Dharma Library

The following Dharma Talk is from a Silent Illumination Retreat, November 2010 at Dharma Drum Retreat Center. It was transcribed by Catherine Burns and edited by Eddy Street. Published in Chan Magazine Spring 2012.

Perception and Sensation 

At each morning service and evening service we chant The Heart Sutra together. In one part it says: 

Form is precisely emptiness 
and emptiness precisely…

Thank you all for coming, and for your trust in appointing me as the second Teacher of the Western Chan Fellowship. This is of course a significant responsibility, but one that I am happy to undertake.

As well as being our first meeting since John Crook’s passing last year, it is also the third anniversary of the passing of Chan Master Sheng Yen, our Shifu. It is natural that we remember both of…

The Second Talk given on Silent Illumination, at the two week retreat, April 2006, at the Maenllwyd.

Yesterday I mentioned some of the history of Silent Illumination and how it starts with Honghzhi. In fact it goes back further than that and I found a reference in the Sutra of Hui-neng, the Platform Sutra. Most of you probably know the Platform Sutra, or at least the first chapter of it which is…

Day 2, Three Week Retreat

Silent Illumination is essentially very simple. It can be summarized in three sentences:

Look and see.
Look what is there.
And don't add to what is there.

'Look and see': Illumination.

'Don't add anything': Silence.

But it doesn't seem so easy! Why? Because there's something in the way. You! You're in the way of your own seeing. You're disturbing your own mind.

When I…

A Talk given on Silent Illumination, at the 3 week retreat, May 2005, at the Maenllwyd

John has just spoken about the two entrances to Dharma, through Principle and Practice, which Bodhidharma taught us all those centuries ago.

Silent Illumination corresponds to a state, either you are in Silent Illumination experiencing the Principle or you are not. If you are actually in Silent Illumination…

When I was first asked to lead this short retreat, my first thought was "Why do they need someone to lead a weekend retreat, can't they just gather together and sit together?"

I guessed I would have to provide some sort of teaching. So then I wondered what teaching might be valuable? Perhaps I should regurgitate something remembered from a book or a sutra that I have read but which you may not…

Some years ago in NCF No. 12 John suggested the possibility of establishing an organisation based on the work at and attenders of Maenllwyd. My initial reaction, and I suspect also that of many others, was something like "well, it could be all right, but I don't like the idea of the formalities and organisation and committees etc." It seemed a bit unnecessary as everything seemed to work out fine…

In the Lotus Sutra the Buddha predicted a future Buddhahood for most of his followers yet both his cousin and personal attendant, Ananda, and his son, Rahula, had to wait until after the others before the Buddha made predictions concerning them. In his "A Guide to the Threefold Lotus Sutra," Nikkyo Niwano interprets this as indicating the difficulty inherent in teaching those close to oneself.…

We are presenting here an important article sent us by Dr Simon Child. Based in his personal practice of meditation it clarifies a way of looking at the Buddhist concept of rebirth which is often a stumbling block for many a Westerner. In conversation, Shifu once commented that for a Buddhist the idea of rebirth might be taken as myth but that to be a Buddhist, a concern with the continuity of…

It felt such a privilege to be attending the retreat with Shifu. I couldn't make the effort to go to New York, but he had come here! And yet a retreat is just a retreat. Really it was like a solitary retreat, as I just isolated myself from the environment and continued my practice.

I came to the retreat feeling that I wanted to be there, and John wanted me to be there in particular to confirm my…