Daily Wisdom — Outside True Hearts Exists No Buddha

By Chan Master Wu Jue Miao Tian
Translated by Shilo, Harry and Ronald

Outside True Hearts Exists No Buddha

Chan Buddhism is known to teach its practitioners without formality and language. It is the teachings of “heart-to-heart transmission.” It is also known to be “pointing straight to the heart,” “witnessing true nature,” and “seeing Buddha, becoming Buddha.” The [...]

Some Thoughts on Choosing a Fun Topic for Telephone-Charade Game

To prepare for the game, we have put much thought on picking the topics to play with. We have identified some features that tend to make a topic more fun and entertaining. Below are some of them. They may form a useful guideline for picking a topic to play next time.
1. Well-known phrases
There are simply [...]

USC Zen Fall 2008 — 7th Meeting (Special Session)

Today was our special session. In the past, we had Guest Speaker, Movie/DVD, etc. for special sessions. For this semester, we decided to try new stuff — Games! But since we want to tie the game with Zen and what we had talked about in class, we eventually came up with only one game. It’s [...]

USC Zen Fall 2008 — 6th Meeting

Today our focus was to reinforce our practicing on the Navel Chakra. So we introduced a new Motion Zen that can potentially stimulate our Navel Chakra, which is called Body Earthquake. Besides helping to find the Navel Chakra, it can massage our organs and release bodily tension. It is sort of like jogging, but compared [...]

Daily Wisdom — Arm Twisting Motion Chan

1. Stand with your feet hip width apart.
2. Bring your arms out to the side at shoulder height with palms facing forward. Turn your right palm up and left palm down.
3. Following the direction of the twisting caused by turning of the palms, twist the arms even more to your maximum without straining. Simultaneously turn [...]

Five Obstacles

In the Yoga Sutras, similar ideas to Five Poisons were mentioned. In fact, the classification and use of words may vary, but the same message is conveyed. Here is the Five Obstacles in the Yoga Sutras, with the original passages in Sanskrit and English translation and commentary by Swami Satchidananda:
avidya = ignorance
asmita = egoism
raga = [...]

Five Poisons

Adapted from Heart Chan Meditation DVD 2A
The five grave precepts for lay Buddhists are: no killing, no stealing, no sexual misconduct, no lies, no intoxicants. However, these precepts are not the most fundamental.
The most fundamental precepts are not “precepts on behaviors” but “precepts on intentions”, which are so-called Bodhisattva’s precepts. That is, we are to [...]

USC Zen Fall 2008 — 5th Meeting

From the feedbacks we know that many people love the Motion Zen, such as the Arm-dropping. They find it very helpful in releasing the tension in the neck and shoulders, which a lot of modern people tend to have. Therefore, we started off by practicing it for a few minutes together. We also introduced a [...]

Gratitude Fills Me at the Moment of Graduation

Before I decided to pursue my Ph.D. study, I consulted a professor whom I highly trusted for his advice on making this move. He said, “There may be numerous frustrating moments during the course of the study, but you will not regret it after completing the process, as none of my friends that I know [...]

USC Zen Fall 2008 — 4th Meeting

We had fewer people today. But smaller group is also good, as we can have more interactions and get to know each other a little bit better…
It’s good to review Motion Zen at the beginning to loosen up the body and tension. We did some stretch exercises from yoga also (Yi-ping is a certified yoga [...]

Breathing as a Bridge between Physical and Mental Being

Breathing is important. We can go for days without eating or even drinking, but we need to take the oxygen in every few seconds. If you really think about it, breathing is a very special function of our body. There are a lot of involuntary movements happening in our body, such as heartbeats and the [...]

USC Zen Fall 2008 — 3rd Meeting

Today we had 14 people, some newcomers. We started off doing the Arm Dropping Motion Zen. It’s a simple, everyone-can-do exercise yet very powerful. It can effectively release neck and back tension, as well as shoulder pains which we tend to have when typing so much in front of the computer, or sitting for a [...]