No Obsession and No Attachment

Publish Date:2020-10-30

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No Obsession and No Attachment.“The Order of Buddhist Chan rejects any form of written discourse as a means of perpetuating its own system of tenets”is one of the distinguishing features of Chan School. For example, Po, the main character of the Hollywood movie Kung Fu Panda, got the no-worded Kung Fu scripture and saw himself reflecting in the book and finally he realized that he was the real secret of success, and “Seeking Buddha-nature within” is exactly what Chan Sect advocates. Chan is a kind of feeling, and he who drank it knows whether the water was cold or warm. Furthermore, Chan is neither out of words nor out of thought, which just takes us farther away from it. So does martial arts, one cannot achieve anything with the rigid forms, though it is straight and clear. That is to say one can reach the highest level in martial arts by going beyond of gong-fu forms and having no attachment and obsession in mind. In this connection Hui Neng, the Sixth Patriarch of the Buddhist Chan Order, leaves us the core method for Chan cultivators in his Platform Sutra: “no obsession serves as the basis, formlessness serves as the body and no attachment serves as the root”. “Have no obsession and attachment” is the highest state both for gong-fu and Chan, we can become so prudent as to be at one with yatha-pratyata (acting in accordance with universality of dependent origination and being fashioned in compliance with causes and conditions). (From A Speech by Shi Yongxin)

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