Author: Rebecca LI

Reflections

Silent Illumination Retreat–May 2023 (C.B.)

Having attended a 7 day retreat last year I arrived confident that this time I would settle in more quickly.  I was not nervous, just a bit excited to get started.  Little did I know I would soon be presented with an unexpected challenge and guide to my practice. Sunday morning I awoke and I reached up from bed to turn on the light.  My right shoulder did not appreciate that maneuver and responded with a very painful muscle spasm.  It took a few minutes to realize what happened and to figure out what motions I could or couldn’t make.  It would prove to be an aid in focusing my bodymind awareness and would force me to practice compassion toward myself; to be easier on this aging body. 

 I was able to settle in after the first day, which was quite difficult, and to relax and receive the teaching.  The introduction of Silent Illumination resonated deeply and I sat with periods of clear awareness.  Sometimes my shoulder would do its bad thing. This sharply brought my awareness to the exact position of my right arm and shoulder.  It proved to be both an interruption and a point of focus for practice during the Eight Form meditation and standing stretching.

The whole retreat was one continuously changing moment. Impermanence.  Dynamic stillness. Vibrantly calm.  It doesn’t last. Then back or knee pain.  It is a big problem to sit there and try to make things stay the same!   Often I would struggle.  But when I relaxed in good posture I could settle into a good period of sitting.  Amazing!  Just as our teacher pointed out it is necessary to overcome our conceptual understanding of what of what meditation is and just sit. 

So, that’s one big takeaway; to relax and let go of mind.  Let thoughts go. The other is the importance of continuously practicing.  In Master Sheng Yen’s commentary on the poem Faith in Mind he talks about practice as putting air in your tires. If you meditate daily and go on retreat once or twice a year you are putting enough air in to balance the leak. Your tires won’t go flat. But if you practice continuously you can stop the leak!  

Lastly, I have found it easier since being back in the world to access what comes up when interacting with people, particularly my spouse and colleagues at work. So many habit tendencies!  Like when I get upset they can’t read my mind and then have to tell them more clearly what I mean!  Or when I’m at the food shelf volunteering I find it hard to strike up a conversation unless it’s about the most mundane things.  But I guess that’s how you start one. 

It is so fortunate that causes and conditions came together to create this retreat. From our skillful teacher, Rebecca, to DDRC, to the many volunteers, especially the cooks, and the retreatants I am extremely grateful and appreciatively joyful.  After three Silent Illumination retreats I feel I am starting to practice more effectively this method of no method.  And I have been inspired to make a vow to practice continuously without striving or any idea of gaining so Buddha nature may be revealed.  Forget what I think it is or should be.  Just practice.

Uncategorized

Author’s Event at Watchung Booksellers

On January 23, 2024, Watchung Booksellers in Montclair, NJ hosted Rebecca for an author’s event for her new book Illumination: The Buddhist Method of No-Method. She started the evening with a short guided meditation, followed by a talk on how to transition from meditating with the breath into the practice of silent illumination and how the practice helps us gain insight into our mind to cultivate wisdom and compassion. The talk was followed by a session of Q&A and book signing.

Photo by David Slaymaker
Photo by David Slaymaker
Photo provided by Watchung Booksellers
Photo provided by Watchung Booksellers
Photo provided by Watchung Booksellers
Photo by David Slaymaker
Calendar

Retreat and Dharma Teaching Schedule (2023)

January 13-15 (In person)

Three-Day Chan Retreat (Dharma Drum Mountain San Francisco Bay Area Center)

February 5 (Sun) 7-8 pm E.T. (In person)

Yale University Meditation Workshop–“Chan Practice of Silent Illumination and Daily Life” (Yale University, chaplain.yale.edu)

February 13 (Mon) 7-9 pm (In person)

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

February 19 (Sun) 10 am to 4:30 pm E.T. (In person)

Clarity and Inner Peace: Daylong Retreat (Newark Center of Meditative Culture) Click here for registration details.

February 23 (Thu) 1-1:45 pm E.T. (In person)

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

February 26 (Sun) 8 am to 4 pm P.T. (Online)

One-Day Retreat (Dharma Drum Vancouver Center)

March 3-4 (Fri-Sat) (In person)

Spiritual Practice for the Social Good: Cultivating Clear Awareness of Invisible Group Dynamics through Chan Practice (Two-day Course at Union Theological Seminary) Click here for registration details.

March 7 (Tue) 2:30-3:30 pm E.T. (Online)

Stillness in Motion: Dharma Talk on Cultivating Compassion (Dharma Drum Retreat Center (www.dharmadrumretreat.org))

March 26 (Sun) 9 am to noon (In person)

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

April 15 (Sat) 10:30 am to noon (Online)

Public Dharma Talk: Realizing the Four Noble Truths as a Chan Practitioner–Part 1 (Dharma Drum Retreat Center (www.dharmadrumretreat.org))

April 21-23 (Fri-Sun) (In person)

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

April 29 (Sat) 10:30 am to noon (Online)

Public Dharma Talk: Realizing the Four Noble Truths as a Chan Practitioner–Part 2 (Dharma Drum Retreat Center (www.dharmadrumretreat.org))

May 6 (Sat) 10 am-5 pm E.T. (In person)

One-Day Chan Retreat (Buddhist Sangha of Bucks County, 65 North Main Streat, Yardley, PA (buddhistsangha.com)

May 18 (Thu) 1-1:45 pm E.T. (In person)

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

May 21 (Sun) 9 am to noon (In person)

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

May 27 to June 3 (Sat-Sat) (In person)

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

June 9 (Fri) (In person)

Public Dharma Talk: How Does Chan Meditation Alleviate Suffering (Chan Bern, Switzerland)

June 10-17 (Sat-Sat) (In person)

Intensive Silent Illumination Retreat (Seven-day retreat at Haus Tao, Switzerland) Click here for more information.

August 4-7 (In person)

Four-Day Chan Retreat (Dharma Drum Vancouver Center)

August 25-27 (Fri-Sun) (In person)

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

September 10 (Sun) 9 am to noon (In person)

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

October 6-11 (Fri- Wed) (In person)

Western Zen Retreat (with Simon Child; at Dharma Drum Retreat Center (DDRC), 184 Quannacut Road, Pine Bush, NY http://www.dharmadrumretreat.org/)

November 12 (Sun) 9 am to noon (In person)

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

November 20 (Mon) 7-9 pm (In person)

Meditation and Dharma Talk on “Wisdom and Chan Practice” (Buddhist Sangha of Bucks County, 65 North Main Streat, Yardley, PA (buddhistsangha.com)

December 3 (Sun) 7-8 pm E.T. (In person)

Yale University Meditation Workshop–“Silent Illumination” (Yale University, chaplain.yale.edu)

December 14 (Thu) 1-1:45 pm E.T. (In person)

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

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.