Time’s Up for Chan Meditation Improving Session in Shaolin Temple in Qi in Gengzi Year

As abbot Shi Yongxin claimed “Jie!”, Shaolin Temple’s 49-day Chan meditation improving session in Gengzi Year ended up completely on Jan. 6, 2021. During the time a total of 106 people including elders, holy men from mountains, old Chan masters, fresh Chan monastics gathered at the Meditation Hall together, overcoming fatigue, delusion and other difficulties to sit meditation and enlighten themselves as well as achieve realization within a set timeframe.

At 3:15 am, all Chan monastics started to sit in meditation during the duration of burning the first incense as usual when boards rang. Today is the last day of Shaolin Temple’s Chan meditation improving session in Gengzi Year. More than one hundred Chan monastics from all over the country would take the Shaolin Kungfu test monitored by master Shi Yongxin and major heads.

Rules of the Da Chan Qi each year in Shaolin Temple is impartial, have strict requirements with the meaning of prowess and diligence. Get up at 3: 20 am and have a rest at 11:45 pm each day meanwhile respectively run and sit in meditation during the duration of burning 12 incenses, equivalently walking 30 miles each day. Concentrate and deal with delusions to ensure focusing attention for consecutive tens of days. Thus monks apply for permission to take time off from life and death with venerable master Yongxin advance before Da Chan Qi to seek disengagement.

At 6:30 am, master Yongxin had vegetarian meal together with people. All seats, the west and east seat, were occupied. Then all masters run during the duration of incense burning at the Meditation Hall. And master Yongxin gave a dharma teaching.

All masters lined up standing on both sides of Damo to invite abbot Yongxin Jie Qi after venerable master Yongxin together with first seat and major heads gave a Kungfu test respectively. Master Yongxin claimed: “Jie!” Then all people paid a respect, expressed their gratitude to major heads, incense guards, protectors and so on, meanwhile standing up to the Abbot Hall and applied permission to take time off from life and death with abbot Yongxin. So far, Jie Qie has been finished completely.

There are no too many chores after farm work during the winter each year in the temple. Thus monks take siting in meditation as the dharma gate and make every seven days as a session called Da Chan Qi. Da Chan Qi is an important way of Chan Buddhism in cultivation, and has to be conducted at the meditation hall.

As the ancestral monastery of Chan sect, Shaolin monks have always stuck to practical cultivation for thousands of years. The Meditation Hall had been destroyed in the war. Thus the tradition of Da Chan Qi had ever been interrupted. The present Meditation Hall in Shaolin Temple started restoration and construction in Oct 2004 and launched Da Chan Qi for the first time in 2005.

Venerable Yongxin repeatedly stressed, “Buddhism is a religion attaching great attention to practice. The growth in body and mind can be achieved only by real practice. Chan Buddhism also paid more attention to real practice. Shaolin Temple, as the ancestral monastery of Chan sect, restored the Chan meditation hall and insists on Da Chan Qi, inheriting and carrying forward Shaolin culture, and also a kind of responsibility of Buddhism. The Meditation Hall is the core that Shaolin Sangha work hard and handle affairs. Shaolin monks stick to this lifestyle of sitting in meditation, practicing Kungfu, doing reciting and chanting precepts to attain comfort and detachment of body and mind. Buddhist monks of ten directions conduct Da Chan Qi in Shaolin Temple each year. By this means, let people be able to get improvement from reflection in Chan practice, learn something and attain achievements!”