In Footprints In the Snow Venerable Mentor Chan Patriarch Huikong Shengyan expounded:
Chan disciples often stayed in Chan Halls for years. Some, after hearing one sentence, let go of self-centered attachments. Some even attained enlightenment in the Chan Hall. But the experiences of “seeing into the self-nature” (or enlightenment) mostly happened outside the Chan Hall; when a follower heard a sound, or saw something, that provoked a very strong reaction and led to “seeing into the self-nature” (or enlightenment).
Beishi Guohan’s Narrating the Dream on the Chan Path:
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10-day Silent Illumination Chan Retreat in Late November of 2003:
Before the end period of the 10-day Chan retreat, while Guohan was on the cushion diligently applying “absolute contemplation” and continuously using non-abiding awareness to let go of “simultaneous luminosity and quiescence”, Guohan suddenly experienced the strong reaction “the empty space collapsed and the great land subsided”. Venerable Mentor immediately offered guidance: “I will instruct you in a new approach for walking meditation! While you use slow-walking meditation, your hands are holding a buddha with non-abiding awareness, and you are afraid it will be lost. As soon as you lose it, change to fast-walking meditation, in order to find the true buddha again.”
After the end of Chan retreat, Guohan immediately continued with a 21-day intensive solitary retreat at home. Following Venerable Mentor’s appropriate guidance, and with effortless-effort, Guohan finally set his foot on the way of “returning directly home to the self-nature”. In late December, after the Dharma Talk at Vancouver Convention Centre, Venerable Mentor used one simple word “Good!” for mind-to-mind confirmation to Guohan.
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10-day Silent Illumination Chan Retreat in Late May of 2004:
In the early morning of the first day of the 10-day Chan retreat, Guohan had a continuous experience of “the empty space collapsed and the great land subsided” on the cushion in the Chan Hall. Venerable Mentor confirmed it in the morning Dharma Talk, saying “How marvelous it is! There is a Chan practitioner with extraordinary potentiality who has deeper awakening on the first day of the retreat.”
The day after the retreat, Venerable Mentor met Guohan at the Chan Meditation Center (DDM New York).
Venerable Mentor asked Guohan, “Did you join the retreat?”
Guohan said, “Yes! I did.”
Venerable Mentor asked, “How was the experience?”
Guohan answered, “No good, no bad!”
Venerable Mentor applied mind-to-mind confirmation, saying “Not bad!”
Guohan made obeisance to the Venerable Mentor.
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10-day Huatou Chan Retreat in Late November of 2006:
After the 10-day Chan retreat, Venerable Mentor said to Guohan, “From today you should share responsibility in the spreading of Chan Dharma over the whole Western world and let true Suddenness Chan Dharma become popularized in Western countries.” Right after receiving the Dharma Transmission, Guohan returned directly to Vancouver Canada, and began to popularize the Suddenness Chan Dharma all over the world.
In the first half of the same year, Venerable Mentor asked Abbot Guodong to inform Chan Hall Master Guoyuan: every few years from now onward, please convene all Dharma-heirs at Dharma Drum Mountain to share and discuss their experiences and suggestions in the global spreading of Chan Dharma. At the same time, Venerable Mentor also informed Abbot Guodong that Guohan should establish separately a non-profit Community for spreading Chan Dharma all over the world (now “Cosmos Chan Community”).
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10-day Shawangank Chan Retreat in Late November of 2007:
During every moment of and even after this 10-day Chan retreat, Guohan always maintained the “Chan realm of perfection, brightness, and everlasting silence and illumination.”
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After the end of 10-day retreat, Guohan used the Verse of Dream as respectful offering to Venerable Mentor Chan Patriarch Huikong Shengyan:
All the universal phenomena wander about the wanderings of non-arising in a tiny speck of dust. Innumerable Buddhas and Patriarchs/Matriarchs pilot the shuttle of effortlessness on the tip of a ripple. One moon with perfect brightness, extending everywhere in the empty space, is silently illuminating the immeasurable Ocean of Lotus-Treasury Adorned Worlds. One Buddha with thus-coming, traveling around the whole universe, is spontaneously manifesting the boundless and universal Pure Realm of Sentient Beings.
In gratitude to Shakyamuni Buddha, all Chan Patriarchs/Matriarchs, all Chan Masters, and all sentient beings, Guohan also applied the following Verse of Dream:
Originally there is “no Buddha and no sentient beings”; Yet skillful wisdom for effortlessly delivering all illusory beings always spontaneously manifests in accordance with causes and conditions.
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Spreading Suddenness Chan Dharma in Canada in the Year 2008:
As recorded in his Narrating the Dream, when Venerable Mentor Chan Patriarch Huikong Shengyan was at the New York Chan Centre on November 8, 1983, he rose in the early morning (about 4:00 o’clock) experiencing an extraordinarily refreshing and quiescent dream of “entry into the realm of perfect rest and cessation.” In the dream, he arrived in an unpeopled world, a vast empty space in which ten pictures made up of abstract patterns and lines appeared consecutively. He could not tell what they were, but his mouth spoke ten titles concerning interaction of “mallard (wild duck) and goose.” He then looked up to see nothing but an open and substantial world from before antiquity, which was just a starting point leading into the realm of perfect rest and cessation. He looked back, and returned to the human world where he saw the masses of sentient beings.
Guohan realizes Chan Patriarch Shengyan’s dream to be an expression of the Chan world of the “non-abiding nirvana” and also the fifth level of the “Five Levels of Chan Enlightenment.” Moreover, these images relating to the interaction between mallard and goose are nothing less than a brand-new way of accurately presenting levels of attainment on the Suddenness Chan path. Therefore, in his book Awakening On the Chan/Zen/Seon/Thien Path – Returning Directly Home to the Self-nature, Guohan introduces what he calls the Ten Dream-awakening Pictures to serve as a more detailed annotation of the process between the “complete enlightenment” of the third level and the “ultimate and complete enlightenment” of the fifth level of the “Five Levels of Chan Enlightenment.” The system is introduced in an effort to let Suddenness Chan’s realms of realization on the Suddenness Chan path have a fuller, more complete framework.
Today, the “water of the Cao Creek” (Suddenness Chan) has flowed to North America and Europe; the “Chan style of the Patriarch/Masters” has manifested in the Western world. Beishi Guohan has the following greatest and sincerest deep wishes:
All Suddenness Chan/Zen/Seon/Thien Good Fellow-practitioners!
Everyday activity is itself Chan/Zen/Seon/Thien.
With ordinary mind of non-abiding awareness, awaken on the Chan Path, and return directly home to the self-nature.
After the ultimate realization of Non-abiding Nirvana, act as an authentic Bodhisattva, who always goes through future prospects with vastness and majesty to fulfill the greatest vowless-vow of immeasurable time.
Suddenness Chan Dharma will universally bloom and bear fruit in the whole Western world.
All sentient beings will completely see into the self-nature and attain Buddhahood in the Dharma-gate of the Mind Ground.
“Three tender Osmanthus trees will become prosperous for a long time”
“Three Osmanthus Trees” represent three Suddenness Chan Lineages: Caodong Chan Lineage, Linji Chan Lineage, and Dharma Drum Chan Lineage”
