Uncovering the Causes of Vexations - Using mindfulness to overcome distress

Talk by Venerable Chang Yan
Report written by Samuel Tan 07/11/2010

On Sunday, July 11, 2010, Venerable Chang Yan shared her thoughts on the Chan meditation practice at CMC.

    Before she began the talk, she asked if anybody has been to the Chan Hall in Dharma Drum Mountain in Taiwan to practice Chan meditation in a female monastic. She also mentioned that the practice method used now in DDM was one of the methods taught by Master Sheng Yen. When Venerable Chang Yan began her talk, she started with a story about herself during her first Chan Practice in DDM in Taiwan. She continued to participate in the practice because she found the method and meditation practice to be useful. However, after the fourth time participating, she decided to no longer continue participating.

    The reason Venerable Chang Yan had decided to no longer participate was because, when anybody participates in the Chan retreat in DDM, the participants would receive their own bowl for eating. During the entire retreat, when they are finished eating, the participants are required to use water to clean the bowl, drink the water, and wipe their bowl clean with their cotton cloth. This soon got to a point where Venerable Chang Yan became disgusted that the institution did not give clean bowls to eat with, and decided on not coming back to practice there.

    From the story, the Venerable asked, when we practice Chan, what questions are we dealing with? What does the practice of Chan offer us to answer the questions encountered? And when interacting with an environment with regulations not familiar to our standards, how should we react to them? By giving up Chan practice because of the style of washing bowls?

    Because of the style of washing their bowls in DDM, the Venerable felt threaten of her health and thought the method was not hygienic and would cause sickness. As a result, she gave up Chan practice after some time. However, she soon realized: isn't Chan practice the method used for recognizing our attachments to our self-centeredness? Because of her own self-centeredness, she was unhappy with the style of washing bowls during Chan practice in DDM even though she used the method to help her get rid of attachments to her self-centeredness.

    We often need to contemplate when we encounter the outside environment or our internal reactions. What is our reaction to them when practicing Chan? Therefore when we live our daily lives, we encounter different situations. When we encounter these situations, we react to them, and from this, an aversion arises, whether it is greed or hatred.

    Using the story as an example, in the female monastic, Venerable Chang Yan immediately encountered that she had a strong standard from her self-centeredness: her attachment to her ways of doing things. Otherwise, the entire retreat, with over two hundred participants, she wouldn't have been the only one uncomfortable with the washing of the bowl. Everyone else was able to follow the rules, yet to her, this was unbearable. Because of her attachment to her standards, there was a strong greed and hatred that arose. This particular reaction in our mind is the root of our vexations. So how do we get rid of our self-centeredness so we can live in a liberated life without an attachment to self-centeredness? The answer is difficult to discover. However, it is easier for someone to defeat this reaction, such as the sense of greed and hatred, when he or she feels the sense of greed or hatred. From that sensation, he or she would know his or her attachment to the self-centeredness. Greed and hatred is the actual appearance of self-centeredness that we feel. Many people do no understand their own attachment to their self-centeredness, but they understand the feeling of greed and hatred. Therefore, the feelings of greed and hatred are more concrete than the feeling of self-centeredness and are the actual representation of their attachments.

     But then, can we just say that we can just not react when a situation arises? Even the Venerable Chang Yan, someone who diligently practiced Chan mediation for seven day in a rigorous retreat, couldn't get rid of the reactions from washing her bowl. That reaction is derived directly from her self-centeredness without her knowing. Therefore, it is not easy to just say we can just not react to a situation. However, a long time ago, the Buddha had already taught us how to sever the tendencies we have towards the environment: by carefully observing the activities of our mind before the sensation arises.

    One of the conditions of our mind is desire. We encounter situations fitting to our self-centeredness, or in accordance with our standards. When we encounter a situation unfitting to our self-centeredness, we react to it with unhappiness and rejection. On the other hand, when we encounter a situation in accordance with our standards, we react to it with happiness and motivation to grasp and hold on to it. So in order for us to sever our attachment to self-centeredness, we must observe before our desires arise.
The Buddha taught us a method of Chan contemplation. This method would help us discover when we encounter objects outside, right then, we have to know our minds process from our attachment of self-centeredness. If we know how to protect our minds from this attachment, then we will know how we can transform our minds to use the Buddha's teachings. From this, Venerable Chang Yan introduced to us the concept of impertinence and emptiness. We have a reaction or a sensation of greed or hatred when we encounter objects that are outside our environment. If we like what is around our environment, then we have this sensation to keep it and from this, greed arises. On the other hand, if we encounter a situation that we don't like, we tend to have a sensation to reject it and form hatred from it. The encounters outside of our environment and our reactions to them are the essence of impertinence and emptiness. Venerable Chang Yan encouraged us to train our sense faculties and from that, we can be free of vexations.

    According to Venerable Chang Yan, in the Agarma sutra, it goes into greater detail analyzing over the sense faculty and how encountering the outside environment would bring about an understanding of our reactions. The Venerable explained that during the process of our mind's reaction, the mind is separated into different situations called the Five Pervasive Operations. According to the Venerable, generally, when a situation appears in front of us, we recognize it and we have a reaction in our mind. In addition, there are twelve links of conditional, in which the sensation has already arisen. The Venerable continued to explain that the part of the mind is called "the mind of seeking", when our body and mind reacts to a situation, our mind would search for the information stored in our consciousness and try to make sense of what this reaction is and whether or not we would be happy with the outcome.

    The next motivation is the desire to want more or to reject it. Venerable Chang Yan explained that the key point of Chan practice is, when the outside encounters our mind, our mind clearly knows what is being encountered. In addition, the mind is further broken down into finer categories. According to the Venerable, the mind is broken into two parts: the seeking mind and the mind of determination. The seeking mind is the mind that enables the person to observe; whereas in the mind of determination, the person determines what is being observed by the mind. The Venerable explained to us that the Buddha developed the Four Foundations of Mindfulness: body, sensation, mind, and dharma. The Four Foundations can be further broken down into two groups. The first is the body and sensation and the second is mind and dharma. The first group has regards to what is being observed, while the second is the ability for our mind to observe. This is the basic idea of Chan practice Buddha designed for us. When these two parts of the mind star to function, we use the Four Foundations to detect and to somehow deal with them. However, different scholars have debated whether these minds occur sequential or simultaneously regardless because our minds are not still.

    Venerable Chang Yan soon began to discuss the principles of how vexations arise. She explains that is we can get hold of this principle by practicing the Four Foundations of Mindfulness as well as really understanding how our own vexations occur. By doing so, we would be able to sever these vexations, and the way to do so is through the Chan practice methods. One of the examples was counting our breath. By having the breath be the object of consciousness used to detect when the sensations arises, we are able to detect our sensations. This is how the mind of determination arises. We are able to observe that through the interaction between the mind and body, we can see the effect of impertinence and how it rises and perishes.

     The other method involves the mind and dharma as objects in our consciousness. When the seeking mind stops to differentiate and directly contemplate that all dharma are empty derived from cause and conditions, then the person would have no reaction to the outside environment. Therefore, the different methods that derive from Chan practice or meditation practice refers to the Four Foundations of Mindfulness. However, all of this is theoretical and sounds easy: if we are free from desire, we would be free from ignorance and therefore we would be cut from the cycle of death and rebirth. But in actuality, how do we do this? The Venerable asked: Is it possible for someone to understand what impertinence and emptiness is about? For example, when we meditate, after a while, we started to have leg pain. As a response, we either move our leg or stay. By staying still, we don't react to the situation and just continue to meditate and not let our mind be controlled by the sensation of pain. This is someone who truly understands what emptiness and impertinence is.

     Referring back to the story, Venerable Chang Yan concluded, when we encounter a situation with greed and hatred, then we should reflect, observe and not react. Only then we will know the greed that has arose from our hearts. Because the mind has greed, we use Chan practice to observe the whole process of the body and mind to sustain it and overcome the situation by not reacting and by just observing. This is the purpose and principle of Chan practice. Overtime, through Chan practice, the observant power of the mind becomes stronger and will be able to observe subtle details and movements between the mind and the body; the mind then won't react and develop inner strength.

     Venerable Chang Yan concluded the talk by explaining, if she was able to utilize the moment when her mind arises from the sense of discomfort from the lack of hygiene during her retreat to DDM, instead of making the decision to not come back any more to the female monastic in DDM, she should have relaxed and realized that it is the reaction of the body and mind, then her practice would have become tighter and her life would have more accordance with the principle of Chan practice. If she could have done that, she would have made a great leap in her practice.