How about David? Okay. Hello everyone. So I'm delighted to welcome and introduce our Dharma speaker tonight, Dr. Rebecca Lee. Dr. Lee is a Dharma heir in the Dharma drum lineage of Chun Master Shen Yun, with whom she began her teacher's training in 1999. and also served as his translator until his passing in 2009. And in 2016, she received full Dharma transmission from Simon Child in the UK, who is one of Master Shen Yun's lay Dharma heirs. And Rebecca, as she prefers to be called, is the founder and guiding teacher of the Chang Dharma community, as well as a sociology professor at the College of New Jersey, where she also serves as the faculty director of the Allen Dolly Center for the Study of Social Justice.

[01:09]

And I've gotten to know Rebecca through our mutual participation in the Gen X Buddhist Teacher Sangha over the last six years, and I feel quite honored to call her friend. And Rebecca, I'm I'm so glad you're able to join us virtually tonight. I know you were planning to be in San Francisco, and of course circumstances have changed. But I also want to acknowledge your fortitude joining us this evening, given that it's, I believe, 1045 your time in the evening on the East Coast. So extra bowels of appreciation. And thank you again for sharing the drama with us this evening. Thank you. Thank you, David. I'm going to switch my screen back to gallery mode so I can see all of you. It's a real pleasure to have an opportunity to share a space with this Sangha that I admire greatly over the years.

[02:24]

And I was very much looking forward to visiting the center again and speaking your beautiful hall. And so maybe it will be another time. And like David said, I have to say I was falling asleep at 7.45 three hours ago. So I took the drastic measure of taking a nap after dinner to ensure that I can be awake. Because last night I was... completely asleep by 945. So if you saw my beginning to get incoherent, that I'm going to blame it on that. So thank you for joining me this evening. And I spoke with David, a dear friend from the Gen X community. he gave me this list of a big wish list of what he would like me to talk about.

[03:30]

And then I discovered the amount of time I got. So I would do my best. What he told me is he, well, I think it's really a good request since you haven't met me. You probably want to know who is it who is speaking. And I also heard that it would be that would be great interest to hear something about how it was to train with Master Shen Yen and perhaps how he trained students. And so I hope in what I'm going to talk about, it will address that. And so depending on how time goes, I have a giant clock in front of me so I don't go over time. I hope... to be able to share a little bit of what's alive for me, what's of great interest to me in the recent days.

[04:31]

And one thing that might be helpful to talk about is that I often find there are a great deal of assumptions made about me because of my ancestry, for example. people assume that I grew up Buddhist, which is not very close to the truth at all. I grew up in a totally non-religious family. My parents are quite confused still why they had a Buddhist daughter and an evangelical Christian brother. And so, a son. And I was born and grew up in a British colony, Hong Kong. And because of that, I received a British... and rather very often non-Chinese upbringing because of my environment and because of the fact that my parents had to move to Hong Kong and start their life anew when they had to flee communist China.

[05:45]

So... And I ended up in the United States when I went to California to do my graduate study in sociology. It was in California where I encountered Master Shen Yen's teaching through my current husband. That's another assumption often made. He was a genetics graduate student. a blue-eyed white guy from Kansas. So most people just assume that I made him Buddhist, but it was the other way around. He already practiced Zen for a number of years. And at that time, he was studying with a student of Massachusetts in California, Southern California. And he was actually the person who taught me how to meditate. And so that was another common assumption.

[06:48]

Usually people just like look super surprised when they heard that. And at that time, that's before Google and all that stuff. So I actually had to go to a monastery in the L.A. area to borrow written by Master Shen Yen to and and I felt a very strong affinity with him after I read his books. In particular, I remember one of the very first books I read by him. He wrote about what Buddhism was about, which was very different from the folk understanding for people among whom I grew up with and really resonated with me. It felt very much like what I was looking for and really made a lot of sense to me. And so what happened was a few months later, he made a trip to Los Angeles, a rare occasion.

[07:53]

And I took refuge with him the very first time I saw him in person after he gave a public lecture. And that was before I had a chance to practice with him in a retreat. And it was very difficult to get into a retreat with him that he held in his center in Queens, New York. So almost a year later, I finally had a chance to travel from Southern California to Queens to attend the first retreat, which was a seven-day intensive retreat in Queens. I felt like when I first met him in the interview in that retreat, I remember that I just felt like I found my teacher. And I couldn't stop crying. I didn't quite know why.

[08:53]

But I felt that I finally found him. And so it started the years of my life in the final years of my graduate study, where I... worked on my research, but also devoted a great deal of time and energy to my practice, prioritizing my practice. So when it was time for me to go on a job market, being able to practice, preferably being to be close to Master's Junior was important. And that's how I ended up in New Jersey. And I took my... and academic position here. Because I was living in New Jersey, I traveled to the center every weekend when I was here on my own, because at that time, my then fiance was still finishing his graduate study. And what happened was a series of interesting events over the first 10 years.

[10:05]

when I was living in New Jersey. I became his interpreter because his interpreter at that time had to take a leave. And I was asked to be trained to be his interpreter. And I tried because I didn't really understand Mandarin, which was what Master Jin-hin was speaking in. I could only understand his Dhamma talks in translation in English. And I became his interpreter in his Dhamma talks and retreats. And I traveled with him internationally when he was attending religious leaders' meetings. And looking back, part of what drove me was when I was staying at the center over those weekends. Inevitably, every morning we would share breakfast.

[11:08]

We actually shared all the meals. Every time when Master Shin returned from Taiwan, he split his time between Taiwan and New York. He would ask how we could bring Chan practice into American society in a more integrated way. And the Sangha was... struggling that by that time it was mostly supported and attended by i think mostly taiwanese immigrants and so um the the community was struggling with that a little bit and in my mind i i told myself i would um i would do everything i could to help him and so when they wanted me to be his interpreter that's That's what I thought I could do, the small part I could do. And around the same time, someone approached Master Shen Yen to publish or work on an autobiography for him, which was eventually published in the title of Footprint in the Snow.

[12:21]

Some of you might have read it, and we didn't know, but it turned out to be a 10-year project. And it was one of the greatest blessings of my life to be the one person who helped work on that project. And so I, with working on that project, one thing involved me having to conduct a lot of interviews with Master Shenyan. And what Master Shenyan said was that, well, I don't have any time to do this. The only time I could do interviews for this book was was during retreats. So from then on, during every intensive retreat I attended with Master Shen Yan, I served as his interpreter during the retreat talks. And also, I would spend an hour of each day conducting interview with him for his book.

[13:21]

And... I also did help with some organizational things, such as helping to coordinate the teacher's training. I was also drafted, asked to participate in a teacher training program, largely because he got tired of people just sitting in his Dhamma talks and then not do anything with what he talked about. So he wanted us to train to be... possibly become lecturer in the Dharma. And as a way, it really is his trick to get us to study the Dharma more diligently. And so that's something I did. And that resulted in my starting to teach as a Dharma lecturer in 2002. And, of course, that compelled me to... take my dharma study more seriously so that I could talk about the dharma in a way that would be helpful for others.

[14:29]

And looking back, I saw that going through that training and being a dharma lecturer was a very important part of my training in the dharma. It compelled me to practice more diligently than I would otherwise. I was also drafted to help with running the retreat center in 2004. At that time, the organization wanted to engage in some restructuring, so Dharma Dharma Retreat Center was trying to incorporate as a separate organization. And I was asked to be one of his founding board members and try to figure out how to set things up there. And it was quite a learning experience to learn to navigate the delicate situation of teasing out that part of the organization from the existing community.

[15:43]

without damaging relationships. It was a real project and a great gift that Master Xinying gave to me in my training over the years. I think for over 15 years, I was doing that work. And I also trained with Master Xinyin's two most senior lay dharma heirs from the UK, Dr. John Crook and Simon Child, from whom I received my dharma transmission. And this is very interesting. What happened was Master Xinyin tasked them in his dharma heirs, but in particular, John Crook.

[16:43]

Master Xinyin tasked them with the job of adapting Chan practice to the West. Because when John Crook, the first Dharma heir, received his transmission, he asked Master Xinyin, what should I do? And Master Xinyin told him, well, I'm not a Westerner. You go figure it out. And that's... I kept that in mind because Master Xinyan entrusted him to find his way and as a way to fulfill his great vow of sharing this great gift of Buddha Dharma to as many people as possible. And... my training will not be complete without mentioning what i have learned from john crook and simon child some i don't know many of you may not have heard of him he's a good friend of david lloyd and stephen bachelor in the uk and um he had skillfully incorporated western psychology and encounter group techniques he picked up while he was a visiting professor at stanford

[18:10]

And the way he did it helped practitioners develop this mind of inquiry, which is actually quite tricky to do. And I would argue that he has done a brilliant job to accomplish them. For the practitioners that I trained with, that I later teach, They learn to penetrate the mind using a question. He designed this retreat called Western Zen Retreat, which uses a question and similar to the practice of huato. Some of you might have heard of that in Chinese chan, but in a different way from how it was done in traditional chan practice. But it's very, very effective. And from my experience over the years, practitioners who have attended the Western Zen retreat, who have trained with this kind of method, are much better at picking up the practice of cultivating clear awareness, such as even in a silent illumination retreat, without falling into the trap of quietism.

[19:36]

And I have benefited greatly from from training with them. And so as a result, I largely teach along this line, and it has yielded very much benefits. And I believe it is an approach that suits the Western educated mind. So I think for many of us, whether we call Westerners or not, nowadays, even in Asia, many, all my friends, at Western Educated and find that they could connect with this kind of approach more readily than the much more traditional Chinese method. And I think, I don't know how many, how much you know about Master Shen Yan. In the United States, he's mostly known as a Chan Master.

[20:40]

but he's also a very accomplished Buddhist scholar. He pursues scholarship in Buddhism, not with an eye to become a knowledgeable scholar person, but as a way to practice and also to really revive Chinese Buddhism. for the benefits of the world. Because he deeply believed that the way Buddhism had developed in China had resulted in a form of practice and teaching that makes it very portable from culture to culture. And so... What he did was he engaged in a six-year solitary retreat in which he engaged in the intensive practice, but also read through all the Tripitaka, all of it.

[21:57]

So he was not well versed only in... in Chan part of Buddhism, but all of Agamas or the early Buddhist teaching, but also other traditions, Tiantai, Huayin, all of it. And he also went to graduate study in Japan, so he also became familiar with Japanese. Buddhism, various forms of Japanese Buddhist practice, which brought him to be a very eclectic teacher. So in terms of techniques, he picked up many different forms of practice and incorporated them wherever he found they are useful. So for example, when he first started teaching meditation in

[22:59]

New York, that was when he first started teaching. He asked, what did people like to do? And he heard, oh yeah, people really like to counter breath. So that's what he taught. And of course, he was familiar with that from his study of Tiantai. When that was not a traditional method in meditation in Chan. For a Chan monastery, up to that point in most of the early 20th century, of course, and before, the method used to calm the minds actually reciting the Buddha's name and what we will associate with the Pure Land method. So I thought I will give you a little bit of a sense of the other side of Master Shen Yen that may not be well known. The reason is that his scholarly his scholarly work led him to view Chan in a way that might be quite different from others.

[24:06]

And I remember from the very first retreat I attended with him, he kept talking about, he kept saying this thing about how Zen or Chan is Buddha Dharma, which I didn't quite understand why he kept saying it. And later on, I heard that some people thought that Zen or Chan is something, is its own thing. And as I study his scholarly work more, he really wanted to clarify that Chan is not just a sect in Buddhism. Chan practice is a culmination of centuries of Buddhist practice and study in China that was later also spread to Japan, Korea, and other parts of Asia.

[25:08]

And of course, that was Buddhism inherited from India. And so it was all of Buddha Dharma. And so when we practice Chan, we are practicing the Buddhist And he focused on the practice of hua to and silent illumination. And with silent illumination being particularly portable because intensive hua to retreat can be done really mainly in the intensive retreat setting where practitioners are well supported. whereas silent illumination is a practice that can be done anywhere, whatever you do. And so that's that part of it. And I want to talk a little bit about, it sounds like I've just been talking about my story, but I want to talk about Master Shen Yen's approach in teaching.

[26:24]

and training his student. If you're listening, you're like, where's the training program? I don't see Rebecca went through any real training program there. There was no set program. And the way he trained his students, my experience is unique. No one else did the exact thing. list of things I did, but the training I went through is actually not atypical among Master's training students, which is very much an emphasis on Bodhisattva path, where we prioritize engaging in the practice that bring benefits to others. And So that's the practice of sitting meditation, mainly to stabilize the mind so that we can cultivate insights, but not to engage in meditation for deep meditative experiences.

[27:41]

And so when I say emphasizing this Bodhisattva path, very often is done by engaging in various kind of what you will call work practice. As you can see, if you remember the different things that I was asked to do, I was not asked to do more longer retreats. And very often in retreats, I had assignments during retreats. Almost every retreat, I would have some practitioners in the retreats who came up to me and almost feeling sorry for me that like, Rebecca, I feel so sorry for you. You didn't get to like sit as much as we do because you have to talk as the translator and you seem to have to leave the chan hall because you have to, I don't know what you have to go do, which is when I went to do the interview.

[28:45]

And actually, because of what I had to do, I had to focus on my practice even more than if I was sitting on my cushion. So, for example, because I had to translate for Master Xinyin, I remember when I was doing sitting meditation, I really could not goof around in my sitting meditation. I had to, I told myself, I better really practice well so that my mind can be clear, so that I could understand Master Shenmian's lecture, so that I could translate all of them to those in attendance, because otherwise they would miss out on what he was teaching. And it was not uncommon for him to talk 15, 20 minutes at a time

[29:47]

before I get to translate for him. So because of that, I was motivated to be more concentrated, to stabilize my mind getting to the retreat right away. And so, of course, to be his translator, I also need to study and learn the Dhamma, terms and the content itself and besides learning Mandarin and because he spoke with a very heavy accent I learned to listen every word very very closely so it was I learned to develop a listening skill so this is an example of what I was talking about by practicing the bodhisattva path, which we engage in some work with some people who think it feels like a chore or work, but because the goal or the motivation was to do this to help others to be able to practice, then it actually became a vehicle to deepen our own practice.

[31:12]

And similar experience can be found in my work of interviewing for his books. And for one thing, I had to let go of the attachment that I'm here for retreat and I should be sitting in meditation during those interviews. That's how I practice. I practice listening to the interview. typing them all down in front of a computer. Many people would not think of that as the right thing that one should be doing in a Chan retreat. But that's very much part of this. So I learned not to be attached to the form of practice. Of course, being able to listen to... Master Xinjiang talk about his life story was incredibly invaluable.

[32:12]

I learned so much from him, from his example, how he responded and lived his life. For example, when he had to flee to Taiwan in 1949, when the Chinese Communist Party took over China, because of the fear that the communists would force monastics to disrobe. So he fled, but the only way for him to flee was to join the nationalist military. So he ended up as a military. So he had to leave monastic life for 10 years. So for other people, they might feel very discouraged, but he made the best of it and took advantage of the vacation time. to visit with old masters who also fled to Taiwan and focused on finding ways for himself to resume monastic life.

[33:15]

And it was the determination and great vow that deepened his resolve and commitment. And so... I learned from these stories and I draw on them all the time as I encounter challenges as a Dharma teacher and also as I, for example, during the years when I had to set things up and established a retreat center for a Dharma drum and also as I'm establishing my own sangha after I receive my dharma transmission from Simon Child. So time really flies when you talk, and I really would like to give some time for questions. I guess I would share something more

[34:22]

That's been really been on my mind. When I went to, recently, I've been practicing with this sutra that was brought to my attention by my dear friend, Brother Phapai, senior disciple of Thich Nhat Hanh. This is the sutra on the eight realizations of the great beings. I started integrating them into my mind. integrated it into my morning service during my solitary retreat in Hong Kong. And if you have not encountered this sutra, I encourage you to read it. It's a very short sutra. It pretty much sums up what we should remember all the time as a practitioner. And... So it's talked about eight realizations, but the one I want to bring to your attention, because when I read it, I was like, wow, like the Buddha and these great practitioners were talking about it centuries ago.

[35:34]

This is the second oldest sutra brought into China. So it's a second sutra that was translated into Chinese for Chinese Buddhists. And I want to read the text of this realization. The sixth realization is the awareness that poverty creates hatred and anger, which creates a vicious cycle of negative thoughts and activity. When practicing generosity, bodhisattvas consider everyone, friends and enemies alike as equal. They do not condemn anything. anyone's past wrongdoing, nor do they hate those who are presently causing harm. When I read this, I said this is so useful for us in dealing with the current political situation in our country.

[36:40]

Here, it's like this realization is the awareness awareness, remembering that poverty creates hatred and anger. Remembering that here poverty, of course, is not just referring to material poverty. It can be poverty or rights and status, power. So really, he's talking about being aware and remembering that being marginalized and treated unfairly will breed anger and hatred. And we should remember it all the time so that we will not turn a blind eye to social structure that breeds or allow unfair treatment of some part of the population. But I believe that's not

[37:44]

what's been happening, we allow them. We allow inequality to grow, injustices to fester and pretend that we can get away with it. And so remembering it, being aware of it, will really is to remind us not to tolerate it, not to tolerate extreme inequality and injustice. and foolishly believe that it's not going to become a problem. And here is talking about the practice of generosity. And I was so moved when I read about this. It's not just about generosity at the personal level, but also remind us of how we really need to reflect on the destructiveness. of the politics of meanness that we have been practicing in our society and really look deeply into how we can change the way we deal with politics so we don't perpetuate this idea there are some people in our society that don't deserve a life with basic human dignity.

[39:13]

The last sentence I think is quite very, very important, that we do not condemn anyone's past wrongdoing. Unfortunately, that is our habit, whether it's the discussion of racial injustice or other kind of inequality or climate change. we are ready to condemn those who have done wrong in the past and making it very difficult to have a conversation to find solution together. And in the Buddha's time and his disciples, they already discovered this and left it in writing for us to to guide us not to condemn others' past wrongdoing.

[40:18]

And in fact, if we practice and look into our own past, we know we have made a lot of mistakes out of ignorance, out of foolishness, lack of awareness. And so we can remember that that same applies to others. And nor do they hate those who are presently causing harm. Again, it is an important reminder. There are those who are causing harm. We don't condone that. We need to hold them accountable. But it's not out of hatred. It's out of compassion. to stop them from creating more unwholesome karma for themselves, to stop them from hurting more people.

[41:20]

But it's not because we hate them. And of course, generating hatred in our heart towards them only hurts ourselves, and it's not going to help matter to progress. So this reminds me of the... of two lines that Master Shen Yun articulated that I use all the time. With wisdom, there is no vexation. With compassion, there is no enemy. So when we practice this way, the most difficult problem can be sorted out and resolved in our lives. So I will let you do the closing now. Thank you. Great. Thank you so much. Let's transition by offering the closing chant, which you'll find in the chat. And we may have time for just a few questions.

[42:24]

May our intention equally extend to every being and place. with the true merit of Buddha's way. Beings are numberless, I vow to save them. Delusions are inexhaustible, I vow to end them. Dharma gates are boundless, I vow to enter them. Buddha's way is unsurpassable, I vow to become it. So, I'd like to recognize that we're at our usual ending time, but it would be very nice to have a few questions, if that's available or if that's of interest to the group. I do also want to make it totally okay if it's time for you to go to bed.

[43:31]

Thank you very much for coming. But if you would like to offer a comment or a question, please feel free to open your participants' window and raise your hand using the raise hand button. I see Joe. Can you hear me okay? Yeah, great. Thank you for your talk. One thing that I wanted to ask you is if you could say a little about the difference between how Chan is practiced in China and Taiwan or here in America compared to Japanese Zen, which is the style that most of us have gotten used to. I know when I visited China, it seemed a lot more relaxed while Japanese Zen tends to be more strict, but I don't know if that's true in general.

[44:32]

Can you say a little about the differences between the practice of Chinese Chan and Japanese Zen? Thank you. Thank you for the question. I'm not qualified to do the comparison between Japanese Zen and Chan because unlike my husband, I have never practiced in a Zen center. Actually, every time I go give a talk in the Zen place, I did something wrong. I messed up the rituals. But what you have observed corroborated with a lot of... retreatants that I have met who have participated in Zen retreats. And they talk about in our retreat, they use the word relaxed. I believe maybe the form is less elaborate.

[45:36]

And so that might be that. I can I can talk a little bit about the way Chan's practice in... I can give an example. For example, my observation was that in the Zen, though, there was a very strict way to bow and do the rituals. And it's quite a lot simplified in our Chan hall. So that's why... I screw it up every time I go to Zendo. So not out of this respect, I haven't been trained in that set of elaborate rituals. And I never lived in China, and also Dhammadrum's based in Taiwan, and I don't...

[46:37]

I've never lived in Taiwan either. But in Chinese, Master Xinyin teaches differently in the United States and in Taiwan. When in Taiwan, he would incorporate more of the pure land practice in the China... in the Chan practice, which is traditionally meaning in the development of Chinese Buddhism in the last few centuries. So when we use the word tradition, we were talking about many centuries of history. So Chan went to Japan in the Song Dynasty in the 10th, 11th century. That's largely what went to Japan. But Chan continued to develop in China in the later centuries.

[47:41]

In fact, that's the research area of Master Shenyan of Ming Dynasty, Chan Buddhist development that would be between 14th to the 17th century China. a very much less understood era. And during that time, Pure Land practice became more popular and largely to accommodate the non-elite practitioners, offering them the practice of Pure Land and the method of reciting the Buddha's name. And in those later centuries, most Chinese monasteries combine pure land and chan. So how is pure land and chan? So I would say one difference is that Chinese chan has less of a strict idea of sectarian identity.

[48:52]

So the way it's practiced among Chinese monasteries For example, in Taiwan, it's not uncommon for people to engage in the practice of pure learning. Using the recitation of Buddha's name as their main method of meditation, calming the mind. And their next step, or if they engage in Chan practice, is to use that as a question. Who is reciting the Buddha's name? That's the most common question used in channels. I hope I address your question in an adequate manner. Yes, thank you. Dr. Lee, I never do this, but could I pose a very short question?

[50:04]

Sure, of course. What you were saying about Master Sheng Yen, Chan as Buddha Dharma, resonated very closely for me with a reading close to our house of Dogen Zenji in his sort of his sort of discussion of the path as not a Mahayana, it's not a Hinayana, it's like one bloodline of Buddhism. And there's this way that brings forward a feeling of family, a feeling of connection with very ancient tradition. But I wonder what role did that idea play for Master Sheng Yan and how did it support him? If you could say anything about that. Thank you. Thank you. That's a really great question. So it shows up in, I can say in a couple of ways that I can explain adequately in the amount of time we have.

[51:12]

For one thing is in his teaching, he does not focus only on, for example, Chan, what we call text from the Chan group. So, for example, he does not, in his retreat, he does not focus on using koan stories to teach. He would use the, he might use the teaching, writing from, for example, Master Hongzhi, who is one of the founders of what we call the Soto Chao Dong. But it's not uncommon for him to also bring in, for example, the platform sutra. So like less, not only using the discourses in what we think of as the typical Chan canon.

[52:18]

And also in his teaching, he would incorporate the teachings of Mahjyamika, Yogacara, Tathakaragaba, and also the Agamas, Hisais Agamas, and various important sastras like Mahjyamika, Karika, Bainagajuna, very, very, very frequently. And so as an effort to help us understand that Chan is all of Buddhadharma. And also, it's not to only draw on the early teachings as those recorded in the Agamas. Those are important, but also... or the centuries of all the practitioners and masters and teachers who have practiced very seriously and through that practice bring the Buddha's teaching alive to the society, to the culture, to the generation of people with whom they were teaching and practicing.

[53:35]

That's all part of Buddha Dharma as well. So... that's very important in his teaching. Thank you so much. Siobhan. Sally. Hi, this is Sally. Thank you. for being here so late at night for you. I really appreciate your presence and sharing the history of Master Shenyan. And it seems like he was living in a time that was very potent. There was huge cultural, civil unrest, and...

[54:38]

his own culture and practice was being, there was kind of like an existential threat of, as religion was being persecuted, religious peoples were being persecuted in China during that time. And he had to leave his home country. And so I think that there's, there must be a lot of very practical things of crystallization or practical in the moment um things that are formed because of the intensity and the um the quality of the times and i feel like our current time is is like that in how there's a people are feeling an existential intensity right now here in our country but also many other places in the world, including Hong Kong, Taiwan, Hong Kong, feeling a lot of pressure from mainland China and as well as Taiwan, but maybe not so much in the forefront in the press.

[55:52]

And I just wonder, you know, coming from a teacher who was kind of born into his teaching during a time of such a cultural and civic intensity, if there is anything that comes to the forefront of your mind of what can be applied, like on a very practical, on the street level. Thank you. Thank you. Thank you for the question. I think the one thing that he emphasized over and over again is the great vow. so one thing one of the first lines that i remember from his writing was that the buddha dharma is so wonderful and so few people know about it and that was when he was little in the 40s when he first became a young monk and uh and and so many people misunderstood it

[57:01]

So even when people encounter, they may not understand the Dharma. So it formed this great vow in his mind to do everything that is necessary in this tumultuous time in which he was growing up to bring the Dharma to as many people as possible. And that's what drove This vow was what drove him through and not just survive, but to thrive in the very challenging environment he was in and never lose hope ever. So I mentioned in his story that he ended up being stuck in the military for 10 years. Actually, at that time, it was... quite difficult, if not impossible, to leave the military because during that time, the relationship between the nationalists and the communists were very, very tense.

[58:13]

And so there was this great suspicion of anyone trying to leave the military. You might be accused of being a spy and things like that. So it was theoretically not really possible. And he made the impossible happen. because he never lost heart, never lose hope, and just kept trying to cultivate the causes and conditions to make it happen eventually. And I always draw on that from his life story to not become discouraged, not become hopeless, not become cynical. because of his deep understanding of how truly everything is impermanent. In fact, this is a great time to practice. We don't have to be convinced that everything is impermanent.

[59:13]

The world we knew a few months ago is gone. Gone. Gone because of the pandemic. And as you acknowledge, being someone who... who grew up in Hong Kong, I still have family there. The month I was there, I just returned from Hong Kong. It's completely gone. So everything we hold dear and we think how the world is supposed to be is impermanent. And so it makes it actually easier for us to realize this deep truth. taught and shared, discovered by the Buddha and practice and face up to this reality so that we can live with a more wakeful mind to the reality. And so that's what I will draw on and encourage you to practice with as well.

[60:20]

Shall we finish for the night? Thank you again. Thank you very much. And I'm glad I was able to stay awake. And thank you for joining me this evening. I look forward to practicing with everyone at another time. Thank you so much. If you would like, you should be allowed to, or everyone should have the capability to unmute now if you'd like to say goodnight, goodbye, or thank you. Thanks, Dr. Lee.

[61:08]

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