Monday, January 24, 2011

The Heart Sutra

















Gate, gate, paragate, parasamgate, bodhi svaha.

"The Heart Sutra is very, very interesting. It begins by showing the opposites world, then shows the Absolute world, and finally leads to complete world, or what we call moment world. Opposites world is
"form is emptiness, emptiness is form". The Absolute world is emptiness, or nirvana: "no form, no emptiness". The complete world is annuttara samyak sambodhi - truth, just as it is: "form is form, emptiness is emptiness". Attaining truth is not enough. Because our experience of truth must function for other beings from moment to moment, the sutra closes with some exhortation to action: Gate, gate, paragate, parasamgate, bodhi svaha. This mantra means keeping moment world, which is Great Love and Great Compassion. It is the path of the bodhisattva.  When you do together-action with all beings, then Great Love appears by itself. Together-action only means acting together harmoniously, from moment to moment. That is world peace Only do it. Only do it. If someone is thirsty, give them something to drink. If someone is hungry, give them food. When a suffering person appears before you, you only help, with no thinking or checking"......pg. 138 in Zen Master Seung Sahn's The Compass of Zen

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And if we cannot free ourselves from attachments to our thinking right now, the picture below offers a practical solution.  




As a reminder, this sunday will be the Interfaith Retreat Day. Join us in your form of silence: meditation, prayer, sacred walk or observance and dedicate your practice to women in crisis throughout the world.  
 Comox Valley Women’s Resource Centre #1 1491 McPhee Ave.

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There will be a Chan meeting this Thursday evening.


Also check  out:
Master Cheng Yen in Facebook; 
http://chancommunitycanada.wordpress.com/ 
and the Western Chan Fellowship at http://www.westernchanfellowship.org/

Call Adrian at 250 898 8201,
Please notify me if you wish to be removed from the email list.

Monday, January 17, 2011

Five masters comment on our relationship with the external world















“Proceeding in such a way,
All things appear vividly, without obscurity;
Everywhere, all things manifest as they are,
{maintaining} one thought for ten thousand years.
Fundamentally, this in non-abiding in appearances.”

An Excerpt from The Discourse Record of Chan Master Hongzhi  by Master Sheng Yen in The Method of No Method, pg. 97

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“You must ever bear in mind that the light and life that go out from you to the object are quite as important as that light that comes to you from the object. Thought is activity of the consciousness impressed by the external world.” …Sufi Master Hazrat Inayat Khan in A Meditation Theme for Each Day

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“We will eventually come to the realization that what we are looking at is what we are, no matter how we feel, no matter how we think of ourselves at the moment, we cannot be other than what we are looking at. We will see that our self-image is a convenience to assume a viewpoint, but we are actually looking at what we are. We are not looking at something other than ourselves.” …E. J. Gold in Life in the Labyrinth, pg. 199.

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“The Buddha Mind, unborn and marvelously illuminating, is like a bright mirror. A mirror reflects whatever is in front of it. It's not deliberately trying to reflect things. Likewise, when the object being reflected is removed, the mirror isn't trying not to reflect it, but when it's taken away it doesn't appear in the mirror. The Unborn Buddha Mind is just like this.” … Bankei

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“There are mountains hidden in jewels. There are mountains hidden in marshes, hidden in the sky. There are mountains hidden in mountains. There's a study of mountains hidden in hiddenness.” …Dogen










Also check  out:
Master Cheng Yen in Facebook; 
http://chancommunitycanada.wordpress.com/ 
and the Western Chan Fellowship at http://www.westernchanfellowship.org/

Call Adrian at 250 898 8201,
Please notify me if you wish to be removed from the email list.