To meet the need to extensively spread Buddhism, a peculiar style of literature, “Bianwen”, evolved. It actually springs from a style of songs and odes popular in ancient times. Bianwen is the expression of Buddhist scriptures in common words for easily narrating and singing. Various Bianwen discovered inside the Dunhuang Caves are popular literary works whose ease, verve and richness of imagination contributed to the subsequent popular forms of Chinese literature such as Pinghua, novels and plays. Besides, another special style named Recorded Utterance, arose out of the records of conversations and inculcations of the Chan masters. This simple and lively oral style was later followed by the Neo-Confucianist scholars in the Song and Ming Dynasties and many such works were produced. In addition, in the field of Chinese Phonology, a system of phonetic letters known as “Fanqie” developed under the influence of the Sanskrit alphabet. This was popularly used in the old Chinese dictionaries. Generally speaking, the Buddhist manifestations in Chinese literary are varied and colorful.
The Wutai Mountains as the preaching place of Manjusri was recorded in Mahayana Buddhist scriptures, so in ancient times, it was worshipped by quite a few eminent monks from India and Central Asia. There was even an old legend in Nepal saying that the Kathmandu Valley (where the capital of Nepal is located) used to be a large lake. It was Manjusri, after he arrived there from the Wutai Mountains, China, who cleaved apart a mountain, drained off the lake water, and settled down with his followers, thus founding the State of Nepal.
In the monastic community, senior or junior does not refer to older or younger in age, but the number of years since ordination. The title “Thera” (Elder) is conferred on Bhikkhus 10 years after ordination, and “MahaThera” 20 years after ordination. Juniors should salute seniors. Seniors precede juniors while walking along.
It is a sheer misapprehension that what Chan self-cultivation requires a practitioner to fulfill consists only of
<1> doing seated meditation, <2> reciting Buddha’s name and recalling his great deeds, and <3> performing worshipping rites and chanting the Buddhist Scriptures.
The three form a ritual trinity for a practitioner of course and are in a sense indispensable for Buddhism as a whole. But the said ritual trinity is at its best a secondary dharma-gate to contribute to a practitioner’s self-cultivation career and does not constitute a universally feasible policy needed for ensuring the success of a self-cultivation program, even though the trinity can exercise some positive influence on or strengthen the intensity of some practitioners’ self-cultivation programs. If a practitioner would choose to prioritize the secondary dharma-gate over any other related dharma-gate, that would certainly result in either an impaired self-cultivation foundation or a retarded progress in self-cultivation. So far as seated meditation is concerned, it should be counted an important procedure in the spacious precincts of self-cultivation. But practicing seated meditation in order to secure Samadhi is not resorted to by Buddhists alone. A spectrum of other religious faiths than Buddhism—such as Yogic meditation practiced by Yogis in India, Taoism in China—also practice the seated meditation. Besides there are some varied patterns of seated meditation such as “vowed silence precept” (默語戒), “meditation executed behind closed door” (閉關(guān)). In a word, it is not wise for a Chan practitioner to cling to, or to drop, a certain secondary dharma-gate simply out of loyalty to a certain Buddhist sect or order. What need to be taken into consideration by a Chan practitioner in opting for a secondary dharma-gate are
<1> his or her own specific capacity for absorbing the impact a proposed dharma-gate is supposed to exert, and <2> his or her concrete habits and living conditions.
As for the primary dharma-gate a Chan practitioner is required to adopt, he or she must absolutely not try to shun it. (From My Heart My Buddha)
A lot of people seem to labor under the misapprehension that what practicing Buddhism calls for are merely such activities as doing seated meditation, recitation of Buddha’s name and recalling his great deeds, performing all the worshipping-Buddha rituals, poring over the Buddhist Scriptures and so on. I would beg to aver that this is misapprehension! A practitioner is of course a mortal. As mortal beings, none of us, the laity as well as the monastic practitioners, is isolated from the everyday mundane life. Everybody needs to consume food, to have clothes to put on, and to be sheltered from the elements. Those practitioners who do not lead a monastic life need to support their families. Therefore neither a practitioner nor a lay person is entitled to be supported or provided for by somebody else merely because he or she practices Buddhism. He or she should be called deliberately bedeviling the community or family he or she belongs in, if pretentiously claiming to be so entitled.
Nirvana can never be separated from moksa (liberation from samsara, the cycle of death and rebirth and all of the sufferings and limitation of the worldly existence). It is reasonable for us to regard nirvana as the cause which leads to moksa, because a practitioner needs to have fully realized in the first place that the worldly life is in nature an emptiness. It is by dint of such a realization that he can be led to free himself of any attachment to the worldly life and accept and achieve nirvana. Therefrom he would be exempted from all sufferings arising from samsara. A true votary of Buddhism is bound to die at the end of his mortal life, but his right faith in Buddhism enables him to be immune to all sufferings of worldly life throughout the duration of his mortal life. Nor would he be tormented by deathbed throe at the moment when his mortal life expires. Why? It is due to absence in him of any attachment to life. Detachment from any obsession with the mundane life makes him completely nonchalant of death. A true Buddhist votary faces his death as calmly as he would face his everyday life, because he regards the duration lasting between birth and death merely as a process which witnesses the beginning and the end of his greed or avarice. Death of a human being can be likened to the ruin of an edifice which, as an insentient existence, knows neither birth nor death.（From My Heart My Buddha）
One of the basic premises of Buddhism is anitya (impermanence, or incessant changes). The world is experiencing changes in all respects and at all times, and so is the mind of every sentient being. Even if a thing may stay unchanged for a relatively short period of time, yet our perception of it tends to not stay unchanged for that relatively short period of time because our point of view with reference to it may alter in spite of its remaining unchanged for a relatively short period of time.
