Buddhist
Hour
Radio Broadcast on Hillside 88.0 FM
Buddhist Hour Script
338 for Sunday 18 July 2004
Glossary:
concupiscence: eager or inordinate
desire, immoderate sexual desire, desire for worldly
things.
capricious: humourous; fantastic, characterised by far
fetched comparisons.
laudable: praiseworthy,
commendable.
antithesis: the substitution of one case for
another, opposition or contrast of ideas, expressed by parallelism of
words which are the opposites of, or strongly contrasted with each
other.
This script is entitled: Chopping wood, carrying
water. Preserving our Chan Heritage.
On 4 April 2004 Chan painting classes recommenced at
our Chan Academy.
Over the last 12 months members have
practised Chan in caring for their teacher during his illness, and
with diligence and persistence they maintained our Buddha Dhamma
Centre.
What is Chan?
What is mind?
Mind is the
substance of Chan.
Master Sheng-yen in his book Dharma Drum:
"The life and heart of Ch’an practice" points out to
the student that: Chan first teaches us to always observe the
“direction” of our mind. If we keep the mind within the
perimeter of our observances, we will not be ensnared by the external
environment.
A famous saying in the Chinese monasteries
(states): “a monk for a day, strike the bell for a day.”
The point of this saying is that you should perform your duties well.
It is with this Chan mind that the students took care of
their teacher and maintained our Centre.
We all have our own
“bells” to strike. Clearly set forth and develop your
highest potential. Your mind should be focussed and directed toward
the task at hand. Don’t be indecisive, fickle, or
capricious.
Lu K’uan Yu writes that in the essentials of
Chan training our daily activities are performed within the truth
itself. When a person’s Chan meditation becomes effective, there
will be (mental) states which are too many to enumerate, but if you
do not cling to them, they will not hinder you. This is what the
proverb says: ‘Don’t wonder at the wonderful and the
wonderful will be in full retreat.’
The prerequisites of
the Chan training from the Hsu Yun Ho Shang Fa Hui as recorded in
Master Hsu Yun’s Discourses and Dharma Words and edited,
translated and explained by Lu K’uan Yu goes on to note that:
“…the object of Chan training is to realise the
mind for the perception of (self-) nature, that is to wipe out the
impurities which soil the mind so that the fundamental face of
self-nature can really be perceived. Impurities are our false
thinking and clinging (to things as real).
Self-nature is the
meritorious characteristic of the Tathagata wisdom that is the same
in both Buddhas and living beings. If one’s false thinking and
grasping are cast aside, one will bear witness to the meritorious
characteristic of one’s Tathagata wisdom and will become a
Buddha, otherwise one will remain a living being. For since countless
eons, our own delusion has immersed us in the (sea of) birth and
death. Since our defilement has (already) lasted so long, we are
unable instantly to free ourselves from false thinking in order to
perceive our self-nature.”
Lu K’uan Yu
explains…‘this is why we must undergo Chan training. The
prerequisite of this training is the eradication of false thinking.’
As to how to wipe it out, we have already many sayings of
Sakyamuni Buddha and nothing is simpler than the word ‘Halt’
in His saying:
‘If it halts, it is Enlightenment
(Bodhi).
In the Chan training, one should be in earnest in
one’s desire to leave the realm of birth and death, and develop
a long enduring mind (in one’s striving). If the mind is not
earnest it will be impossible to give rise to the doubt, and the
striving will be ineffective. Lack of a long enduring mind will
result in laziness and the training will not be continuous.
Just
develop a long enduring mind and the doubt will rise of itself. When
doubt rises trouble (klesa) will come to an end of itself. As the
ripe moment comes (it will be like) running water that will form a
channel.
To say this another way, success is bound to
follow.
Master Hsu Yun tells the following story he personally
witnessed. ‘In the year K’eng Tsu (1900), when eight world
powers sent their expeditionary forces to Peking (after the Boxer
rebellion), I followed Emperor Kuang Hsu and Empress-Dowager Tz’u
His when they fled from the capital. We had to hurry towards Shen his
(Shesi) province; each day we walked several tens of miles, and for
several days we had no rice to eat. On the road, a peasant offered
some creepers of sweet potato to the (hungry) emperor, who found them
savoury and asked the man what they were?
You can imagine
that when the Emperor who used to put on airs and had an
awe-inspiring reputation, had to run some distance he became very
hungry. When he ate creepers of sweet potato, he gave up all his airs
and awe-inspiring attitude.
Why did he walk on foot, become
hungry and lay down everything?
Because the allied forces
wanted his life and he had only one thought, that of running for his
life.
Later, when peace had been concluded, he returned to
the capital, putting on once more his airs and his awe-inspiring
reputation. Again he would no longer walk in the street and did not
feel hungry. If he did not find some food savoury, once more he could
not swallow it.
Why was he (again) unable to lay down
everything now?
Because the allied forces no longer wanted
his life and because his mind was not set on escaping.
If he
now applied the same mind (previously) set on running for his life to
perform his religious duty, was there anything he could not do? This
was because he did not have a long enduring mind, and when favourable
conditions prevailed, his former habits appeared again.
Lu
K’uan Yu’s translation, writes of the beginner:
The
most common defects of a beginner [lay] in his [or her] inability to
lay down his [or her] habits of false thinking; of (self indulgence
in) ignorance caused by pride and jealousy; of (self-inflicted)
obstructions caused by concupiscence, anger, stupidity and love; of
laziness and gluttony; and of (attachment to) right and wrong, to
selfness and otherness. With a belly (breast) filled with all the
above (defects), how can he [or she] be responsive to the
truth?
“Dear Friends, the murderous demon of impermanence
is constantly looking for our lives and will never agree to conclude
peace with us. Let us hastily develop a long enduring mind to get out
of birth and death.”
The late Chan Master John D. Hughes
founded the Chan Academy at Upwey, Victoria, on 6 February 1986.
It
was designed to become an international centre for Chan painting and
calligraphy.
The buildings of our Chan Academy sit within a
heavenly Chan garden, a place of altars, ponds, flowers and paths
that have been developed and maintained for over thirty years under
the skillful guidance of our late teacher.
John D. Hughes
created the suitable conditions for the preservation of the Chan
tradition of the "Way of the Brush" in Australia. For many
years, monthly classes have been held at our Centre with places in
the Chan Hall for six persons.
The Chan Academy's goal is to
become a Centre of excellence of an international standard for Chan
arts.
Practicing Chan persons will improve their life chances
to learn.
Under our late Teacher's guidance through his
recorded teachings and writing about Chan tutelage, our organisation
is committed to help the living preservation of Chan in the world for
future generations.
Some of this good information is
propagated on our website at www.bdcu.org.au. A virtual exhibition of
Chan paintings by John D. Hughes can be found online at
www.buyresolved.com.au.
We welcome you to visit our website
and experience our Chan heritage.
One way that we practice to
preserve our Chan Heritage is through our website links to The
Australian Libraries Gateway web address is promoted on the front
page of our Buddha Dhyana Dana Review. The review is distributed
online at www.bddronline.net.au for persons all around the world, and
serves to add credibility to our library collections.
Inclusion
on the Australian Libraries Gateway is a way by which we can increase
the rate of hits on our websites.
This web-based directory
service is administered at the National Library of Australia in
Canberra and gives Internet access to information about Australia's
libraries and their collections and services.
The Australian
Libraries Gateway has approximately 4,500 libraries in its database.
Its goal is to be the 'one-stop-shop' for Australian libraries
a vital tool for both Australian and international users.
There
is no easy way to the top of our organisation, and in the last
analysis the rising stars know, without doubt, it is up to them.
We
use the old Japanese term "samurai" to indicate a "rising
star" manager with superior grounding in that his or her wish to
pursue Buddha Dhamma into future lives is no idle aspiration.
Chan
teaching methods are interesting because they remove resistance to
work from the minds of the young and not-so-young persons.
In
time, our Chan students welcome the insights about work culture by
"discovery" we can form from policies that work at the
micro level as described by Dr. Peter Brain.
One of the prime
difficulties is that the learning benefits of Chan Buddhist studies
in higher education cannot be reached without access to a
considerable number of rare source materials.
Our library has
many rare treasures such as illustrated books on the thousand
national treasures of Japan.
For 40 years, our Teacher, John
D. Hughes has had a policy of building good will to get access to
suitable research materials for Chan painting and calligraphy in
Australia.
These venture tactics have begun to yield a
harvest.
For example, on one occasion some years ago our
multicultural library received 404 Buddha Dhamma books as a donation
from one of our graduate Members who now lives in Malaysia.
Our
plan is that we continue to recruit more Members interested in art
works and such publications as are needed for us to develop our
scholarship with a national reference collection.
Viewing the
treasures of the study section of our peak library materials requires
persons to make use of the better types of mindsets that welcome
multidisciplinary studies.
The methods of Chan are distinct
from other traditions because the teaching is not designed to puff
the ego.
The tradition of Buddhism started, we assume, around
the time of Sakyamuni, and very much emphasised renunciation at
first.
If you read old Buddhist texts, or if you study
Buddhism in Asia, you cannot avoid the awareness of the importance of
renunciation as an issue in Buddhism.
Our Teacher sometimes
thought of this as the foundation of Chan.
This is the ideal
quality that comes with any great learning. That you will have to
give up something if you want to practice the dharma well.
If
you want to become wakened or enlightened.
In the initial
traditions of Buddhism this was a very literal thing.
The idea
was you could not really become enlightened or have a happy life
without giving up everything, without living uncertainty, and
certainly as a celibate person begging enough food for one day and no
more.
And each day going out begging if you did not get the
food, you went hungry.
So that was really the idea of
renouncing all certainty and protection, in a sense, in this
life.
There was very much the idea that lay people did not
quite make it.
They had to wait for a favourable rebirth when
they could become monks or nuns.
As Buddhism progressed some
people stopped taking renunciation so literally and started to see it
more as an inner matter.
There was a great split in Buddhism
and these people founded the Mahayana school, of which Chan appears
to act as members of that school.
But, in fact, there is no
division of the true schools.
And they thought that you could
actually be quite asleep, you could follow all the monastic rules
perfectly and still be a donkey.
And while there can be a
laudable intention in renunciation, it does not always achieve what
is wanted by itself.
The Mahayana was founded on renunciation,
but was something else.
One writer compared it as if you had a
castle built in the desert.
Mahayana came out with the idea
that whether you are a lay person or a priest or a nun, enlightenment
is equally available to everyone, no matter what your
circumstances.
There is no special fortune you must have in
this life that makes enlightenment available to you.
So you
can see this is a very democratic move in some ways-that you do not
need to have any special fate. Enlightenment is always
available.
Renunciation, then, came to be seen more as a sort
of an inner feeling.
You might call it a fasting of the heart
rather than of the body in which we just do not cling to
things.
There is an old Zen saying that states, "The
great way is not difficult, it just avoids picking and choosing."
It
avoids comparison.
It avoids praise and blame.
So there
is a great discipline in renunciation as the foundation of Zen. Some
think it is very much an inward matter.
At first, you may
think the primary element of renunciation is in our attention.
We
stop following the mind road so that when you hear a bird call and
you begin to think of the last time you heard a bird call, and you
remember when you were in a forest and saw a beautiful pheasant, and
then you think about a caged bird and feel sorrowful for all the
caged birds in the world, and then you think, well, maybe I am a kind
of caged bird, and then you think, well, I can sing anyway.
That
is the mind road and it is not much use.
So there is a
renunciation that needs to happen there where we do not follow that
well-worn groove in the mind.
As the mind when it is doing
that is not lively.
It is not immediate and vivid. It is just
plodding along like the old donkey it is.
Sort of like an ox
grinding corn in a traditional village. Just plodding around and
around and wearing a furrow in the ground. So we renounce that sort
of ox-headed quality about our lives.
And actually, that's the
great difficulty, the most difficult thing to renounce, really,
truly.
Who knows how active the mind is in offering routines
to us in all sorts of conventional things?
Flaubert, the great
French novelist, actually made a dictionary of received ideas that he
thought were those idiotic, pompous things that everybody
believes.
And it's rather shocking when we begin zazen to see
how many of those received ideas we just have and how much we just
run our lives by them and make major decisions by them.
In
Chan (Zen) we are told to let go of those opinions.
As one wit
put it, an opinion and ninety cents will get you a cup of coffee. So,
what is your opinion worth?
So we let them go.
And then
you can see that in renunciation there is an act of courage because
we have to let them go without knowing what will take their
place.
Because if we know what will take their place, we are
not letting them go. We cannot get there from here.
And what
will take their place is something very magical and shining and
vivid. But we cannot have it until we let go of what we have already
gotten.
I think, again, it was Yn-men who said, "It was
better to have nothing than to have something good."
So
that is one expression of the renunciation of Zen.
That is
very interesting. There is an equanimity with the rise and fall of
the waves of the world. And that is really true.
We really do
get that over a long time.
And the wave will come through and
something will happen. We will be sad or we lose our temper or
something like that, but then it is gone and a new wave is coming
through and we do not cling to the past wave. Even if we were stupid,
we do not cling to that. Even if we were very successful, we do not
hold that either.
In the Mahayana, people built up the idea of
the bodhisattva and the legend of the bodhisattva is of one who
really knows what her purpose is in this world.
It is to
enlighten and to save other beings.
The bodhisattva in the
legend also puts off full awakening.
Please come and visit our
Centre and start to explore Chan.
Since the Chan Academy’s
establishment by John D. Hughes in 1986 classes were regularly taught
on one Sunday of each month.
Now continuing with the practise
established by our Founder Chan Teacher Melba Nielsen B.A. teaches
the ancient art of Chan painting at our Centre each month.
Melba
is a past student of the late Chan Master John David Hughes. From
1986 to 1997 Melba practised under Chan Master John D. Hughes, Zen
Patriarch Venerable Seung Sahn, Buddhist monks and scholars at the
Chan Academy.
Early in 2004 Melba set up the School of Four
Seasons with fellow Chan practitioner June Young.
Following
the lessons of our Chan Academy the aim of the School of Four Seasons
is to teach the ‘Way’ of the Brush – Path to
liberation through the Truth, Beauty, Respect and Harmony of the Chan
or Zen Arts.
The school's student information catalogue notes:
In the basics of Chan, first you are introduced to the ‘four
friends’. ink, stone, brush and paper. With these four friends
you can then practice by following the instructions of your teacher
and applying mindfulness in everyday life.
Chan painting,
known as, ‘one-breath painting,' is based on the brushstrokes of
the Chinese Classics and applied ethics of Chan or Zen Buddhism.
It
is taught through the brush and rice paper, fragrant ink, the garden
and a single flower.
Just as nature grows and renews, so does
the Chan painter.
Chan ink brush painting is an antithesis to
endless, weary concepts about art that give nothing to the viewer. It
refreshes, as it is free from the artificial barriers of the mundane
mind.
The Chan beginner is introduced to the ‘four
friends’, painting bamboo, orchid, chrysanthemum and plum
blossom. These basic and traditional brush strokes can then be
applied within the Australian context – to our own
environment.
Over many years visiting Master Andre Sollier has
taught the ancient Japanese art of Sumi-e at our Chan Academy. In
2002 Master Sollier created a series of paintings titled the Ten Chan
Masters.
The masters chosen for the paintings were from the
time of the Buddha up to the last century. The paintings formed the
study theme for each of the year's ten classes. The Ten Chan Masters
paintings can be viewed online at www.buyresolved.com.au.
On
the 25th April of this year Venerable Chan Master Sheng-yen gave a
public Dhamma talk entitled “Chan and Building a Pure Land on
Earth” at the Manningham Function Centre, Doncaster,
Melbourne.
In welcoming Master Sheng-yen, the Mayor of the
City of Manningham said it was a great honour to welcome him to the
city, describing his advocacy for protection of the spiritual
environment, a more kind and gentle approach to caring for the
environment within.
Since 1978 the Venerable has held the role
of Professor of Chinese Culture at the University of Taipei.
He
is Abbot of the Dharma Drum centre in the USA with 100 Monks and
Nuns. The Master runs a Chan Meditation Centre in New York, with 3000
students in the USA and 300,000 students in Taiwan. Venerable Master
Sheng Yen has lectured in 40 Universities in the United States, run
140-week long Chan Meditation retreats, and has been responsible for
the revival of Chan in China and the West.
The Mayor also
formally welcomed Senator Chan Chien and Mr Benjamin Liang, Director
General Taipei Cultural and Economic Organisation.
We would
now like to read to you some parts from the Master's talk, and
request the forgiveness of our listeners and readers for any errors,
omission or misinterpretations that may have occurred in our note
taking of the talk.
The Venerable Master Sheng-yen began the
dhamma talk by thanking the Mayor for the detailed introduction and
the interesting topic noting Australia’s dedication to the
preservation of the environment.
The talk proceeded in the
following way.
There are three parts to the talk:
1. An
introduction to what Chan is
2. An introduction to what Pureland
is , and
3. How do we create a Pureland on earth through Chan
practice?
He commented: There is no specific thing called Chan
– it is a method to calm the mind, to gain serenity, to
cultivate a pure mind of compassion and wisdom.
Activity
carried out through Chan practice purifies the world, society, mind,
relationships between people. Chan practice works to purify the
world.
The task is about protection of Spiritual life, Social
life, Practical life and Everyday life.
He asked the following
question: How do we do this using Chan ideas and methods to achieve
these goals?
The idea or practice of Chan is to learn that we
all have the Pure Land in us. But people are self centered, we
destroy the Pure Land in our mind. People destroy the environment,
destroy the interactions between humankind and they destroy our
natural resources and eco-system.
People destroy the very
thing they seek.
All our needs go against what we hope for –
as a result of this a lot of problems arise.
At the conclusion
of the talk our President Mr Julian Bamford presented to Master
Sheng-yen a copy of our 1999 Chan Calendar containing prints of 12
original paintings by the late Chan Master John David Hughes.
In
his book ‘Dharma Drum’ Master Sheng-yen wrote in a section
entitled Cloudless Sky – Enlightened View the words:
“The
Dharma has no fixed Dharma.
Buddhism has a long history, yet it is
Always new. In the old days, it was
Suitable to the conditions
of the times.
In our modern age, it adapts to new
conditions.”
We
plan to hold a Chan art exhibition next Versak 2005, as well as
maintaining our ongoing program of selling Chan artworks, holding
Chan classes each month, cleaning and preparing the Chan Hall,
preparation of food for the students, transcribing and printing Chan
talks and calligraphy for free circulation, as well as indexing Chan
artifacts in our library. These activities provide splendid
opportunities for merit making.
May the merit of these Chan
classes preserve the art of Chan painting in this our home
Australia.
May the merit of these Chan classes preserve the
practice of Chan meditation in this Buddha sasana.
May the
Chan Academy last for five hundred years to continue to help beings
to cultivate the Buddha Dhamma.
May all beings come to see
emptiness and become fully enlightened.
May all beings be well
and happy.
Today's Buddhist Hour Broadcast script was prepared
by Anita M. Hughes, Julian Bamford, Frank Carter, Leanne Eames, Leila
Igracki, Lisa Nelson, Julie O’Donnell, Lainie Smallwood and Paul
Tyrell.
References:
Lu K’uan Yu (Luk,
Charles) (Ed.) Ch’an and Zen Teaching First Series. The Clear
Light Series. Shambala Publications, Inc. California USA
1960.
Sheng-yen. Master. Dharma Drum. The life and heart of
Ch’an practice. Dharma Drum Publications. 1996. New York.
USA
Hughes, John D. The Chan Academy Three Year Plan.
www.bdcublessings.net.au/radio/archive.html 1998.
Canvassing
the Four Seasons Exhibition. Preview Catalogue of Paintings of an
Auction of Chan Paintings by John D. Hughes held on 9 September 2002
at 2.00pm at 33 Brooking Street, Upwey Victoria.
3158.
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