Venerable Guo Jing propagated Mind-calming Tea Chan during visit to Vietnam
From July 12th to 26th, Venerable Guo Jing (果鏡法師), Director of Chung-Hwa Institute of Buddhist Studies (中華佛學研究所), along with six students from the Department of Buddhist Studies, Dharma Drum Institute of Liberal Arts (法鼓文理學院) visited Vietnam upon the invitation of Venerable Dao Jie (道戒法師), also a student at DILA from Vietnam.
"Mind-calming Tea Chan," theme of this trip, embodied Venerable Dao Jie's presentation for graduation. Venerable Guo Jing tried to bring the tea culture in Chinese Chan school to local youth through the form of tea gathering, a first-ever attempt in Vietnam. The tea gathering included not only morning and evening service but also moving meditation, walking meditation and recitation of Buddha's name, in the hope that the youth would be able to experience Chan live.
Through tea gathering, Venerable Guo Jing guided young Vietnamese to experience sitting meditation and Tea Chan.The first tea gathering was held on July 13th at Ha Tien Monastery (河仙寺)in Vinh Phun (永福). More than two hundred elementary to high school students joined the event. Under the guidance of Venerable Guo Jing, participants learned to know about tea sets and tea leaves, and also how to brew tea, to appreciate the beauty of tea and to experience the joy of “tea and Chan are of one flavor.” After lunch, high school students serving as group leader helped each other to clean the dishes then dried them under sunshine for disinfection, a simple and eco-friendly practice of local people.
The second tea gathering, held on July 21st at Chua Long Quang (龍光寺)in Hanoi City, attracted close to seventy teenagers. After the practice of reciting Buddha's name and walking meditation, Venerable Guo Jing guided the participants to relax their body and mind before they experienced sitting meditation and Tea Chan. Afterwards, during the sharing session, many participants said that they enjoyed Tea Chan very much and were highly interested in the history of Tea Chan in Chinese Chan School.
In recent years, the number of monastic students from Vietnam was constantly on the rise. During this trip, Venerable Guo Jing also paid a visit to the monastery presided over by Venerable Mi Jian (彌堅法師), alumni of DILA. "It's truly touching to see that Vietnamese monastics, no matter they have graduated or not, are making a lot of effort to bring what they've learned back to their country to share with local monastery and upholders." Buddhist sangha in Vietnam emphasizes a lot on monastic education, said Venerable Guo Jing. They quite often send monastic disciples to local and overseas Buddhist seminaries and therefore one can easily see them around the world. Venerable Guo Jing also hoped that after the young generation of Buddhist monastics return to their home country, they would bring a bright prospect to Buddhism in Vietnam.
Texts / Photos: Chen Huiqiu (陳惠秋)
Translation: France Liu (劉演珮)
Editing: DDM Editorial Team; John Wu (吳俊宏)