The Heart Chan Paths

Today we have only four people in the class. Three of them have been keeping really good attendance and one of them has stopped for a while (I am glad to have her back!).

Since in the beginning we had only three people and I wanted to wait a little bit and see if more people were coming, I led some yoga stretches to loosen up our joints. Then we did Arm Twisting and Leg Kicking. Right after we finished yoga and Motion Chan, the fourth people came in! Perfect timing! Then we practiced Navel Chakra for about 20 minutes. I think it’s full moon today (at least close to) and one guy felt it was a good session just like I did.

I told a story that I heard from Sister Young-Lien over the past weekend. Once Buddha told one of his disciple (disciple A) to go get some water from a well. The Buddha gave him the directions and told him there would be an old lady and he should politely ask that lady to give him some water from the well. Disciple A did so but the old lady was mad and didn’t want to give him water. So he came back with nothing. Then the Buddha asked disciple B to do the same thing. Wondered and thought he’ll get the same results, Disciple B still went. However, the old lady was so kind and happy to see him and gave him water. The two disciple was wondering why this old lady had such different reactions to them. The Buddha explained. In one of their past lives, that old lady was a rat. The rat was crushed dead by a horse car. When the past life of disciple A passed by, he thought “it’s so gross!” However, when the past life of disciple B passed by, he was compassionate and buried the body of the rat.

I guess this story told us why we feel differently to people even before we actually talk to them. There are connections between people and these might come from past lives. Then everybody kind of talked about what they think about the story. Some think the idea of past lives is natural to them but some don’t. However, they think it’s interesting to hear about Buddhist concepts and sometimes they can find parallel in Christian.

12 people came to today’s last session in this 8-week series. Since we’ve learned a bunch of Motion Chan throughout the semester, I took requests for Motion Chan exercises and I got 4 requests: Arm Dropping, Arm Twisting, Body Earthquake, and Turtle Breathing.

Then I introduced Zen Chakra, or Chan Chakra, which is about 3 finger width below the center of the crown of the head. It’s at the same level as the center of the forehead. And if you check the picture in anatomy books, it’s at the 3rd ventricle of the brain. By focusing on Zen Chakra, we let our brain to rest fully and get refreshed. Spiritually, Chan Chakra corresponds to the realm of Buddha as each of the Ten Chakras corresponds to a realm in the Ten Realm in Buddhism. Then we practiced Chan Chakra for about 20 minutes. A guy said he felt heavy on the Chan Chakra. And I also shared my experience when I first learned the Chan Chakra. I felt it even before the teacher told us the position of it in that class. I can still vividly remember that class was in the Judo classroom at NTHU.

After the meditation, I talked about the four stages of Zen practice: Purification, Wisdom, Fulfillment or Harmonization, and Enlightenment. I told the group that this is so important that our Master has it posted on the wall of every Zen center in Taiwan. It’s the essence of Heart Chan teaching. We purify our body, mind, and spirit by practicing meditation. We cleanse the negative energy physically and eliminate the mental poisons (Five Poisons which we talked about last week). And we also purify the karma by doing meditation. In Yoga Sutras, Patanjali also told us “to accept pain as help for purification.” So even there are challenges in Zen practice, including the physical pain in legs from sitting and other intangible “pain,” we takes it as help for purification. (This idea is unique in Buddhsim and other related religion and not so much seen in modern Western religions as far as I know….a lot of spiritual books on US mainstream market are “feel good” books.)

Next we rediscover and reconnect with the innate wisdom of our Buddha Nature. Zen practice is actually a process of un-learning. Opposite from gaining knowledge, we go into our heart and find the wisdom within. With purity and wisdom, we are able to fulfill every encounter and relationships and find harmony in our life. And finally we reach Enlightenment. With these four “stages” being said, we can actually see these four as different paths and not necessarily one stage after another.

Finally it’s gift giveaway! To recognize their effort, I gave 9 practitioners who attend 6 or more classes this semester two things. First is the book: Chan Master Miao Tian’s Book of Wisdom and the Guide to Heart Chan Meditation. The second one is a gift certificate with which they can get a discount ($30 off $100 fee for students; $50 off $180 for non-students) when they register for Heart Chan Retreat 2009. (Zhenyao, don’t worry, I’ll cover the $30 or $50 difference.)

Although it’s the “last” session, we actually will have two more meetings in a different format. We’ll watch video seminar from our Chan Master for half hour and practice meditation for another half hour.

Only 8 participants showed up today probably because of the midterms. Next week is the spring break and there are only two more classes after that. Time really flies.

As usual we started with Motion Chan. We practiced Arm Dropping and Body Earthquake; then I introduced Leg Kicking and Tai Chi movement. I mentioned that Arm Dropping and Leg Kicking both have a more attractive name in Chinese meaning “Unblocking the energy pathways by dropping the arms/kicking the legs.” But apparently it’s too long for a name, so we just use these ordinary names for these actually powerful exercises. Tai Chi is the one that you pretend you are holding a big beach ball with the hands and move the ball between left and right. Try to feel the energy between the hands. Someone suggested that we should do the “energy between the palms” again before this one. We may try it next time.

We practiced Navel Chakra Breathing today. There are two types: back-and-forth and up-and-down. We move our attention around the Navel Chakra as we breathe. For type 1, it goes forward as we inhale and backward as we exhale. For type 2, it goes downward as we inhale and upward as we exhale. For both types, the range of movement of your attention is about the width of your palm. Some people had hard time remembering the match between directions and the breath. So I clarify that as we breathe in, we take the air in and DOWN and the belly goes OUT. So as we inhale we move our awareness Downward (type 2) or Forward (type 1). Back-and-forth Navel Chakra Breathing helps balance the immune system and up-and-down Navel Chakra Breathing is good for the digestion. We meditated with Navel Chakra Breathing for about 20 minutes.

Last week I talked about karma and today I sort of reviewed it very briefly by saying that “you are what you have done” instead of “you are what you eat.” I also talked about the water crystal experiment conducted by Dr. Emoto, a Japanese scientist. They sent positive or negative intention to a bottle of water, the water somehow receives the energy and forms very different crystal in response of positive or negative intentions. Intention is the root because our intention decides what we say and what we do.

I also talked about reincarnation today. As I talked about karma I mentioned past lives, so I feel the whole idea about karma is incomplete if we don’t touch the idea of reincarnation. I used H2O as an anlogy. Liquid water, steam, and ice are just different forms of H2O. So after we die, we change into a different form according to our “karma transcript.” And I reviewed the Ten Realms which I mentioned for the first time as I introduced Diamond Lotus Mudra. I pointed out that we reincarnate among the six lower realms. And the goal of practicing Chan and Buddhism is to transcend the six lower realms to the four noble beings. Someone asked what asura means and I explained that it’s a kind of sentient beings that tend to argue and fight. I also pointed out that it’s actually the state of our mind, not necessarily the bodily form of a being.

So basically we want to say, think, and act positively to cumulate more good karma and avoid having more bad karma. Next time we’ll talk about how to do that from a Buddhist point of view.