Category Archives: Chengguan

26Oct/14

Meditating on Sounds: Listening Your Way to Enlightenment

Part III Am I Listening Correctly? Sounds cannot be eliminated. No matter where you are or how quiet it is, there are sounds that cannot be eliminated. The “sound of silence” can therefore be acknowledged as an impossible-to-eliminate sound, the sensory object of quietude. Knowing the different types of sounds,…
14Oct/14

Part II of Meditating on Sounds: Listening Your Way to Enlightenment

With What We Do Not Listen  First of all, “the nature of hearing” is not in or with the physical ears. This nature of hearing is fundamentally the sea-like consciousness that stores all karmic interactions. It is the single entity with six functions, of which include the seeing of the eyes,…
03Oct/14

Meditating on Sounds: Listening Your Way to Enlightenment

PART I According expert meditator and teacher Jiaoguang of China’s Ming dynasty, meditators must get to know our illusions well before we may experience bursts of insight.With regard to the types of sounds for those who practice hearing as a form of meditation, Jiaoguang elaborates: There are sound categories of…
08Aug/14

The Avatamsaka Four Dharma Realms and the Shurangama Meditation of Listening Intersect in Zen

Preview of Upcoming Presentation Seen as stages of practice, Chinese preeminent monk Chengguan’s theory of the Four Dharma Realms and Guanyin’s perfected meditation method via one’s ears inevitably meet complementarily to enhance our understanding of meditation as a practice. More than mere philosophy, the teaching of the Four Dharma Realms…
23May/14

Dedication to A Scripture: To the Avatamsaka Sutra

On Venerating the Avatamsaka Sutra Excerpted from Admonitions for Monastics By Meditation Master Wensui of Suizhou’s Dahong Mountain Homage to my master teacher Vairochana, the Kindly Venerated One of the Flower Treasury.  You proclaim the golden text and the jeweled verses, unfolding scrolls of sutras kept in book sachets. Objects for…
02May/14

A Small Part of Translating Totality in Parts

The following is an excerpt from Translating Totality in Parts: Chengguan’s Commentaries and Subcommentaries to the Avatamsaka Sutra by Guo Cheen. Published by University Press of America. Book launch on May 9, 2014. Please purchase and review the book on Amazon.com that day! Book review:   “Guo Cheen has made…