Master Sheng Yen: His Life and My Practice with Him

This article was published in the Winter 2024 issue of Chan Magazine.

Master Sheng Yen: His Life and My Practice with Him

By Rebecca Li

Rebecca Li, PhD, is the founder and guiding teacher of Chan Dharma Community. She began practicing with Chan Master Sheng Yen in 1996, and in 1999 began serving as his translator. In 2016, Rebecca received Dharma transmission from Simon Child (Dharma heir of Master Sheng Yen). Rebecca is a sociology professor at The College of New Jersey where she also serves as faculty director of the Alan Dawley Center for the Study of Social Justice. She teaches meditation and Dharma classes, gives public lectures, and leads Chan retreats at Dharma Drum centers in North America. This talk was given at Great Vow Zen Monastery on August 12, 2022 in response to the residents’ interest in Master Sheng Yen’s life and Rebecca’s journey in Chan practice. Great Vow Zen Monastery is a training monastery in the White Plum lineage of the Japanese Soto Zen tradition. It is headed by Abbots Jan Chozen Bays and Hogen Bays.

Early Years

Who was Master Sheng Yen? He was born in China in 1930, and he became a monk at the age of thirteen, largely because his family was very poor. A monastery was looking for young people who would like to become novice monks, and so he did that. At first he was very slow, unable to learn and memorize anything. His master told him to make prostrations to Bodhisattva Avalokiteshvara for help. He did exactly that, hundreds and thousands of prostrations, until one day he was able to memorize the chants and the liturgy. So he considered Avalokiteshvara to be a very important bodhisattva for him.

Later on in his teen years, the monastery at which he ordained sent him to a branch monastery they had in Shanghai. At that time in China, monks earned income to sustain the monastic livelihood by performing rituals for the deceased. This was also a time of decline in Buddhism in China. He felt very sad about this because he thought that the Buddhadharma is so wonderful, but so few people know of it, and a lot of people who do know of it misunderstand it. So he gave rise to this vow to really explain and teach the Dharma, so that more people would have correct understanding and could truly benefit from the precious Three Jewels. It was a time when there began to be Buddhist institutes to train monastics in formal Buddhist study. In Shanghai, he found such an opportunity. It was not easy to get admitted since he had very little formal education, because his family was so poor. But his great vow drove him to try to gain admission, and he was admitted and actually did very well in the study.

Revolution and Military

In 1949 he encountered the communist revolution in China. He understood that when the communists took over, many monastics would be forced to return to lay life. He was worried about that prospect, so he followed the Nationalist Army to Taiwan and the only way to do that was to join the military. He wanted to be able to stay on the path; if it involved taking a detour in the military and enduring all that hardship, that’s what he would do. While he was in the military he was able to be flexible with how he could practice in that situation. He maintained his vegetarian diet. He used all his time off to practice with and visit Buddhist masters, many of whom went to Taiwan from China for the same reason he did.

During the time he was in the military, he worked very hard. He worked in the communications department, meaning he wasn’t in combat. He also strived to actually gain advancement in the ranks. Why? Not because of his personal ambition, but to show people that he was someone intelligent and willing to work. He was trying to find the right people to help him get out of the military so that he could become a monk again. At that time, in that very oppressive regime, it was impossible to leave the military. But a miracle happened: someone helped him return to monastic life after ten years serving in the military. This illustrates the importance of vow power, which allowed him to go through that whole process. 

Return to Monastic Life

When he returned to monastic life, he was ordained by Master Dongchu, who had a very special way of training his students. Master Dongchu sent him on a lot of impossible errands, made him angry, humiliated him, and tried to help him dissolve his self-centered attachments. Master Sheng Yen said that sometimes he felt frustrated, but he also saw how compassionate his master was being in putting him through that training. 

After some time with this master, he asked for the opportunity to enter a six-year solitary retreat. Again, it was not easy to find someone who was willing to support you in a six-year solitary retreat. So he worked on the causes and conditions to put together someone to support him, and he took his leave. During that solitary retreat he wrote his first books on the heart of Buddhist teaching, that made it accessible to many people who couldn’t understand what the Buddhadharma was really about. That was one of the first books I read by Master Sheng Yen when I encountered his teaching.

At that time Chinese people largely thought Buddhism was just some superstitious religion for uneducated people. After he came out from the solitary retreat, Master Sheng Yen realized what was really needed for Buddhism to be respected in Chinese society was for monastics to become more educated. So he took it upon himself to travel to Japan to study for a doctorate degree in Buddhist literature. Remember he had very little formal education. He didn’t know any Japanese, yet he went to get a doctorate degree in Japanese. All driven by his vow to do whatever he needed to do bring the Dharma to everyone.

Coming to the West

After he finished his doctorate degree, he was a bit ahead of everyone. Folks in Taiwan didn’t know what to do with someone with a doctorate degree. So he accepted an invitation to be a professor in Canada. After a while he realized that it really couldn’t work because he didn’t speak any English. But he got another invitation to go to New York to teach. That’s how he began his journey of teaching the Dharma in the West. Many things happened over the years, and because of his work, he left a very important legacy. One of the things he did was to give full Dharma transmission to lay teachers in the West, one of whom is my current teacher. Actually, his first lay Dharma heir, John Crook, was also my teacher, and his second lay Dharma heir, Simon Child, is my current teacher from whom I received my transmission.

Many people know Master Sheng Yen as an important figure in Chan Buddhism in the United States. Besides teaching in America, he also established a very large network of Buddhist centers in Asia, with headquarters in Taiwan called Dharma Drum Mountain. Dharma Drum Mountain is a huge campus, with a large Chan Hall and Chan practice program, a Buddhist liberal arts university, a Sangha university, and a publishing house as well as a large congregation of volunteers and followers in Taiwan and all over the world. Master Sheng Yen has published over a hundred books. He was an important scholar of Buddhist studies. His scholarly work is still often cited when people want to study the development of Chinese Buddhism, especially in the Ming Dynasty. That’s just a few of the things he did.

He was not only a Chan master. You can tell that he was someone who worked very hard, not because he was a workaholic, but because he knew he had to use every moment of his precious human life to fulfill the great vow he had made. When he gave transmission to my two teachers, John Crook and Simon Child, I also learned from their example that they took the transmission very seriously. Oftentimes this is misunderstood by people, thinking that Dharma transmission is some kind of achievement. It is not an achievement per se; it is not a status. Master Sheng Yen said it is really a master giving a very heavy responsibility to you, to pass on the Dharma.

I watched John Crook and Simon Child taking this responsibility very seriously. They devoted their entire lives to finding ways to make Chan practice accessible to the Western educated mind. A lot of the teachings, passed down the generations, were designed for those who were educated in the Chinese or Asian way. And there are things that really need to be adapted, not just culturally, but also for people living in modernity. We just think differently. So I also learned from their example in how seriously they took their responsibility.

Though Master Sheng Yen didn’t really give them a choice. The story was that John Crook attended Master Sheng Yen’s retreat and at the end of the retreat, Master Sheng Yen said, “I’m going to give you transmission.” He didn’t expect that at all, but he took it on and took it very seriously. A similar thing happened to Simon Child. I think John Crook did the same thing to me when one time I turned up at his retreat as a participant. It might be the second time I attended this retreat, or the third time at most. He said, “Here, Rebecca, you’re going to be in charge of the retreat, of the Chan Hall.” I said, “Okay, I’ll do my best.” This is part of the training that they learned from Master Sheng Yen as well. 

Rebecca’s Background

I hope I have given you a sense of who Master Sheng Yen was. Some of you mentioned you would like to know about my practice. I didn’t grow up Buddhist. People assume that because I look Chinese, I’m the one who made my white Kansas-born husband follow the Buddhist path. But it’s the other way around. I met my husband when I was in graduate school in Southern California. At that time the only way to get Dharma books was to go to a library. This may be a little difficult for some of you to understand; this was before the internet, before Google, before Amazon. You had to go to libraries with actual books in them. So I would travel with my future husband, drive an hour out into the Los Angeles area to a Chinese monastery that had a good library and let you check out books. We would check books out and bring them back home, and read them, so that we could bring them back the following week. That was our weekly routine.

Some of the early books that I read were the two books that Master Sheng Yen wrote during his six-year solitary retreat. One was his autobiography, telling his story, some of which I shared with you. The other was Orthodox Chinese Buddhism, his explanation of all kinds of different misunderstandings, misconceptions about Buddhism, which were very common among Chinese people. What is karma, what is rebirth, all kind of things. I remember distinctly feeling that this all makes so much sense, the way he explained it. I felt a really close affinity with his teaching.

At that time, one of Master Sheng Yen’s disciples who had attended some retreats with him started a meditation group in the area where I was going to graduate school. My future husband was already attending that group, so he brought me there after sensing that I might be interested. He didn’t drag me there. The first time I attended the group, someone had just returned from an intensive retreat with Master Sheng Yen in New York and shared his experience of the retreat. I remember thinking that I wanted to go to that retreat and I set my mind to attending.

First Retreats

It was very difficult to get into one of Master Sheng Yen ’s retreats at that time because they were always full with his regular participants. They had a relatively small space accommodating only thirty people. I applied and I got rejected. I applied again and got rejected the second time. When I applied a third time, I called them and they finally accepted me. I persevered. If there’s something you want to do, persevere, don’t give up easily. I finally got accepted in 1996. I still remember my first retreat. It was difficult, because they got up at 4:00 a.m. which is 1:00 a.m. in California, which is usually when I went to bed. So I practiced with a lot of drowsiness. I couldn’t really remember much about the meditation itself, except that I didn’t give up. I just practiced with drowsiness and followed some of the instruction given by Master Sheng Yen on how to deal with drowsiness.

I remember feeling, when I went to interview with him the very first time, that “I finally found you.” I wasn’t looking for anyone, but I felt that very strong sense that I finally found my teacher, and I couldn’t stop crying. He asked, “Why are you crying?” I remember that distinctly. By the way, he was speaking in Mandarin. I couldn’t really understand Mandarin, so I was relying on his translator. At the end of the retreat, he asked everyone to share their retreat experience. The Chinese people shared in Chinese and I shared in English because my Mandarin was not good enough. I can’t remember what I said, but after I spoke he looked me in my eyes and said, “You’re going to help a lot of people.” I didn’t know what I was going to do to help people, because I couldn’t understand even his Chinese, but that’s the moment I remember from that retreat. I felt a very strong connection with him.

Early on, when I was going to that library to borrow those books, some of them were Chinese books, and there was one set of verses that really touched and stood out for me. Some of you may have encountered that set of verses. Oftentimes they appear in the beginning of a book or sutra. It goes like this (this is my translation):

The Buddhadharma is difficult to encounter,

now I have encountered.

Human birth is difficult to acquire,

now I have acquired.

If I do not make use of this human birth to deliver myself,

when will this body be delivered?

Delivered, meaning, liberated from samsara. Every time I encountered this set of verses, I was on the verge of tears. I felt deeply touched by it. I felt the urgency of having and making the vow to make Dharma practice a top priority in my life. 

Meeting Master Sheng Yen

That was before I met Master Sheng Yen. That first summer that I started reading his book, I heard that Master Sheng Yen was coming to Los Angeles, which he rarely did, and he would be giving the three refuges ceremony. I was planning to go, to hear his talk, and to take the three refuges with him, even though I had not met him before. I felt I was ready. A few days before that talk I got very sick. As I was laying there, feeling so weak, the thought came that I may not be able to go because I was so sick. Then came a very strong response to that thought: even if I have to crawl to Los Angeles, I *will* go. I still remember the feeling of that sense of determination. Somehow the vow power propelled me in those moments, and that was very important. I did go. Meeting him and taking refuge at that time shaped the trajectory of my life.

That was around the end of my graduate school years, and I needed to start thinking about the next phase of my life. Going on the job market, should I go for the highest status job that I can get? Because that will mean success, that will mean I’ve proven myself to be worthy of my professor. Of course my professor would want me to be like them. But how about what is important for me? The craving for approval, for recognition, might lead to going for a job that may not be the best fit for the life I would want to live.

I was very lucky that I had already encountered a practice, and made the vow to make the Dharma my top priority in life. It was important to find a job that would allow me to have balance in my life. I have to work hard, but also there should be space for my home life and my Dharma work. That means it’s not going to be a place that expects me to spend all my time working. And that may not be the kind of position expected of me by my professors, or other people who have their expectation of me. So it was important for me to have that clarity, and also the priority of being able to practice with Master Sheng Yen. That’s how I ended up in New Jersey, where I could be close to Master Sheng Yen’s center.

Training Begins

When I started my academic career as an assistant professor, I also started practicing and training with Master Sheng Yen more regularly. A couple of things became clear to me at that time. First, I was able to see that the position I got was a fairly good fit for me, and so I saw it as a real blessing to be able to have that job. I don’t know about you; have you had jobs that you like at first and then you start to dislike it? Remembering that it’s a blessing to have this position that accommodates the kind of life I would like to live, allowed me to not let the difficulty in the process of getting through tenure bother me too much. There were some colleagues who were not super friendly. In academia, there are a lot of egos. I’ve seen colleagues who became very defensive, and went into a downward spiral. Some of them couldn’t make it through the process. I saw that there is a greater purpose; it’s not just about getting tenure at the end. Doing this to the best of my ability is part of my path to help me live a life in the Dharma. I need to find my way in the world to have a sustainable way to live, and it was a blessing that I had that good opportunity. It was also fortunate for me to have people like John Crook and Simon Child, my two teachers. John Crook was a professor and Simon Child was a physician in the United Kingdom. They provided this example for me, to be able to juggle both their professional life and their Dharma life. 

The second thing that was very clear to me during those years was that I could only do my best, whether I would succeed or not. I could only do my best with integrity, trying to go through all the hoops while getting tenure. The teacher training with Master Sheng Yen was very demanding. He required us to do thorough research of a topic, and then create a presentation, and we had to do it every week. At the same time, for my job, I had to do class preparation, write my research paper, and be on committees. I was one of the only two people who actually did all the service in the department. So I was very busy at work, along with the demanding Dharma teacher training program. 

What I mean by doing my best with integrity was that I couldn’t pretend to be a greater scholar than I really am. If I did so, my department might make the wrong decision in giving me tenure. It would not be good for them. My performance at work before tenure needed to reflect what I would be able to sustain throughout my career and post-tenure, which I knew would involve spending substantial amounts of time on my Dharma practice and training. So I told myself that if my best effort could not earn me tenure, that meant that it’s not the right career for me and I would have to do some other thing with my life. Why was it possible for me to think that? It has to do with the vow power and this mindset cultivated through my training with Master Sheng Yen. From his example, doing one’s best and not getting attached to the outcome, remembering that everything we do is to cultivate the bodhisattva path.

Translator

Some of you have asked me, did you do a lot of retreats with Master Sheng Yen? I did attend retreat with him regularly. And because I became his translator, I attended even more retreats and also Dharma classes. Those were very important formative years. In his Dharma classes, he emphasized the importance of cultivating right view. He always said that without right view, enlightenment is not possible. So Dharma teaching is always about establishing right view. As far as teacher training: the appropriate attitude in sharing the Dharma, is that teaching Dharma is a form of practice, just practicing in different way.

I began to be trained to become Master Sheng Yen’s translator when I started out as an assistant professor. You might remember me mentioning my not understanding Mandarin. I had one college credit in Mandarin, and I couldn’t really understand Master Sheng Yen’s accent. So when I trained as his translator, I had to really strengthen my Mandarin. Also I needed to learn very quickly all the Dharma terms in Chinese and in English. I was looking at appendixes of all kind of books all the time, staring at them, and listening to his Dharma talks with other translators.

Some people ask how I did it. I think it’s another example of what is possible when we are propelled by our vow. I did not plan to become his translator. I was asked to get into training and I was largely the only one left. Everyone thought they didn’t want to do it and so I had to keep doing it. Master Sheng Yen really had a mission to bring Chan to the West. He wanted people here to be able to share the benefits of Chan practice, but he felt that he needed someone who can translate it into English. So I said, “Yes, my Mandarin’s not very good, I’ll do my best,” and so that’s what I did. It offered me the opportunity to practice in that way in intensive retreats. Because I realized, if I have to translate for Master Sheng Yen, then I had better be able to pay attention fully to what he’s saying, and that means I had better *really* practice when I was in sitting meditation so that my mind was not scattered. 

Some people thought that being translator was a distraction for me. In fact, it actually allowed me to be more motivated to practice diligently. I definitely cannot goof off. In fact, that helped me truly understand how the bodhisattva path works. Sometimes people understand the bodhisattva path as just doing work for the benefit of others. Actually, it’s really about making the vow to bring benefits to everyone. And when we work in that way, the first person who benefits is ourselves. In the case of me being a translator, I heard all of Master Sheng Yen’s teachings and I retained a lot of them because it had to go through my mind before coming out in English. So I don’t know if other people benefit, but I benefit from Master Sheng Yen’s teachings first. This is how the bodhisattva way works: it’s not about benefiting others at the expense of ourselves; we are one of the sentient beings that we are bringing benefit to.

Empty Vessel

Master Sheng Yen had a couple of interpreters before me. He told me, what I want you to do is to not be my interpreter; I want you to channel me. He didn’t want me to say, “Master Sheng Yen said this,” in the third person. Rather, when I speak, I’m just him in English. He was giving me an assignment to be fully present and completely connected with him when he was talking, basically asking me to be kind of an empty vessel for his teaching to pass through. In a way, I found that very easy because I just needed to remember everything he said and say it exactly the way he had organized and structured it. I didn’t need to insert myself to determine what is important, picking and choosing. No need for that. Just say what the Master said. I realized that it was a practice of letting go my self-centered attachment.

He of course also trained me to pay close attention to what he said and more importantly, truly take it to heart. It’s not just something that the Master was saying to entertain us. It was said to help us practice. So, that’s how I have benefited a great deal in being his translator. Besides translating for his retreat, I traveled with him as his translator for international religious leaders’ meetings. This allowed me to spend some time observing up close how he handled various situations. I draw on that when I encounter a situation. So I would say if I handle any situation well, it’s to his credit. It was not me.

Increased Responsibility

In 2004, as soon as I got tenure, I was drafted to be department chair. If you have known those people who are department chair, usually they receive condolences. It’s not a promotion. That same year I attended an intensive retreat. I thought I was there to be a retreatant and the translator. On the first day of the retreat Master Sheng Yen asked me to come to a meeting. Basically, he wanted me to help him form the board of directors to run the retreat center for him. So I spent most of the retreat in meetings. He needed help and asked me to set up the board, hire, train, evaluate staff, set up all the administration systems, everything. Also over the years I helped orient and support monastics sent from Taiwan to help to run and operate the center. I share this because I want to highlight that the training is not just about meditation in the meditation hall. He trained most of his students by giving them a lot of responsibilities. It is through working with our habits, our vexations in working with other people, and overcoming obstacles in various situations that we engage in training in Chan practice. That’s also how we learn whether we are integrating right view fully in our lived experience.

Another thing I did was over ten years I worked on his autobiography, some of you might have read it. I spent a lot of time interviewing him, which allowed me to get to know his life lived as a human being. He was an extraordinary one. What I saw was that we can all learn from the example of someone like him, of making great vows and spending his life to fulfill his vow to the best of his ability. And to keep learning new things. Also, he did everything imaginable to include and invite as many people as possible, making use of their different abilities, and in the process, making his and many people’s life a very meaningful one.

Master Dongchu

Something that stood out for me from Master Sheng Yen’s experience was his training with his teacher, Master Dongchu, when he became a monastic again after being in the military. One time Master Dongchu gave him a ceramic tile and told him “I need you to find another tile that looks exactly like this one.” To search for the tile he had to take a bus, but Master Dongchu didn’t give him any money for the bus, so he had to beg people for his bus fare. He went around to a lot of places, but nowhere had a tile like that. He was so frustrated, he felt like he failed. He went back and the master just laughed at him, saying “Of course there’s no such tile. There’s no way for you to find the exact same tile.” The master basically sent him on an impossible mission. Imagine how that would make you feel; he got mad, very frustrated.

Another example: Master Sheng Yen would be writing essays and Master Dongchu would say, “Why are you writing?” Master Sheng Yen would answer “Well, I’m supposed to write an essay to spread the Dharma.” Master Dongchu would say “No, no, no, go recite a sutra!” So he would recite a sutra. Then Master Dongchu would come by and say “What are you doing?” and tell him to go do some other thing. Whatever Master Dongchu would tell him to do, Master Sheng Yen would actually do it, and then he’d get criticized for doing it. How would you like that? There were many different examples of this in his training with Master Dongchu. You might think, that master was very cruel. But Master Sheng Yen saw this as great compassion. How many of us can do that, and not get mad at our master and leave? Or maybe write on the internet to complain about this teacher? That always stood out for me.

Worthy of Scolding

One time I traveled with him to the United Nations where he was going to be on a panel. A Harvard professor who was also on the panel volunteered to be his translator in that panel. So we got a chair for that translator. But the panel’s moderator moved the chair, and Master Sheng Yen scolded me, saying “What is wrong with you? You should go get the chair!” I was a bit surprised; I didn’t know I was supposed to get the chair. Afterwards, I was so happy that he found me worthwhile for scolding. I saw him scold a lot of his monastic students but I thought maybe he thought a lay person would not be worthy of his scolding. So I took that as meaning I was worth his time to teach me that way.

During the time I was his translator, he told a story about traveling to a conference with his translator (and everyone knew that was me). He was saying “I was trying to tell Rebecca that her mouth really began to stink and she needs to drink more water.” I just translated the whole thing to everyone. I reminded myself that his master liked to humiliate him, and he likes to occasionally humiliate his students in front of everybody. I felt, thank you for teaching me to let go of self-attachment. Afterwards, his Chinese translator from Taiwan came up to me and said “If he did that to me, I’d be so mad.” And I said, “He was not talking about me anyway; he made that up.” So it was not a true story, but it was a really fun time.

I told this story because I want us to learn to appreciate the importance of harsh criticism as great compassion. I often tell my students, “If I’m making you feel comfortable all the time, I’m clearly not doing my job.” If I can push a button occasionally, maybe I’m doing something. But we hate to have our button pushed. We hate to be asked to let go of our dearest beliefs. In the outside world no one would tell us that we were wrong. They would say “Yeah, you’re right,” and then allow us to keep moving down the wrong path. Only when we encounter someone with great compassion, would they be willing to point it out for us. We need to remember to have the wisdom to recognize that as such. That’s one of the many valuable lessons I learned from Master Sheng Yen’s practice in his life. 

Vow Power

Another thing I learned from him, as I’ve mentioned already, is his great vow. Because of his great vow, he was willing to take on the heaviest of responsibilities. In his autobiography, he talked about how he was leading his sangha in the United States, and he thought he was doing good, and doing this thing he thought he wanted to do. Then his master passed away in Taiwan and left the entire organization for him to take over. He didn’t plan to do that; that was not his preference. He did it anyway. He started splitting his time between Taiwan and New York. He just needed to fly back and forth, work harder, and find a way to make it work to fulfill his responsibility. His disciples, John Crook and Simon Child, largely did the same thing. They turned up for a retreat, and Master Sheng Yen said, here, you carry the lineage onward. And they took it on and devoted their lives to do just that, propelled by their great vows. That’s something we all can cultivate, starting from small things, taking on a little bit more responsibility in supporting our sangha, pushing ourselves into unfamiliar territory. 

That’s actually another thing I learned from Master Sheng Yen: he was always willing to seize the opportunity to learn new things. For example, when he was invited to a religious leaders meeting in the United Nations, he had never done anything like that. He went and tried to learn what happens. He shared a story of turning up at the meeting, and seeing everybody hug one another, he thought, “Okay, I’ll try, I’ll learn to hug people when I see these other religious leaders, to make connection with them, to learn how things work in these conferences.” Not to be the popular one, but to make positive affinity with others, so that he could share the benefits of the Dharma with everyone he encounters. Because he knows these people in turn will be able to influence others. So in order to fulfill his great vow, he’s willing to go into unfamiliar territory, learn new things, and that’s also something I took to heart and try to learn to do that myself.

I will stop talking now. Are there any questions?

RESIDENT: You mentioned, Rebecca, that Master Sheng Yen emphasized right view and said that it wasn’t possible for anyone to awaken without right view. I wonder if that’s something that you continue to emphasize in your teaching?

Thank you for the question. The answer is yes. I emphasize cultivating right view, which along the way helps us identify the erroneous views we hold. We think we understand what is impermanence, what is emptiness, and so on. But because we understand these things through pre-existing biases from our conditioning, there are often traces of erroneous views in our understanding. Sometimes not just small traces, but giant boulders. Then, when we ask our questions, that’s where we can reveal that we are coming from a certain perspective that has some of that erroneous view. That’s why it is worthwhile to fully engage in discussion, not to worry about asking what people call a stupid question; not to worry about revealing that you have an erroneous view. Actually, if you reveal it in your question, then you have an opportunity to see that you have that erroneous view. That’s how I usually work with my students. They ask a question and I point out how actually there’s this strand of view that is erroneous. It doesn’t mean they’re bad; they are very sincere practitioners, but we all need help in identifying our erroneous view. That’s how the process of cultivating right view is crucial to awakening. Otherwise, you think you’re going towards awakening, but you might be perpetuating delusion without knowing. 

RESIDENT: I’m having a little bit of trouble fully grasping how a teacher could cause their student to feel such frustration and anger as Master Sheng Yen faced. How could that be purely out of compassion, without it slowly turning into a sort of ego-driven sadism?

Thank you so much, that’s a wonderful question. It is very important for the teacher to truly know themselves. If they have a tendency to want to control and manipulate, then they should not be doing any such thing at all. It has to do with integrity. Master Sheng Yen’s teacher did that because they had a relationship of full trust. The great compassion comes from the fact that Master Dongchu was helping Master Sheng Yen at that time to recognize his remaining self-centered attachment. It’s a little counterintuitive, because we tend to believe, especially in our education system, that a teacher who makes us feel confident is a good teacher. In some way, that’s helpful. But when it comes to our very subtle, deep, self-centered attachments, those things are really obstacles for our liberation. It takes someone of great wisdom and compassion to help us see them in a skillful way. From the outside, it looks like “Wow, his master is so mean!” But it’s between the two of them. Master Sheng Yen recognized that he was benefiting greatly from this training.

CHOSEN BAYS, ROSHI: I was really struck when we began reading Master Sheng Yen’s books years and years ago, and I began teaching from it where he talked about, what in Zen practice would be sudden versus gradual awakening. He talked about gradually refining the mind. Starting with the tangled, confused mind, and then simplified mind, then one-pointed mind, and then no mind as a gradual path of practice. I’m wondering if he taught that when you were translating for him, or how he did teach about sudden versus gradual?

That’s the notion of gradual cultivation and sudden enlightenment. Master Sheng Yen realized people need some kind of, you can say, stages, to break it down, instead of thinking of enlightenment happening suddenly from zero. He was trying to give some guideposts along the way. He would often say that sudden enlightenment refers to the realization, what’s called “seeing the nature,” or kensho. It happens suddenly and then what one realizes is no different from that which was realized by the Buddha. It’s just that usually for most people, kensho, or seeing the nature, is a relatively brief experience and then we return to our usual, deluded way of being. So there’s the gradual cultivation of preparing and stabilizing the mind, from scattered mind to collected mind, to unified mind, to unification of body and mind, to unification of body-mind with environment, unification thought after thought, to the much more subtle stabilization of clarity that allows us to see what’s already here.

Our mind is so distracted. We’re looking for something and forgetting right view, forgetting that it’s already here. So all of that and causes and conditions come together and you realize, aha! But then there is still work to do. Because all the entrenched habitual tendencies and vexations did not disappear with kensho. The only difference is, now we know how to practice with them. We understand that they are not fixed entities, but a path that we continue to cultivate.

We will often clarify that it’s very important not to equate kensho or seeing the nature as liberation. People still have lots of vexations afterwards. Some teachers might still have a lot of their own issues. So it’s very important for students to keep an eye out for it, because our training with our teacher is co-created. We also have responsibility as a student; one needs to discern also. Really practice is about learning to take full responsibility for our life. Your teacher is not responsible for your enlightenment. Your teacher gives you guidance, points out your blind spots for you. It’s your practice. Your path. Take full responsibility for it.

RESIDENT: I wanted to ask about making a great vow and also about taking full responsibility because no one’s going to awaken us for us. There are some residents, like me, going back into the world [after being in residence at Great Vow Zen Monastery]. How can I take my practice further on my own when I’m not in a supportive container? Not only show up the way I am here, but to show up even better, and to bring that into my practice?

Thank you for asking this question for everyone. It’s a really good question. Some of you had already expressed this anxiety, about leaving such a supportive container. It is very similar to the end of any retreats that I lead in the second to the last day, people being afraid to leave the retreat. The idea is: I’m practicing well, and I want this to continue. What you’re really saying is, I feel pretty good about myself, and I want to put this feeling in a bottle and take it home and make it even better. You really like the self that has grown and developed here in this container. 

But you can’t take the container with you. So what happens without this container? This is the time to cultivate right view and identify erroneous view. What is the erroneous view? That the self you are experiencing is permanent. As much as you like the version of you now, it is the coming together of causes and conditions. The container: you are woken up at 4:50 a.m. every day, you meditate for an hour every morning, you meditate for two hours every evening, you have a lot of opportunity to settle your mind. You are with people who are also practicing, supporting you. You don’t have a lot of time on your social media, on your television. You don’t have a lot of people saying things to you that are perpetuating your unhelpful habits. Of course, with this coming together of causes and conditions, you have the best version of yourself here. You might like to think, this is the real me and I want to take this home with me.

This is the you that emerges as these causes and conditions come together. It does not mean there will be a worse version of you when you leave. Will your mind be more agitated? Of course, you’re not meditating three hours a day. Will you be a little more easily distracted? Probably. Will you get upset with something more often than when you’re here? Probably. Will you be more likely to fall into your unhelpful habits? Possibly, because life outside is a little bit more stressful, with a lot more distraction. You will see the you that emerges with that coming together of very different causes and conditions. When you notice that, you realize, ah! there is really no fixed self. 

Then you might think: I like the other self more, so can I return to Great Vow Zen Monastery to get back my good self? That’s the erroneous view — that there was a self to go back to. Every time you recognize this erroneous view, you are cultivating right view. Erroneous view is our default. We will keep going into that over and over again, forgetting right view. But every time you notice yourself doing that, this is awareness that comes from your practice. When you leave here and notice you’re so frustrated, and you think “Why can’t I be like that person I was at the monastery?” That’s the moment you recognize your erroneous view, and that’s the moment to reconnect with right view. That is how we practice. 

Be careful. You mentioned, I’m going to go out and do even better. I want even more calmness, more clarity. Craving, craving, craving. What does craving bring? Suffering. That’s our default, our entrenched habit that we are on the path to unlearn. Every time you recognize it, you are unlearning it a little bit. So you’re practicing well, whenever you notice you are suffering. You are doing good. 

RESIDENT: My question is about effort. In your talk just now, you told many inspiring stories of people persevering and putting in tremendous effort to extraordinary lengths. I have an idea that I really need to apply the right effort, and hold the posture correctly, and all these things to make sure I am good, versus just this basic faith in goodness, a feeling that I’m already good enough. If you could talk about the tension between those two things, I would appreciate it.

Thank you, this is a good question. When you have these questions, listen to what you’re saying. That way we can learn to identify some of the places we’re getting hung up on. I heard you use the adjective “tremendous” effort. So maybe you’re imagining that people have to work like a maniac all the time to be good practitioner. Watch out for the image you have created in your mind when you hear these words: effort, vow, perseverance.

One of the most common misunderstandings Master Sheng Yen would talk about has to do with the cultivation of diligence. Diligence, that’s what you are speaking to. The most common way to understand it is that, usually people get very inspired after being in residential practice. They think, I’m going to go home, and sit two hours every day. And they go home, and they do it, and then after, I don’t know, a week, they burn out. Or some people get very inspired and go to seven day retreats, retreat after retreat after retreat. Because they think that will put them on the fast track to enlightenment. They just work really hard, and then they burn out. That’s not right effort.

Right effort, the way Master Sheng Yen described it, is like a small stream of water, rather than a torrent. We usually think of effort as this torrent; lots of retreats, meditate, meditate, meditate, read, read, read, and just practice like a maniac. Not, that’s not the way. Eat your meals, take your walks, do your work. When you’re tired, you sleep. When you’re hungry, you eat. How do we deepen our practice? Moment after moment after moment after moment. Every moment, wherever we are, whatever we do, maintain and cultivate this total clear awareness. That’s it. So you will notice someone can use some help, because you are paying attention this moment. 

Most of the time, we only remember to pay attention once in a great while, with great gaps of inattention between. Have you noticed that? The way to deepen your practice is to shorten those gaps. The difference between someone like Master Sheng Yen and us, is that his gaps are very small, if they exist at all. We all can do that. It’s not magic. Just practice. 

It’s not by practicing *harder*. The idea that if I practice hard enough, I can get to a place and then I’ll be okay; that is another erroneous view. It’s not that we can achieve something in our practice, whatever it is, and then we can stop and retire from practicing. No, we practice all the way to Buddhahood, eons and eons. We don’t think about retiring from practice. Why? Because every moment we practice, we don’t suffer. Every moment we forget to practice, we suffer. That’s it.

Right now, you’re perfectly fine. You don’t need to be anything more. Part of the practice is to recognize that. Can we learn something more? Like Master Shunryū Suzuki would say, we are perfect as we are, but we all can use a little improvement. I love that phrase. What it means by “perfect as we are” is that all the causes and conditions come together. This is the only way we can be *at this moment*. With all the causes and conditions that come before this moment, and come together at this moment, you are perfect as you are right now. No problem. But we are good at turning ourselves into a problem. Have you noticed that? We’re really good at that.