Chan and Enlightenment 禪與悟(英文版)

The thought of Chan is a clear current in humanity that is free, subtle,
flexible, spacious, open, bright and clear. The life of Chan is a way of
settling the mind, which is vigorous, at ease, simple, unadorned, and
self-contained. The vision of Chan is to teach us that we must first
learn to put down selfishness, self-deception, self-disparagement, selfconceit,
and self-fettering. Only then can we have an open, liberated
spirit to soar freely in the boundless sky. Chan teaches us that we must
first practice to know ourselves, affirm ourselves, and further dissolve
self-centeredness; only then will the state of enlightenment be revealed
to us.

The purpose of Chan is to teach us to turn the hells of eight levels
of heat of the practical world into a seven-jeweled lotus pool that is cool
and refreshing; to transform our bodily, verbal, and mental activities
that harm others and ourselves, into the compassion and wisdom that
benefit others and ourselves.

This book is not Chan itself, but it attempts to convey to the reader
some of the messages about Chan. Prior to this book, I had published
two similar books on Chan: In December 1984, I collected twentyfive
of my lectures about Chan practice and compiled them into a
book entitled The Life of Chan (Chn. Chan de shenghuo). In December
of 1986, I further brought together twenty-four lectures on Buddhist
Dharma that I gave afterwards and compiled them into a book entitled
Holding a Flower and Smiling (Chn. Nianhua weixiao).

In the blink of an eye, it is now the year of 1991. In the past four
years, though I had as usual, given Dharma talks to the Meditation
Group at Nung Chan Monastery, very few of them were transcribed
into articles. The reason is that the Humanity Magazine was publishing
in installments another of my books, Questions about Buddhism (Chn.
Xuefo qunyi), for a year-and-half. So Humanity Magazine was not
lacking in manuscripts for its issues, and, on the other hand, I did not
have much time to revise the drafts transcribed from the tapes.

In 1982, Dharma Drum Publications, which I established in New
York, published Getting the Buddha Mind. This was followed by The
Poetry of Enlightenment and Faith in Mind: A Guide to Chan Practice in
1987, Ox Herding at Morgan’s Bay in 1988, and The Infinite Mirror in
1990, and The Sword of Wisdom in 1992. At the same time, these books
were also published by Dongchu Publications in Taiwan. In terms of
the reprints and publication volume, these eight books in Chinese and
English on Chan should be among the most well-received by general
readers among my various works. Although Chan does not rely on
words, the Chan teaching that I have strived to promote, through the
media of words, in both the East and the West has produced some
positive influence on the world.

Among the twenty-seven articles contained in Chan and
Enlightenment, “Talking about Dreams while in Dreams” and
“Discrimination and Non-discrimination” were lectures that I gave to
the Meditation Group at Nung Chan Monastery. The other lectures
that I gave at different places in Taiwan include ten articles: “Chan and
Entanglement” at Tamkang University; “Right Path and Evil Path” and
“True Enlightenment and Mistaken Enlightenment” at Zhongxing
Hall in Taichung; “Emotion and Reason” and “Good and Evil” at the
Sun Yat-sen Memorial Hall in Taipei; “Chan: Thus Come, Thus Gone” at the Zhongzheng Cultural Center in Kaohsiung; “A Pure Land on
Earth” at Dr. Sun Yat-sen Memorial Hall in Yonghe; “Pure Mind, Pure
Land” at Banqiao Gymnasium in Taipei County; “Chan: You, I, and
They” and “Chan: Many, One, and Nothingness” at Kaohsiung Girls’
Senior High School. The rest of the articles are lectures given in the
United States and Hong Kong, such as “Chan and Enlightenment”
at Harvard University in Boston; “Transcending Time, Space, and
Life” at the University of Massachusetts at Lowell, Massachusetts;
“Chan and Daily Life” at Washington University; “Chan: Human
Consciousness” at the City University of New York; “Chan: Carrying
Water and Chopping Firewood” at Zuang Yen Monastery in New York;
and “Chan: Freedom and Liberation” and “Chan: Ordinary Body and
Mind” at Sha Tin City Hall in Hong Kong.

The articles in this book include three lectures each given in 1986,
1987, and 1989 respectively, eight in 1988, and as many as sixteen in
1990. During these years I had given many public lectures, and the
articles in this book are among those that I had revised and finalized
in 1990.

As for the lectures, because they use a style of speech suited for the
general public, they mostly received hearty responses when I delivered
them, especially in Taiwan, with the lecture halls full, whether the halls
were small or large, and the audience numbering from several hundred
to as many as six or seven thousand. Because the lectures, whether at
home or abroad, were targeted mainly at the intellectuals of middle and
higher levels, I tried as much as possible to take a scientific and rational
perspective to introduce the theories and methods of Chan practice
that are practical, easily understood, wholesome, and with clear levels
and distinct aspects. In a sense, this book allows readers spending a few
hours to accompany me for a period of four years, listening to over twenty of my lectures on Chan practice, one after another. They can
even obtain more information than if they personally attended the talks,
because they have been abridged, revised, and enlarged as necessary, so
that they became much more concise and richer in content than when
they were first delivered.


Master Sheng Yen
Nung Chan Monastery, Beitou, Taipei
April 2, 1991.