The ABCBC comprises a core group of Ven. Haiyun Jimeng's devotees, practisers
and followers in British Columbia Canada, who practise and live the dharma according to the instructions, principles, guidelines
and sublime insights of the Buddha contained in the Avatamsaka Sutra (Flower Adornment Scripture) and other related sutras
that he expounds and manifests.
Our Vision
The ABCBC supports, promotes, and celebrates the Vision,
Mission, Core Values, and traditions of the Da-Huayen Monastery (DHYM) and the Huayen Buddhist World Community (HYBWC), whose
Vision is to realise the main objectives of the Samantabhadra-yana, i.e. to build a world of peace and harmony and to establish
a pure land among peoples.
Our Mission
ABCBC is to attain the Three Perfections of
awakening our inner spiritual nature, promoting peace and harmony among peoples and maintaining eco-balance on earth by:
1. Promoting right understanding in the Dharma, which is the doctrine of the Buddha 2. Training persons to
practice meditation in the Huayen Lin Ji Ch'an Order ("Huayen Meditation") 3. Training persons
to propagate the Avatamsaka Dharma ("Huayen Dharma") 4. Training persons in the practice of the Divine
Maha Yogachar ("Divine Yoga") 5. Training persons in the practice of the Vajra Ucchusma Mantra ("Ci'en
Order") 6. Offering programs of studies in Huayen Dharma such as the Flowering Repository Process ("FRP") 7. Advancing educational and cultural exchanges in Buddhism and promoting harmony among peoples by hosting and participating
in the World Buddhist Sangha Youth (WBSY) General Conferences, and 8. Undertaking community services that benefit
all people irrespective of age, race, creed, nationality, and region.
The ABCBC is incorporated in accordance with the Society
Act of British Columbia. Any person or corporate body who agrees to our objectives or participates in any lectures or forums
we host may apply for membership. 1. An individual applying for membership must be at least 18 years of age, and any corporate
body applying for membership must elect at least one person as its corporate representative, in order to exercise membership
rights. 2. The applicant shall complete an application for membership for approval by the ABCBC Board of Directors to become
a formal member. 3. Matters relating to payment of membership fees shall be decided by the Board as and when applicable and
appropriate.
Sign Up Online
No membership fee shall apply to anyone
who signs up online as virtue member only and who does not participate in person in the activities we organise. Annual
membership fee for residents of Vancouver is CAD$120/yr payable in advance. The ABCBC Board of Directors shall have the discretion
to accept ad hoc fees in addition to annual membership from walk-in participants in any activities
that we offer. Whether you're a member in fact or just a virtue distant member using the services on our website, we
invite you to participate in all the activities listed on the forum calendar. We encourage you to sign up for membership solely for your own benefit because it's one of our goals
to dissiminate the right information about Huayen on our site.
On Wings of Songs
Composer Felix
Mendelssohn
Piano Vladimir Horowitz
Poetry Heinrich Heine
Paintings Marc Chagall Winslow Homer Georgia O'Keefe Camille Pissarro John Singer Sargent
Art Director The
Spadecaller
A
Spadecaller Video
Monday, February 8, 2010
Yoga Experiences
MY YOGA TEACHER TRAINING EXPERIENCES IN INDIA
I was asked to address the audience before my spiritual guru Swami Rajarshi Muniji on 3rd February
2010 on graduation day that marked the end of my Yoga teacher training for this year in Rajarajeshwara (王者之王自在天)
Jakhan, Gujarat, India. I summarized my speech into four main points.
Firstly, I have found the missing piece
of puzzle that helps me see the big picture and find my way home. Before I went to India for Yoga teacher training,
friends and peers in my Buddhist community were not supportive and asked me why I had to learn Yoga from non-Buddhists
when Buddha himself relinquished Yoga practice to meditate on his own and later succeeded in realising Supreme
Enlightenment. They were disappointed and had lose faith in me. I told them to have an open mind because I would
learn from my guru with an open mind. So I came to India with a blank notebook and now I know that the missing
link is the sequential purification of our gross body, subtle body and causal body through Yoga practice, and thus attenuating
the afflictions and tattva in this process of involution. Specific to this process are the shatkriyas and pranayams not known
to traditional Chinese Zen. Here I also observed how young Swamiji purified his food by pouring from his silver
cup into his scooping hand water and dripping a circle around his platter of food before offering it to God. After this
he partook of it.
Traditional Chinese Ch'an or Zen meditation requires that the practitioners to sit in a fixed
posture, usually padmasan, for hours on end, and then on the sounding of a wooden stick on the floor, also requires them to
run around in circles called running meditation. Anyone who are caught in wandering thoughts will be caned with a wooden
stick. They claimed that this way will awaken the practitioners to his original undefiled identity. This way of meditation
is still practised in some famous Zen monasteries in China, namely the Gaomin Temple (高旻寺) in Hangzhou.
Now I know that even with the slightest bit of impurity in our bodies, there is no way a Zen practitioner can realise everlasting
enlightenment. He is bound to fall back on his old habits no matter how many times he has awakened himself.
Secondly,
diet comprises spiritual and physical components. Yogic diet adheres great significance to his spiritual diet by first observing
the yams and the niyams. This forms the foundation for other limbs in the eight-fold path for yoga practice. Knowing my body
type and learning how to balance my doshas is another gain. A yogic diet is a sparing diet. Food is considered the medicine
to alleviate hunger only. To the Yogi, his tongue is the knot of Lord Vishnu (God of Virtue) where
he sleeps. Most people eat three meals per day and answer to Nature's calls only once a day if he/she can afford
to be regular. A yoga practitioner is careful to eat a sparing diet consisting of 50% of solid food and 25% of liquid
food and leaving 25% of his stomach empty to ease digestion. Fasting is also used to consume undigested food and as a remedy
for many kinds of diseases according to Aryuveda.
Thirdly, I have learned to love the Indian culture and her people.
Food delicacies such as home made sweets, ghee, and chappati are some of the things I must learn to make when I get home.
In fact, I cooked four pounds of organic butter to make ghee and shared half of my virgin creation with my dearest pupil.
I also made a carrot sweet cooked with my own ghee and mixed with crushed cashew nuts and almonds and organic sun dried black
currants and organic cane sugar. You will notice that everything I used are organic because as a yoga practitioner,
I don't want to feed toxins into my body and later have to swallow 11 feet of cotton cloth to cleanse my stomach! lol....
Then there are the cows in the ashram. They listen to devotional songs before they let anyone milk them.
And this is exactly how the Indians treat their cows. Guruji drinks only the milk of one cow and she has a name. Their
caretaker take them for a walk twice a day. They are very friendly and they love people. When they hear us resting and talking
in the yard, a cow will walk into the yard and let us pet her. Once you start petting one cow, you will attract other cows
to come for your attention and love. During their walk, their caretakers make sure that their shed are cleaned and washed.
A group of volunteers are their all the time to prepare feeds for them. When they return from their morning and afternoon
walks, they are ready to feed. Beside their shed, Muniji has instructed to have a Cow Temple built and construction is underway
now. Now you wonder why you keep saying Holy Cow in the west!
Then comes the traditional Indian devotional and
classical music and classical dance forms. Each dance always tells the story of some gods or goddesses. During
our training and cultural exchange, LIFE Mission has arranged to have a thirdteen year old kid perform her collection
of classical Indian dance for us including one that tells three stories of Gautama the young prince and later Buddha. This
makes the Indian dancers and the Indian people in general exceptionally spiritual. In my opinion, the Indian is by far
the most spiritual people I've ever met in my life.
Lastly, and closely related to the spirituality of the
Indian people, everywhere you meet people, they greet you with joined palms and say Jay Bhagwan or Namaska, meaning Hail God
or Homage to God. Here they serve you with all their hearts and might and when you say, "Thank you," they say,
"No, not thank you, Jay Bhagwan!" literally, don't thank me, thank God. So when I told Master Sea Cloud about this,
he decided that when the Taiwanese group return home, they will start saying Jay Bhagwan instead of "Xie, Xie" (Thank
you in Mandarin). I have translated that into its Chinese equivalent, "Rongyao Gui Sanboa!" (榮耀歸三寶)
literally, "Glory to Buddham, Dharmam, Sangham!"
A 3" wide
and 22 feet long smooth cotton cloth is to be swallowed for cleansing esophagus and stomach. For us beginners, we are
required to swallow only 11 feet within three minutes. In the early morning of 18 January 2010 in a little village called
Asha in Gujarat India, I performed the vastra dhauti. I was the first one in the group of Yogic teacher trainees
to complete vastra dhauti.
Vastra dhauti requires much more concentration and courage than sutra
neti (passing a piece of string up one's nostril and pulling it out from the mouth, then pulling both ends back and forth
to cleanse the nasal, sinuses and throat), which I had completed the two days before. Swallowing the cotton cloth
was not a pleasant experience and pulling it out was even worse! When swallowing, the practitioner induces a gagging
reflex from the throat and stomach and wants to vomit. On my first trial the day before, I swallowed three feet and gave
up. Pulling three feet from my stomach was relatively easy. Many proscrastinated. Some swallowed only a few inches and
gave up. They gave all sorts of excuses like they had sore throat or flu.
After I had swallowed 10-feet,
Safar and Chang Lung took a photograph of me with one foot of cotton cloth hanging from my mouth and
I started to pull the cotton cloth out. I started pulling and I felt the draw was pulling on my stomach. It
was as though I was pulling my whole stomach inside out. Tears and mucous started running out from my eyes and nostrils. Then
there was a tight grip from my throat and everything stopped after pulling two feet out.
I was overcome with fear.
I still had eight feet inside my stomach but my throat was gripping so tightly that all my throat and neck muscles were tensed
up. My Yoga instructors were standing beside me. They immediately gave me a cup of warm water and while petting
my back asked me to take a few sips normally. They also told me not to be afraid. I waited for 30 seconds to relax. After
a few sips, the water displaced the "vacuum" inside the stomach from the pulling, and I was able to pull
out slowly one arm's length of the cotton cloth from my stomach. Then there was a tight grip in my throat again.
I had to repeat these steps four times to finally pull out the whole eight feet.
The cotton cloth soaked up all
the the slimy stuff, mucous and impurities from my stomach. I used salt water to clean the cotton cloth in a jug and
hung it up to dry. All trainees are required to complete vastra dhauti within the next ten days. Laura, a Vietnamese young
woman from the US, was able to do it on the 20th of January. She went through the same hard times when pulling the dhauti
cloth out. Her stomach content was yellowish in colour and that also indicated that her body type was Pitta (fire).
At the time of this writing, no one else has completed this demanding ordeal. I know I have to keep on practising
until I can swallow the cotton cloth within the stipulated three minutes every time in order to pass the test.
WAS held on Jan 8, 9 and 10 in Mumbai, India. On the 8th, observers from different countries were
surprised that they were asked to perform on stage as international competitors. The teams comprised of delegates from
Canada, Malaysia, Taiwan, United Kingdom and the US. Each competitor must perform five designated asanas.
Two judges marked each competitors on a 10-point scale such as in the Olympics.
Results of the international
competitors were
1. Men Team Winner: India 2. Women Team Winner: India 3. Men Team Runner
Up: Taiwan 4. Women Team Runner Up: Taiwan
Results of the individual international competitors were: 1. Man's Gold Medal: Joseph Tucker of the UK 2. Man's Silver Medal: Master Longyen of Canada 3.
Man's Bronze Medal: Mr. Mau Lian Su of Taiwan 4. Woman's Gold Medal: Holly Yates of Canada 5. Woman's
Silver Medal: Joey Leung of Malaysia.
On the 10th, the international team performed three skids directed by
Swami Satyanandji and won the applause of the audience.
Be it known to all that the SECOND HUAYEN 2553 UPASAKA/UPASIKA MEETING was held on 28 December 2009 in Vancouver
BC at Bo Kong Restaurant. Matters discussed included:
Our lineage Ci'\en
School and the Mahayana Yogacara School of India and their relationship
The definitions of the
Tathagata (如來禪) and Patriarchal (祖師禪) schools of meditation and their differences
Chapter 35 of the 40-fascicle Avatamsaka Sutra (四十華嚴卷三十五彌勒菩薩章)relating
to Anuttara-samyak-sambodhias expounded by the Bodhisattva Maitreya (彌勒菩薩) to
Kuruma Sudhana (善財童子)
Tale of the late Yogacharya Swami
Kripalvanandji Maharaj (Bapuji) as related by Ven. Longyen from his childhood to age 19 when he met Mahatma,
the saint, in Bombay
Composition of the new ABCBC Board of Directors
Introduction
of the Burnaby Practice Centre and the Sunday sutra recitation program. See calendar for details.
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