LJM practitioners made progress at the 10-day Autumn Meditation Retreat
Master Hsin Tao says that ‘as long as you spare no efforts in observing your awareness and keep on the solid practice, the strength of a worry-free mind will grow more powerful. Your mind will know very well what it means to be worry-free.’ The Master goes on to remind the followers that ‘you’d dance wildly when not having familiarized with the mind.’ That practically means that you’ve done too many differentiations in your awareness.
While in the Meditation Retreat, we attempt no efforts but concentrate on the practice of observing our awareness. We need to be simply aware of the empty nature. Our awareness permeates, and it is bountiful. Residing in such awareness, we will then realize and get rid of all dualistic concepts, returning to our inborn awareness. When our perception gets complicated, and everything becomes good and bad, yes and no, amidst all other dualistic attachments that continue to pull at our mind in confusion and misery. In sum, Dharma practice is all about conducting inward inspection of our awareness, without which it is no practice at all.
Enlightenment attained when one lets go all delusions for the Buddhanature to emerge
On the eve of the program wrap-up, Master Hsin Tao called for a review session to test the participants in their respective progress. Monastics at home and abroad took to the Internet for real-time sharing of experiences in practicing Chan meditation. Among them, Master Hai Miao of Kuala Lumpur, Malaysia, shared her story. During the retreat, she was told that her mother was hospitalized for an emergency surgery. The master said that she was caught by surprise and was at her wits’ end at that moment the news broke. Travel ban during the pandemic made it impossible for her to be by her mother’s side, and she was torn between all sorts of thoughts to keep her calm. She started to think real hard.
She realized that impermanence happens to everyone and their beloved, as it is literally inevitable. Such realization got her back on track to go for the proper method that is the LJM’s signature ‘Four-Step Approach’ to practice Chan meditation. Master Hai Miao relaxed herself gradually on the inside to self-guide and return to simple awareness of clarity, concentration, and relaxation. The LJM Four-Step Approach helped her put out all random ideas and kept her mind off of all attachments. She was able to calm down bit by bit. She realized all ideas were illusions that come and go, and the train of run-away thoughts is an on-going display of impermanence right before the eyes. She kept on observing her awareness and realized that all the phenomena were as they were. The realization led to the emergence of the ultimate clarity of our Buddhanature. Master Hai Miao’s takeaway from the Autumn Retreat is that Dharma practice is all about observing the awareness of our six sense faculties rather than consciousness.
Master Xien Yueh shared how she practiced in line with Master Hsin Tao’s instruction. The luminosity of our mind manifests when the six sense faculties are relaxed, said the Master, and Master Xien Yueh based all her practice on that reminder and was rewarded with positive progress for each and every session. It so happened that her assigned seat was right in front of the statue of Bodhisattva Guanyin Pilu. The master said every time when she resumed her vision, her sense of space was open and vast, and she practiced meditation in that unconstrained manner and developed a sense of ‘viewing the Buddha’s temple from the eyes of a newborn baby’. It was an intuitive sense that transcribed that feeling as ‘Bodhisattva Guanyin Pilu being me, and me being Bodhisattva Guanyin Pilu’, which were all manifestations of the mind to Master Xien Yueh.
The LJM Autumn Retreat 2022 saw its wrap-up in the format of a tea party and the meditation facilitator Master Jing Nian encouraged fellow masters to interact freely for exchange of experiences from the recent program. Under the guidance of Master Da Kang, Master Heng Chuan, Master Miao Yun, Master Jing Nian, Master Guang Chun, Master Heng Ming, Master Xien Yueh, Master Xing Yueh, and Master Fa Yung, all participating monastics and laity alike went about sharing their respective takeaway from the program and actively interacted in asking questions about, and getting answers to, whatever bottlenecks they encountered.
Master Bao Yueh offered to share how she benefited from Master Hsin Tao’s reminder of observing our mind in give-&- take scenarios with inborn Buddhanature and the understanding of emptiness, letting go of all differentiations to abide in peace. The reminder worked in particular when the meditation retreat commenced soon after the Water-Land Dharma Assembly, said Master Bao Yueh. There had been simply too many obstructing hindernis and clusters of mental blocks that required eradication and lifting. Master Bao Ben, on the other hand, said that she had cared too much about win or loss, good or bad, and other dualistic differences when practicing the Four-Step Approach before. Master Bao Ben now realizes that it is quite important to have a firm grip on the ‘business as usual’ mindset. She is further in the know that failures in letting go of attachment point to one’s inadequacy in mastering the art of detachment. Master Bao Ben now often reminds herself not to waste any more time on ‘phantom’ stuff, but to hold on to ‘real’ substance.
Master Hsin Tao takes the lead in conducting the Chan Meditation Retreats in Spring and Autumn every year to help followers push for advancement on their Dharma practice so that the mass of sentient beings can be approached and helped. The most recent 10-Day Autumn Retreat concluded with all participants reaping precious experiences and registering impressive progress in practicing Chan Meditation as an advancement in the path toward enlightenment to benefit themselves and the others.(Courtesy of LJM)