New Chan Forum 31

Looking To The Future

This year we celebrate some thirty years of Chan practice up at the Maenllwyd and in our homes. The issues that created our Sangha and which occupied many of us as younger practitioners are opening now into other concerns. How can we ensure the future of Chan teachings with integrity? Should we create further institutions? How should those of us who are elders train to sustain the lineage in the future? How best to relate conventional wisdom with modern concerns? How to engage in interfaith dialogue? How best to consider our enmity, mortality and the karmic seeds we will inevitably leave behind us?

These are not easy questions. The world is continuously changing and our ability to cope with our material success is challenged by man-made disasters and pollution on an unprecedented scale. The very future of world civilisation is threatened. The Humanism of the western” enlightenment” is undermined by global policies of unilateral exploitation and religious evangelism of a notably ignorant and selfish partisanship. Some of us work hard towards a Buddhist Humanism to overcome the nihilism of western thought. These matters require an examination sustained by the practices of mind calming and insight. It is above all these practices that our charity must sustain if Zen enquiry is to make a difference in the world.

In group discussion, in emails, phone calls and letters key questions regarding training to teach and matters focussing on death have been especially prominent among us in recent months. This issue therefore looks back particularly to short works by our patron Master Sheng Yen to clarify our understanding of what we may term the classical Chan position on these subjects. Such discussions may then provide a valuable basis for our own thinking and debating.