Author: Rebecca LI

Books

Illumination

To be published by Shambhala Publications on October 31, 2023. Pre-order now by clicking here. Use the discount code ILLUMINATION30 for 30% off listed price.

Listed as one of the “new books to confront a world of suffering” by Publishers Weekly.

“Rebecca Li’s teachings are deep, lucid, and accessible. She helps undo the habits blocking realization of our naturally radiant, awake being.” —Tara Brach, author of Radical Acceptance

“In Illumination, Rebecca Li offers a beautiful expression of the profound path of Chan Buddhism introduced to her by her root teacher, Chan Master Sheng Yen. These clear yet powerful teachings are for anyone looking to deeply engage in an authentic path of liberation. Li’s deep embodiment of these teachings along with her skillfulness as a teacher and lineage holder have produced a text that will be appreciated for years to come.” —Lama Rod Owens, author of Love and Rage

“Silent Illumination provides a way of delving into the thoughts and emotions that arise in us with a curiosity and acceptance that is spacious and freeing. Li guides readers through this practice with precision and grace, encouraging a deep appreciation for the humanity that exists in direct lived experience.” —Sharon Salzberg, author of Real Change

“An invaluable guide for both Dharma students and Dharma teachers. Dr. Li shares the insights she has developed as the Dharma granddaughter of, and longtime translator for, the renowned Chan Master Sheng Yen. With a lucid writing style, she clarifies the practice of Silent Illumination (shikantaza in the Japanese tradition) and outlines the potential snares that are encountered on the path to awakening, as well as the remedies. Each chapter illuminates mind habits that cause difficulty to earnest meditation students, including craving mode (striving for enlightenment), aversion mode (trying to eliminate thoughts completely), trance mode (cultivating a peaceful but foggy mind state), intellectualization mode (substituting concepts for direct experience), quietism mode (dwelling in a cave of no thoughts), and forgetting-emptiness mode (belief in someplace to arrive at and dwell in).This book is certain to have lasting value as Dharma practice continues to unfold in the West.” —Roshi Jan Chozen Bays, co-abbot of Great Vow Zen Monastery and author of Mindful Medicine and Mindfulness on the Go

“Rebecca Li’s Illumination is a luminous guide to a profoundly positive approach to living. One feels her trust in the natural goodness of her readers, and in their ability to know it themselves. She elegantly weds the ancient teachings on Silent Illumination to contemporary life, and her own wise voice with the voices of her teachers, including the venerable Chan Master Sheng Yen.” —Ben Connelly, Soto Zen priest and author of Inside Vasubandhu’s Yogacara and Mindfulness and Intimacy

“As a young meditation student, Rebecca Li was told by her teacher, Master Sheng Yen, that she would help a lot of people. She is certainly doing that. In this timely and beautiful book—coming at a moment of deep complexity in our world—Rebecca offers us an essential practice and an important reminder: meditation at its core, rather than being a process of striving and elimination, can be a transformative practice of bringing openhearted curiosity to the totality of our moment-to-moment experience just as it is. She reminds us that the capacity to sit with full and openhearted attention is already the fruit of the practice that we have been so desperately striving for. Illumination is a treasure of the heart that you will return to again and again as you walk your path. I know I certainly will.” —Brother Phap Hai, Senior Dharma Teacher in the lineage of Zen Master Thich Nhat Hanh and author of The Eight Realizations of Great Beings

“How can we cultivate moment-to-moment clarity to experience the peace that is always available to us, no matter what is happening? This book is like warm-hearted encouragement and support from a trusted friend who travels with us on the path of spiritual transformation.” —Mushim Patricia Ikeda, Buddhist teacher and author

About

About

Rebecca Li, PhD, is a Chan Buddhist teacher in the lineage of Master Sheng Yen, and the founder and guiding teacher of Chan Dharma Community. She began practicing in 1995 while in graduate school in California and took refuge with Master Sheng Yen, founder of Dharma Drum Mountain, the same year. While in graduate school, she flew to New York to attend seven-day intensive retreats with Master Sheng Yen. She then moved to New Jersey for an academic position and to be closer to Master Sheng Yen, and in 1999 she began serving as his translator and also began teacher training with Master Sheng Yen, she started teaching Dharma classes in 2002.

In 2001, Rebecca began to also train with Drs. John Crook and Simon Child, two of Master Sheng Yen’s Dharma heirs. After Master Sheng Yen’s passing in 2009 and John Crook’s passing in 2011, she continued training with Simon Child, who remains her current teacher. Over the years, Rebecca co-led intensive Chan retreats with Simon Child and collaborated with other teachers of the Western Chan Fellowship of the U.K..

On June 5, 2016, Rebecca received Dharma transmission from Simon Child, and became a Dharma heir in the Dharma Drum Lineage of Chan Master Sheng Yen. Her transmission Dharma name is Zhi-Deng Fa-Chuan (智燈法傳 Wisdom Lamp, Dharma Transmitting).  Counting from Mahakashyapa, the Buddha’s disciple, Master Sheng Yen belongs to the 94th generation of Chan lineage holders in the Linji lineage (Rinzai in Japanese), and to the 85th generation of Chan lineage holders in the Caodong lineage (Soto in Japanese).  In 2001, Master Sheng Yen combined the two transmitted lineages he received, Gushan School of Yangqi Line in Linji Lineage and Jiaoshan School of Yunmen Line of Caodong Lineage, and founded the Dharma Drum Lineage of Chinese Chan. Rebecca is a third generation Dharma heir in the Dharma Drum Lineage of Chinese Chan.

In 2017, Rebecca founded Chan Dharma Community to support practitioners who want to deepen their practice after attending her retreats. She currently teaches meditation and Dharma classes, gives public lectures and leads Chan retreats in North America and Europe and serves as a visiting teacher at Newark Center for Meditative Culture, Buddhist Sangha of Bucks County, Rubin Museum, Zen Mountain Monastery, and Yale University Buddhist Sangha. Her teachings have appeared in Buddhist publications in North America such as Tricycle, Lion’s Roar, Buddhadharma and Chan Magazine, and Humanity Magazine published by Dharma Drum Mountain in Taiwan.  She is a founding board member of Dharma Drum Retreat Center and where she served on the board from 2004 to 2017.  She served on the organizing committee of the 2015 Generation X Dharma Teachers Conference and is one of the founding board members of The GenX Buddhist Teachers Sangha and currently serves on its board.

Rebecca was born and grew up in Hong Kong. She is a sociology professor and lives with her husband in New Jersey. Her book Allow Joy into Our Hearts: Chan Practice in Uncertain Times was published in early 2021, and her upcoming book Illumination: A Guide to the Buddhist Method of No-Method (Shambhala Publications) is expected for release in late October 2023.

Read more about Rebecca’s story, check out An Interview with Rebecca Li published in New Chan Forum in 2017.

Learn more about Rebecca’s Dharma lineage, see Dharma Lineage.

Attend Rebecca’s teachings, please go to the Dharma teachings calendar.

Contact Rebecca, email her at rebecca at rebeccali dot org.

Support Rebecca’s Dharma work, through Paypal by sending a gift to @CDCRebeccaLi, Venmo @Rebecca-Li-36, or by check payable to “Rebecca Li” to P.O. Box 6202, Bridgewater, NJ 08807. Please indicate clearly that you are donating to support Rebecca Li’s Dharma work. These donations support Dharma work expenses including expenses for registration and travels to Dharma teachers conferences, insurance, equipment, Dharma books and journal subscriptions, publication, transportation to Dharma teachings sites, monthly subscription fee for video conferencing service as well as website maintenance costs.

Retreat Reports

Three-Day Chan Retreat 2023 (Anonymous)

Thank you again for the opportunity to practice with you.  I was especially looking forward to this retreat because although I have been practicing Silent Illumination for years, this was the first time I was able to have an interview with a practitioner and teacher of this specific method. A previous teacher used to say that “we are blind to our blindness” and once again that proved to be true in my case.  When you offered your instruction to me during daisan, my incomplete understanding of the Dharma made me confused by and resistant to your words.  After I left the interview, I felt disappointed in myself for wasting this opportunity to improve my practice.  However, as your comments began to integrate with my understanding, I realized that even though we had literally just met and I had only spoken a few words to you, in actuality your penetrating insight went right to the marrow of my practice. 

As Seng Ts’an famously stated at the beginning of the poem Faith in Mind, “The great way is easy if only you do not pick and choose”.  I have worked on cultivating this “mind of non-differentiation” as regards to the physical things around me.  Yet, blind to my blindness, no matter how many times I assured Sariputra that ALL 5 skandas (including thought) were empty (of individual existence and permanence), somehow I had never realized that the mind of non-differentiation must also apply to my own thoughts.  I had made a basic mistake in my understanding of the dharma regarding my own arising thoughts. Whereas I was able to see that all physical things should be honored for their own existence, independent of my wants and desires, I missed that the same was true for my own thoughts.  I had mistakenly taken the “silence” of Silent Illumination to be the quieting of the mind through reduction of arising thoughts, instead of the silence of non-discrimination towards all arising thoughts and phenomenon.  I should have known better because I could clearly see that when sitting in open awareness, phenomenon that would once have been distracting, were now part of the “all that is” that I was paying attention to.  The point of open awareness was not to block out or reduce sensory phenomenon, but to  calmly experience them fully and without discrimination.  Furthermore, in those few times where I was able to feel a deep calm abiding, I noticed that thoughts still arose, they simply did not lead to discrimination as they normally did.  

Once I was able to process your teaching, I was able to clearly see that I was still treating my own thoughts with discrimination; as good or bad, helpful or unhelpful, with the Dharma or against it.  Also, I was practicing to get rid of these thoughts as soon as possible and prevent them from arising.   The Buddha promised the cessation of suffering, but I was ignoring half of the cause of my suffering, my inability to accept my own arising thoughts as part of all that exists. Trying to train the mind though practice to only abide in blissful mental states is impractical and prevents you from accepting the other 99% of your life. Just like with sensory phenomenon, all these arising thoughts are “originally pure”.   Now that you pointed it out to me, I see my discrimination towards my own thoughts everywhere.  Now I that I am aware of what I am doing, I can expand my practice to work on being aware of and accepting all of my thoughts, as they are, without discrimination. By applying the mind of non-discrimination to my own thoughts, I get closer to fulfilling the promise of true equanimity. In reality, there is no (discriminating) mirror for the dust of my arising thoughts to settle on. 

Although this was a short retreat and during it I felt as if I had wasted an opportunity, it turned out to have a profound and critical improvement in my understanding of the Dharma. As I had hoped, you have pointed the way for my practice to improve and mature.

Calendar

Retreat and Dharma Teaching Schedule (2022)

Feb 17 (Thu) 7:30-8:30 pm P.T. (In person with residents)

Fireside Chat: Finding and Creating Refuge and the Practice of Silent Illumination (San Francisco Zen Center, CA)

Feb 27 (Sun) 9 am to noon (In person)

Meditation Workshop and Dharma Talk (DDMBA-NJ Chapter, Edison, NJ (http://www.ddmbanj.org/en))

Feb 27 (Sun) 2-5 pm E.T. (Online) 

Visionary Women Panel Discussion (Interfaith Philadelphia)

Feb 28 (Mon) 1-1:14 pm E.T. (Online)

Mindfulness Meditation Workshop: Love (Rubin Museum of Arts (http://rubinmuseum.org/events/series/mindfulness-meditation))

March 6 (Sun) 2 pm E.T. (Online) 

Public Talk: Allow Joy into Our Hearts (All Souls NYC) Click here to join.

March 8 (Tue) 2 pm E.T. (Online)

Stillness in Motion: Day Four Dharma Talk (Dharma Drum Retreat Center (www.dharmadrumretreat.org))

March 13 (Sun) 10 am to 4 pm E.T. (In person)

Relaxing into Clarity: Daylong Retreat (Newark Center of Meditative Culture) Register here.

March 17-20 (Thu-Sun) (In person)

Residential Retreat: Our Very Nature is Buddha: Chan Practice with the Platform Sutra (Zen Mountain Monastery, Mount Tremper, NY)

March 26 (Sat) 10:30 am to noon (Online)

Public Talk: Cultivating Compassion as a Chan Practitioner–Part 1 (Dharma Drum Retreat Center (www.dharmadrumretreat.org)) Click here to join.

March 27 (Sun) 9 am to noon (In person)

Meditation Workshop and Dharma Talk (DDMBA-NJ Chapter, Edison, NJ (http://www.ddmbanj.org/en))

March 28 (Mon) 1-1:45 pm E.T. (Online)

Mindfulness Meditation Workshop. (Rubin Museum of Arts (http://rubinmuseum.org/events/series/mindfulness-meditation))

March 29 (Tue) 7-8 pm E.T. (In person)

Meditation Workshop on “Cultivating Compassion in a Competitive World” (Yale University (http://chaplain.yale.edu/))

April 2 (Sat) 5-6:30 pm E.T. (Online)

Public Lecture: Benefiting Sentient Beings as a Chan Practitioner (Vancouver Chan Meditation Center)

April 15-17 (Fri-Sun) (Online)

Three-Day Online Chan Retreat (Dharma Drum Vancouver Centre, Richmond, B.C., Canada)

April 22-24 (Fri-Sun) (In person)

Foundation Retreat (Dharma Drum Retreat Center (DDRC), 184 Quannacut Road, Pine Bush, NY  http://www.dharmadrumretreat.org/)

May 7 (Sat) 10:30 am to noon (Online)

Public Talk: Cultivating Compassion as a Chan Practitioner–Part 2 (Dharma Drum Retreat Center (www.dharmadrumretreat.org)) Click here to join.

May 16 (Mon) 1-1:45 pm E.T. (Online)

Mindfulness Meditation Workshop: Harmony. (Rubin Museum of Arts (http://rubinmuseum.org/events/series/mindfulness-meditation))

May 29 to June 4 (Sat-Sat) (In person)

Intensive Silent Illumination Retreat (Dharma Drum Retreat Center, 184 Quannacut Road, Pine Bush, NY  http://www.dharmadrumretreat.org/)

June 6 (Mon) 1-1:45 pm E.T. (Online)

Mindfulness Meditation Workshop: Transformation (Rubin Museum of Arts (http://rubinmuseum.org/events/series/mindfulness-meditation))

August 26-28 (Fri-Sun) (In person)

Beginner’s Mind Retreat (Dharma Drum Retreat Center (DDRC), 184 Quannacut Road, Pine Bush, NY http://www.dharmadrumretreat.org/)

September 11 (Sun) 9 am to noon (In person)

Meditation Workshop and Dharma Talk (DDMBA-NJ Chapter, Edison, NJ (http://www.ddmbanj.org/en))

October 3 (Mon) 7-9 pm (In person)

Meditation and Dharma Talk (Buddhist Sangha of Bucks County, 65 North Main Streat, Yardley, PA (buddhistsangha.com)

October 7-12 (Fri- Wed) (In person)

Five-Day Chan Retreat (Dharma Drum Retreat Center (DDRC), 184 Quannacut Road, Pine Bush, NY http://www.dharmadrumretreat.org/)

October 26 (Wed) 7-8 pm (In person)

Yale University Meditation Workshop–“Cultivating Self-Knowledge as Wisdom and Compassion” (Yale University, chaplain.yale.edu)

November 13 (Sun) 9 am to noon (In person)

Meditation Workshop and Dharma Talk (DDMBA-NJ Chapter, Edison, NJ (http://www.ddmbanj.org/en))

December 12 (Mon) 1-1:45 pm E.T. (Online)

Mindfulness Meditation Workshop (Rubin Museum of Arts (http://rubinmuseum.org/events/series/mindfulness-meditation))

December 18 (Sun)  11 am-noon E.T. (Online)

Sunday Open House Dharma Talk: Cultivating Loving Kindness as a Chan Practitioner (Chan Meditation Center, Queens, NY)

Retreat Reports

One-Day Online Retreat (C.T.)

I appreciate this opportunity to practice in a structured way at home. The schedule is tight so it is a good training for me to apply mindfulness moment to moment in the home setting. It definitely pushes me to practice more diligently by myself at home.

From the sittings, I noticed I had many wantings especially in the morning sessions: wanting to relax, wanting to do good, wanting to apply the teaching, and wanting to stop the other wantings. These wantings were so pervasive that they were affecting my attitudes continuously. I can sense the wantings but I can’t remove them. 

In the afternoon sessions, the grips of the wantings subsided. I was just in the state of being, being with the leg pain, being with the breathing sensations, being with the awareness and the thoughts. I was at peace with the present moment. 

From this retreat, I can see how strong my inner urge is. Yet, it is not that formidable anymore because I have also experienced it quieting down. It is a continuous practice to let go the interference over and over again, not only during meditation, but more importantly, in real life situations.

Thank you, Rebecca, for providing a valuable retreat for us to practice.