On destined fortune

This link leads to a listing of web pages containing a statement the honorable Minister of Qing Empire, Zeng Guo Fan, once said: "... believe in the destined fortune and not the acquired knowledge...(信運氣﹐不信書)". My understanding of his statement is that he believes that any of our achievement manifests by our destined fortune and not just simply from careful planning and persistent effort. He must have made this conclusion from all of his life experience.

I also agree with some other bloggers' view point of this quote. Some said that Zeng's statement was just a reflection of his characteristic of being humble and modest. while some said that instead of emphasizing his accomplishments were the result of his intelligence and hard working, he attributed all of the abundant fruition to the manifestation of his good luck. However, I personally believe that either of the aforesaid point of view shares only 30% of the truth, There is this thing labeled as Karma which is similar to the notion of fortune moving all the trivial and major incidents of our life around, and that force takes up 70% or even more of the end result.

What triggered my intent of writing on this topic was from a chat with my wife this morning. "Jean, Chi-an (our son), started his first class at 9 am, he is teaching those school boys in the school now," I continued, "how lucky he is to get a good jobuch as this." Jean replied,"yeah, two months ago, we were still worried about his job issue, and suddenly the changes brought up this happy opportunity." she said while doing the laundry. "This reminded me of a remark the honorable scholar and government minister of Qing Dynasty, Zeng Guo Fan, once said '...believe in the destined fortune and not the acquired knowledge...'" I said, "I am going to write a blog about my perception of his famous remark."

May 2 of 2011 marked the day my son started his involvement in the music education in a state run college and another five primary schools and intermediate schools. A few days earlier, he was required to be interviewed by the head of the school's music department and the principal to make sure he was the right one they wanted to recruit to train the four rock bands of the school.

The interview went well and Chi-an was formerly employed by that college. His first class will be on May 5. With this guitar tuition in the state schools plus his other two sectors of practices, his work day hours are reasonably fully booked, and so his income is expected to be sustainable. All that had happened to result in this reality to come true were so unbelievably played one after another, just as dramatic as a playwright containing the various parts of longing , anxious, frustrated, nervous, exciting, disappointing, and all sorts of feelings you name it. Fortunately the desired and expected ending turns out to be a happy one. And now I am, as the father, is noting down the bits and pieces of thoughts with regard to this remarkable episode of Chen family.

My perception of spiritual practice

In the past few years, Internet has become very popular and advanced enormously, e-mail users often send interesting or useful information to share with each other. I noticed that this trend began increasing sharply in 2000, sometimes I receive this kind of forwarding from friends whom I haven't got a chance to meet them in person, and the number of this kind of forwarding can be over 20 or more in one day. Among these articles, over 50% of them are topics relevant to the maintenance of our physical health.

I wonder if there is anyone censoring and ranking the most popular topics being shared on the Web, if there is one, I believe the results will show that most of the Internet users are careful about their health of the physical aspect, as to the mental health part, it is very seldom mentioned.

As far as I can remember, people living in the small town where I was born in Taiwan, "mental health" was rarely heard of before 1960 in spite of the fact that there were insane people wandering on the streets in those days. As humans civilization progress, people began to acknowledge the importance of mental health; began to address the need of both physical and mental health. So we saw and noticed a rapid growth of the mental health service and heard of the terms such as depression, anxiety, anorexia, counsellor, psychologist. and so on.

I personally agree that if people are healthy in both mental and physical aspects, then they are really healthy people. But Buddha, Jesus, and everyone of the awakened or enlightened beings who had once lived on this planet with us, the ordinary beings, told us that we are the ignorant, sinners, wanders, strayed lambs, the unawakened. All these labels point out a fact that to the standard of the awakened sages, we are just like a patient, a sick fellow, a pitiable one, so we are not healthy at all to their viewpoint. And I believe the qualities we lack of are in the spiritual area within us. So the spiritual part of our life has been neglected or is denied of its importance.

To my understanding of Buddha's teaching, the motivation that made him spend 49 years of his life was that he wanted to share the ultimate bliss he achieved and experienced through his practice. Although he had tried his best to explain and describe what we should look for, only a few of his students understood and attained the fruition of their practice. He knew that only through diligent practice can anyone achieve that goal and realize what he had tried to teach, yet he still tried to depict what the final goal was all about, and left innumerable volumes of his teaching in a great deal of diversified methods after his demise.

What is that unspeakable goal he pursued before his enlightenment?

"The self." The self is the ultimate center wrapped by layer and layer of contamination in our mind such as: ignorance, desire, selfish, anger, and etc. Sometimes Buddha refers "the self" to "the other shore" or "the pure land" or "the Western blissful world" or "Nivana".

Although the nature of "the self" is unexplainable and unimaginable using our language, some attempts were still made to describe it. The most popular one is that the nature of the self is emptiness, albeit this one may easily mislead to a mind picture like the vast outer space looking very bleak, lonely, cold and all sort of unwelcoming qualities. I personally like the one presented by the sixth patriarch Huineng upon his enlightenment, he said, "何期自性本自清净，何期自性本不生灭，何期自性本自具足，何期自性本无动摇，何期自性能生万法"( never had I expected that the self is purely clean; never had I expected that the self is beyond birth and demise; never had I expected that the self is completely sustained; never had I expected that the self is unshakable; never had I expected that the self produces limitless beings).

The reason that we should start our spiritual practice as early and diligently as possible is that life reincarnates. After we die, we don't know and we cannot control where will we be born; who will be our parents; and this reincarnation has no end, it just repeats and repeats till one day when we finally awaken and achieve Nivana.

Now, we realize the necessity and importance of doing spiritual practice so as to achieve that wonderful goal Buddha has pointed out for us, how should we start with?

My advice is to look for recommendation from your networking a genuine and non-cult Buddhism learning group, or browsing through the webpages created by Buddhist group, and find one that you prefer the most, and then visit them and join their regular activities. You will gain the basic knowledge about Buddhism from there. And the next step is to study the basic scripts recommended by your group. And lastly and the most important step is to observe what Buddha taught.

What benefit will you attain from your diligent practice? You will feel more peaceful because the layers of contamination wrapping up "the self" are gradually peeled off, and eventually you will be enlightened and permanently stay away from the hopeless reincarnation.

So let us learn and practice the spiritual before it is too late.

Having read "The Shack"

A friend, a devoted Christian and dentist based in North Shore City, recommended I read a book titled “The Shack” by William P Young.

The book begins with an explanation of the childhood of the main character, McKenzie, nicknamed ‘Mack’.

My reading took about two weeks, leaving me with the impression the content is quite philosophical because of the great amount of discussion between Mack and the Holy Trinity during a weekend spent in the shack. The discussion is centred on the tragedy which Mack had experienced.

Composed of 18 chapters, the book begins with a prologue of Mack’s childhood wherein the author tells of Mack’s father, abusive when drunk, always seeking forgiveness when sober. These details help me make sense of following episodes.

The core of the story is Missy, Mack’s youngest daughter aged 6 who was abducted from the camp yard where Mack was picnicking with his three children. Only Missy’s red clothes were found on the table by the fireplace of an abandoned shack in the bush. Overwhelmed by his tragic loss, Mack began to question the truth of God’s love.

One day, two years after the tragedy, Mack received a note left in his letter box inviting him to re-visit the shack in which Missy’s clothes were found. It astonished him to see the note was signed “Papa”, in the way his wife Nan refers to God.

Curiosity, anger and guilt, buried deep in his mind frequently haunting him, made him determined to revisit the place to face and challenge the negativities he had been embracing.

One Friday afternoon, unknown to his wife and children, he set off. On entering the bush near his destination, the surrounding atmosphere became so peaceful, refreshing and solemn as he sighted the shack in the distance. It was there he encountered the Holy Trinity - God, Jesus and the Holy Spirit.

The following chapters of the book contain and explain the questions, answers and hot debate which ensue between Mack and God. The main point of the questions being that if God loves his creation, why are there tragedies and sufferings in the world.

I feel the author, William Young must be a very knowledgeable theologian or is a senior Christianity scholar as the arguments he weaves in the story are very deep and incomprehensible to me. Although difficult for me to read, I completed the book in order to improve my reading capacity.

After the two-day stay in the shack with God, Mack felt an inner transformation leaving him with a feeling of light and peace replacing the anger and guilt. He felt it was time to go home and back to reality.

At this point of the story, the author makes a technical twist to involve Mack in a massive traffic accident on his way home. Mack loses consciousness, falls into a coma and on awakening asked his wife what happened. It was then he knew he had been in hospital during the whole weekend whereas for him, he had been in the shack with God.

(Great thanks go to my English mentor Neville who corrected the grammar of the original post for me.)

Mind Chatter - Self-talker in the mind

I can not recall the approximate time, now, when did I begin to notice there was a chatter inside me. The chatter I am talking about here is not a hallucinative one which whispers into our ears, but the one that comes out of the ego from our minds. Or may be I should term it the mind self-talker.

For a brief experiment on myself. I stop writing this post at this point. I close my eyes with an intention of still my thought and see what goes on during the following one minute.

Now I recount what have arisen in the mind. First of all the chatter started "Gee, it is chilly today" "it is cloudy" "what am I doing" "a mind chatter experiment" "what is Robbie doing? on the web? He got a good job." "why my mind is so busy?" "what to write in the blog?" "something that I have experienced." "Chenny promised to broaden his guitar teaching a bit, to include classical guitar music".

To my personal view point, the content that flashed through my mind in the one minute experiment is like a mass of entangled thread. It is possible to be guided toward a desired topic, but once there, it freely jumps onto something else, and just a short moment later it is gone to another one. It is like a curious wild monkey being put on a leash, but never settles down at any time.

If we look into our mind closely we will only then realize our mind is constantly talking and chatting all the time till we fall into sleep. Or perhaps even most of the time during sleep, the mind is still restlessly talking itself into the dream. This incessant mind chatting may result in poor productivity, inefficiency, chronicle fatigue, and eventually become a stubborn part of us that we find it annoying but we just tightly embrace it and react to it. And many of us, unfortunate enough, end up having to rely on sleeping pills, to take anti-depressant, or to consult mental health professionals.

Don't scare me! It is not that serious!

But it is true. I have heard of an estimated figure that one-fourth of the world population will experience some form of mental problem in any given year.

May be you will argue that you only think about happy stuff. Your mind chatting topics are all surrounding good and peaceful notions. Then, I congratulate you that you may be put in the lucky three-fourth world population.

However, according to law of impermanence, there is just nothing that will remain the same permanently. At least we all have to go through the major life issues - aging, sickness and death, each of which will throw us into pathetic mind chatting for sure.

I suppose that 2500 years ago when Prince Siddhatha found the way of ceasing the wandering thoughts and achieved Buddhahood, he realized the cause of suffering was this constant mind chatter that sooner or later leads us into thoughts of craving, hatred and ignorance if we don't get them under control. He decided to walk into the world to teach all the beings the technique of genuine awakening.

Recently I came across this passage when I was searching for discussion group on this topic in Chinese web pages: "狂心若歇﹐歇即菩提" which means "Once the wandering thought ceases, the wisdom emerges." (Please forgive me if my translation is off the original meaning too much.) This text is said to be originated from Surangama Sutra, and has made me ponder on how to tame the wandering mind.

So in the past three years since I was introduced to the Pure Land path, I have been at the same time in quest for the possibility of putting this wandering mind, or mind chatter, at ease, hoping to gain at least some happiness if not the complete awakening.

All the techniques had been tried. Sitting Zen, sutra chanting, visualization, walking meditation, mindfulness training, observing precepts, guided meditation and some mundane methods were adopted at different stage of the quest but the anticipated outcome was dim.

Finally came Master Chin Kung's persuasive explanation about why Buddha most recommended the method of chanting Amituofo to followers of this era.

Because the mind chatter has evolved to be far more stubborn and polluted by today's worldly temptation than the one in ancient days. Now that it is almost impossible to cease its constant chatting, we can coax it into chanting Amituofo. When the chanting becomes the whole thing of the chatter, that state is equivalent to enlightenment.

The logic is convincing to me. What about you?

Introducing Mrs. Lee's art works

This Chinese character means Buddha. It was written, or I should say, painted on a framed canvas with color oil paints, by Mrs. Lee, our family friend. It looks like she is doing calligraphy on this character. But, traditionally, Chinese calligraphy is done on absorbent cotton paper with water based black ink, while this work is done on canvas with oil based color paint.

Mrs. Lee calls her painging style "Buddha Calligraphy Oil Painting". The style name implies that all her works are surrounding on this Chinese character "Buddha" exclusively; are in various calligraphy patterns; and are done with oil painting skills.

Mrs. Lee loves oil painting. She loves the richness of its colors. She tried to describe for me about how she was overwhelmed by the antient oil painting works displayed in Louvre Museum when she visited Paris ten or more years ago. "That sudden wonder I had upon viewing those art works was hard for me to describe. Perhaps the seed of my fondness of oil painting was nurtured by those masterpieces at that moment and started its sprouting. I had been pondering on oil painting works after we left Paris."

About five years ago, Mrs. Lee was referred to Master Chin Kung's DVD lectures on Buddhism. Through learning Buddhism together with her husband, her spiritual practice progressed steadily. She learned from Master Chin Kung that by observing precepts so one can attain concentration; by holding concentration so one attains wisdom, the perfect state of enlightenment. During this stage she had the idea of practicing concentration by doing calligraphy.

"I think now that I am a devoted Buddhist, why not begin my practice on the 佛﹐Buddha?" So she did her first calligraphy of 佛﹐Buddha, in the conventional way, by using paint brush, ink stone, ink tray, and absorbent cotton paper.

She gazed at her calligraphy upon its completion for a while, at that moment, the feeling she had buried in her mind after that visit to the Louvre Museum sprang out. The idea of integrating the three areas - spiritual practice, calligraphy and oil painting, emerged. Not long after that wonderful inventive day, she had all the materials need for the so called "Buddha calligraphy oil painting" ready in her studio.

"I usually enter a blissful mind state when I work on this art, no exception," she said, "it has been my method of cultivating concentration, and my way of getting solace whenever I have any worrying thing in my mind."

I noticed that one of the pieces was a 佛 riding on space shuttle, and I asked her what was in her mind when she combined this two mutually contradicting subjects into one picture. She said, "The public has misunderstood Buddhism as being superstitious, while as a matter of fact Buddhism exists everywhere throughout the univers, in our daily living, so I was trying to tell the spectators even the success in launching a space shuttle which is the product of all the top forms of science and engineering is the manifestation of Buddha nature."

As time goes by, her works is cramming up her small studio, so she has another idea. "I had this strong urge of sharing my enjoyment from doing Buddha calligraphy oil painting with others." she said.

Mr. Lee, her husband, is also a very devoted Buddhist. He organized a Buddhism learning group on the North Shore. He helped to give many items of his wife's art work away through the Buddhist group.

Yet, she wants to spread her joy to many more other groups. I asked her what kind of price would she put on her works.

"The materials are affordable to me, my labor and time are the offerings to Buddhism, so I am very happy to give away free," she said, "but if anyone who does feel the blissfulness from the works is willing to share the cost, they can pay whatever amount they like as donation to Amitabha North Shore Association".

Being moved by her devotion to Buddhism and her pursuit of Dharmic bliss, I volunteered to construct a website for her to publicize her ideas and artworks.

So this concludes the story of Mrs. Lee's unique Buddha Calligraphy Oil Painting.

On The Pure Land Path

Many of my friends and my two children know that I will be going to Nianfo, reciting Amituofo, in a Buddhist meeting somewhere in Auckland on Mondays. They know I and my wife are Buddhists; are quite devoted to its activities; and are helping that group with some secretarial tasks.

But they know very little about what activities are held there; why it attracts me to travel all the way by bus to attend every week; what do I pursue on this path? I suppose they have some ideas about Buddhism - it talks about emptiness and various philosophical yet abstract topics; it was founded by a prince of ancient India; and it is mainly welcomed by old fellows. And that are all what they might know about.

So I like to write this post to tell my friends, especially my two children the basics of this tradition.

The following are what I learned. About 2500 or 3000 years ago, a prince of ancient India, by an enormous cause, got a chance to leave the palace and saw things that he could only see in the outside world. He saw a very old man staggering along the street; he saw a sick man lying on the roadside; he saw a corpse surrounded by the mourning family. He was overwhelmed by what he had never seen in the palace. And he saw a spiritual practitioner as well. This encounter triggered his realization of the truth of life, and resulted in his drop out of palace one night to start his quest for solution of complete liberation. (This link will bring you to a 40 minute video which gives detailed description about The Life of The Buddha.)

After 9 years of diligent practice and seek for the truth, he achieved enlightenment under the Bodhi Tree. He found the answer of life and discovered fact of the universe. He was free from the endless cycle of rebirth. He was completely liberated.

I imagine what the Buddha was thinking after his enlightenment. He was thinking that he should share with all beings how he had reached the state of full liberation, what the liberation was like; he should start his teaching. So he walked out of his retreat to begin his preaching that lasted 49 years long till he dropped his physical body and entered Nirvana, the ultimate state of being free from suffering and cycle of rebirth.

His teaching came to China in the middle of 1st century, and was naturally localized and diversified into many different schools to suit individual learners of various nature and capacity. Among them are schools such as Cha'n (or Zen in Japan), Tendai, Pure Land and etc. Despite that there are so many different schools, their main courses are all the same - following the three learning steps: Observance of Precept, Mindful in Concentration and Ultimate Wisdom.

I was brought onto Pure Land path through viewing Venerable Chin Kung's DVD titled "Getting To Know Buddhism". This school teaches us how to go through the above mentioned three steps by reciting "Amituofo". So in the group meditation practice, you can see they walk in round in the chanting hall aiming to tame our wandering mind to achieve mindfulness by focusing our thought on the recitation of Amituofo.

My personal experience from practice Pure Land path tells me mindfulness is the most difficult skill one can learn in his lifetime. Try it yourself. Sit on a chair comfortably, close your eyes, take a few deep breath, and then try to still your thought. How do you feel? Can you hold the stillness for a few seconds? It is challenging, isn't it? A renowned spiritual practitioner had lived in a cave in remote mountain for 12 years doing intensive meditation retreat. Once she was asked by people about how she felt during her retreat. She said to them that she was never bored during that period of time. Obviously she had tasted the heavenly happiness through her diligent practice.

Though it is difficult, it is a lot of fun and enjoyment in cultivating this skill because you will gradually gain the long lasting calmness and bliss if you persevere. And don't forget, our ultimate goal is to achieve Paramita Wisdom, the perfectly awaken state of mind, the state that free us from the endless cycle of rebirth.

Recently I heard from some of my friends that their parents were suffering from various diseases such as Alzheimer, Diabetes, Incontinence etc and had become bed bounded for quite some time. Although their life is long, all are over 90, but the diseases resulting from longevity make them suffer. That's why in the first sermon that Buddha delivered after his enlightenment pointed out that life is Dukkah, or is never satisfactory. To my perspective, Pure Land path is designed to train us to be in control of our worldly life, to get us prepared to migrate to the Pure Land at our will.

Knowing that no one can bring anything along after our life is ended, isn't it the most urgent and important task to be prepared to break the cycle of rebirth in our lifetime?

The Big Question

At some stages of our life, we may have big questions come up our mind such as: Where was I before birth? Where am I going to after death? What I am here for?

I remember it was in my pre-school age when I asked my mother, for the first time, where I was from. I remember the answer given was that I was popping out from a big stone. Though I believed what I was told then, the same question had been asked by me at various stages of my life again and again, and the answers were different one another.

The answer of this question is not just something as that is explained in the biology textbook. I think all of us are born to be with some degree of a philosopher’s mind. That’s why, in my personal example, I kept on asking and considering over the same question. All sort of answers and theories were never satisfactory to me, and I think this applies to everyone else, because the real truth is not yet found.

Over 2500 years ago, Buddha had gone through the same process trying to sort out his big questions about why is life impermanent and suffering, and how to attain permanent bliss. After all, he was an extraordinary human being, after 12 years of searching for the answer and the way to solve the problems, he got it. He tried to explain and teach his experiences and methods in the following 49 years to people who were also in quest of the answers. But only a very few could understood his teaching and achieved enlightenment. Most of his teachings seem understandable to us, but yet, the answer to the big questions are still beyond our reach. Why?

Because it is such a big question that the answer is beyond the capability of any language to describe to make it understandable to us. That’s why Buddha taught us eighty four thousand methods in his 49 years of lecturing. He assured that by practicing the most suitable method he had taught, we will finally get enlightenment and fully understand the truth of life and the whole universe. The truth can only be experienced, and can not be really understood by means of words.

What is the most suitable method that will enable us to achieve the objective? The one that most patriarchs and senior practitioners advocate is Pure Land chanting Buddha’s name. One of the most popular websites promoting this method can be accessed by the following link: http://www.chinkung.org/ . Another method being popular among western Buddhists is meditation. Rev. Kusala Bhiksu is one of the American monks teaching this method. His very popular podcast lectures can be downloaded at: http://www.urbandharma.org/udharma9/dharmatalks.html .

Well, my fellow answer seekers, let’s set off for the journey of seeking the answer. May whoever reaches the goal remember to come back to help the others.

Jean's tour to Pure Land Learning College

This is my wife, Jean, standing by the entrance of Pure Land Learning College. Picture was taken during her recent visit/learning trip to this school (or monastery) from 24/2/07 to 10/3/07.

In June 2001, Master Chin Kung established Pure Land Learning College in Toowoomba, Brisbane, Australia. In order to continue the mission of spreading Buddha’s education, he found it was necessary to have a homebase where decent Buddhism lecturers can settle in and concentrate on their cultivation and learning. From time to time, they invite adherents from all over the world to the College to witness their learning outcome.

The most recent visit/learning activity was scheduled on 24/2/07 for 2 weeks. Having learned a lot from others about Master Chin Kung, we took this as a very precious opportunity to meet the master in person and to treat ourselves with an overseas trip together. However, at the last minute of the decision process, we realized that one of us had to stay at home to look after our dog, Spot. As Spot listens to me more than to anyone else of the family, I decided that I gave up this opportunity, and let Jean travel with the New Zealand group of 10 to enjoy her first time ever of a visit/learning tour. Through the assistance of Amituofo Chanting Society of Auckland, this group of 10, led by Mr. Lee, set off for Brisbane on 24/2/07.

Jean was very much impressed by the College’s valuing the real essence of things instead of pursuing the appearance. For instance, she thought the school building could be something like a traditional Chinese temple. But it is not. It is just an ordinary Australian building. She was told that the building used to be a Catholic church. The College maintained it as it was after the purchase. This enables them to save a great amount of money and energy in property maintenance, and thus, their delivery of education quality can be more assured, and more resourses can be saved for education related activities.

A short distance from the main building is a vegetable farming section growing organic produce. This is where the residents of the school can exercise their physical body by involving in the garden jobs apart from the spiritual cultivation. Together with another even bigger area of vegetable garden farther away, the amount of vegetable produce is sufficient to feed the 1000 visitors of this activity. The 3 meals each day are simple but abundant and fresh.

It is said that Master Chin Kung’s biggest dharma protector, Mrs. Han Ying, was very good at cooking, and also took the meals provided to visitors as a very important part of the religious activity. So during her life time, she had created a lot of recipes of vegetarian dishes. In this activity which Jean attended, each of the visitors was given a recipe book based on Mrs. Han Ying’s cooking principles. After Jean returned home, she made a few dishes following the recipes and found that we all liked their taste. Most important is that the materials required in the recipe are very ordinary stuff and the cooking process is simple.

The daily activities started from 6:15am in the morning and ended at 9:00pm in the night. Each of Master Chin Kung’s disciples was allocated at least one lecturing session of two hours. The topics were surrounding the three classical works – The Ten Good Deeds Sutra (十善業道經); The Supreme Response Chapter(太上感應篇); Disciples Regulations(弟子規). This covers the 3 major beliefs of Chinese community: Buddhism, Taoism and Confucianism. Master Chin Kungs believes that the teachings taught in these three classical works are like the three legs of a Tripod. That means attaining Buddhahood begins from fulfilling the teachings of these three works.

Besides the three lecture sessions each day, there are Buddha chanting practices in between the classes. Buddha chanting is held at Ten Thousand Surnames Ancestors Memorial Hall (萬姓先祖紀念堂). In the hall, Jean saw that the three sides of the wall were full of wooden plaques each of them represents a family branch in Chinese history. A religious ceremony called ‘Three times reminder" (三時繫念) is conducted here regularly to remind both the ancestors and the alive of their endeavour to immigrate to the Pure Land.

With this tight learning schedule, Jean said, one can empty their mind easily for receiving the good knowledge. To her personal experience, she totally dropped the material world matters as soon as the first two days had past. She felt her mind was full of dharma pleasure since the 3rd day and onward.

On 4th March, the visit/learning activity came to its peak because the Master Chin Kung arrived the College from Hong Kong to conduct a memorial ceremony for his biggest dharma protector, Mrs. Han Ying, and his dharma initiator, Master Zhang Jia(章嘉大師).

For years, most of the adherents have been learning Buddhism with Master Chin Kung by means of CDs, books or on-line videos without having a chance to see their teacher in person. So the atmosphere in the hall was a mixture of respectful, exciting and surprising when Master Chin Kung entered the hall. They have known from CDs that their teacher looks young and is healthy despite his being 81 years old. Now they witnessed this fact by themselves. After the ceremony was done, the adherents of each region had a photo with their teachers and the master.

Time flies. On 6th March, they said goodbye to the college and carried on their remaining activities at Amitabha Brisbane Association. On 10th March, they came back home with a more purified mind. I am surprised to see that Jean has become a more committed vegetarian after this visit/learning trip.

Happy New Year

It is the new year’s day of 2007. Everyone has more or less forms of celebration on this day. Travelling, climbing mountains, walking in the bush, reading books, eating or even sleeping are just a few examples of the New Year holiday activities. To me, I use of this time to write a blog posting as my form of celebrating the start of the New Year.

I have wished my families, relatives and friends a Happy New Year annually for at least 50 times since I had memory about everyday life. Chinese celebrates Lunar New Year which is about one month following the New Year of the solar calendar. To a child of my generation, New Year is an exciting day for many reasons. New clothing, big feast, toys, money given in a read envelope and a lot of social activities such as dragon dance, lion dance, fire works, parade of various performing groups. Children could be looking forward to the New Year’s arrival a few weeks earlier. I remembered that each time before the New Year arrived; I vowed to hold on it and would never loose it. But, after a few years of life experience, I finally realised that New Year is never in our control, it slips away and it sneaks in quietly and stubbornly.

While New Year is an eagerly desired holiday to children, it is rather an unwelcome event to adults of different mind sets because its arrival reminds them that they are one year older. Examples of people having this kind of feeling are such as entertainers, stage performers, good looking women, the elderly and etc. To them, the arrival of New Year means their enjoyable life has been deducted by one year.

Why do people have such different feeling about New Year, the feeling about time? Buddha points out that it is because of our minds craving for the pleasant objects, and this results in the feeling of loss. The feeling about time is actually an unreal phenomenon. In the Mind Sutra: “When in a meditation of deep wisdom, Boddhisatva witnessed that the cores of the five sensory mechanisms were of emptiness.” So if one can harness his mind effectively, one can maintain a genuine peace of mind. This mind state can be achieved by doing the appropriate meditation practice according to the self nature of each individual. Many highly experienced meditation practitioners in the world can witness this true fact about mind.
In reflection of feelings about New Year, I now feel that the meaning of my New Year’s wishes toward my dear family, relatives, friends is not just the worldly blessing but also the understanding of the nature of mind.

My journey of belief

I am quite a religious person to the eyes of most of my friends who have known me reasonably well. My religion is Buddhism. But why, with so many other religions in where I had been raised up, Taiwan, have I eventually chosen Buddhism to be my religion?

My earliest memory about religion was from my 3rd elder sister when I was about 4 and she was 14 years old. One morning she shared some of her lollies with me which she said was given by the church down the road of where we lived. I asked sister to take me to the church to get my own portion. But at the time we got to the church, nobody was there and its gate was shut. Sister told me something about Jesus in front of the gate. She said to me that Maria bore Jesus, and Jesus was crucified on a cross.

We walked back home with questions in my mind, why people were so cruel as such that they dared killing a good man in a terrible way. I remembered I also asked sister to take me along next time when she went to church so that I can have my own lollies.

Apparently my sister hadn’t invited me to the church ever since that day because my next memory about religion was when I was in the junior high school at the age of about 13. In between these two encounters with new religion, I was taught by my mother to worship anything that was believed to bless people with their wishes.

I remembered that in a trip to mum’s maiden home in the village, mum asked a fortune teller to write my name and date of birth on a piece of red cloth. With that red “sacred document” in hand, we walked together to a big tree by a creek. The tree was said to be as old as over 300 years with twisting and intercrossing roots spread over a radius of about 3 meters forming many cavities on the ground. Each cavity was full of red cloth. Mum found one cavity that was not so full, and inserted my red “sacred document” in it. In front of that cavity, mum placed a plate of roasted chicken as offering to the deity believed to be living in that tree, and prayed for my rapid and safe growth.

While I was growing older, I was gradually getting away from the polytheism. Though I had a chance to have briefly learned a bit of Buddhism during my teenage period, I basically believed that science explained everything, and took all sort of religions as superstitious. This had been so until the day when I watched a movie about how the Roman army persecuted Christians. When I saw how those devoted Christians were tortured or even fed to lions and yet wished God bless their enemy, my tears streamed down with blissful joy.

This unforgettable experience occurred in my early twenties. Then, on one Sunday morning, two graceful ladies knocked the door wanting to preach “Kingdom’s message”. They were from Jehovah’s Witness. They gave me two of their pamphlets and invited me to come to their assembly. I didn’t accept their urge of baptising me, but I had identified myself as Christian for about 5 years since then. During the one and half years serving as sub-lieutenant trainer at air force cadet training centre, I spent many Sunday mornings alone in a nearby school yard reading bible while my colleague officers enjoyed their free movie session in the cinema.

The process converting to a Buddhist, starting from around the year 1977, was very unobvious. But it could be due to the expectation from my parents for a son of me and my wife after our marriage in 1977. Year after year, my wife’s pregnancy just remained no hope. Though we had a lovely daughter in 1982, however, a son was so important to Chen family that the pressure was getting bigger and bigger.

Some enthusiastic friends and relatives offered their secret remedies of bearing a son. These included medication, improvement of the Feng Sui of our bedroom, walking under the lanterns on the night of Lanterns Festival, non-stopping herbal drinks and etc.

Finally came a good friend of mine who gave up all his possessions preparing to be a Buddhist monk, he suggested that I should chang to vegetarian diet in order to induce the birth of a son. He pointed out that having a mind of non-killing is the cause of giving birth to a good son. He meant vegetarian diet was equivalent to non-killing.

Not long after his suggestion, an Indian American, who was the foreign technician at where I worked, urged me to convert to vegetarian diet when he knew my wish of bearing a son. With these two coincidences, I pledged to practice vegetarian diet.

About six months later, my wife was proved pregnant, and a subsequent fetus liquid dye examination proved it a boy. I had thus fulfilled my mission by producing a son for the Chen family.

But this should not be the reason I converted to Buddhism from Christianity. When my friend, who later on became a Buddhist monk, urged me to try vegetarian diet, he also presented me a set of books titled “弘一大師傳” (Biography of Master Hong Yi). This book sets out how the master achieved a highly respected status from being a less careful artist. The way and determination of how Hog Yi followed Buddha’s teaching to achieve enlightenment touched my mind. From reading his biography I gradually grew interest in reading other Buddhist publications and attended many Buddhist activities.

Everyone will have his course to become part of a certain religion. To my viewpoint, religion is a set of instructions which the believers follow to be happy. Everyone, depending on their uniqueness, will get into a course naturally to go through a journey of belief and eventually settled down on one which he will embrace till the end of his life on this planet.

All the five major religions are the same to me because they all teach the believers to love others. By theory, if all the believers touch their minds and completely follow what their religions have taught them, the world should not be as violent as today. What has gone wrong is a big study for the intelligent to sort out.

Buddha’s words about the various forms of saviours impress me a lot: “應以何身得度﹐即現何身而為度之” (meaning that the One will appear in the right form to achieve that follower’s wish if that is most suitable to him). So what? Don’t you agree that Jesus, Mohammed, Jehovah, Brahma, Buddha, etc are just the same One who will appear in the most suitable form to save the unique individual?