A Journey of Learning and Insight: An Autobiography of Chan Master Sheng Yen 聖嚴法師學思歷程(英譯版)

Chapter 3

Becoming a Monk and Returning to the Life of a Monk

Since joining the army in May, 1949, until my discharge in January, 1960, this journey of my life exceeded the number of years I was a monk in my youth. Throughout this time, my identity was that of a solider but in my mind, I was always a monk. So, when I left the service I naturally returned to the Buddhist sangha. To me this was not becoming a monk again, but simply returning to the life of a monk.

I have already described how I first became a monk at Wolf Mountain in Mainland China. And in my autobiography, The Journey Home, I described my state of mind and feelings about returning to the life of a monk: “When I was fourteen years old, I wove a beautiful dream about becoming a monk—that the world of Wolf Mountain was as magnificent as a painting, as marvelous as a poem. Because I held to this dream of paintings and poems, when I went to Wolf Mountain, the dream became a gap between being a monk and practicing the Dharma. As a result, due to conditions, I was not able to keep the identity of a monk. Now, I see that the dream may have been mistaken, but the road I took was correct; so after wandering around in a very big circle, I have finally found my way home.”

My ten years in the army were not a waste of my life. I contributed my share of serving the country, and I also found many ways to improve myself. It was a painful process of growth, worth remembering and cherishing. In terms of studies, I was no longer the Ah Meng of the Wu Dynasty (222-280) (referring to General Lu Meng in the Three Kingdoms Era (220 BCE-280 BCE), a model of diligent self-improvement). As for practice, I also had some breakthroughs, especially in my twenty-eighth year, when I was able to enter the “gate of Chan.” This occurred through compassionate guidance from Master Lingyuan Hongmiao (1902-1988), a disciple of the contemporary master, Xuyun (1840–1959). That experience had a deep impact on my life, and it allowed me to jump out from the web of ensnaring myself. Since then, my life no longer belonged to me. Not to say that I dedicated my life to contributing to our world and all sentient beings, but that I was determined to find ways to work and study for humanity’s needs and Buddhism.

I returned to the life of a monk by taking refuge under Tonsure Master Dongchu, who then gave me the Dharma name, Huikong Shengyen. A student of Master Taixu, Dongchu was abbot of the famous Caodong monastery, Jiaoshan Dinghui, in Zhenjiang, Jiangsu Province. Master Dongchu was a 50th-generation Dharma heir in the Caodong school of Dongshan Liangjie (806-869). Dongchu also studied in the school of Linji Yixuan (d. 866) at Changzhou Tianning Monastery, first becoming a monk in the Linji monastery at Putuo Shan. Therefore, he received transmission in both the Linji and Caodong lineages. Being a disciple of Dongchu, I also inherited Dharma transmission in both lineages. This may appear complicated for a monk; however, this was actually quite remarkable—the Dharma originally being one, to divide it into branches is not what a wise man would do.
At this point, I must make another description to retrace the past and account for the future. Besides receiving Dharma transmission in two lineages from Master Dongchu [in 1976], in the spring of 1958 [while still in the army,] I had already established Dharma affiliation with Master Lingyuan. [Then, 20 years later, I encountered Master Lingyuan again, and] at 2 P.M. on December 5, 1978, he formally gave me the Dharma name Zhigang Weirou. He also gave me a book of the Dharma lineage chart, The Record of Illuminating Stars. This resulted in my establishing Dharma connections with Gushan Yongquan Monastery, and becoming the 57th-generation Dharma heir in the tradition of Linji.

Editing and Writing

As of January 1, 1960, I was discharged from the army and received the formal Order of Retirement. The date for exchanging my uniform for a robe and having my head ceremonially shaved for the second time was December 1 of lunar calendar 1959. Since I retired from the army for health reasons, I was hoping to recover my body and mind after returning to the sangha. I was also hoping to take time to repent for my recklessness and carelessness in the army over the past ten years, to shake off the winds and dust of the army life, and to delve into and fully enjoy Master Dongchu’s collection of Buddhist texts.

At the time, only the Central Library of Taiwan kept a set of Qishazang, the only complete set of Buddhist texts in Taiwan, and only the Chung-Hwa Institute of Buddhist Culture was conducting cultural works and publishing books, such as printing the Taisho Tripitaka, which was compiled [in Japan] during the Emperor Taisho era (1911-1925). With the first and second edition, this came to a total set of 100 volumes. In 1959, the Institute completed printing 500 of these Tripitaka sets; it also completed the printing of the Zengaku Taisei, a compilation of Japanese translations of fifty-nine classics of Chan literature. Master Dongchu himself was a scholar of Buddhist history and before he passed away he completed: the History of Communication between Indian and Chinese Buddhism, the History of Communication between Japanese and Chinese Buddhism, and the Contemporary History of Chinese Buddhism. In Taiwan at that time, it was not easy to find a Buddhist monastery with that large a collection of books as the Chung-Hwa Institute of Buddhist Culture.

Master Dongchu continued the will of Master Taixu to spread the Dharma through the use of words, and advocated [what Master Taixu called] Humanistic Buddhism. Commencing May 1949, Dongchu gathered several Buddhist youths with similar goals and began a monthly magazine, Humanity. It has survived since then through the efforts of more than ten editors, and when I sought refuge under Master Dongchu, it was just as the chief editor resigned. As a result, I moved from being a writer to Humanity’s chief editor. Before I went into solitary retreat in the mountains in southern Taiwan, I had served as editor for two years.
During this time my physical health was never well; I experienced weakness, dizziness, tightness, feeble arms, cold feet, low appetite, and stomach problems. It is said that before Shakyamuni Buddha attained perfect enlightenment under the Bodhi Tree, he encountered obstacles from many demonic states, so these small problems that I had were really nothing. Luckily, an elder master referred me to a Chinese doctor for diagnosis, who prescribed two sets of medicine for me. After I took the medicines for six months, my body gradually recovered from barely functioning.

During that time, not many articles were being submitted to Humanity by the Buddhist community, and since there was no remuneration for the writers, acquiring articles was very difficult.

I really respected the previous editors for being able to publish the magazine every month on time, an amazing feat. Therefore, I asked Master Dongchu to tell me the secret. His reply was, “What secret? If nobody wrote anything, then do it yourself! If you wrote one article a day, you would have thirty articles each month. Give a different penname for each article and it would be done. The Dharma is so vast and deep, yet the problems of humanity are so many and complicated. You could find great topics everywhere, from what you heard, read, felt, touched, and thought everyday, and there would be an endless supply of articles.” So I asked him to submit some articles, and his reply was even cleverer: “For those editors of Humanity who couldn’t write, I had no choice but to write for them. Now that you have become really good at writing, and since I’m getting old, of course it would be your turn to write.”

And so it was that I had to work hard, from the editorial section to the afterword. Fortunately, there were two lay Buddhists who had been submitting articles to Humanity on a long-term basis, which helped to share some of the burden. Although their articles were not very long, they were full of philosophical insight and depth but may have been too difficult for ordinary readers. Luckily, the number printed each issue was only around a thousand, and there were always one or two articles that were worth reading. Especially, when occasionally, Master Dongchu gave oral teachings, and I recorded and published them as editorials. These often turned out to be the “heavyweight” pieces in a given issue.
I was inviting people to write, asking and begging for articles. Several magazines inside and outside the Buddhist community were also pressing for the articles that I owed them. Thus, I had to write, edit, and compile articles for Humanity as well as deal with pressure from the outside. With such poor health, writing was a painful task. The spaces for editing, publishing, and funding the magazine were all in my office, and the staff, if you add the others, would still be just me. I often went in person from the Old Beitou Train Station to the small printing factory in Wanhua, to deal with the typesetters—just for altering the layout, adding news, or even correcting one or two words. When it was time to publish, even though their attitude was quite nice, I had to go to the printer up to five or six times. That was not so much fun. As far as I knew, the cultural groups within or outside the Buddhist community were mostly in the same boat, and books were still being published one by one, and then sent to the hands of the readers. Therefore, those who are in the circle of [this kind of] cultural work must have this kind of devotion.

During that period, besides editing, writing, and seeing the doctor, I also used the time to read some larger sutras and shastras, [commentaries, usually on sutras]. I finished reading all eighty chapters of the Flower Ornament (Avatamsaka) Sutra, all forty chapters of the Mahaparinirvana Sutra, and twenty of the one hundred chapters of the Shastra on the Mahaprajnaparamita Sutra. Every day, aside from morning service, evening service, and meditation, I also did the Great Compassion Repentance for the length of time to burn one stick of incense.