Sheng Yen

Sheng Yen (Chinese: 聖嚴 Shèngyán; 22 January 1931 – 3 February 2009) was a Taiwanese Chan Buddhist monk, religious scholar, and writer. Sheng Yen was the founder of the Dharma Drum Mountain, a Buddhist organization based in Taiwan.

Quotes

Yu, Jimmy (2021). Reimagining Chan Buddhism: Sheng Yen and the Creation of the Dharma Drum Lineage of Chan. London: Routledge. ISBN 978-1-003-19637-2. 

• 無事忙中老,

空裡有哭笑,

本來沒有我,

生死皆可拋。

• Busying with nothing while growing old.

Tears and laughter in emptiness.

Intrinsically, there is no “I.”

Life and death, thus cast aside.

• Sheng Yen’s death poem

• Chinese Buddhism is indeed in a state of crisis, facing great challenges. The fact that many Chinese Buddhists subscribe to a bleak view of the future of Chinese Buddhism is something lamentable. Many of them feel that they are better off practicing Tibetan or Theravāda Buddhism. Some are even ordained into the Tibetan or Theravāda traditions. There would not be any future for Chinese Buddhism if all Chinese Buddhists held such attitudes. In the past I have said that the different forms of Buddhism are the same, whether it is Theravāda or Tibetan Buddhism. As long as either one of them exists, even if Chinese Buddhism is extinguished, Buddhism will still remain in the world. However, I said those words with great pain.
  • Sheng Yen, Chengxian qihou 承先啓後, 25

• I have a deep conviction that the future of global Buddhism must rest on the inclusive (baorong xing 包容性) and syncretic nature (xiaorong xing 消融性) of the Han transmission of Chinese Buddhism as its main feature in order to take varying sectarian postures and viewpoints and return them to the original intent of the Buddha, so that a new form of Buddhism can emerge that is needed by all people.
  • Sheng Yen, Tiantai xinyao 天台心鑰, 9

• [Chan masters] were not only highly accomplished practitioners, they were also well versed in literature, history, and Buddhist scholarship.
  • Sheng Yen, The Poetry of Enlightenment: Poems by Ancient Chan Masters, 2

• In life, most people are unable to let go of this and that; specifically, they cannot put down their money, their wealth, fame, and social status. In death, even though they should be able to put down everything, many still cannot. Because they cannot relinquish their “smelly skin bag” (chou pinang 臭皮囊), they’re propelled to buy a piece of land to house it. These are the foolish things that people do.
  • Dharma Drum Publishing Editors, Woyuan wuqiong: meihao de wannian 我願無窮：美好的晚年開示集 [Inexhaustible vows: a collection of [Sheng Yen’s] teachings in the splendor of his later years] (Taipei: Dharma Drum Corporation, 2010), 348.

• The supreme realization is seeing the original nature of mind. It neither affirms nor negates any conceptual point of view; hence it does not need language for expression. One can exhaust the resources of language and still not express ultimate Chan. This is because Chan transcends knowledge, symbols—the entire apparatus of language. You may call Chan “emptiness,” but it is not emptiness in the nihilistic sense, of “there is nothing there.” You may call it “existence,” but it is not existence in the common sense, of “I see it, so it must be there.” It is existence that transcends the fiction of our sense impressions of the world: of sight, sound, smell, taste, touch, and form. Yet this Chan is never apart from, is all of a piece with, our everyday world. It is indwelling in all beings, everywhere, at all times.
  • Sheng Yen (Shengyan) 聖嚴. Getting the Buddha Mind, i-ii. New York: Dharma Drum Publications, 1982.

• Only Chan Buddhism as a school (zong 宗) retains the spirit of Chinese civilization; only the Chan school can unify and absorb the essential teachings of all the various Mahāyāna Buddhist traditions without ever falling into deterioration.
  • Liangqian nian xingjiao 兩千年行腳 [A pilgrimage of year 2000], 1. Taipei: Dharma Drum Corporation, 1998.

• Material forms, visual consciousness, visual contact, the feelings unpleasant or pleasant or neither-unpleasant-nor-pleasant that arise conditioned by visual contact are empty, empty of eternal and unchanging nature, empty of anything belonging to self. Why is this so? This is nature as it is. Ear, nose, tongue, body, and mind are also thus.
  • Saṃyuktāgama or Za Ahan jing 雜阿含經 number 232, T no. 99, 2: 56b24–29.

• All things return to emptiness (guiyu kong 歸於空)—that is, there is no-self (wuwo 無我), no beings (wuren 無人), no living (wushou 無壽), no life (wuming 無命), no great being (wushi 無士), no ordinary being (wufu 無夫), no form (wuxing 無形), no appearances (wuxiang 無像), no men (wunan 無男), and no women (wunü 無女). Why? Because characteristics of a self are no characteristics; characteristics of a person, sentient beings, and lifespan are all free from characteristics.
  • Ekōttarāgama or Zengyi Ahan jing 增壹阿含經, T no. 125, 2: 575c18–20.

• The śūnyatā or emptiness in the Prajñāpāramitā Sūtras refers to the emptiness of the self-nature of all dharmas. It doesn’t mean nothingness. Rather it refers to the fact that all dharmas, whether worldly or world transcending, are devoid of fundamental nature. This nature would include the conceptual, the corporeal, the abstract, or anything physical. The nature of every dharma or phenomenal existence is impermanence. If any view posits something as permanent, then such a view cannot point to the ultimate [nature of reality].
  • Sheng Yen fashi jiao huatou 聖嚴法師教話頭禪 [Master Sheng Yen teaches the critical phrase method of Chan] (Taipei: Dharma Drum Corporation, 2009), 173.

• The supreme realization of the original nature of mind neither affirms nor negates any conceptual point of view; hence it does not need language for expression. One can exhaust the resources of language and still would not express ultimate Chan. This is because Chan transcends knowledge, symbols—the entire apparatus of language. You may call Chan “emptiness,” but it is not emptiness in the nihilistic sense, of “there is nothing there.” You may call it “existence,” but it is not existence in the common sense, of “I see it, so it must be there.” It is existence which transcends the fiction of our sensory world of sight, sound, smell, taste, touch, and form. Yet, Chan is never apart from them, and is one with our everyday world. It is innate to all beings, everywhere, at all times.
  • Sheng Yen (Shengyan) 聖嚴. Getting the Buddha Mind, i-ii. New York: Dharma Drum Publications, 1982.

• Silent illumination is actually the most direct method, because Chan is not something that you can use your mind to think about. It’s not something that you can use any words or form of language to describe. The method is simply to do away with any method of practice. Use no method as the method itself. … The silent illumination method is to not have any thoughts. At that moment you just put down everything, and that is the state of Chan itself. Silent doesn’t mean falling asleep. That’s why we have to follow the word “silent” with the word “illumination,” that is, your mind must be very clear.
  • Chan Newsletter 10 (December 1980): 1–2.