Chan and the Bodhisattva Way

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Astus
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Chan and the Bodhisattva Way

Post by Astus »

Jianhu Shifu (見護法師), hosted by Shifu Simplicity (見銷法師) from the Miao Fa Centre, talks about the basic elements of Chan and the fundamentals of the bodhisattva way. Both venerables are disciples of Chan Master Wei Chueh.

Youtube channel of Jianhu Shifu.
Youtube channel of Shifu Simplicity.

"Let's examine the mind a little bit. You see a shifu here, right, you see two shifus or three shifus here. So you see something, 'Oh, that's a Buddhist monk or Buddhist nun.' Right? That simple experience you see with your eyes and you say oh that's a Buddhist monk, speaking. That simple experience consists of two parts: knowing and consciousness. Knowing means you perceive something through your eyes. You perceive there's an object here wearing brown robes, looking like a person. Right? See, perceiving this through your eyes, that's called knowing. Now at this point you have not formed a concept, but immediately, in less than a second, you say, 'Oh, that's a Buddhist monk.' That's a concept, that's an idea that you learned. Right? If you've never seen a Buddhist monk, you say, 'What is this, what is this person? Right? You don't know. But because you have some knowledge about Buddhism, so you say, 'Oh, that's a Buddhist monk.' That's an idea, that's part of your consciousness, that's the part of your mind we call consciousness. It consists of ideas, concepts, emotions, judgment, decision, discrimination, in a good and bad way. So all of that is consciousness. Most of what we call our mind is actually consciousness. Most of us ignore a more basic function of our mind, and that is knowing, or just simple perception, they just perceive some information."
(Chan and the Bodhisattva Way - Jianhu Shifu, 54:16-56:39)
1 Myriad dharmas are only mind.
Mind is unobtainable.
What is there to seek?

2 If the Buddha-Nature is seen,
there will be no seeing of a nature in any thing.

3 Neither cultivation nor seated meditation —
this is the pure Chan of Tathagata.

4 With sudden enlightenment to Tathagata Chan,
the six paramitas and myriad means
are complete within that essence.


1 Huangbo, T2012Ap381c1 2 Nirvana Sutra, T374p521b3; tr. Yamamoto 3 Mazu, X1321p3b23; tr. J. Jia 4 Yongjia, T2014p395c14; tr. from "The Sword of Wisdom"
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Matt J
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Re: Chan and the Bodhisattva Way

Post by Matt J »

I thought this was a good talk. Simple and profound. Interestingly, a Chung Tai monasteries just opened not from where I live. So far, everyone there is very friendly/bilingual, and there is a strong focus on meditation.
"The world is made of stories, not atoms."
--- Muriel Rukeyser
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