Venerable Master, all Dharma Masters, and all Good Advisors: I would like to share some of my thoughts during the (just concluded) winter Chan session.

I would like to repeat what a fellow cultivator John from Berkeley shared during this meditation retreat because it was fantastic. He initially had not intended to attend the retreat from beginning to end, but being so happy after a week's worth of Buddha recitation, he decided to stay and try the Chan session. He had never joined a meditation retreat before. He had false thoughts continuously during the first few days of the Chan session, but just as he was engrossed by those thoughts, he suddenly felt a pat on his head. He was startled and thought, "Ah, the proctor must be behind me." He turned around to look and saw no one. His stream of consciousness began flowing again the next day during meditation. Just as his false thoughts were flying off to who knows where, he again felt another smack on his head. He jumped again and turned around quickly to see who was hitting him. Again, he saw no one. He felt that this was increasingly strange.

That afternoon, he ran into another American disciple from Berkeley who told him as they chatted that, "Gee! Meditation is too painful! I can't stand it! I'm going to pack my bags and leave." John asked him, "Really? You're going now?" "Yes! When I was meditating today, I saw the Venerable Master walk into the meditation hall to look at each one of us very closely. He walked up to everyone and kept looking at each person from the front. He would look and then go on to the next person. He took his time to look at each person." John was shocked when he heard this.  

This American disciple also said, "The Venerable Master asked later, 'How's your sitting now?' I replied, 'Oh! No! It's too painful, I'm leaving.’ The Venerable Master smiled and said, 'Oh, you're leaving.' Then he went to look at the next person." After hearing about this, John thought, "Maybe it was the Venerable Master smacking me on the head!" He didn't dare to let his thoughts stray when he went to meditate again.

After a few more days, John said that he was experiencing a tremendous amount of pain during meditation, so he wanted to go home too. That was a Thursday. He packed up his things after lunch and was ready to slip out. That day Chin Lin Shr was going to head back to Berkeley Monastery and ran into John after lunch. He said, "You know, it's really painful to meditate during a retreat because to experience pain is to eliminate karmic obstructions. It doesn't matter that it hurts. Be more patient." Since Chin Lin Shr told him this, he thought he should forego the idea of leaving. He stayed to continue the meditation session. After a few more days, he again couldn't stand the pain any more and thought, "Tomorrow morning. Tomorrow morning I will definitely go home."

That evening, while he was listening to the Venerable Master's taped talks from the Hundred Day Chan Session, the Venerable Master happened to talk about how many disciples cannot tolerate the pain and go home during the Chan sessions. They make up all kinds of excuses to leave, saying that they have things to do at home, and escape. John heard this and thought, "Oh, the Venerable Master seems to be talking to me." He was quite embarrassed and didn't leave the next morning. He stayed once again. In the blink of an eye, the final week rolled around. So he stayed until the final Saturday before he went home.

This is John's story.  

There was another old man from Los Angeles who came with John. I don't know his name. He said that during this Chan session, he once was entertaining thoughts of lust and felt extremely bad. He thought, "What should I do?" Then he thought about the slides of a skeleton that the Abbot had shown when he gave a brief introduction to the rules of the meditation hall. As he thought about this, he felt that all his muscles were gone and he had only his bones left. He therefore never had any more thoughts of lust.

As he continued to contemplate in this way, the skeleton accidentally fell to pieces all over the floor. Originally he his feet had been hurting really badly, but with his bones crushed, he suddenly felt that his feet didn't hurt so much anymore. Amitabha!