we start the day. We do this so that we are more 'stilled' and more open to creating and allowing positive interactions with the people and situations around us. My life has not miraculously altered as a result, however by consistently being more open to the great things in people and situations I have found so much good in them that I would have otherwise been largely closed to. I can already see a positive cycle starting that may well over time 'miraculously' alter our lives.

Perhaps one day AR may truly be marked as a transformative event in my life.

Buddha Nature, Inner Child (June Lei)

A wonderful sharing by participant June Lei:

Thank you all for making the retreat such a delightful and memorable experience to me!

Kishi told me to write something and I did. This piece I'm posting here is not entirely about the meditation retreat. It's more like a brief narrative of my spiritual exploration in Taiwan.

Buddha Nature, Inner Child

I like the quote "God, grant me the serenity to accept the things I cannot change; courage to change the things I can, and wisdom to tell the difference.” For a while, I was resorting to God for help. The Christian group I was associated with are extremely kind and helpful to me, to each other, and to people in general, and I enjoyed bible reading, gospel meeting, and other activities with them. For me though, it was difficult to say out loud “Oh, Lord Jesus,” to believe that human beings are merely containers where Lord Jesus is invited to come fill up, or to get baptized any time soon so I won't disappoint people. Chan meditation doesn’t make me feel as pressured. What attracts me most in Zen/Chan is its emphasis on Buddha-nature, which, I think, is close to “inner self” or “inner child” in the West, a pure, precious, and unpolluted being. It reminds me a poem by Wordsworth:

My heart leaps when my eyes behold

A rainbow in the sky:

So was it when my life began;

So is it now I am a man;

So be it when I shall grow old,

Or let me die!

The Child is father of the Man;

I could wish my days to be

Bound each to each by natural piety.

Yes, Wordsworth's poem is an ode to nature, but when I read it now, it also feels like an ode to inner nature. The leaping heart is where the inner nature is hidden, and "the child"is the precious being that helps "man" to remember, to re-experience the joy we felt in heart when first seeing the colorful lights of the rainbow. A joyful heart is the beginning of our life and it also keeps us from fearing age and death (doesn't this remind you of the story of shakyamuni buddha we saw where he first saw aging, sickness and death and was determined to look for a cure?). During the meditation retreat, I literally felt that my heart became more joyful and expanded. It used to be a small heart, only enough to contain myself in it, and now I’m willing to make an effort to expand it so eventually it will have space for all beings 众生。During the meditation class, someone shared a Chan story about the ocean and a bottle of water. A bottle of water is easily hazed by a few drops of mud but the ocean remains the same. He inspired us to think that if the heart is big enough, it’s less likely to be disturbed. The heart will remain a heart peaceful, joyful and compassionate.

愿大家保持一颗平常心，欢喜心，慈悲心！

Yours,

June Lei