Venerable Guo Xing gives Dharma Talk on Chan meditation
On the morning of Sunday 11 January 2009, Venerable Guo Xing gave a Dharma talk on meditation. Despite the chilly weather, about 100 followers took advantage of this rare opportunity. Venerable Guo Xing taught that the purpose of practicing Chan meditation is to enable practitioners to better cultivate themselves, work on precepts, stabilization and wisdom.
Venerable believes Dharma should be applied to meditation practice as well as daily life. As long as one possesses the correct concepts, there is no place on earth that cannot be treated as a Chan Hall, through which one can comfortably practice Chan (Zen) at any time and condition.
Venerable Guo Xing went on to explore anger and emotions and related them to meditation practice. For example, sometimes when we help others we feel our emotions take its toll on us . However, we should see that these emotions are merely emotions, so there is no need to confuse them with what we know as the "self" and become burdened by it. Through this approach, we can appropriately use Chan to assist those in need. This is the idea of "no self", which is fundamental to meditation practice.
Finally, Venerable introduced three steps which is used for reflection in our daily lives to help us see through the phenomena in our lives that are merely illusion, to realize that they are not connected to "self" or "me".
1. There is no connection at all between the images generated in the mind and the outside.
2. Illusions that one has in mind are merely a product of imagination and memories of the past.
3. One can often practice the Chan (Silent Illumination Meditation and Huatou Chan) to reflect, for the ease of body and mind and to stabilise mind.
Venerable Guo Xing's clear and animated talk encouraged everyone to actively interact with the Venerable and the class was filled with laughter.
(by Jin Yang/edited by DDM Australia Editing Team)
