Words on
the way of Zen
Reflections on practice, tradition, and the everyday path of Zen.
Lay Practitioner Zhuang Chunjiang: A Basic Understanding of Buddhism, Chapter 8 — Taking Refuge and Receiving Precepts
During the Buddha's time, lay followers would often hear the teachings directly from the Buddha or from enlightened Arhats. Profoundly awakening to the Dharma, their doubts would dissolve, giving rise to a firm, unshakable resolve. They ...
ReadTrue Contentment Is Not Settling for Meager Gains
True contentment is not settling for meager gains. It is the understanding that when you find yourself in wholesome karmic conditions, you apply steady, sincere effort to settle your mind and walk the path of practice. It is not settling...
ReadZhuang Chunjiang, Lay Buddhist: A Study of the Tathāgatagarbha, Chapter 1: Introduction
- Interpreting the Tathāgatagarbha through the "emptiness of suchness" and the "emptiness of dependent origination." - Interpreting the Tathāgatagarbha "self" through the Buddha’s unhindered freedom. - Understanding the Tathāgatagarbha a...
ReadLay Buddhist Practitioner Zhuang Chunjiang: A Study of the Tathāgatagarbha — Chapter 4: The Conception and Completion of the Tathāgatagarbha Doctrine
The Avataṃsaka Sūtra contains three key passages that express Tathāgatagarbha teachings, even though it never explicitly uses the term "Tathāgatagarbha": The Huayan (Avataṃsaka) teaching of the buddha-realm matrix is infinitely layered, ...
ReadZhuang Chunjiang (Lay Buddhist Devotee): A Study of the Tathāgatagarbha, Chapter 5: Early Buddhist Canonical Scriptures on the Tathāgatagarbha Doctrine
The Aṅgulimālīya Sūtra, Śrīmālādevī Siṃhanāda Sūtra, and Non-Increase Non-Decrease Sūtra all teach that the mind is intrinsically pure. The latter two sutras have concise, well-structured doctrine, approaching the style of treatises, and...
ReadLay Buddhist Zhuang Chunjiang: A Study of the Tathāgatagarbha, Chapter 6: The Mainstream of Tathāgatagarbha Doctrine
These three dimensions of the Tathāgatagarbha—“the Buddha’s Dharmakāya,” “undifferentiated true suchness,” and the “definitive, fixed Buddha-seed nature”—are simply different ways of describing the same fundamental reality: spoken of fro...
ReadProfessor Lin Chongan: Q&A on the Āgama
The term "Āgama" (also rendered by the alternate Chinese transliteration 阿笈摩, Āqímó) is the foundational body of teachings transmitted by Śākyamuni Buddha. At the First Council held the year after the Buddha’s parinirvāṇa, four collectio...
ReadZhuang Chunjiang — A Study of Tathāgatagarbha, Chapter 7: The Yogācāra Teaching on Tathāgatagarbha
The ālaya-vijñāna as retributive seeds emphasizes the defiled aspect; transforming defiled perfuming into pure perfuming, while manifesting the suchness that's pure by nature, is hard to explain fully. Tathāgatagarbha as basis emphasizes...
ReadLayperson Zhuang Chunjiang: Fundamentals of Buddhist Practice — Chapter 5: The Dharma in Daily Life — Section 1: Discipline of the Six Sense Faculties
The most precious gift of the Dharma is its ability to fully resolve the suffering and distress we live with. And that suffering and distress arise right in the midst of our everyday lives. So if our Dharma practice can’t weave itself in...
ReadVenerable Master Da’an’s Collected Teachings: Diligent Pure Land Cultivation
The Dharma is lived as it is taught, and taught as it is lived. A foot of talk is worth less than an inch of practice. It all comes down to how you practice: the Dharma only becomes real when you put it into action.
ReadLay Buddhist Zhuang Chunjiang: *A Study of the Tathāgatagarbha*, Chapter 8: Discerning the Tathāgatagarbha Buddha-Nature
A Study of the Tathāgatagarbha
ReadContemplating Emptiness Through Phenomenal Constructs, Writing That Transmits the Way
We speak of the stage of seeing the Path—but what Path does one actually see here? Two: the first is called the true seeing of the Path, the second the seeing through phenomenal marks. The true seeing of the Path springs from fundamental...
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