The `Practice` Approach

As soon as one enters the doorway of `practice,` one has to cultivate the `purification of body, speech, and mind.` This is to enable one to attain Enlightenment, to transform the energy in one`s body, and to realize Emptiness. Ultimately one will obtain the Rainbow Radiance. Actually, as long as one achieves Enlightenment and the Clear Light, and realizes Emptiness, one will automatically understand the Buddhist doctrines. Although one has not studied or researched the sutras before, one will be able to penetrate their meaning. The Sixth Patriarch Hui-neng was almost illiterate, but after engaging in Actual Practice, he just opened his mouth and out came the expounding of the Buddhist doctrines! [audience applause] After the Fifth Patriarch Hung-jen transmitted the formulae of Enlightenment to him, Hui-neng fled to live among the hunters for over a decade. During those years, Hui-neng put the teaching of Hung-jen to actual practice and was able to achieve Awakening. After Realization, the words he expounded were the Truth of the buddhadharma. Therefore, one does not have to be a scholar to understand the Buddhist doctrines. %% but one has to do %% actual practice by focusing on and deepening one particular %% practice at a time. By focusing on one practice and practicing it wholeheartedly, one will also be able to understand the Buddhist doctrines.

This brings us to one of the issues of `practice.` Should one learn many practices or concentrate on just one practice? It is better to cultivate just one practice at a time. The learning of many practices is tantamount to `seeking a wide knowledge!` When one concentrates on a single practice at a time and penetrates that practice deeply, one will arrive at a Realization. This Realization will enable one to understand and penetrate all other practices. As long as one achieves Enlightenment through actual practice, one will understand all the Buddhist doctrines. That is why the approach of `practice` surpasses that of `theory.`

Many of the older generation Buddhists today are very well versed on the Buddhist theories and doctrines. They can tell you the contents of each sutra, but when asked if they have done any Actual Practice and attained Realization, their answer would be `no.` This is the flaw of a pure theoretical approach. Pursuing many practices at the same time also has its problems. I have recently written an essay for the True Buddha News criticizing a certain contemporary Buddhist monk who admitted that he had not achieved any Realization. We do not have any dark clouds here today! [audience laughter] This Buddhist monk claimed that he practiced Zen, Pure Land, and Tantrayana and confessed that he had not achieved any yogic response or Realization. Strictly speaking, he does not practice Tantrayana as he only chants the Great Compassion Dharani and the Ten Minor Dharanis. You see, there is something wrong when he could not even obtain any yogic response with `the Tantrayana` practiced `his way!`

Some people claim that their school is an amalgamation of eight different schools. Do not think that is very lofty! You will become totally confused when you enter such a school. If you have to practice doctrines alternately from the Zen, Pure Land, Tantrayana, Vinaya [disciplines], Madhyamaka, T`ien-tai, Lotus Sutra, and Hua-yen schools, you would be completely confused! It is better to concentrate on one practice and penetrate deeply into it. Otherwise, you would not have achieved any Realization when %%you are sixty seven years old. you are sixty or seventy years old. If that happened to me, I would find the whole situation laughable and embarrassing. Perhaps one the doorways of `gold,` has been pursuing the doorways of `money,` `authority,` and `power,` none of which is a Buddhist doorway. Such pursuits are behaviors of ordinary people of the samsara world. Isn`t there something wrong when a monk becomes involved in business deals?

Therefore, the most important thing in practicing Buddhism is to concentrate on one single practice and to penetrate it deeply. [audience applause] I have made this recommendation before: a young person can afford to look into different schools to hear more teachings, a middle-aged person should stick to just one practice and concentrate on it to reach Enlightenment, while an old person should seek rebirth to a Pure Land. As one gets older, one does not have much time left and one should therefore concentrate on a practice that will lead one to be born to a higher realm. These are very important points. Indeed, focusing on one single practice %is much better than is better than doing many practices at the same time. There was one student who had sent me one hundred U.S. dollars requesting one hundred different kinds of empowerments. He wanted empowerments for all the practices I have mentioned in my books. One should only seek empowerment for the practice that one will do, unless one is a master in this school. A master in this school might seek to receive many empowerments so that he or she can in the future give others the same empowerments. Otherwise, for the general students, they should focus on one practice. As long as one achieves spiritual response or realization in doing one particular practice that results in the opening of one`s heart, one can immediately see the Light and the Truth of the entire buddhadharma.

In the past I had trouble understanding the sutras. To be honest, my wisdom was not that high. When I read the Diamond Sutra before, all the paradoxes were an enigma to me. [audience laughter] I could not figure out what it was about. Today I open the Diamond Sutra, I can penetrate deeply into it and understand its charms and meanings. I can open any sutra now and penetrate completely its meaning. [audience applause]

Thus, inherent in Realization are the other three steps of `Faith, Comprehension, and Practice.` While one may choose either the approach of `theory` or `practice,` the approach of `practice` is better. Understanding the Buddhist doctrines does not necessarily result in Realization while Actual Practice can lead one to Realization. When one attains Realization, one will also definitely understand all doctrines. [audience applause]

Integration of Practice with Daily Activities

Many students have been coming here for several years to learn to do the practice. There was one time when they were asked by someone outside the school what they had learned from me, one student replied, `Master Lu did not teach me anything.` Wouldn`t my feelings be hurt? Let me use this story as an illustration. One of the students of the Zen Master Bird Nest has been following him for many years. One day, this student packed up his belongings and bade farewell to the Zen Master. The master asked, `Where are you going?` `I am going to look for another teacher.` The master asked again, `Why are you going to find another teacher? Aren`t you doing very well here?` The student replied, `You have not taught me any buddhadharma in all these years I have been here.` Zen Master Bird Nest then entended his leg and plucked out a hair. Too bad, I don`t have any hairy legs. [audience laughter] Zen Master pointed to the hair, `This is buddhadharma.` This hair from the leg is the buddhadharma, do you get it? At that moment, the student suddenly had a breakthrough and understood what buddhadharma was. If that student I mentioned earlier had packed up and come to say goodbye to me, I would also have plucked out a whisker [audience laughter] and told him, `This whisker is the buddhadharma, do you understand?` Buddhadharma is interwoven with everything in one`s daily life and it has to be experienced! Everything is a manifestation of the Truth! After listening to the teachings, instead of going home and forgetting about them, one has to practice the teachings in one`s normal life and daily activities ?this is buddhadharma.

Therefore every gesture of the teacher is a dharma teaching. [audience applause] Every word uttered and every action performed by Buddha Shakyamuni was the buddhadharma. Described in the sutras were the daily rituals of the Buddha`s which indicated that walking, residing, sitting, and lying down could also be an intimate experience of the buddhadharma. Many people are not aware that to practice Buddhism is to have a ritualistic or sacred orientation to everything in the ordinary life. Buddhadharma is not some special technique that is only taught to one special person. Its Transmission is not based on any special `price.` There are teachers outside who would confer to you special methods or exclusive empowerments if you make a huge offering. We have a Taiwanese folk saying to describe such practice: `One has a grand opening every three years and money made at each opening lasts three years.` Sometimes some of these special methods are not authentic. There are people outside who use this form of practice to make money. At the time of Buddha Shakyamuni, such practices were forbidden by him.

Seeing the Mountain as a Non-mountain

We know that as soon as one enters the door of the buddhadharma, one`s perception of the world will undergo a transformation. In the past there was a Zen Master who explained it this way. Before his entrance into Buddhism, he saw mountain as mountain and water as water. After entrance, he saw mountain to be non-mountain and water to be non-water. After a while, he achieved Realization and he again saw mountain as mountain and water as water. What do these three stages mean? One has to contemplate and experience them.

Recently I have started to learn Chinese painting. My teacher is Mrs. Au Moolan from San Francisco. Mrs. Au has learned painting from Chao Shao-an, a very good Ling-nan style painter who has had many teachers himself. I have taken up the lessons so I can paint when I get old and have nothing to do. [audience laughter] The two activities I have decided on are music and painting. I can entertain myself with a musical instrument and my own voice ?which probably will not generate any income. [audience laughter] Painting is better. I can exhibit the paintings and publish albums of my paintings. So Mrs. Au came and stayed for a week to teach me.

We know that we see mountain as mountain and water as water, but after I started painting, I found that mountain was not mountain and water was not water! [audience laughter] Water could become mountain in my paintings and vice versa. [audience laughter] You can also say that in my paintings a cow becomes a horse and vice versa. [audience laughter] In the process of painting, one`s consciousness undergoes transformations. When one enters the door of the buddhadharma, one also sees with a different perception. Therefore I am not learning the `meticulous style` of painting which takes a long time to draw a painting. I am learning the `essence style` which creates renderings that do not look exactly like the portrayed objects but capture their essence. In `essence painting,` one is painting with one`s mind. If an exact reproduction is what one wants, one can learn to use a camera instead of learning to draw. Why does one want to draw in an exact way that does not express any spirit? When one draws an object, one wants to express the unique quality and the invisible spirit of that particular object. A really good painting does that. What I am learning from Mrs. Au are her techniques of brush strokes and mixing colors. In the future, I hope you can come and lend me support. [audience laughter and applause] `Essence style` paintings are very simple with the essence of a painted object sometimes expressed in one or a few strokes.

The practice of buddhadharma is the same as the art of painting. Before entrance, one sees mountain as mountain and water as water. One knows that mountain is stationary and water is fluid. A painter who captures the fluidity of mountain and the stillness of water is one who is able to see into other dimensions. It is the same with practicing Buddhism. After practicing Buddhism for a period of time, one no longer sees mountain as mountain and water as water. Why? This is because one becomes awakened to the fundamental essence of all beings.

One day I came upon an album of paintings by the painter Yang Shan Sheng. After looking carefully through it once, I passed it to Mrs. Lu. Mrs. Lu also looked through it and then remarked to me, `About his paintings, I`d rather have a slice of toast.` What she meant was that one could get more flavor out of a piece of crescent or some other kind of bread. This was because Mrs. Lu did not understand paintings. [audience laughter] We cannot blame her. So Yang Shan Sheng also does not have to be offended by her as she really could not understand. [audience laughter] His paintings have the essence of `seeing mountain as non-mountain and water as non-water,` although there is also the more conventional element of `mountain as mountain and water as water` in them. What struck me, however, was that the paintings of a skillful and experienced painter such as he could resemble those drawn by me, a kindergartener in painting. [audience laughter] Several sheets of my exercise had such terrible paintings that I had to reapply ink on them to erase what I had originally drawn. When I perused his album, I found that there was no difference between those few pieces of my scrawlings and some of his work! [audience laughter] I told myself that I should not throw those few precious sheets away, as such works were also found in Yang Shan Sheng`s album. [audience laughter] When I ran into Master Lian-teng, I commented to him, `Yang Shan Sheng is a great painter. It is strange that his album looks like a few big brush strokes or the pouring of ink onto the papers and allowing them to dry.` Master Lian-teng said insightfully, `This is because at the stage of Ultimate Realization, mountain looks like mountain and water looks like water again.` [audience laughter and applause]

We have here Master Lian-jun of Indonesia who is also a painter of Chinese ink and wash. ink. The subjects of her paintings are shrimps, crabs, swallows, pines, cranes, flowers, and birds. At my house I have some of her paintings. She paints very well and some of her paintings have garnered her awards. She studies her subjects every time before she draws them. For example, if she wants to draw a painting of crabs, she will buy many crabs and observe them crawling around before drawing them. One time her husband said to her, `Fortunately you don`t draw tigers. We will be in trouble if you bought a tiger.` [audience laughter]

Whether one enters the door of the buddhadharma through `theory` or `practice,` there will be ultimately the awakening to the realm of `as-is-ness.` After the entrance, transformations start to occur which lead ultimately to the realization of one`s `innate freedom` and the entering into `as-is-ness.` At the realm of Emptiness when one`s ego is expanded to embrace all, there will be a spontaneous manifestation of one`s Original Face. The Original Face will also be manifested in such a person`s paintings. There is an important link between practicing Buddhism and painting! Have you heard of `Zen paintings?` When a Zen master paints, he or she enters completely into the state of total purity wherein the egotistic consciousness and mind are transcended. Such a non-strategic painting is an excellent rendering reproduced from within and it transcends both time and culture.