Master Jiqun

Ven. Jiqun, Buddhist Master. http://www.facebook.com/masterjiqun http://www.twitter.com/masterjiqun

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Miracle

Every single life is a miracle. We should respect and cherish it.

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The Drama of Samsara

Ego keeps writing the scripts of samsara and staging the dramas one after another.

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Self-Transformation Through the Three Trainings

Most people’s identity and personality take form unconsciously. Only through studying the Dharma can we gain thorough self-knowledge: discerning unwholesome traits to abandon, and virtuous mental qualities to nurture. We may then reshape ourselves via the Three Trainings — precepts, concentration, and wisdom — and endow our lives with genuine worth.

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Transformation Comes Only Through Practice

The mind can only be transformed through genuine cultivation, not mere verbal discussion. Intellectual understanding of concepts alone remains detached from one’s lived experience and bears no tangible transformative power.

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Responsibility Towards Life

Modern people appear to possess an ever-weaker sense of responsibility. From one perspective, this may signal greater openness and fewer rigid constraints. Yet on the other hand, many live trapped in self-indulgent sentiment, believing they owe nothing to others: they choose to live only when life feels pleasant, and even consider giving up on life when discontented. In reality, this is reckless indulgence and irresponsibility toward one’s own life.

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The Essence of Spiritual Practice

What exactly do we cultivate through practice? No matter which Dharma door one follows, practice ultimately amounts to mental training: the deliberate repetition of wholesome mental states. Hence my definition of spiritual practice: abandon what is flawed, sustain what is virtuous. This truth holds not just for spiritual cultivation, but for all worldly matters. We must continuously let go of unwholesome habitual patterns and uphold virtuous mental conduct.

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The Myth of the Starting Line

A popular maxim goes, “Children must not lose at the starting line”, which has pushed countless parents into cutthroat rat races. Determined not to let their children fall behind, parents rush to advance learning earlier and earlier, shifting the starting point backward continuously: from middle school to primary school, kindergarten, even infant toddler classes. All this effort merely moves the same curriculum forward by a few years. What good does this style of education bring? In most cases, it saddles children with heavy stress from early childhood, stripping them of the innocent joys they ought to enjoy. When they finally reach university, the stage meant for in-depth academic pursuit, they are utterly burnt out and devoid of motivation.

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Shaping Our Lives with Chan Wisdom

To shape one’s life through Chan wisdom, we must recognize the mental substances that compose our existence. If we pick inferior substances, we develop a warped character and a life full of blemishes. Only by embracing virtuous qualities such as conscience and compassion can we forge a sound, broad-minded life.

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A Life of Mindful Cultivation

To practice the Dharma requires not only listening, contemplating and Chan meditation, but also shaping a lifestyle consistent with self-cultivation. We must break free from ingrained habits of chasing efficiency, prioritizing consumption and flaunting the ego, and learn to uphold mindfulness and abide in the present moment — in every action, from walking and eating to tidying our living space.

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Self-Mastery

Self-mastery means being the lord of one’s own mind: gaining mastery over every arising thought and mental stirrings, instead of being carried away by random thoughts and emotions.

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The Tea Ceremony and Chan

The tea ceremony carries Chan wisdom through the ritual of tea drinking, or to put it another way, it embodies Chan practice within the act of making and drinking tea. Core concepts of tea ceremony culture — harmony, respect, purity and tranquility, the spirit of ichigo ichie (one encounter, one lifetime), and the teaching "originally there is not a single thing" — are all manifestations of Chan.

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Buddhism and Philosophy

Among all religions, the Dharma boasts a profound philosophical framework. Through extensive doctrinal teachings, it thoroughly and profoundly elaborates on mind-nature, the phenomena and essence of the world, and the interplay between mind and the external world from multiple perspectives. Still, practicing merely by studying doctrines is far from easy: grasping the theories alone is difficult enough, and integrating them into genuine mental practice is even harder.

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Childhood and Education

In bygone eras, there were far fewer temptations. Children grew up playing amid nature, with simple and wholesome hobbies. Yet amid today’s societal climate, education faces unprecedented challenges, most of which parents have never encountered and cannot resolve based on past experience. How should we respond? On one hand, parents must keep learning to offer positive guidance to their children. On the other hand, curating a nurturing micro-environment suited to children’s growth is more vital now than in any previous age.

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True Ease of Mind

What is true ease of mind? It means abiding peacefully with oneself, free from reliance on external things, embodying the inherent independence of life. Ordinary worldly people lean on status, wealth and fame to sustain inner peace and balance. Yet from the Buddhist perspective, life is inherently perfect and self-sufficient, requiring no outer support whatsoever.

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Knowing Who We Are

We all live confined by symbols, labels and identities, taking these as the basis of our sense of "self". In truth, what embodies the original essence of life is the awakened mind. Ordinary beings are veiled by ignorance and lose sight of their true nature. They chase all illusions manifested by the mind, and construct an ego within these illusions. This so-called ego is merely a byproduct of life, not the genuine "Self".

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Turn Inward To Our Hearts

In the present age, ecologically, land, water sources and air are polluted to varying degrees. Socially, human bonds have become alienated by materialism, no longer built upon kinship and ethics. Mentally, as people relentlessly pursue material gains, their inner worlds grow barren, with psychological troubles such as anxiety and depression growing increasingly prevalent. Against such a backdrop, only by turning inward to our inner mind can we live in sound physical and mental health.

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The True Mind

Within the Chan school, all daily chores—carrying firewood, drawing water, dressing, eating, interacting with others—can serve as spiritual cultivation. Why is this possible? The true mind, which Chan practice and all Dharma cultivation seek to realize, is inherently complete within every person. We never separate from this mind for a single instant in daily life. Yet we chase after external phenomena, and in this pursuit, lose ourselves and sink into delusion.