Our First Lecture at Vancouver Chan Meditation Center, VCMC
On Thursday August 2 Dr. Rebecca Li presented the first, of hopefully, a long list of Dharma lectures at the new Vancouver Chan Meditation Center at Cambie and Broadway. Dr. Li is not only a second generation Dharma heir of our founder Master Sheng Yen, but also a sociology professor at the College of New Jersey. This unique combination of deep spiritual practice and extensive academic achievement, as well as a personal familiarity with both oriental and western culture is rare and precious. It allows Dr. Li to bring age old concepts to life in a modern world. Her lecture was entitled “Living a Fulfilling Life in Chan Practice”.
It is common misunderstanding that Chan is only about sitting meditation. As Dr. Li pointed out meditation is a small, but significant part of Chan practice. Throughout its history teachers and masters have emphasized that Chan must be practised continually, or it is not Chan. Chan exists in motion as well as stillness.
What then is the role of meditation? Dr. Li explained that, meditation calms, settles and concentrates the mind. This is of crucial importance to our practice as Buddhists. It is only in that clear and settled state that we can become aware of how our mind produces our suffering. This understanding begins on the cushion as we deal with our reactions to our method of choice. It is in this simplified and quiet state that we first have a chance to see our grasping and rejecting first hand.
But the work does not stop there. As we grow in our meditative practice, and as our minds become more and more settled, we must take this awareness into the rest of our day to day lives. The goal is to make our lives a moving meditation and in that movement find a growing awareness of our relationships with ourselves and the rest of the world.
As this awareness grows so do our choices. As Dr. Li pointed out, how can we make choices if we are not truly aware of our thoughts and actions. So much of what we do is based on habitual thoughts and reactions that we are often not aware of yet deeply attached to. Chan practice aims to open this awareness and plumb its depths. It strives to understand the mind and its workings.
Chan in its practice on and off the cushion aims to make the invisible visible, and in so doing breakthrough Mara and Samsara, or could we say today illusion, bias and prejudice. These illusionary views are the bricks that form the walls we put between ourselves and others, and these walls are the impediment to our fulfilment as sentient beings.
This is but a brief synopsis of an informative and enjoyable talk and my hope is that a recording of it will be available on the internet for others to hear. The day after this lecture Dr. Li held a three-day retreat at the Dharma Drum Center in Richmond that I had the good fortune of attending. Her clear and relevant teaching continued throughout those three days. I look forward to her return next year if causes and conditions allow.
Written by : Tom Kaczmarski