Just wondering if there is a Chan Buddhist Discord server?

EDIT： This is the link for anyone wanting to join the new server https://discord.gg/hN6nYGt5YG

Ive recently started walking meditation in the A-Mi-Tuo-Fo style from an Avatamsaka Sutra perspective (think master hsuan Hua but even further on the Pure Land side of the spectrum) and would love any tips for this amazing practice. I have a carrying mala already and don't wanna buy anything else unless it's super amazing for this purpose! Thanks and Amituofo/ Namo DiZang Wang Pusa

I am located in Western Australia, and would like recommendations on retreats in WA (or nearby places like Singapore, Taiwan, Bali etc) which can be beneficial for someone like me who has a personal practice but feels stuck without a real teacher. I don't speak Chinese, so that makes it a bit harder.

Thank you.

From "Treasury of the Eye of True Teaching" by DaHui, translated by Thomas Cleary: [7]

"If you cry like a fox, I roar like a lion; if I cry like a fox, then you roar like a lion. If you roar like a lion, I too roar like a lion. Set out and taken up according to the time, meaning and expression are mastered.
"Thus it is said, 'In meaning is expression, in expression is meaning; but expression is not kept in meaning, and meaning is not kept in expression.' If meaning and expression are not equivalent, how do you understand?
"The meaning can shave the expression, the expression can shave the meaning; the interaction of meaning and expression is awesome. If you don't understand meaning and expression, if you don't penetrate fact and theory, then you are just an iron hammerhead with no hole, what the ancients called a common vulgar cleric. Such people are as common as rice and flax, bamboo and reeds-- what use are they?
"In this school you have to be an individual, with eyes alert, turning freely at a touch. How could this be sought in your terms of purity and pollution? How can 'ordinary' or 'holy' explain it?"

The Avatamsaka Sutra says:

Worldly and otherworldly/mundane and transcendent are differences in name only. . .
The Buddha Dharma is a nondual dharma. . .
The Buddha Dharma is right here and now in the world; there is no awakening divorced from this world. . .
Truth and falseness interlink and mingle;
within the ordinary mind one finds the buddha mind.

And this verse is from the Platform Sutra, where the great master Huineng says:

The Buddha Dharma is right here in the world,
There is no awakening apart from this world;
To search for Bodhi somewhere beyond this world, (or, ‘to leave the world in search of bodhi’ is to lose both)
Is like looking for a rabbit with antlers.

From Wikipedia: “skandha” is Sanskrit for heap or aggregate: I truly believe all skandhas to be intrinsically empty. Namo Amitabo

The five aggregates or heaps of clinging are: form (or material image, impression) (rupa) sensations (or feelings, received from form) (vedana) perceptions (samjna) mental activity or formations or influences of a previous life (sanskara) discernment (vijnana).[6][7][8] In the Theravada tradition, suffering arises when one identifies with or clings to the aggregates. This suffering is extinguished by relinquishing attachments to aggregates. Both the Theravada and Mahayana traditions assert that the nature of all aggregates is intrinsically empty of independent existence and that these aggregates do not constitute a "self" of any kind

The way you tell if you're working in concert with the Dao (道), i.e. if your actions are action-less (為無為):

From the book The Way of Ch'an by David Hinton:

Wu-wei means "not acting" in the sense of acting without the metaphysics of self, or of being absent when you act. This selfless action is the movement of tzu-jan (自然, zi-ran), so wu-wei means acting as an integral part of tzu-jan's spontaneous process of Tao/Way: Absence burgeoning forth into Presence, and Presence dying back into Absence... to practice wu-wei is to move with the wild energy of the Cosmos itself.

Gold Buddha Monastery is going to host an Introduction of the Meditation Practice online course. If you are interested, please register at https://gbm.drba.org/ or with QR code. Details below.

Gold Buddha Monastery

http://www.gbm-online.com/

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hi all! i am in the process of pursuing an extended residential stay and wanted to use this community as a sounding board. i had a chance to go to a retreat at Zen Mountain Monastery in Mount Tremper, NY this january and have had since been deepening my zen practice/meditating remotely with ZMM as well as the BK Zen Center. in May of this year i had the opportunity to attend a retreat lead by Guo Gu and both the emphasis on embodied experiencing and practice of silent illumination have made it such that i am gravitating more towards greater immersion and committed Chan practice. i only live about 2 hours from where Guo Gu resides (Tallahassee, FL) but unfortunately the Tallahassee Chan Center does not yet have a residential community (although they are working towards raising funds to create one). i am really looking to go deep into sangha and practice and have a great desire to spend dedicated time with Guo Gu as a teacher. his way resonates so much with me and i have such profound respect for his life, practice, and teachings. so i am feeling challenged that it is not really a possibility at this time to be in residential space. i love and and appreciate the Zen practices and teachers/teachings i have been exposed to, however it feels really palpable to me how much the dedication to the priming of the body before sitting is paramount to me in a way i havent experienced in Zen practice. this is all greatly informed by how I've found Chan practice to be way more conducive to my practical engagement/ somatic integrity as someone who has a chronic pain conditions.

lastly for context i am exploring the possibility of a stay at Green Gulch (SF Zen Center), Great Vow (in OR), Upaya (NM), Sweetwater Zen Center (San Diego), or the Ancestral Heart Temple affiliated with the Brooklyn Zen Center. so far I feel most drawn towards BZC because of their commitments to dismantling white supremacy, the Dharma talks I've checked out, and my experience with people on the online sangha.

tldr I am more interested in dedicating myself to Chan practice/lineage than Zen but have not found any options stateside for longer residential stay (Dharma Drum's longer offerings being the closest thing i can find). am I missing something and do you have any suggestions?

I recently visited China and saw him everywhere, and was wondering if there’s anywhere to learn more about him. At least on the English internet, I can only find extremely surface level summaries of how he was a monk who was cheerful and wandered around with a sack. I could barely even find anything discussing what it means that he was an incarnation of the Maitreya or what significance or background this has.

I know he’s a folk figure, but are there any interesting stories or scriptures related to him?

Or is his character in general just not very fleshed out and up to individual interpretation?

Link:
https://tricycle.org/magazine/ananda-jennings-chan-buddhism/

Ananda Jennings, Master Xu Yun, Master Hsuan Hua at Nanhua Temple ,1948

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Was Bodhidharma the founder of Chan Buddhism?

Did he have supernatural powers?

Was he the founder of Shaolin?

Hello r/chan,

not being completely new to the Zen/Chan, but rather dismayed about the state of another Zen related subreddit, I've come here.

I've read the Gateless Gate and started reading a collection of Joshus Koans.

My main question being...

Is Chan just a pointer towards practice without clinging to scripture (with a rich body of work and expressions of course) or is it more than that. Is there a method to the madness?

(I'm coming from a simple 'neti-neti' tradition, by Nisargadatta, and from that I really haven't gotten anything more than simply meditating on.. well... the witness, being, self... concepts are readily available, but I hope the general approach is conveyed).

Here are some important practice points:

First, after settling into the correct posture, relax. Tension, whether physical or mental, is a detriment to practice. It leads to resistance, which causes exhaustion, and you cannot concentrate if you are tired.

Second, disengage your mind from any concerns other than the practice method before you. You will have wandering thoughts anyway, but if you determine to concentrate on the method, this will help dispel scattering.

Third, be patient. Do not anticipate or push for results. Simply persevere.

The practice itself is the result. That is the Chan attitude.

Give your body on the cushion and your mind to the method! This is the foundation for effective meditation.

Only just become interested in Buddhism and Chan / Zen which ever you want to call it. Where would you start?

So if Buddhists don’t believe in a soul, what is the fundamental substance that transmigrates among the six destinies and can transcend mundane existence?

[...]Buddhists believe that “phenomena arise dependent on conditions” and “things inherently lack self-nature.” In accordance with this view, the physical world exists dependent on causes and conditions, as does the spiritual [mental] domain. Things arise when the right causes and conditions are present, and they disintegrate and disappear when causes and conditions disperse. Without causes and conditions, nothing would exist. Thus, in a sense, we can say that nothing really exists. Scientists studying physics and chemistry can easily support this observation .

And what of the spiritual domain? Although Buddhists do not believe in a soul, they are by no means materialists. Buddhists describe the spiritual domain with the term “consciousness.” In Nikāya Buddhism, six consciousnesses are discussed, with the sixth consciousness serving as the entity that integrates the life process. In Mahāyāna Buddhism, two more consciousnesses are mentioned, for a total of eight consciousnesses. The eighth consciousness is the entity that integrates the life process [providing coherence and continuity within one life and between lives].

All the eight consciousnesses are actually one entity: they are given different names in accordance with their eight different functions. Residue from all the activities of the first seven consciousnesses, good or evil, is deposited and registered in the eighth consciousness, which serves as the depository of all karmic seeds. The supervisor of this warehouse is the seventh consciousness, and the sixth consciousness works like a warehouse clerk handling the in and out of inventory. The first five consciousnesses execute actions.

[...]So the function of the eighth consciousness is storage. But the storage is not that of a one-way depository. It takes deposits from outside and makes withdrawals from inside. What is deposited is the psychological residue of behavior, which is imprinted on the field of consciousness and called karmic impressions or seeds; what is withdrawn are psychological impulses that later develop into behavior and the results of behavior, called karmic fruits or active dharmas. [...] The flow of cause and effect from seed to active dharma and active dharma to seed goes on and on, from countless lives in the past until countless lives in the future. This flow of causality comprises the coherence we experience in one life and the continuity between different lives.

[...]The eighth consciousness, therefore, exists in the continuum of momentarily changing karmic seeds and fruits. Besides this changing continuum of karmic seeds and fruits, there is no such thing as the eighth consciousness itself. An analogy to a current of water is illustrative. A current of water is nothing but water flowing in continuous motion. Besides the flowing water, there is no such thing as a current itself. The objective of Buddhist practice toward liberation is to disrupt this current of birth and death induced by karmic seeds and fruits.

[...]From the above discussion, we see that the eighth consciousness is not equivalent to an eternal soul. If an eternal soul did exist, then the transformation of an ordinary person into a noble one, that is, liberation from the cycle of birth and death, would be impossible. Buddhists reject the concept of an eternal soul, and their ultimate goal is to negate the eighth consciousness altogether.

From his book Orthodox Chinese Buddhism

Im looking for Chan Buddhist texts that were written in China with English and Chinese translations. Not so much the sutras but the texts/classics that were written by Mazu Daoyi, Linji Xuyuan, Huang Po… and other Chan Buddhist master for example. Any recommendations would be helpful thank you.

Gold Buddha Monastery is going to host an Introduction of the Avatamsaka Sutra and the Shurangama Sutra online course. If you are interested, please register at https://gbm.drba.org/ or with QR code. Details below.

Gold Buddha Monastery

http://www.gbm-online.com/

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How would you translate it to Western categories?

"...Rely on yourself to do chores around the house, like cleaning up after meals. Do your household chores carefully and mindfully: don't shake dishes, don't slam doors... these chores help you center your mind and make meditation easier. They can also prove: whether you are truly mindful or still lost in afflictions...."

"When I talk about the east, you go into the west, and when I talk about the west, you go into the east; I can do nothing for you! If you could turn your heads around, when your insight opened up you’d be able to say, “After all it turns out that the teacher has told me, and I have told the teacher,” and when the head was shaken the tail would whip around, everything falling into place."

MTNemptiness inserts:

[“Others have put samādhi (“the mental state of being firmly fixed on a single object”) earlier and prajñā ("non-discriminating knowledge", or "intuitive apprehension") later. I put prajñā earlier and samādhi later.” Indeed, when …(doubt) indecision/apprehension are smashed [THAT IS PRAJNA], then [what the false teachers] call 'taking a rest and stopping' [i.e., the samādhi of quiet sitting] IS SPONTANEOUS; no need of your wishing for it.”] Master Dahui [Broughton]

Grand Master Foyan continues:

"You brag about having studied Zen for five or ten years, but when have you ever done this kind of work? You just pursue fast talk." (see Cleary, Instant Zen)