Tuesday, March 5, 2013

Vexation and Wisdom in Chan/Zen




"Shakyamuni Buddha transmitted the teaching of thusness. He said the following:

Please train yourselves thus: In the seen, there will be just the seen. In the heard, there will be just the heard. In the sensed, there will be just the sensed. In the cognized, there will be just the cognized. When for you, in the seen there is just the seen, in the heard just the heard, in the sensed just the sensed, in the cognized just the cognized, then you will not identify with the seen, and so on. And if you do not identify with them, you will not be located in them; if you are not located in them, there will be no here, no there, or in-between. And this will be the end of suffering.
This is seamless meditation. It is seamless meditation. There is no seam between you and the heard; there is just the heard. No seam: only the heard and the seen and the imagined. This is having no object of thought.

Shayamuni Buddha also said, "If you approach the five skandas*, if you approach colours or sounds, or if they approach you, this is misery."

Approaching colours is not just the colours being the colours, but you approaching them. This is misery. Approaching feelings, approaching perceptions, approaching emotions, approaching consciousness, making these approaches, or being approached by these phenomena: this is misery. But if we do not approach these phenomena, if there is no seam between them and us, then these very same skandhas, these very same colours and sounds, are bliss. We can see the roots of the Zen tradition of objectless meditation in this teaching of Buddha."...from Just Sitting by Reb Anderson, Pg. 156 in The Art of Just Sitting by John Daido Loori.


skandas* (Pali, khanda), lit. "group,aggregate, heap"; term for the five aggregates, which constitue the entirety of what is generally known as "personality".
They are 1. corporality or form
               2. sensation
               3. perception
               4. mental formation
               5. consciousness




Also check out these Chan sites of interest: 1. chancommunity.ca
2. How to chan meditate:http://chancenter.org/cmc/chan-practice/how-to-meditate/3. Master Sheng Yen in Facebook
4. The Western Chan Fellowship at http://www.westernchanfellowship.org/
5. Other Buddhist centres in the Comox Valley:http://www.dharmafellowship.org/hermitage/ http://www.sherabchammaling.com/biography.html

Call Adrian at 250 898 8201 or email adrian2@shaw.ca