Tag Archives: Keeping the One

VS: The Ch’an Factor

Posted on January 4, 2016 by Vajragoni

The opening blog of this series touched upon the Ch’an usages of shou-i, or “Keeping the One”:

To “guard the one without wavering” means to be intent on viewing the one thing [the Buddha-mind] with this void and pure eye. Without asking whether it is day or night, devote yourself to remaining constantly unmoving. Should the mind be about to gallop off, quickly work to rein it back in. It is just like a cord binding a bird’s foot, which would hold the bird fast should it try to fly off. View the whole day through, unceasingly. Then, extinguished, the mind will become concentrated on itself. (Buswell, The Formation of Ch’an Ideology in China and Korea…pg. 142) read more

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The Vajrasamādhi Sutra

Posted on January 1, 2016 by Vajragoni


Wŏnhyo

Our next text for study from our sūtra-series is the Vajrasamādhi Sūtra. Firstly, a thank-you is in order for one of our readers, JB, who recently brought this magnificent text to our attention. We are also indebted to Robert E. Buswell, Jr. for his excellent scholarly texts, The Formation of Ch’an Ideology in China and Korea, The Vajrasamādhi Sūtra—A Buddhist Apocryphon; and his Cultivating Original Enlightenment: Wŏnhyo’s Exposition of The Vajrasamādhi Sutra. His first work focuses on the doctrinal and historical position of this uniquely “Korean” Ch’an-Sŏn Sutra. (1) Buswell draws the conclusion that the Sutra’s author (circa 685 C.E.) was the legendary monk, ŏmnang, who is reported to have studied under Daoxin, the primary founder of the East Mountain School. As we shall discover within this series its doctrinal and contemplative/meditative dimensions are highly attuned with the East Mountain School—particularly on the notion of “Keeping the One”—Shou-i: read more

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