Awareness in Christ Retreat: Silent Illumination
Sat, 11 Dec
|Awarezen Room
A monthly meditation mini-retreat for all who enjoy the process of meditative inquiry into the heart of being—unveiling the knowing within our experience, along the way traversing profound reaches of meditative mind and insight from jhana to dzogchen in the light of Christ.
Time & Location
11 Dec 2021, 9:00 am – 3:00 pm SGT
Awarezen Room
About the event
Awareness in Christ Retreat is a series of meditative explorations into key aspects of deeper meditation in the context of micro-retreat. We will cover salient dimensions of jhana (lucid concentration), aruppa (immaterial absorption), vipassana (deep insight), mozhao-chan 默照禅 (silent illumination), huatou-chan 话头禅 (critical phrase), anuttara-yoga tantra (highest integral blissful wisdom), mahamudra (nature of awareness), and dzogchen (pristine awareness in essence and effulgence)—all luminously held in the presence and power of Christ.
Today's retreat focuses on mozhao (默照) or silent illumination. We shift from meditation of the early Buddhist texts into meditation of the Chan/Zen tradition, a lineage traceable according to traditional accounts to Maha Kasyapa, one of the chief disciples of the Buddha. Of the two main meditative approaches in Chan/Zen, silent illumination—a profound awareness practice orally transmitted in the Caodong school of Chinese Chan was later put into writing by Hongzhi Zhengjue 宏智正觉 (1091-1157 C.E.). Silent illumination evinces a…