Opening and Closing the Gates of Heaven

Miracles are in short supply these days, though we seek them daily. Sometimes we find them, or possibly they find us. Seven years ago a beautiful young girl lay dying in a Vancouver hospital bed, victim of a rare and aggressive form of lymphoma. After a devastating course of chemotherapy failed to eradicate the disease, doctors told her that she had only two weeks to live. Her only hope was an extremely painful bone marrow transplant with a success rate of five per cent. Faced with death, many people would desperately cling to any offer of hope, but with courage rare in one so young, Helen Liang resolved to spend her final days out of the hospital, at home, trying to find a kind of peace with her family. Her father, the famous martial arts master Liang Shou-yu, refused to let her give up hope and embarked with her on a course of qigong, tai chi, meditation and alternative Chinese and Western medicine. Two weeks passed. She was still alive. Another two weeks, and then another. Week after week became five years. Whether to attribute the miracle to Kuan Yin, the goddess of mercy, to qigong, to bitter Chinese herbs, to a family’s unwavering love, or Helen’s own will to heal her cancer, the answer is still a mystery. But seeing Helen today, performing her favorite martial art form, Liu He Ba Fa (Water Style), is poetry of the soul in motion, a miracle in action, and a dancing light beaming steadily out of the darkness that nearly extinguished her life nearly seven years ago.

Successive Rings of Fire

It's not like Helen or her family had never known hardship. It was there from the beginning. She was born in a very remote village in China's Sichuan province in the middle of the Cultural Revolution, where her father had been forced to relocate after graduating from University for "re-education." Liang Shou-Yu was a famous wushu teacher, highly educated, and one of China's top coaches. Students of this poor Sichuan region were lucky. But luck hangs in the balance. As many people's fate spun out years later from that turbulent era, Helen's may have also been entwined with the politics that tore through wushu as through everything else. She says, "I was born in that village. I didn't even go to the hospital; somebody helped my mom with the delivery. In 1994 when my dad took a demonstration team back to China, he took me to that village to see the actual room I was born in. It was old and dark. People were poor then. I also have a younger sister, but my parents sent her to my grandparents in Chongqing city, because it was so poor and very difficult to take care of two children. They wanted the best for both of us. So in Chongqing she had a much better living standard, and that's why she's a lot healthier too. I was weaker because the facilities and the food. But they tried to provide me with the best they could."

Essentially Helen became the only child once her sister was gone, but, as she recalls of her early years, "Later on we moved to another town. I was with a whole bunch of other wushu sisters and brothers so it was never really like I was alone. That's when I started wushu, when I was about four years old, with my dad. He trained me every day. I remember how I would start a form each morning and I had to do it ten times. Every time you had to do it with a lot of power; my dad was very serious. You'd get really tired after three or four times, and you just don't want to do it, and he'd say, no – ten times. He'd come over and hug me and kiss me and then go – ok, keep on going! So I'd have to finish my form ten times every day."

Helen's youthful wushu training continued with her father until she was eight. Then he had the opportunity to go to Canada as a wushu coach. Seeing a better future for his family, he made the hard journey, leaving his family and students in 1980. He wouldn't be able to return for them until four years later.

Meanwhile, he told Helen she must keep on training. She had an extended wushu family to help her. "My dad left a lot of students," she says, "and he really had been a father figure to them, so they'd hang out at our place almost every day. My brothers and sisters -- and that's how I actually addressed them -- would come every day and train me, just like my dad would. Ten times every day. And of course I'd do the basics, as well. They would stay at my house, and my mom would cook for them. It was like a big family."

"Every day we would walk from my house to the training place, about forty minutes of walking. At that time there was no transportation, no car, you had to walk forty or fifty minutes to the place you train, and then walk back. But actually that was the fun part."

My dad would write back to us often, saying to my mom, 'Make sure Helen is training, and that she remembers her forms.' He put so much emphasis on it. I really missed my dad, but I was more mature. I would write to him, telling him don't worry about us, don't worry about Mom, I can take care of my mom. I would feel that my mom was lonely. And write to my dad that I was being a good girl, and not giving my mom trouble."

Life went on this way for several years. Helen trained, and wrote letters to him in Canada, which seemed very far away. When she was twelve she went away to the Sichuan Provincial Wushu school, and trained there for a year. Recalling her trip to the school, she notes, "I had to travel from that small town, and basically it's two days of boat ride. Then you get to Chongqing city, and then you had to take a train from Chongqing to Chengdu. At that time it was the capital of Sichuan. So I did all that on my own. People on the boat asked me, 'Where are you going?' I'd tell them, I'm going to the wushu school. 'Oh, wushu, do you know somebody named Liang Shou-yu?' I'd say yes I do, he's my dad. He's very well known in Sichuan province, especially around the Yangzte river. They'd say, 'Oh, you're in trouble. Your dad is in North America, and he's not going to come back, and he's not coming to get you guys.' At that time there are all these stories about how martial artists go to North America, and they get killed, fighting with people, stories like that! It was so frightening to hear. Or they'd say he'll find another wife and never return to you. So every time I'd hear that I'd say, no no, he's coming back, but I felt angry."

Helen trained at the Sichuan Wushu school for about a year, and then word came from her father that he was coming to take them to Canada. Finally the long wait, and her fears, were coming to an end. Still, even this happy event was touched by sadness as Helen's grandfather died just before the move. "My dad was very close to my grandfather," Helen says. "My grandfather practiced wushu too, and then he was a businessman who traveled to Hong Kong and Shanghai. He was very successful. But in his later years China didn't turn out to be the way he wanted it to be, because of a lot of things going on there, and it was quite sad. He always had high expectations for my dad. And my dad was coming back, after being established in North America, to take him out, but then he passed away."

Then it was time to move to Vancouver. "It was very overwhelming," Helen remembers, "My first time on an airplane. In my small town people hardly ever see any airplanes. Everything was very new to me. But I was young and easy to adapt to a different world."

At first Helen only studied English, in a class with students from many other countries. She recalls not being afraid, just trying to speak, and how her teacher liked her. Soon she went on into high school and became a normal Canadian school girl. Well, except for being one of the top wushu students in the country, still under the tutelage of her father who was now a professor teaching wushu at the University of British Columbia.

"I was still training quite a bit," says Helen. "I think in China going to the professional school was a good experience, but I do feel I got the most from my dad. My passion about wushu is from him. He influences you in a way that you love this art. He also emphasizes the culture, and the history of wushu, of China. He's concerned about your body's health, and doesn't push you, he's very careful, even with his students in China. He's taking care of you as a person. That's something very important. My dad would get us to read the Chinese martial arts novels, so that we don't forget Chinese, that's also important to him. We were so into those novels, every day. And that's partly how we kept up our Chinese language."

With her dad as her teacher Helen made dramatic improvements in her wushu. When she was seventeen she began teaching kids in her dad's school, and then later adults. "My life," she recalls, laughingly, "was really just school and wushu. And my parents were quite strict about us going out. So even though I was here in the West I guess I had a very different teenage life from other kids, who go out and hang out at parties and clubs. No, none of those for me. Just training, and then come home. A lot of it’s because they’re worried about us. So it was very strict. But they love us very much, and we're very close as a family."

Staying close to wushu and her family, Helen went to the University of British Columbia and studied Economics there. Her parents relaxed the rules a bit, but Helen still spent many hours in the library and hanging out with her friends. The year she graduated her father took a North American wushu team back to China to demonstrate and tour in 15 cities. It's the only time she's been back to China since her immigration.

Helen Liang To the Edge of Darkness

Upon graduation Helen got a job at a Vancouver bank. She was up for a promotion when all of a sudden she got sick. "It started with pulling wisdom teeth out and I got a bad infection. Even now they don't know what is the cause of lymphoma. I just remember I had a very high fever for nearly a month. I went to the hospital and they were trying to find out what it was; they thought it was some kind of infection. I stayed in the hospital for so long, getting different kinds of antibiotics. But nothing happened. Lumps started coming out, and it was very painful. It was awful. Once they were taking a biopsy, and I was there by myself early in the morning. Doctors came, and they took this huge needle, didn't give me any anesthetic, but drilled into me, and I fainted. My parents came while I was unconscious, for I don't know how long.'

The doctors did all kinds of tests. "One day my doctor came," Helen recalls, "he was also our family doctor and had always taken care of me. He referred us to this oncologist; I think he was already suspecting something. I remember one morning I was with my dad, just the two of us, and this doctor came in. 'I have something to tell you,' he said. 'I'm afraid Helen's got cancer.'"

"To me at that time, cancer was the end of the world. I was so young, and I'd been so healthy, and just graduated and had a whole life ahead of me, so I just felt I couldn't accept it. How could it be cancer? My dad was very quiet, he didn't say anything. The doctor continued, we have to treat her right away with chemotherapy. I didn't know what chemo was, I didn't have a clue. And then he left. "

"You always see it on TV movies, somebody gets cancer, and then they die, that sort of thing. And so right away, I was lying there, looking at my dad, he was holding my hand, and I was having so much pain at the time, and thinking cancer…I just felt like crying, but I didn't cry. I didn't know what my feelings were. My dad said, 'Well you have to be strong.' I asked, what happens when I die? Where would I be going? Where are you guys going to be? And my dad said, 'Just make sure that if you see any kind of light' – he’s into Buddhist and Taoist meditation – 'if you see light you have to follow the light, you can’t be afraid of it, you have to go there.' I was trying to imagine how that would be like."

"Then he had to go, he had a class that night. My mom came to stay with me. I was lying there that whole night and I didn't want to fall asleep because I was afraid in the darkness that I wasn’t going to wake up again. Later on I heard that when my dad got to class -- he's very strong, never cries -- but later on students told me that he could barely talk, and he told me he was crying in the car by himself."

Helen started an aggressive chemo treatment, which was very difficult and harsh for her small size and frail body to take. "I had long hair," she says, "and of course they told me that I’d lose my hair. Each new thing was something that you just can't imagine happening. One day in the shower a whole handful of hair suddenly came out. It took me so long but I couldn't get out of the shower. My dad was very worried, because I was very weak, and a lot of times I needed their help just to take a shower. I came out and I was crying. "

"My parents just felt so bad, and they tried not to show it in front of me. They gave me a lot of care, and my friends and their friends and a lot of doctors did too." Despite the debilitating effects of chemo, Helen also practiced qigong and meditation.

The chemotherapy went on for about 3 months, but after the final doses the cancer came back again a few days later. Helen started to get lumps once more, and developed a very high fever. "I was hospitalized again," says Helen. "They tried other things, but then they said to me, you only have a few weeks to live. The only thing we can do is try a bone marrow transplant. But the success rate of that is less than five percent. And we have to find the right marrow."

"Then they took me to a wing of the hospital and tried to show me what the transplant would be like. They showed me some of the people in there, and that was the most horrible thing that I remember. I saw all kinds of tubes running into their bodies, as I was passing by their rooms, and I just didn't feel it was a life any more."

The doctors told Helen they could not give her any other treatment for her cancer. This was the last hope they could offer. She had been in the hospital for three weeks with a raging fever, which no medicine was able to cure. "That afternoon," she says, "we had to make a decision on whether to go for a bone marrow transplant or not. I remember that day. All my family was there for this decision, because it was an urgent issue. And nobody could make that decision. I had to make the decision. So eventually I was thinking about the pros and cons. I think my Dad was leaning towards not doing it and seeking alternative medicine, but he couldn’t really make the decision for me. I was just sitting there and I was thinking, I’ve looked at those people and is that a life that I really want? And the chances were less than five percent. Do I want my last few days to be in that room, or do I want to be with people I love and do the things I wanted to do? It was a hard decision."

"But finally I said, I'm just going to enjoy the next few weeks. And do whatever that I have to do. But my aunt reminded me, now I’m already experiencing so much pain, later on it will get worse and worse. It will be very painful. But I said that's OK, at least I'm home, I’m with you guys. It’s OK."

Helen went home, tended by her entire family and her family doctor. He practiced Western medicine but he had also learned qigong with Liang Shou-yu as well. This doctor supported Helen leaving the hospital and Helen’s parents when they said they wanted to search for an alternative medicine treatment. Her father, says Helen, would do anything.

After seeing her life drain away in the hospital, Helen was at least glad to be home. She recalls, "After I made the decision I went down to the beach and all of a sudden it's as if I have thrown away all the burden. I feel it's OK. I’m just going to do what I have to do for the last few weeks, and every day I'm not going to give up. My dad's still telling me to do meditation, do qigong. And it so happened that day that there’s a doctor, a close friend of my dad's, in Seattle. He called and said, 'I know this Chinese doctor from Beijing, maybe he can help.' My dad said, yes, let’s try."

After contacting this Dr. Wang, Helen described her illness and symptoms to him over the phone. He wrote a prescription and faxed it immediately. "We went to get these Chinese herbs," says Helen. "My parents were forcing me, saying you have to take this, at least just to kill the fever for now. You have to just try. Of course the bowls of this bitter Chinese medicine…I was so weak, and I’d take just a little bit and I would throw up. But I forced myself. I'm not giving up, I thought, and I'll do whatever I need to do. So I took the medicine for a few days, and my fever did start to get better. I had diarrhea but that's how the medicine works, how the medicine gets rid of the impurities in your body, so that's supposed to help you. So at least my fever was more in control.

"I was more relaxed, and I was doing qigong and tai chi with my dad every day. We'd go out doing all kinds of qigong because it's good for you to stay outside and get a lot of oxygen. That’s supposed to kill the cancer cells. So we're outside two-thirds of the day, my dad and friends and everybody taking turns, taking me out, walking on the beach. We had to stay away from the crowds because my immune system was really low, very weak. So I just took Chinese medicine, doing qigong and tai chi."

Helen did this routine for one week. Then another. Soon it was three weeks. "I say oh, three weeks, I'm still around. And I know everybody is feeling that way, they just don’t want to say it. They don't want to get excited. They're very careful. And my dad is very strict, saying you have to go out every day, get as much oxygen as possible. And do qigong and a lot of meditation. And take the medicine. Then we combined it with another medicine, from another alternative medicine doctor, a Western doctor. Some kind of medicine that's supposed to boost your immune system. I was giving injections to myself. That was a very painful process, because I had to stay in bed for an hour or two just doing the injection to my stomach area. All the medicine, from China, from different places, it cost my parents a lot of money. Every month thousands and thousands of dollars."

Slowly, Helen's body began to heal. For the next six months Helen's cancer would come back a little bit, but then go away. The combination was working. Little by little her strength came back to her, and by the end of one year she was finally regaining her body and spirit.

Healing Light -- Buddhist and Taoist Qigong

As Helen's recovery progressed she practiced Buddhist and Taoist qigong with her father, and also a serious amount of meditation by herself. "Every day," she recalls, "I'd go in the backyard where we had flowers and bamboo. In the morning, facing the sun, with no noise, I'd sit and meditate. I’d combine methods, and shorten them, tailor them to me. I focused sometimes on the goddess Kuan Yin; I'd feel peaceful whenever I'd think of her. So I’d do something that has something to do with her, visualize an image of healing light.

"Another thing that really helped me, I found it myself. I would sit there and imagine I am one with the universe, almost that I’m not there. When you think about that, how immense the universe is – the good, the bad, disease and everything, how everything moves on, recycling, coming in a circle – you're no longer afraid of anything. I'd think, I'm not even sick right now, I'm the universe – feel how powerful the universe is – I'm not there and yet I’m powerful."

"Sometimes feeling pain, the side effects from chemo, I'd feel horrible, that's when I meditated the most. I'd wake up and feel refreshed – feel peaceful and powerful – I was the universe."

As her body healed Helen had the strength to practice more taiji and other internal styles, particularly her favorite Liu He Ba Fa (Water Style). In the quiet bamboo shade of her garden, or the salty air of the Vancouver beach, Helen's focus never wavered. She took in life moment by moment, day by day, becoming one with nature.

"Everyone tried not to talk about it at the beginning," she remembers. "Then three weeks passed, four weeks passed, then I just don’t think about it anymore. One of the things I learned the most is let nature run its own course. Don't worry about the outcome. Worry about the process, and let nature go from there. Always try your best, but don't worry. If you fail and lose, it doesn’t matter. That's part of nature."

"At the beginning when the doctor told me there was nothing they could do, and I only had a couple of weeks, I was in denial. I asked why? I never knew the answer. I couldn't pull myself out. And with this disbelief, I was scared and depressed."

"Then, I found some kind of answer. It depends on how you look at this thing and what you learn from it. Now, I can say I don’t feel bad what I went through. I wouldn’t say I'd want to re-live it, but the experience, and what I learned, it was a very special experience. I don’t feel bad because I learned so much. There were enlightenments that I really, really treasure. I can feel it, I know it."

Many people have trouble with meditation because they don’t know how they are supposed to feel, and have a difficult time disengaging from the mundane thoughts of everyday life. Few people achieve the kind of deep focus that was afforded Helen by being on the edge of the abyss, but the very fact that her meditation was a life or death matter may have produced an exceptional human experience.

"During meditation," she says, "if you could reach a stage where you're in a state of bliss, you don't feel yourself. It’s hard for anybody to reach that kind of state. It is the ultimate state. A few times I reached that. That kind of happiness cannot be described. It’s blissful. But only two or three times I had that kind of experience. I have not felt it recently. Meditation now, I do it in a different way. But then, my mind wasn’t thinking about anything else – just healing yourself everyday. Every second, every minute, healing yourself."

Helen recalls reading the martial art novels her father gave her as a teenager, and says she felt like one of those mystical Taoist hermits. Forced to stay away from people and crowds due to her low immune system, she found her real peace with herself and nature, in the backyard garden, in the park, on the beach. "It was a quiet and peaceful feeling," she says, "which I carry with myself from that time onward."

Helen Liang For All the World to See

After a profound year of meditation, qigong, and internal martial arts Helen’s hair had grown back. Still frail, the experience only seemed to make her beauty all the more ethereal. It was then 1997, and promoter Jeff Bolt was having a groundbreaking event in Orlando, a pay-per-view sanshou fight coupled with a live demonstration performance featuring the top wushu talent of North America. It would be the first broadcast of its kind, and was much anticipated by the entire American martial arts community.

Liang Shou-yu was one of the top stars, and Helen was invited to perform as well. She had not performed in a long time. Her body was still weak, and she was tentative about performing the Water Style form in its entirety. Again, it was her father who pushed her forward, nurturing her, encouraging her. She found the will and the strength and the courage to get on the stage, and by the end of the night she was the star of the show (though she will deny this with her characteristic modesty, I was there helping to coordinate the show, and can vouch for the star quality coupled with a spiritual serenity which made her beloved by both the audience and her peers).

Helen's healing remained on strict schedule. "My mom brought 3 jars of Chinese herbal medicine to Orlando. My hair had grown back a little by then. Orlando was a good experience for me. It was the first time after I got sick that I actually did the whole Liu He Ba Fa. I tried my best to do that. It was very tiring but it was good."

The Orlando event was an important milestone in her recovery, giving a much needed psychological and emotional boost to Helen, for not only was the physical wasting of lymphoma devastating to her body, but the mental trauma was also something difficult to conquer. Returning to the hospital that had both failed and given up on her was a hard road to retrace. "For a long period of time," she says, "I was afraid of going back to the hospital. I had very bad feelings as soon as I’d go in. My dad knows that. He’d say, go in, take it lightly, it doesn’t matter if it's the hospital, park, or here. Make sure you have that peace inside you, no matter where you are."

Her experience with the oncologist, from the beginning, had gone from bad to worse. He was not only final in his pronouncement that Helen's illness was terminal, but he also openly scorned alternative medicine. "He told me nothing could be done. He couldn't accept the fact we did alternative medicine, and called my doctor bad names. After chemo and fever for so many weeks my body was all bones, I couldn't move, I was lying in bed. He saw where I was giving myself injections, and was furious that I’d gone to that other doctor. Later on that oncologist also did terrible things to my family doctor, and tried to bring him to court."

"But my family doctor stayed by my side, and the Chinese doctor too. I refused to go back to the oncologist. Since I left the hospital I’ve had no contact with him. Half a year later he called me once. My impression was that he called to see if I was still around! I heard later he was in disbelief. I never called him back. And refused to go back to the hospital to have him check me."

They say if you can last the first five years after cancer your survival rate is good. Even as the clock ticked away, Helen didn’t count time quantitatively, but qualitatively, living each moment, each day to its fullest. She has never gone back to be checked for the lymphoma. "I don’t think I ever got a confirmation," she says. "If I feel good, I feel good. I don't want to hear them say anything. Let it be. If I feel sick, I'll go to a doctor. I just want to feel normal. Of course this is a very special situation, and rarely anyone has one like it. My type of lymphoma was an extremely aggressive one. A rare type."

A careful regimen of continued meditation, qigong and martial arts practice continues to keep Helen healthy, though her immune system remains delicate and vulnerable. She still gets sick more than most people, and has to be careful about her health. But most of all, she realizes you can't take anything for granted. "My illness was an amazing growing up experience, even though I suffered so much growing up at that age. I had these youthful dreams and then it hits you – all of a sudden the world stops for so many years."

"After all, you come to realize how much people care. I owe my parents so much. They love us so much. I couldn't believe how much energy they put in, and love. Also, I was fortunate to have friends and my parents' friends who were very good to me and there to care for me. So to me, I always treasure friendship, and material stuff is not important. I don’t talk about what they have done, but I always remember. I keep it inside me."
Wushu, Water Style and the Way

Today, seven years later, Helen still practices wushu every day, and teaches at her father's school in Vancouver. "Wushu remains an inseparable part of my life," she says. "I've been doing it since I was a little child. When I needed it so much it helped me. Before I loved it as an art, a very complete art. If you love something you find it always completes your life. When you’re younger external styles seem more exciting, and they're beautiful, they have strength, require stamina, they train your will. I still love that, but now I do more internal martial arts. When I'm in an internal mode, I can find myself more. Whenever I do this form ( Liu He Ba Fa – Six Unities/Eight Principles – also known as Water Boxing or Water Style,) I'm totally with it. It's that meditation kind of feeling. Plus the theories and histories of Water Style, and my evolving understanding of it, has brought me to an even higher level."

Since her public performance of Liu He Ba Fa half a dozen years ago Helen has become one of its best-known masters. When Kungfu magazine first published her article on it in 1997, following her Orlando performance, dozens of letters poured in and the demand eventually produced Helen's instructional Water Boxing video. According to Helen's article, Liu He Ba Fa is believed to date back to the 10th century, created by a Taoist hermit in Huashan to benefit one’s health, strengthen the body, get rid of sickness and attain longevity. It is no wonder that she became a master of it.

"My love is Water Style, I feel it's my true expression," she says. "Naturally, I always like to associate Water Style with that element's characteristics, and I'm very fond of water. People say Helen, you look gentle, but you have strength and power. Later on I came to realize, yes, I am like that – and even if I'm not, I'd like to be. As it says in the Tao Te Ching,

Under heaven nothing is more soft and yielding than water. Yet for attacking the solid and strong, nothing is better; it has no equal. (verse 78)

"I love that passage. Water yields and receives. It has no edge, no shapes, no limits. It can absorb, and erode firmness. It can absorb and be powerful. This idea ties in so much to my life philosophy, and Water Style itself. Water can appear very gentle and beautiful, but so powerful, have so much strength and be so receptive."

"The Tao Te Ching also discusses that to have is to not have, not to have is to have. That kind of paradox – I feel very linked to that. To be simple, really, if you can find the peace. Always bringing your peace with you. Simplicity. Harmony. Everything I talked about, eventually it's going towards harmony. With yourself, people around you, harmony with nature. I strive very hard for that. The ideas are so deep, and I feel I’m at the very beginning here. I feel it will take me a lifetime, to always learn from this.

I liken many things nowadays to Water style. There's speed in the form and slow parts. It's so much like human life. Sometimes you work, work, work and then you need to rest. Conserve your energy. Use it and apply it when it’s the right time. When you don’t need it, don’t use it. That's how I see life as well."

Looking Ahead

Outwardly there remains no sign of the ravaging illness that nearly extinguished Helen Liang's life. Her delicate beauty is deepened by the experience in her eyes, and by a calm that emanates from her person. And yet, between moments of calm and reflection internal energy also fuels a power you can see in her martial arts and her quiet passion for living.

"More and more I try to find something that is beneficial from the simplest thing, an everyday occurrence that's happening around me. I try to take that experience with me, make it something I can learn from. Innately that ability was always there, but I never had a chance to bring it out, to contemplate it fully. My experience with illness really magnified it. Now it's up to me to explore."

Today Helen is a financial consultant at the bank, and continues to teach wushu at her father's school. "I think martial arts would always be an inseparable part of my life," she says. "Of course there's a lot more I need to explore and learn in martial arts. I want my children to learn martial arts. There are a lot of expectations for my family. Family is important to me. Family in harmony is important. I’d like to train, teach, and ever influence my children in the future. And students too. I'd really like to have my skill in martial art, and my experience, influence people in a positive way."

Helen teaches wushu forms and taiji, but not Water Style yet, though her video has introduced the form to many practitioners. But she hopes to use Water Style as an instrument that can contribute to contemporary culture and bring a profound understanding to more people.

"I think that this very ancient thing can link to modern society," she says, "and have a place in the modern world. Water Style combines theory and practice with a person. By understanding, and practicing Water Style, learning how that builds up strength – it may enable people to even reach enlightenment."

And when asked about being a female role model doing this powerful and complex form, Helen smiles her characteristic humble smile, but remarks, "I think a girl doing Water Style can really bring a lot of positive things."

Acceptance

Both the Buddhism and the Taoism that inspire the qigong that helped to vanquish Helen’s illness place an emphasis on balance. Balance between acceptance and empowerment, between human will and the Tao of the universe.

"If I have a piece of advice," she says, "it would be to learn acceptance. If you have an illness, accept the fact that you are sick. I was in denial, but when I made the decision not to go for bone marrow I accepted the reality. Accept it as something normal, not sad or tragic. This is happening to me – what can I do? Accept different things, different people. Tolerance is very important. Become more adaptable. That way you never lose your center.

"Events happen in life – one links to another, fate, chance. Everything happens for a reason. I can't say exactly what the reason is. But because of the things that happened to me I think I’m in a much deeper state now. Otherwise, it would take me another 30 years to realize. So I feel grateful. It puts things in so much more perspective."

TaiJi

The Taiji is the infinite, or the principle that embodies all potential things including all possible time and space. This is seen as the perpetual cycle of yin and yang, as reflected in the taijitu, which is simply referred to as the "yin-yang" in the West. Taiji is itself part of a progression similar to yin and yang. "Existence," the Taiji, arose from "non-existence," or Wuji, the "Great Emptiness."

The Taiji is understood to be the ideal of existence. Yin and yang are used to illustrate the contrasting qualities within reality and experience. For example, light contrasts with darkness, providing them both with context and therefore meaning. Taiji is not perceived as a simple list of all things and potential things, but rather a complex interconnection of all things in all possible contexts. This concept is often used to illustrate the doctrine of cosmological unity. It is also used to explain the creation of the "myriad things" (i.e., everything in existence) through the dialectical process of alternating polarity between yin and yang. Western proponents of Taoism sometimes conflate Taiji and the "myriad things," but Taiji is not only representative of what exists, but also that which has existed, will exist, and could potentially exist.

The concept of Taiji was introduced in the Zhuang Zi, showing its early place in Taoism. It also appears in the Xì Cí (Great Appendix) of the I Ching, a fundamental Taoist classic.

When Confucianism came to the fore again during the Song Dynasty as Neo-Confucianism, it synthesized aspects of Chinese Buddhism and Taoism, and drew them together using threads that traced back to the metaphysical discussions in the Book of Changes.

God, Chan, and the Intuition of Being

In 1938 Jacques Maritain gave a paper at a Carmelite congress on religious psychology entitled, "Natural Mystical Experience and the Void." (1) This is one of the finest Thomistic contributions to a metaphysical understanding of Zen. It is somewhat ironic, therefore, that Maritain did not have Zen directly in mind, but rather the religious experience of India, and found his inspiration in a work by Ambrose Gardeil, The Structure of the Soul and Mystical Experience. Père Gardeil in turn found it a complete surprise that his ideas developed in relationship to Christian mysticism would be applied to the mysticism of India. (2)

Maritain's starting point is the structure of our self-awareness. This self-consciousness is a reflection of the spiritual nature of the soul which is by nature transparent to itself. But since the soul is profoundly united to the body it cannot realize, or actualize, this transparency. We have no inner vision of our spiritual nature. Instead, our self-consciousness is founded upon a reflection on the operations of the soul. We act and reflect on our acts and become aware that we are the ones that are acting, as Sekida noted. In Maritain's language there is not "even a partial actualization of the latent self-intellection of the soul reflecting upon itself." (3) This kind of auto-intellection is hindered by the union with the body, but it can still serve as the "metaphysical condition and the first foundation for the faculty of perfect reflection upon its own acts which the soul enjoys by title of its own spirituality..." (4)

The two basic orientations to reality, what something is and that it is, return here but now from the inside, manifesting themselves in the very nature of our consciousness. Our knowledge is oriented outward to the world of the things around us, and we come to understand both what they are and that they are. But when we reflect on these acts of knowledge and grasp from within ourselves as the subject of these acts, we have an intimate living experience of the fact that we exist and can assert "I am," but we have no direct grasp of our own essence, or of what we are. Our "experiential knowledge" of ourselves is "purely existential and implies no other quid (what) offered to my mind than my own operations grasped reflexively in the emanation of their principles." (5) I may reflect upon the nature of these acts that come forth from me, and by way of concepts attempt to reason about my nature, but I do not have a direct intuitive grasp of my essence.

This state of affairs surrounds self-consciousness with particular paradoxes and possibilities. My self-awareness has a deeply attractive immediacy by which I am myself. I am no longer knowing things from the outside, but I am present to myself within myself without the mediation of concepts. This is a deeper and richer way of knowing, but it is hedged about by all sorts of limits. To lose my consciousness can appear to be a loss of what is most precious in me, and yet, each day, I am subject to this loss many times over, whether it is in my sleep, or by inattention. Instead of my self-awareness being located in the center of my soul so that I would once and for all be and possess myself without fluctuation, it rides on the waves of my activity. I know that I am, but I really do not know who I am in all my amplitude. My consciousness, this very ego I call myself, is not at the center of my being. The very structure of my consciousness makes me realize the radical insufficiency of the possession I have of myself. I am faced with the tantalizing mystery of how to become fully myself. If I pursue myself in the direction of knowledge of things outside myself, and even within, it is their whatness that most confronts me. I become aware of their differentness and separateness from me, and no matter how much I know them and use them as a spring board by which to reflect and grasp my own self, I still remain a

"prisoner of mobility and multiplicity, of the fugitive luxuriance of phenomena and of operations which emerge in us from the darkness of the unconscious… The phenomenal content which occupies the stage and, indeed, is the only set of qualities to be grasped in the existential experience of ourselves." (6)

But there is another direction to explore, and this is the purely existential grasp I have of myself. It could be called the way of existence rather than the way of essence. The starting point is this experience we have of being present to ourselves, but now it is a question of a journey from this ego consciousness to our inner or absolute self. This happens, according to Maritain, by

"reversing the ordinary course of mental activity" so that "the soul empties itself absolutely of every specific operation and of all multiplicity, and knows negatively by means of the void and the annihilation of every act and of every object of thought coming from outside - the soul knows negatively - but nakedly, without veils - that metaphysical marvel, that absolute, that perfection of every act and of every perfection, which is to exist, which is the soul's own substantial existence." (7)

This stopping of all conceptual thought Maritain calls "an act of supreme silence," and the objection that has been posed to many Zen masters comes to his mind. If every image is removed, will not the result be pure and simple nothingness? And he answers in traditional Zen fashion, without realizing it, that this process of purification results "in a negation, a void, and an annihilation which are in no sense nothingness." (8) And these words "signify an act which continues to be intensely vital, the ultimate actuation whereby and wherein the void, abolition, negation, riddance, are consummated and silence is made perfect." (9) Even the principle that the soul knows itself by its own acts is maintained, in this extreme case where "the act in question is the act of abolition of all acts." (10)

The emptiness that results from the abolition of all essence becomes the formal means by which the substantial existence of the soul is known, but "negatively - transferred into the status of an object, not indeed of an object expressible in a concept and appearing before the mind, but an object entirely inexpressible and engulfed in the night wherein the mind engulfs itself in order to join it." (11)

The emptiness that is the elimination of essences or concepts becomes itself the means of knowing, not, of course, by concepts, but by connaturality. In this kind of connaturality, the void itself connatures the knower with that absolute which is the existence of the soul. And Maritain, paraphrasing the famous passage of John of St. Thomas on supernatural mysticism, amor transit in conditionem objecti, says, "vacuitas, abolitio, denudatio transit in conditionem objecti." (12) Emptiness is the proper and formal means of knowing the "to exist" of subjectivity.

But since this very experience requires as its indispensable prerequisite the elimination of any essence which would limit and contract the existence of the reality perceived, then this experience of the existence of the soul is at the same time an experience of the metaphysical amplitude of existence and God as the source of existence. The soul is experienced as an absolute which cannot be conceptually distinguished from that absolute given in the intuition of being and the absolute who is the author of being.

God, in this experience, is not the object of possession or union through love as He is in Christian mysticism, but He is attained through the negative experience of the existence of the soul so that it is legitimate to speak of a "contact with the absolute" and an "experience of God in quantum, infundens et profundens esse in rebus, indirectly attained in the mirror of the substantial esse of the soul," (as far as he is pouring and infusing existence in things). (13) But what is mirrored cannot be distinguished from the mirror. What springs up is a powerful metaphysical mysticism attained at the price of negating all essences. (See Appendix II).

But this essence-less-ness is a consequence, from the Thomistic point of view, not of the actual constitution of things but of the means by which they are known. It is the price that must be paid to arrive at this experience, but the consequence on the speculative level is the risk that the formal means of knowing will so color what is known that the absolute that is the existence of the soul will be identified with the absolute seen in the intuition of being and with the absolute which is God. Thus, a Zen master can say when one of his students achieved enlightenment, "Now you understand that seeing mu is seeing God." (14) Or Suzuki, in one of his later essays, could describe the discovery of the self in its "native nakedness" or "isness" by saying, "It yields a kind of metaphysical formula: self = zero and zero = Infinity; hence self = Infinity." (15)

CHAN LANGUAGE

Yet we should not make this lack of distinctions into a rigid principle. The Zen master is well aware of the differences of things as reflected in this traditional Zen saying:

"In the beginning mountains were mountains and rivers were rivers. Then all were one, and finally, mountains were really mountains and rivers were really rivers." (16)

This depicts, first of all, the state of unenlightenment, then the initial stage of enlightenment, and finally, a fuller development of that enlightenment. In some sense, distinctions do exist and it might be useful to comment upon this passage from the point of view of Thomistic metaphysics.

In the first stage, or what the metaphysician might call the stage of common sense, existing things are seen chiefly from the point of view of essence. What a thing is fills our whole vision and prevents us from seeing the rest of reality. We equate our idea of the thing with the thing itself. We look at the relationship between essence and existence and see only essence. We are looking from the circumference of the circle, and this circumference blocks our view of the center. Thus, mountains are mountains, rivers are rivers, flowers are flowers, all things are themselves and distinct from each other, and this sense of distinction fails to see the deeper ground of unity that exists between them all. Such essentialistic thinking is at the root of the opposition between myself and others. In actual fact, there is no me, no ego, that is purely essence without relationship to existence. In this sense the ego is a product of ignorance and a hindrance to genuine enlightenment. Zen language is moving on the practical and existential plane and not on the ontological one. Thus, when the ego stands in opposition to others in such a way as to deny the underlying unity of all things, it is a false ego. There is no ego in this sense.

In the second phase, where enlightenment has been attained in a certain degree, all appear as one. The unity of all things in existence has been revealed, the Thomist metaphysician might say. The view of existing things has been reversed. Now it is existence that is seen first and which blinds us with its splendor to the fact of essence. We see unity without diversity, where before we saw diversity without unity. Such a view is an important advance over the first, for it does not lead to opposition and strife, but it is still incomplete. Things are not simply existence without relationship to essence. Existence on the level of existing things is always the existence of something, and while the act of existence attains a relative unity in the mind, it is an analogical unity. Each existing thing has its own act of existence.

Balance is finally achieved in the third phase of full enlightenment. Mountains are again mountains and rivers are rivers, but there has been no return to the common sense notion of being. The everyday world is, indeed, the world of enlightenment, but the enlightened man does not see it the same way as the unenlightened man. Now existing things reveal themselves as transfigured by the mystery of existence. There is nothing in them that does not exist. Every fiber or fragment of everything exists. Essence is seen in its ultimate significance, which is its relationship to the act of existence, and existence is seen in those things which exist. In this sense there is no existence outside of the manifestation of existing things, and there are no essences outside of existence itself. In this sense form is emptiness, that is, essence is totally related to existence and emptiness is form.

Yet, the very real similarities between enlightenment and the intuition of being should not obscure the significant differences. The first and chief difference is the relationship between the insight and its elaboration in concepts or ideas. If both intuitions transcend the level of concepts, their transcendence is not the same kind. The intuition of being is radically open to concepts. It itself is an eidetic intuition. It is in continuity with the world of concepts even when it transcends them by pushing them to their limit.

With Zen the situation is very different precisely because the means to the intuition is the elimination of all conceptual thought. Zen looks at conceptual thought as a tyranny that it must overthrow. It avoids it, not simply because it has been overemphasized, but because the very nature of enlightenment demands that it be avoided. It asserts the absolute primacy of intuition not to restore the balance between intuition and concepts, but because the intuition it is striving for is antithetical to conceptual thinking.

This lack of conceptual continuity can be seen in the language of the Zen masters. They did not speak in cryptic sayings or koans out of a love of mystification, but firmly grounded in enlightenment they uttered or acted out some sign of this mystery, but always reluctantly, for they knew that words are a temptation to the beginner who will attempt to attain the insight through the concepts or by repeating the gesture. The words of the Zen master are an enigma and even a scandal to the beginner who is expecting him to reveal something and is constantly searching for their hidden meaning or someone who can interpret them and unveil their contents. These beginners miss the point, for they are looking for continuity between the concept and the insight. This is the pattern of knowing that they have grown up with and which appears much preferable to the work of stopping all conceptual thought, if, indeed, the latter even presents itself as a practical alternative. Only as the mind matures by means of Zen training does it become probable that the words and gestures that have originated from an experience of enlightenment in the master can trigger a stopping and a reversal of the mind in the student by which enlightenment can be attained.

Zen language, then, is highly distinctive. It communicates, but not conceptually. It is enigmatic without being a secret code. Even if we amass collections of koans, we cannot treat them as a cumulative collection of clues. There is no gradual dawning of understanding that results from our deeper and deeper penetration into the meaning of these Zen sayings. They are one-way realities: nonsense from the point of view of the discriminating ego but genuine expressions of enlightenment when seen from the point of view of enlightenment itself. By virtue of this unidirectionality they disconcert the mind's attempt to understand them, and they force it to exhaust its conceptual bag of tricks until finally, in the best of cases, conceptual thought dies out and enlightenment is born. The mind is forced out of its normal channels, and once satori is reached, then the koans yield their meaning. Thus, books that purport to give the answers to koans are not destructive because they can actually give away a genuine meaning, but they can be harmful inasmuch as they clutter up the mind with conceptual answers to something that cannot be answered conceptually.

Notes
1. It appeared in Maritain's Quatre Essais and in English translation in Understanding Mysticism, ed. R. Woods.
2. Ibid., p. 487.
3. Ibid., p. 485.
4. Ibid., p. 486.
5. Ibid.
6. Ibid., p. 487.
7. Ibid., p. 489.
8. Ibid.
9. Ibid.
10. Ibid., p. 490.
11. Ibid.
12. Ibid.
13. Ibid., p. 499, note 18.
14. The Three Pillars of Zen, p. 254.
15. Self the Unattainable, p. 16.
16. See the commentary in Abe's Zen and Western Thought and T. Izutsu's in Toward a Philosophy of Zen Buddhism, p. 28.

Prepare for the Rat!

I apologize that I will be unable to update daily over the next few weeks, as preparation for the Spring Festival is taking up much of my time. I will still try to update every other day, when possible. In the meantime, be sure to take the poll if you have not yet and check out all the sites on my blogroll to the right. And if you like, leave some comments below too.

A Vision of The Divine Goddess, Guan Yin

Legends of the Mahayana School of Buddhism recount that Kwan Yin was 'born' from a ray of white light which The Amitabha Buddha emitted from his right eye while he was deep in spiritual ecstasy.

Kwan Yin is regarded as an emanation of The Amitabha Buddha and as anembodiment of compassion, the quality which Amitabha himself embodies in the highest sense.

Many figures of Kwan Yin can be identified by the presence of a small image of Amitabha in her crown. It is believed that as the merciful Kwan Yin expresses Amitabha's compassion in a more direct and personal way and prayers to her are answered more quickly.

The paintings of Kwan Yin depict her in many forms, each one revealing a unique aspect of her merciful presence. As the sublime Goddess of Mercy whose beauty, grace and compassion have come to represent the ideal of womanhood in the East, she is frequently portrayed as a slender woman in flowing white robes who carries in her left hand a white lotus, symbol of purity. Ornaments may adorn her form, symbolizing her attainment as a bodhisattva, or she may be pictured without them as a sign of her great virtue.

Kwan Yin's presence is widespread through her images as the "bestower of children" which are found in homes and temples. She is one of the most beautiful of all the goddesses. She is often depicted seated upon a lotus or carrying a lotus.

Kwan Yin is also known as patron bodhisattva of P'u-t'o Shan, mistress of the Southern Sea and patroness of fishermen. As such she is shown crossing the sea seated or standing on a lotus or with her feet on the head of a dragon.

Like Avalokitesvara she is also depicted with a thousand arms and varying numbers of eyes, hands and heads, sometimes with an eye in the palm of each hand, and is commonly called "the thousand-arms, thousand-eyes" bodhisattva. In this form she represents the omnipresent mother, looking in all directions simultaneously, sensing the afflictions of humanity and extending her many arms to alleviate them with infinite expressions of her mercy.

Symbols characteristically associated with Kwan Yin are a willow branch, with which she sprinkles the divine nectar of life; a precious vase symbolizing the nectar of compassion and wisdom, the hallmarks of a bodhisattva; a dove, representing fecundity; a book or scroll of prayers which she holds in her hand, representing the dharma (teaching) of the Buddha or the sutra (Buddhist text) which Miao Shan is said to have constantly recited; and a rosary adorning her neck with which she calls upon the Buddhas for succor.

Today Kuan Yin is worshipped by Taoists as well as Mahayana Buddhists--especially in Taiwan, Japan, Korea and once again in her homeland of China, where the practice of Buddhism had been suppressed by the Communists during the Cultural Revolution (1966-69). She is the protectress of women, sailors, merchants, craftsmen, and those under criminal prosecution, and is invoked particularly by those desiring progeny. Beloved as a mother figure and divine mediatrix who is very close to the daily affairs of her devotees, Kwan Yin's role as Buddhist Madonna has been compared to that of Mary the mother of Jesus in the West.

The Goddess Kwan has great healing powers. Many believe that even the simple recitation of her name will bring her instantly to the scene. One of the most famous texts associated with the bodhisattva, the ancient Lotus Sutra whose twenty-fifth chapter, dedicated to Kwan Yin, is known as the "Kwan Yin sutra," describes thirteen cases of impending disaster--from shipwreck to fire, imprisonment, robbers, demons, fatal poisons and karmic woes--in which the devotee will be rescued if his thoughts dwell on the power of Kwan Yin. The text is recited many times daily by those who wish to receive the benefits it promises.

Devotees also invoke the bodhisattva's power and merciful intercession with the mantra OM MANI PADME HUM-- "Hail to the jewel in the lotus!" or, as it has also been interpreted, "Hail to Avalokitesvara, who is the jewel in the heart of the lotus of the devotee's heart!"

Throughout Tibet and Ladakh, Buddhists have inscribed OM MANI PADME HUM on flat prayer stones called "mani-stones" as votive offerings in praise of Avalokitesvara. Thousands of these stones have been used to build mani-walls that line the roads entering villages and monasteries.

It is believed that Kwan Yin frequently appears in the sky or on the waves to save those who call upon her when in danger. Personal stories can be heard in Taiwan, for instance, from those who report that during World War II when the United States bombed the Japanese-occupied Taiwan, she appeared in the sky as a young maiden, catching the bombs and covering them with her white garments so they would not explode.

Thus altars dedicated to the Goddess of Mercy are found everywhere--shops, restaurants, even taxicab dashboards. In the home she is worshipped with the traditional "pai pai," a prayer ritual using incense, as well as the use of prayer charts--sheets of paper designed with pictures of Kuan Yin, lotus flowers, or pagodas and outlined with hundreds of little circles.

With each set of prayers recited or sutras read in a novena for a relative, friend, or oneself, another circle is filled in. This chart has been described as a "Ship of Salvation" whereby departed souls are saved from the dangers of hell and the faithful safely conveyed to Amitabha's heaven.

She had numerous embodiments prior to her ascension thousands of years ago and has taken the vow of the bodhisattva to teach the unascended children of God how to balance their karma and fulfill their divine plan by loving service to life and the application of the violet flame through the science of the spoken Word.

22 Identical Teachings of the Buddha and the Christ

(1) "Do to others as you would have them do to you." (Luke 6:31)
"Consider others as yourself." (Dhammapada 10:1)

(2) "If anyone strikes you on the cheek, offer the other also." (Luke 6:29)
"If anyone should give you a blow with his hand, with a stick, or with a knife, you should abandon any desires and utter no evil words." (Majjhima Nikaya 21:6)

(3) "Love your enemies, do good to those who hate you, bless those who curse you, pray for those who abuse you. From anyone who takes away your coat do not withhold even your shirt. Give to everyone who begs from you; and if anyone takes away your goods, do not ask for them back." (Luke 6:27-30)
"Hatreds do not ever cease in this world by hating, but by love: this is an eternal truth. Overcome anger by love, overcome evil by good ... Overcome the miser by giving, overcome the liar by truth." (Dhammapada 1.5 & 17.3)

(4) "Truly I tell you, just as you did not do it to one of the least of these, you did not do it to me." (Matt. 25:45)
"If you do not tend one another, then who is there to tend to you? Whoever would tend me, he should tend the sick." (Vinaya, Mahavagga 8:26:3)

(5) "Put your sword back into its place; for all those who take the sword shall perish by the sword." (Matt. 26:52)
"Abandoning the taking of life, the ascetic Gautama dwells refraining from taking life, without stick or sword." (Digha Nikaya 1:1:8)

(6) "This is my commandment, that you love one another as I have loved you. No one has greater love than this, to lay down one's life for one's friend." (John 15:12-13)
"Just as a mother would protect her only child at the risk of her own life, even so, cultivate a boundless heart towards all beings. Let your thoughts of boundless love pervade the whole world." (Sutta Nipata 149-150)

(7) "Grace and truth came through Jesus Christ." (John 1:17)
"The body of the Buddha is born of love, patience, gentleness and truth." (Vimalakirtinirdesha Sutra 2)

(8) "The kingdom of heaven is like a mustard seed that someone took and sowed in his field; it is the smallest of all the seeds, but when it has grown it is the greatest of shrubs and becomes a tree, so that the birds of the air come and make nests in its branches." (Matt. 13:31-32)
"Do not underestimate good, thinking it will not affect you. Dripping water can fill a pitcher, drop by drop; one who is wise is filled with good, even if one accumulates it little by little." (Dhammapada 9:7)

(9) "Why do you see the speck in your neighbor's eye, but do not notice the log in your own eye? Or how can you say to your neighbor, "Friend, let me take the speck out of your eye," when you yourself do not see the log in your own eye? You hypocrite, first take the log out of your own eye, and then you will see clearly to take the speck out of your neighbor's eye." (Luke 6:41-42)
"The faults of others are easier to see than one's own; the faults of others are easily seen, for they are sifted like chaff, but one's own faults are hard to see. This is like the cheat who hides his dice and shows the dice of his opponent, calling attention to the other's shortcomings, continually thinking of accusing him." (Undanavarga 27:1)

(10) "They said to him, "Teacher, this woman was caught in the very act of committing adultery. Now in the law Moses commanded us to stone such women. Now what do you say?" He said to them, "Let anyone among you who is without sin be the first to throw a stone at her." (John 8:4-7)
"Do not look at the faults of others, or what others have done or not done; observe what you yourself have done and have not done." (Dhammapada 4:7)

(11) "Your eye is the lamp of your body. If your eye is healthy your whole body is full of light; but if it is not healthy, your body is full of darkness. Therefore consider whether the light in you is full of darkness. If then your whole body is full of light, with no part of it in darkness, it will be as full of light as when a lamp gives you light with its rays." (Luke 11: 34-36)
"As a man with eyes who carries a lamp sees all objects, so too with one who has heard the Moral Law. He will become perfectly wise." (Udanavarga 22:4)

(12) "Your father in heaven makes his sun rise on the evil and on the good, and sends rain on the righteous and on the unrighteous." (Matt. 5:45)
"That great cloud rains down on all whether their nature is superior or inferior. The light of the sun and the moon illuminates the whole world, both him who does well and him who does ill, both him who stands high and him who stands low." (Sadharmapundarika Sutra 5)

(13) "Blessed are you who are poor, for yours is the kingdom of God." (Luke 6:20)
"Let us live most happily, possessing nothing; let us feed on joy, like the radiant gods." (Dhammapada 15:4)

(14) "If you wish to be perfect, go sell your possessions, and give the money to the poor, and you will have treasure in heaven." (Matt.19:21)
"The avaricious do not go to heaven, the foolish do not extol charity. The wise one, however, rejoicing in charity, becomes thereby happy in the beyond." (Dhammapada 13:11)

(15) "He looked up and saw rich people putting their gifts into the treasury; he saw a poor widow put in two small copper coins. He said, "Truly I tell you, this poor widow has put in more than all of them; for all of them have contributed out of their abundance, but she out of her poverty has put in all she had to live on." (Luke 21:1-4)
"Giving is the noble expression of the benevolence of the mighty. Even dust, given in childish innocence, is a good gift. No gift that is given in good faith to a worthy recipient can be called small; it effects us so great." (Jatakamala 3:23)

(16) "Everyone who lives and believes in me will never die." (John 11:26)
"Those who have sufficient faith in me, sufficient love for me, are all headed for heaven or beyond." (Majjhima Nikaya 22:47)

(17) "Those who want to save their life will lose it, and those who lose their life for my sake will save it." (Mark 8:35)
"With the relinquishing of all thought and egotism, the enlightened one is liberated through not clinging." (Majjhima Nikaya 72:15)

(18) "Foxes have holes, and the birds of the air have nests; but the Son of Man has nowhere to lay his head." (Matt. 8:20)
"The thoughtful exert themselves; they do not delight in an abode. Like swans who have left their lake they leave their house and home." (Majjhima Nikaya)

(19) "When the devil had finished every test, he departed from him until an opportune time." (Luke 4:13)
"During the six years that the Bodhisattva practiced austerities, the demon followed behind him step by step, seeking an opportunity to harm him. But he found no opportunity whatsoever and went away discouraged and discontent." (Lalitavistara Sutra 18)

(20) "Blessed are the pure in heart, for they will see God." (Matt. 5:8)
"Anyone who enters into meditation on compassion can see Brahma with his own eyes, talk to him face to face and consult with him." (Digha Nikaya 19:43)

(21) "Although the doors were shut, Jesus came and stood among them." (John 20:26)
"He goes unhindered through a wall." (Anugattara Nikaya 3:60)

(22) "And after six days Jesus takes with him Peter, and James, and John, and leads them up into a high mountain apart by themselves: and he was transfigured before them. And his raiment became shining, exceeding white as snow; so as no fuller on earth can white them." (Mark 9:2-3)
"Ananda, having arranged one set of golden robes on the body of the Lord, observed that against the Lord's body it appeared dulled. And he said, "It is wonderful, Lord, it is marvelous how clear and bright the Lord's skin appears! It looks even brighter than the golden robes in which it is clothed." (Digha Nikaya 16:4:37)

Over 200? 谢谢!

According to the poll on the right, this blog now has over 200 readers! Slightly over half are Buddhists, almost 40% are Christian, and almost 10% are Taoists. Of course, "Other" is actually the 3rd most popular choice, but I wonder if the "others" out there could tell me what type of "other" that they are?

Thank you to all of my regular readers. I know asking people to comment on what they like and dislike about this blog does not work. I asked twice before and got only a couple responses. So I will not ask that this time and simply will say Thank You! Everyone who has ever commented or linked to here has been added to the blogroll on the right.

☯ Taijitu: Yin and Yang ☯

In Chinese philosophy the yin and yang (simplified Chinese: 阴阳; traditional Chinese: 陰陽; pinyin: yīnyáng) are generalized descriptions of the antitheses or mutual correlations in human perceptions of phenomena in the natural world, combining to create a unity of opposites in the theory of the Taiji. The term liang yi (simplified Chinese: 两仪; traditional Chinese: 兩儀; pinyin: liǎngyí, lit. "two mutually correlated opposites") has a similar meaning.

The dual concepts of yin and yang (or heaven and earth) describe two primal opposing but complementary principles or cosmic forces said to be found in all non-static objects and processes in the universe. This seemingly paradoxical concept is the cornerstone of most branches of Chinese philosophy, as well as traditional Chinese medicine.

Yin (陰 or 阴 "shady place, north slope, south bank (river); cloudy, overcast"; Japanese: in or on; Korean: 음, Vietnamese: âm) is the dark element: it is passive, dark, feminine, negative, downward-seeking, consuming and corresponds to the night.

Yang (陽 or 阳 "sunny place, south slope, north bank (river), sunshine"; Japanese: yō; Korean: 양, Vietnamese: dương) is the bright element: it is active, light, masculine, positive, upward-seeking, producing and corresponds to the daytime.

Yin is often symbolized by water and earth, while yang is symbolized by fire and air.

Yin (dark) and yang (light) are descriptions of complementary opposites as well as absolutes. Any yin/yang duality can be viewed from another perspective. All forces in nature can be seen as existing in yin or yang states, and two produce constant movement/force of the universe.

As the universe is relative and interdependent, the determination of which thing is yin or yang depends on what is its complementary opposite - that is, the frame of reference. This yin-and-yang relativity concept forms the core in understanding of many Chinese philosophic classics as embodied in the Tao Te Ching.

The Taijitu (pictured at top of page; traditional Chinese: 太極圖; simplified Chinese: 太极图; pinyin: Taìjí tú; Wade-Giles: T'ai4 chi2 t'u2; literally "diagram of the supreme ultimate"), often referred to as yin-yang in English, is a well known symbol deriving from Chinese culture which represents the principle of yin and yang from Taoist and Neo-Confucian philosophy. The term Taijitu itself refers to any of several schematic diagrams representing these principles.

The taijitu represents an ancient Chinese understanding of how things work. The outer circle represents the entirety of perceivable phenomena, while the black and white shapes within the circle represent the interaction of two principles or aspects, called "yin" (black) and "yang" (white), which cause the phenomena to appear in their peculiar way. Each of them contains an element or seed of the other, and they cannot exist without each other. There are other ways that Chinese schools of thought graphically represented the principles of yin and yang, an older example being the solid and divided lines of the I Ching.

Wu Jianquan, a famous Chinese martial arts teacher, described the name of the martial art Taijiquan this way at the beginning of the 20th century:

"Various people have offered different explanations for the name Taijiquan. Some have said: 'In terms of self-cultivation, one must train from a state of movement towards a state of stillness. Taiji comes about through the balance of yin and yang. In terms of the art of attack and defense then, in the context of the changes of full and empty, one is constantly internally latent, not outwardly expressive, as if the yin and yang of Taiji have not yet divided apart.' Others say: 'Every movement of Taijiquan is based on circles, just like the shape of a Taijitu. Therefore, it is called Taijiquan.' Both explanations are quite reasonable, especially the second, which is more complete."

The image above showing yin-yang is a circle (presenting taijitu- the initial unity of universe) with two parts: white part presents yang and black part presents yin. Two parts pass through each other on a line because yin and yang are never separated, such as if people do not know what bad is, they do not know what good is. There is a small black round in white part and so is in black part; that presents the philosophy: "yang in yin, yin in yang" (for example: though water is fluid-yin, water is also hydraulic-yang); if yin is not in yang, yang is not yang and so (everything have two aspects). Neither white part nor black part is a semicircle because there is never absolute balance between yin and yang. There is always having a stronger aspect and a weaker aspect; that presents the philosophy: "Whenever yin is stronger, yang is weaker and so". If the circle is divided into two by any diameter, black or white colour never cover all of the area of a segment because universe is never in all yin or all yang.

On the opinion of stay, two parts are put together in a circle; that is unity. On the other hand, on the opinion of motion, two parts are contradict aspects, they fight and interchange each other; whenever the trend of yin increases, the trend of yang decreases and so. At the specific time when yin is extreme, yin starts to grow into yang and so (for example: day after night, night after day). The unity maintains universe and the contradiction is the stimulation of the universe's development.

The process of universe's development is started up by wuji. Then wuji led to taiji or yin and yang (also liang yi "two symbols"). Two symbols became four symbols. Subsequently, four symbols became bagua. And at last, bagua describes the myriad things of creation.

Christianity in the Crucible of Chan Conversations

The fact of having Christians as students and seeing them advance in their Zen practice could not help but raise questions in Koun Yamada’s mind. For a long time he restrained himself from asking these questions lest he confuse his Christian students, but finally, he addressed them to two of his advanced students, Hugo Lassalle and Ruben Habito: "First, why did you not just continue meditational practices following your own Christian tradition instead of coming to Zen? Was there something lacking in Christianity that led you to seek something in Zen, or did you have some dissatisfaction with Christianity that led you to Zen? And also a question to Christians who have had the Zen experience through the mu koan: How would you express this experience in your own Christian terms? And a third question: For those who have had the mu experience there is given the koan about the origin (kongen) of mu. How would you answer a question about the origin of God?"

Fr. Lassalle answered the first question by explaining that his initial motivation to practice Zen was his desire to enter more deeply into the inner life of the Japanese people, and Zen had enabled him to understand the Christian mystical tradition better.

Ruben Habito’s answers went deeper. The practice of Zen had been preceded by his struggle to find meaning in life, and to face the question of God, both before and after he had joined the Jesuits. This search reached a certain culmination in his first breakthrough in Zen:

"… For me the mu-experience, triggered by my working on the koan of Joshu’s dog, literally shook me inside out, and kept me laughing and even crying for about three days, as I remember. People around me must have thought I was going crazy then. I can only say at this point that the experience enabled me to see the truth, the forcefulness, the real reality of what Paul wanted to express in Galatians 2:20 - "It is no longer I that live, but Christ in me!"

"So to answer Yamada Roshi’s first and second question in the same breath, I came to Zen in the search for my True Self, and the mu-experience was its discovery, the discovery of my total nothingness. And yet this total nothingness is also total everythingness, the discovery of an exhilarating world of the fullness of grace surpassing all expectations, active even before the beginning of the world (Eph. 1:1-11), and one can only exclaim again with Paul, Who can fathom "the breadth and length and height and depth," and Who can "know the love of Christ which surpasses all knowledge"? (Eph. 3:18-19).

"And if you ask the origin of all this, I can only admit I don’t know. One can only humbly receive, from moment to moment, the fullness of grace."

It is interesting to note how seamless this integration of Zen is with his prior Christian training, as shown by the natural way in which he has recourse to the Scriptures and the use of the term grace. In the face of such dynamic experience, our question of the relationship between contemplation and enlightenment, still less metaphysics, could easily appear to be the ingrained theological resistance of a Christian mentality dominated by concepts and bereft of experience. Yet, is it possible to see in this passage hints of a unification of Zen and Christianity in which the spiritual practices of both would be identified? Or is there something more nuanced or subtle going on here where it would be possible to say that contemplation and enlightenment are not different, but they are not the same – not one, not two?

In a videotaped interview he describes how he became the first Catholic religious in the circle of Yamada’s students to attain kensho or enlightenment in November, 1971. Reflecting on whether the Christian experience of contemplation is the same as enlightenment, he tells us that in reading the profound insights to be found in the letters of St. Paul, he found that they "pointed to the same dimension

that I somehow felt overwhelmed by in that Zen experience, and so now, reading those passages, became triggers for me to reenter that same experience, and so I boldly say same because for me it is the same."

It is important to note that the answer that Ruben Habito gives to Yamada, and probably Yamada’s questions, themselves, are cast in the pattern of the classical Zen dialogue. In fact, Habito’s answer to Yamada was in the form of the demonstration of a koan, and that was probably what Yamada was asking for. But is it possible to ask these questions from another perspective from the point of view of our pilgrimage through East-West dialogue in order to concretely situate our question?

Why did Christians come to Zen? Did they feel a dissatisfaction with Christianity? It seems that this was often the case, and why wouldn’t it be? The Christian mystical tradition had entered into a long, dark night at the end of the 17th century that it was just beginning to recover from at the time of the Second Vatican Council. And the Christian metaphysical tradition of St. Thomas had been handed on in a rather lifeless, conceptual way rather than in the form of an initiation into the mystery of being. As a consequence even candidates for the priesthood were poorly instructed in it. Instead, they were often force-fed an over-conceptualized philosophy and theology – unfortunately, in the name of Thomas Aquinas – that did little to nourish them philosophically and theologically, and still less spiritually. Further, at a certain critical juncture of the life of prayer, which could be called the dark night of the senses in the wide sense of the term, ordinary discursive forms of prayer begin to fail. This failure makes itself felt in the diminishment of consolation and gratification that prayer used to bring, and practical help in resolving this crisis was lacking. Zen, therefore, represented, and still represents, an attractive choice in the face of these deficiencies in Christian philosophy, theology and spirituality. Zen aims at direct experience, and so is a powerful antidote to overconceptualization.

How can we express the new experience in Christian terms? We can read this question in different ways. One would be to answer it as a koan, as Habito did, and that is probably the way it was meant by Yamada. But there is another way to look at it. We could rephrase the question in terms of what the Christian mystical and metaphysical tradition had to say about the mu experience, or the nature of enlightenment. Unfortunately, it appears that many Christian Zen students, to one degree or another, are unacquainted with or estranged from these mystical and metaphysical traditions. Their overconceptual presentation has caused them to be held in contempt. Christian Zen students, having tasted the new freedom of Zen experience, can hardly be expected to look kindly on these old conceptual prisons, but the result is that they are unable to answer Yamada’s questions in a distinctively Christian way. They are unable to believe that Christian mysticism and metaphysics have the resources to tackle such a difficult issue. Thus, they can tacitly act as if Zen meditation and the Christian life of prayer are the same thing, or they can keep them in separate compartments, but rarely can they find the enthusiasm for dealing with Yamada’s questions from a distinctively Christian point of view.

It is much the same case with Yamada’s third question about the origin of God. A question about the origin and nature of God is central to any Buddhist-Christian dialogue. Later in this same interview Yamada remarks: "Recently one of my disciples, who is a Benedictine nun, presented to me a book written by a German Catholic priest, subtitled Foundations for Buddhist-Christian Dialogue. It was written by Hans Waldenfels, S.J., and the title of the English translation is Absolute Nothingness. I was very much impressed with the contents of the book, and it led me to see that what you Christians call God may not be too different from what we are concerned with in Zen. Just the other day I had a meeting with four Catholic priests who have finished the Zen koan training, and during our free discussion I asked them about this, and all of them seemed to agree on the common ground of what you call God and what we are concerned with in Zen. Fr. Lassalle came later, and he also shared the same view."

In a very profound way it is possible to say that Zen is about God, or more precisely, it is, indeed, a mystical experience of God, and this is saying a great deal, for then it becomes clear why Christians can and have embraced Zen so deeply. It is rather ironic and sad that Christians who thirst for God fail to find God amidst constant talk about God in Christian theology, and constant prayer exercises and go on to find a certain assuagement of that thirst for God in Zen Buddhism which refuses to talk about God. But as important as it is to recognize that Zen enlightenment can be an experience of God from a Christian perspective, this does not lead to the conclusion that Zen meditation is the same as the Christian life of prayer, or that their goals are the same. The same God can be approached from different directions and under different formalities.

Yu GuanYin

Like America 150 years ago, today’s China has sophisticated modern cities in the east and an untamed wild west where everyone seems to have a gun. Goddess of Mercy bounces between these two worlds, taking its indefatigable heroine An Xin (Vicky Zhao) on a journey with enough action, drama, and leading men to fill three movies. It’s an operatic eyeful that has won much acclaim in Asia but appears on these shores without a theatrical release. DVD may have to suffice.

We first meet An Xin mopping up in the Beijing tae kwan do school where she works. Described as a “bumpkin” by the city slickers who practice there, she catches the eye of man-about-town Yang Rui (Yulong Liu), a young playboy who has a brand new Jeep, a Vuitton-obsessed girlfriend, and lots of cologne in his bathroom. It’s love at first sight for Yang Rui, but An Xin brushes him aside saying she’s not interested and hinting that she has many dark secrets. When he persists she even kicks him in the face, but she can’t shake him, and soon she’s succumbing to his charms as he swears off his gallivanting lifestyle.

The jealous girlfriend, however, has hired a detective to track Yang Rui, and when his relationship with An Xin is revealed, she trumps up a corporate extortion charge against him, and he’s off to jail in an instant.

To find out about An Xin’s secret past, a flashback transports us out west to a provincial town where we discover that she’s actually a cop involved in a Colombian jungle-style war again ultraviolent drug traffickers who challenge the police in frequent shootouts. She’s also engaged to newspaper reporter Tienjun (Jianbin Chen), who hates her career choice but can’t wait to marry her anyway.

But then comes leading man number three, Mao Jie (Nicholas Tse), who also falls in love with An Xin and sweeps her off her feet while Tienjun is out of town. He doesn’t know she’s a cop, and she doesn’t know his family is in charge of the local drug trade, but it all becomes clear when the two meet each other on a ferryboat during an undercover sting. Oops. He’s arrested, his family is killed, and revenge is on the agenda. But she’s pregnant. With his baby. Oops again.

From this point the film rushes back toward the present with enough death, destruction, and tears to fill the stage of the Metropolitan Opera for days. No one is spared, and it becomes kind of funny that An Xin’s boyfriends have told her she looks like the goddess of mercy figure she wears on a necklace. She’s more like the goddess of incredibly bad luck, at least for the men who fall in love with her.

At the center of this wild storm is Vicky Zhao, who American audiences have seen in Shaolin Soccer and 2003’s high-tech girl-on-girl chopsocky fest So Close. She appears in virtually every scene and holds the film together. She’s one part Michelle Rodriguez (the girl can kick!) and one part Julianne Moore. In fact, it would be hard to pick any one American actress who could play the part were the film ever remade here.

Overplotted though it may be, Goddess of Mercy (Yu GuanYin) pulls you in and sweeps you along, especially when An Xin’s impossibly cute toddler son is put in danger (and by his own father, no less). The film ends with images of Buddhist pilgrims chanting as they hike up the side of a Tibetan mountain. You kind of want to go along.

The story of An Xin's jade Guan Yin pendant and Guan Yin are a strong part of this movie. It will make you want to get such a pendant for yourself.

The Reverend Jesuit Father Joachim Bouvet and the Figurists

The Reverend Father Joachim Bouvet (July 18, 1656 - October 9, 1730) (Chinese:白晋 or 白進, courtesy name:明远) was a French Jesuit and Figurist. As a sinologist, Bouvet focused his research on I Ching (a.k.a. Yìjìng, Yiqing, I-Tsing or YiChing). Trying to find a connection between the Chinese classics and the Bible, Bouvet came to the conclusion that the Chinese had known the whole truth of the Christian tradition in ancient times and that this truth could be found in the Chinese classics.

The origin of the Jesuit Figurists in China can be traced to the ideas of the Jesuit Matteo Ricci. He had seen in ancient Chinese religion evidence of God, which convinced him that there was a connection with the Judeo-Christian tradition. The Jesuits wanted to integrate the Confucian tradition instead of rejecting Chinese traditional elements such as the Rites, which can be seen as accommodation to the Chinese tradition. They hoped to convince the Chinese literati of their theories and consequently convert them to the Christian faith.

The Figurists often disagreed with each other but there were three basic tenets on which they could agree:

1. The Issue of Chronology - The first aspect that all Figurists agreed upon was the belief that a certain period in the Chinese history does not belong to the Chinese only but to all of mankind. The Jesuits furthermore believed that Chinese history dated back before the Flood and was therefore as old as European history. This made the Figurists believe that the two histories were equal in religious importance.


2. The Theory of Common Origin with Noah - After the great Flood, Noah’s son Shem moved to the Far East and brought with him the secret knowledge of Adam in original purity. Thus the Figurists believed that you could find many hidden allusions to pre-Christian revelation in the Chinese classics. The Figurists also thought that Fu Xi, supposedly the author of the I Ching, was really Enoch, the biblical patriarch.


3. The Revelation of Messiah - The Figurists determined that the shengren (聖人), or sage, was in fact the Messiah. This proved in the minds of the Figurists that for example the birth of Jesus was foreshadowed in the Chinese classics as well.

The Divine Goddess Kwan Yin

Legends of the Mahayana School of Buddhism recount that Kwan Yin was 'born' from a ray of white light which The Amitabha Buddha emitted from his right eye while he was deep in spiritual ecstasy.

Kwan Yin is regarded as an emanation of The Amitabha Buddha and as anembodiment of compassion, the quality which Amitabha himself embodies in the highest sense.

Many figures of Kwan Yin can be identified by the presence of a small image of Amitabha in her crown. It is believed that as the merciful Kwan Yin expresses Amitabha's compassion in a more direct and personal way and prayers to her are answered more quickly.

The paintings of Kwan Yin depict her in many forms, each one revealing a unique aspect of her merciful presence. As the sublime Goddess of Mercy whose beauty, grace and compassion have come to represent the ideal of womanhood in the East, she is frequently portrayed as a slender woman in flowing white robes who carries in her left hand a white lotus, symbol of purity. Ornaments may adorn her form, symbolizing her attainment as a bodhisattva, or she may be pictured without them as a sign of her great virtue.

Kwan Yin's presence is widespread through her images as the "bestower of children" which are found in homes and temples. She is one of the most beautiful of all the goddesses. She is often depicted seated upon a lotus or carrying a lotus.

Kwan Yin is also known as patron bodhisattva of P'u-t'o Shan, mistress of the Southern Sea and patroness of fishermen. As such she is shown crossing the sea seated or standing on a lotus or with her feet on the head of a dragon.

Like Avalokitesvara she is also depicted with a thousand arms and varying numbers of eyes, hands and heads, sometimes with an eye in the palm of each hand, and is commonly called "the thousand-arms, thousand-eyes" bodhisattva. In this form she represents the omnipresent mother, looking in all directions simultaneously, sensing the afflictions of humanity and extending her many arms to alleviate them with infinite expressions of her mercy.

Symbols characteristically associated with Kwan Yin are a willow branch, with which she sprinkles the divine nectar of life; a precious vase symbolizing the nectar of compassion and wisdom, the hallmarks of a bodhisattva; a dove, representing fecundity; a book or scroll of prayers which she holds in her hand, representing the dharma (teaching) of the Buddha or the sutra (Buddhist text) which Miao Shan is said to have constantly recited; and a rosary adorning her neck with which she calls upon the Buddhas for succor.

Today Kuan Yin is worshipped by Taoists as well as Mahayana Buddhists--especially in Taiwan, Japan, Korea and once again in her homeland of China, where the practice of Buddhism had been suppressed by the Communists during the Cultural Revolution (1966-69). She is the protectress of women, sailors, merchants, craftsmen, and those under criminal prosecution, and is invoked particularly by those desiring progeny. Beloved as a mother figure and divine mediatrix who is very close to the daily affairs of her devotees, Kwan Yin's role as Buddhist Madonna has been compared to that of Mary the mother of Jesus in the West.

The Goddess Kwan has great healing powers. Many believe that even the simple recitation of her name will bring her instantly to the scene. One of the most famous texts associated with the bodhisattva, the ancient Lotus Sutra whose twenty-fifth chapter, dedicated to Kwan Yin, is known as the "Kwan Yin sutra," describes thirteen cases of impending disaster--from shipwreck to fire, imprisonment, robbers, demons, fatal poisons and karmic woes--in which the devotee will be rescued if his thoughts dwell on the power of Kwan Yin. The text is recited many times daily by those who wish to receive the benefits it promises.

Devotees also invoke the bodhisattva's power and merciful intercession with the mantra OM MANI PADME HUM-- "Hail to the jewel in the lotus!" or, as it has also been interpreted, "Hail to Avalokitesvara, who is the jewel in the heart of the lotus of the devotee's heart!"

Throughout Tibet and Ladakh, Buddhists have inscribed OM MANI PADME HUM on flat prayer stones called "mani-stones" as votive offerings in praise of Avalokitesvara. Thousands of these stones have been used to build mani-walls that line the roads entering villages and monasteries.

It is believed that Kwan Yin frequently appears in the sky or on the waves to save those who call upon her when in danger. Personal stories can be heard in Taiwan, for instance, from those who report that during World War II when the United States bombed the Japanese-occupied Taiwan, she appeared in the sky as a young maiden, catching the bombs and covering them with her white garments so they would not explode.

Thus altars dedicated to the Goddess of Mercy are found everywhere--shops, restaurants, even taxicab dashboards. In the home she is worshipped with the traditional "pai pai," a prayer ritual using incense, as well as the use of prayer charts--sheets of paper designed with pictures of Kuan Yin, lotus flowers, or pagodas and outlined with hundreds of little circles.

With each set of prayers recited or sutras read in a novena for a relative, friend, or oneself, another circle is filled in. This chart has been described as a "Ship of Salvation" whereby departed souls are saved from the dangers of hell and the faithful safely conveyed to Amitabha's heaven.

She had numerous embodiments prior to her ascension thousands of years ago and has taken the vow of the bodhisattva to teach the unascended children of God how to balance their karma and fulfill their divine plan by loving service to life and the application of the violet flame through the science of the spoken Word.