It was my pleasure to join the event held by DDYP (Dharma Drum for Young People) at Chan Meditation Center for the Buddha Nature in Food- Part II. DDYP invited an experienced nutritionist, Iraina, to share her professional knowledge about helping those people with nutrition and health issues.

The summer of 2017 has become the most memorable summer of my life thanks to the one-month visit to the Dharma Drum Vancouver Center (DDVC). I’ve been living on the DILA campus for the past two years and I thought that I really understood what sangha life really is. It had never occurred to me how hard it could be for a foreign religion like Buddhism to survive or struggle to prosper in a foreign context, even though I knew that it was even more difficult in ancient times when most people were conservative or illiterate and resisted things alien to what they already knew.

As part of this year’s high school summer camp (生命美學研習營), I gave a talk entitled “A Westerner’s Perspective on Eastern Religious Traditions and Education” (歐美人士眼中的東方宗教傳統與教育). In order to give the audience some insight into my own personal background, I decided to dedicate the first segment of the talk to introducing the young Taiwanese high school students to some key facts about the religious landscape of modern Western countries.

In May, 2015, I had the chance to attend a nine-day Chan meditation retreat of DDM. I never went to any retreats before and just have a couple of months experience in the Chan practice, so when I first arrived I felt quite nervous and had no idea what was waiting for me.

Saturday November 4th patrons of Dharma Drum Vancouver Centre were blessed to hear a dharma talk from Abbot President Venerable Guo Dong. The turnout was amazing, with chairs spilling out into the lobby and the dining hall at the back. The subject of the talk was a timely one, something that everyone could relate to, namely, how to communicate and get along across generational and cultural lines.

On this Saturday afternoon (11/4/2017), we were so lucky to join the seminar of “Welcoming Little Bodhisattvas” led by Dr. Ya-Ning Amy Hsu at the Chan Meditation Center. As a modern well-educated scholar, Dr. Hsu has years of work experience and rigorous academic training in language education and child development. Also, she is a successful mother who has three children and has accumulated lots of parenting experiences from her own family. So this time, she gave us the wonderful talk and shared her experiences.

Part One: Memories with Dharma Drum Mountain (DDM)

Hugo is a psycholocial counsellor from Mainland China to study Counselling at NTNU. He was introduced by a western freind to come to International Meditation Group (IMG) to practice Chan Meditation and to get more connections with DDM. He had something to share on his experience during the past few years.

It had been my wish to attend a Chan retreat lasting more than 3 days for a long time. Finally, the moon, the stars, the sun and everything else in my life lined up perfectly. I was able to carve out some time and fly to Vancouver for the 5-day Outdoor Retreat. Here I will share some impressions of my experience from the retreat on Hornby Island from 9/10 - 9/14.

“I think the AC in the van stopped working.”
“It’s not field work unless the AC goes out.”

Mosquitos, sprained ankles, a car tire slipping off the edge of the road, and AC blowing out in the muggy Northern Taiwan climate are all part of a day’s work in the field. Over one hundred religious sites visited, and one week to go. During the Space and Cyberspace Workshop at DILA, three teams were tasked with recording pictures, video, and location data to create a special database of religious sites in the Jinshan and Shimen districts of Northern Taiwan. Faculty and student researchers from thirteen universities worldwide gathered at Dharma Drum Mountain from June 5th to June 16th to learn digital mapping techniques that will help them in a host of digital humanities projects. This workshop is at the cutting edge of research and combines real world field data with interactive mapping technology, bringing innovation to time honored techniques.

The spring language competition has become something of a small tradition here in DILA. Students look forward to hearing their classmates’ chants, songs, and short lectures. For the students who take part in the competition, this is a unique opportunity to get additional instruction from their language teachers outside of the classroom.