Buy Illuminating Silence

Illuminating Silence - Master Sheng-yen

Introductions and commentaries by John Crook

This comprehensive work provides an introduction to the practice of Chinese Zen (Chan) by a great contemporary Chan master based on talks given during two intensive retreats at the Maenllwyd - the meditation centre of the Western Chan Fellowship in Wales. It provides a basic handbook for all concerned with an effective training in Zen for the West.

In his foreward Stephen Batchelor writes:

The discourses are lucid and direct, drawn widely on the sources of Chinese Buddhism, and speak in a refreshingly modern idiom. Perhaps because the setting was relatively small and intimate, the gentleness, warmth and humour of Master Sheng-yen radiate throughout the text.

Part One provides full details of the unfolding of a Chan retreat with details of schedule, liturgy and all talks by the Master thereby enabling the reader to sit in on the retreat as it developed.

Part Two contains a careful presentation of the meditation method of Silent Illumination (mo chao) which, taken later to Japan, there became the sitting style called "shikantaza" The talks here are based in the original presentations of Master Hongzhi Zhenjue (1090-1157).

Part Three comprises retreat reports written by the editor during his training with Master Sheng-yen and which thus provide the reader with an experience of what it is like to "sit" a training retreat with a Chan master.

John Crook, the Teacher of the Western Chan Fellowship and the first European Dharma Heir of the Master in the Linji and Caodong traditions of Chinese Zen, has constructed the text from the taped English interpretations by Ming Yee Wang of the spoken mandarin. He writes:

I was engaging in an exercise in hermeneutics, an interpretation of the teaching in which my own subjectivity was highly engaged. I thus received the teachings many times over.

John also provides commentarial introductions to each part of the text and an edited autobiography of the master.

ISBN: 1-184293-031-1, reprinted by Motilala Banarsidas as ISBN 8178221160

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