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(Chinese version here: 只管打坐：與洪文亮老師三日禪（第九十屆）——個人記錄與誠摯推薦)
Place: Taichung — “Right Dharma Eye Treasury Shikantaza Zendo”
Dates: October 2025 (three-day retreat, with a public evening talk the night before)
Guidance: Teacher Hong Wen-Liang (Sōtō Zen)
I have recently attended a retreat with Zen Master Hong Wen-Liang in Taiwan, Taichung. There are eight 45-minute sitting periods per day along with a dharma talk by Master Hong on each of the three days and the day before the retreat. Noble silence is observed. There was however, karaoke, dinner and wine after the retreat (this part is optional but I think everyone or almost everyone attended the dinner – including a Buddhist nun, although due to Vinaya rules, she of course left before the Karaoke started). Vegetarian and non-vegetarian meals are provided on all days (very delicious food). The strongest impression from these three days is how plain yet penetrating Teacher Hong’s expression is. He never courts the audience with elaborate argument, yet he points straight to the essentials of anatman (no-self) — dependent origination — total exertion. If you understand Chinese, I strongly recommend seizing the chance to attend in the future and verify this for yourself.
A Brief Portrait of Teacher Hong (as I gathered it)
- Born 1933 in Yunlin, Taiwan; graduated from National Taiwan University College of Medicine; served as a surgeon and forensic pathologist.
- After long study and practice, he entered the Sōtō lineage in Japan. He emphasizes shikantaza (“just sitting”) and opens the Way through Genjōkōan / total exertion: no thing to grasp; the Complete Activity (全機) exerts and involves the totality of all conditions in any given activity.
- Now over 90, slender and walking with a cane, yet his mind is keen and sharp, and his speech clear and precise.
- There are twice-monthly public talks; retreats are arranged according to conditions (to inquire about the next retreat, please contact the organizer here:
👉 Right Dharma Eye Treasury Shikantaza Zendo (Facebook): https://www.facebook.com/profile.php?id=100064895641674 )
What I Heard and Noted On Site
1) The decisive seal is no-self, not “an eternal witness” or a reified One Mind
Teacher Hong repeatedly pointed out: taking “I am a pure witness / One Mind / the Absolute” as the final realization is still subtle self-grasping.
In his talks, Dr. Hong often contrasts scientific objectivity (subject studying object) with the investigation of Eastern spirituality and religions into what is prior to the split of subject–object. He adds that however, the Buddha rejected the non-dual oneness of the Upanishads. He warns against mistaking the Upanishadic Brahman or a One-Mind “Absolute” for Buddhist realization. (I believe he has read the AtR blog and thus raised this topic in his teachings. That nondual oneness can still be a subtle clinging.) The Buddhist insight is anatman, emptiness and dependent origination, not reducing everything to one real substance. It is the realization and actualization of anatman and total exertion. Zenki: Complete Activity 全機 is one of the terms used to express that the very vivid manifestation of any given phenomenon, be it a plum, a flower, a tree, birth or death, itself is the manifestation of the totality of all conditions in all ten directions and all times, free from the false separation of a seer apart from the seen, a hearer apart from sound or a knower apart from the known. Birth, death, and all activities are themselves the complete activity of the three times (past, present, future) and ten directions – hence it is said that the entire world of the ten directions is the true human body（尽十方世界真实人体）。 What matters is the living insight that nothing has self-nature (anatta/emptiness) and total exertion, and the ongoing actualization of this in conduct—moment by moment. Buddha-nature is not a static substratum but impermanence impermancing impermanence, dynamic and alive.
“Realization isn’t something that ‘happened once’ and then you’re forever realized. In any moment where conduct accords with truth, there is awakening; otherwise, delusion.” — notes from his talk (my paraphrase from retreat impressions)
For a taste of his voice and approach, you can browse compiled talks and translations. https://www.awakeningtoreality.com/search/label/Zen%20Master%20Hong%20Wen%20Liang%20%28%E6%B4%AA%E6%96%87%E4%BA%AE%E7%A6%85%E5%B8%88%29
He expressed in his own words that the Buddhist awakening is the insubstantialist nondual realization of anatman and dependent origination, there is no real duality of subject and object, knower apart from known, yet it does not reduce everything to one real substance.
2) Total exertion: birth is thoroughly birth; death is thoroughly death
Using Dōgen’s language, he taught: “Birth does not turn into death,” just as summer does not turn into winter. This neither denies continuity nor asserts permanence. It points out that each dharma is empty of own-being and functions in seamless participation with all dharmas as a complete activity right now. This very present Dharma is the exertion of all dharmas past, present, and future. Each dharma abides in its dharma position, before and after are cut off and disjointed. Precisely because there is no self-nature in all phenomena and selves, we speak of “no-birth”—which is not a denial of causality.
To elaborate: In Teacher Hong Wen-Liang’s explanation of the “birth and death” passage from Genjōkōan, birth does not turn into death and death does not turn into birth because each is the Presencing of the moment’s total exertion—like summer and winter that never transform into each other. “Birth is no-birth” does not mean annihilation or some Taoist-style immortality; it points to the fact that all phenomena are without self-nature, so there is no fixed "phenomena" or “someone” that is born, persists, and then dies. Precisely for that reason, he insisted this insight does not cancel karma: it rejects a migrating entity, not karmic continuity. Cause and effect remain unobscured (不昧因果): deeds plant seeds and ripen later, including across lifetimes, which is why ethics, vows, and good actions matter. He also contrasted “no-birth/no-death” with a Hinayāna reading of cessation: Mahāyāna speaks of no cessation, because the very arising and ceasing are empty and only the present all-inclusive manifestation is complete—yet within that completeness, dependent origination still functions and rebirth is affirmed, so misunderstanding Dōgen here as denying future lives is simply wrong. (My own note: many modern Soto teachers deny rebirth and karma, thus falling into the wrong view of uccheda-dṛṣṭi, 'the doctrine of Annihilationism' – something refuted clearly by both Buddha and Dōgen https://www.awakeningtoreality.com/2023/03/did-dogen-teach-literal-rebirth-and.html . Zen Master Hong did a good critique of such wrong views. John Tan too was emphatic that we should not reject rebirth: see https://www.awakeningtoreality.com/2025/09/meeting-notes-with-john-tan-and-yin.html
Nagaraja rightly said: “The problem is that Zen is widely misunderstood in the West. Because of the historical process of Zen's transmission to the West, this transmission has several problems and flaws. Among them is the impression that Zen is a more rational/materialistic/logical Buddhism that rejects fundamental Buddhist principles. In reality, we have everything Mahayana Buddhism has: karma, rebirth, deities, Bodhisattvas, mantras, mudras, devotion, ritual, blessings, merits and so on. This creates dissonance and estrangement between practitioners in temples and historical traditional communities in East Asia and practitioners in western Zen centers.”)
3) Not obscuring cause and effect
He was emphatic: “No-self ≠ no causality, no responsibility.” Because things are dependently arisen and empty, karma is even clearer. Cultivate virtue and wisdom; keep precepts and do good. This is because when conditions ripen, results appear, even into the future lifetimes.
4) Body–mind and posture: shikantaza is not piling up techniques, but whole-body participation
Although he does not elaborate this on the sessions I attended, his other videos place great weight on daily sitting and correct posture. Sitting is not a purely mental activity; it is body and mind as one—settling, letting fabrication drop, so that the habit of “subject vs. object” loosens in upright sitting and the Presencing of total functioning/total exertion is self-evident. His pointers are concrete: sit upright, care for breath and bones, and let the all-inclusive functioning (total exertion) naturally manifest itself. Shikantaza, in his words, is letting the myriad Dharmas reveal that there is no you (anatman): https://www.awakeningtoreality.com/2023/12/shinkantaza-just-sitting-letting-all.html
Through meditation, he isn’t teaching “how to manufacture a special state,” but how to lay down contrivance and the clinging to a false self, so that your Buddha-nature, the truth of anatman (no-self), emptiness and total exertion appears by itself.
A Few Passages from the Handout and Lectures
- Opening Verse (Kaijing-gāthā)
“The unsurpassed, deep, subtle, wondrous Dharma,
Is hard to encounter in a hundred thousand eons.
Now that I see, hear, receive, and uphold it,
I vow to understand the Tathāgata’s true meaning.”
With this resolve, the entire retreat is devoted to “understanding the true meaning,” not chasing a state to possess. - From Dōgen’s Genjōkōan (as printed in the booklet)
“To study the Buddha-Way is to study the self.
To study the self is to forget the self.
To forget the self is to be verified by the myriad dharmas.
When verified by the myriad dharmas, one’s body-mind and the body-mind of others drop away.” - On “knower/known” and both extremes (verses cited in the handout)
“The agent (subject) ceases into the environment, the environment sinks into the subject.
The environment is environment because of the subject;
the subject is subject because of the environment.
The two arise from the one—
do not even hold to the one.”
Comments:
“Subject” and “object” inter-are: To grasp either as ultimately real is delusion. However, understanding this is not enough: true experiential realization goes further and collapses and dissolves subject into object, and object too vanishes into subject until no trace of subject-object duality remains. Yet, do not even abide in a substantialist nondual "one substance", for that too is another subtler delusion.
- On thoughts and fixation (handout §9 highlights)
“No-thought within thought, and not dwelling in thought…
If thought dwells, it is called bondage.
Regarding all dharmas, when thought does not dwell, there is no bondage.”
Comments:
It’s not a rigid “no thought at all,” but non-dwelling. Thoughts arise and are known; we neither throw them out nor are dragged by them.
- Hui-Neng and Self-Nature
As Teacher Hong explained, the Sixth Patriarch Hui-Neng—“an illiterate woodcutter” in the received accounts—initially used the phrase 「自性生萬法」 (“self-nature gives rise to the ten thousand dharmas”). He did so, Teacher Hong said, while already intending the sense of total exertion (全機／現成公案；亦稱「摩訶生命」): each event is the total, all-inclusive functioning with nothing left over. Later, seeing that 「自性」 (“self-nature”) is often a term used to refer as a substantial essence like Brahman, he dropped the character 「自」 (self) and retained 「性」(nature) only as a pointer to this all-inclusive functioning of total exertion (全機)—not a thing behind phenomena, but the immediate, selfless manifestation of the totality of all conditions. In this reading, 「自性生萬法」 was never meant to posit a metaphysical Self; it was a skillful designation aiming at total exertion here and now. Thus, when Teacher Hong cites Hui-Neng, he clarifies that the point is no fixed self-nature to grasp, only the present, entire activity—birth as entirely birth, sound as entirely sound—so that talk of “nature” does not congeal into an entity apart from the ten thousand dharmas.
- A caution about “all dharmas contained in one nature” (handout §9e)
The text warns that phrases like “all dharmas are contained in ‘nature’; all dharmas are that nature” are easily misread as reifying a big “Nature” that everything collapses into. This Maha-Life is the boundless life beyond notions of big and small, and this is called “nature”. Teacher Hong however cautioned: do not turn “emptiness” or “nature” into a "thing" reified and grasped. What is present is dependent origination without own-being, not building a bigger “One.” 10. In human society, to completely realize a state with no quarrels and no conflicts—a peace like that—those “good men and good women” who only fantasize about pleasant things are in fact at greater risk. Because in this world there are many people who specialize in forming groups to deceive and take advantage of these “good men and good women.”
“Things are not that simply good.” So long as we live as members of society, we must first become aware and prepare ourselves: no matter what, we cannot avoid mutual quarrels and mutual friction. And yet, even so, we should, while disputing and rubbing against one another, continually bow and look up toward what is higher [i.e. Truth]; and even in bowing, we still cannot help but have some amount of dispute and friction—this is precisely the condition within which we cannot avoid living.
However, this attitude of “on the one hand bowing, and on the other hand inevitably disputing and rubbing against one another,” or the mindset that within dispute and friction one still “cherishes the wish to look up toward what is higher and more fundamental [i.e. Truth],” is after all somewhat different from the way of living that “relies solely on the struggle for survival.”
Words from John Tan
- John Tan (2022):
“‘Listening with the whole body’ is total exertion. This requires no prior training—it is an intuitive gnosis… a heart-to-heart communication rather than logical analysis. Once the prājṇa-eye opens, do not cage it in arbitrary systems of thought… This is why I advise you to read Hong Wen-Liang.”
(Full context in the ATR post https://www.awakeningtoreality.com/2022/02/anatta-total-exertion-a-natural-state.html ) - John Tan (2020) — corrected phrasing:
“The most important breakthrough post-nondual: do not subsume (everything into a universal awareness or One Mind). [The direction] is dependent origination and emptiness; or, in Dōgen’s terms, total exertion and emptiness—like Hong Wen-Liang.” - He also said elsewhere about Master Hong:
“There are too many insightful pointers—worth rereading again and again. It is rare to find a teacher with such intimacy with one’s empty clarity.”
Why I Wholeheartedly Recommend Attending
- View and embodiment together: He presents no-self and dependent origination thoroughly yet down-to-earth—straight into conduct.
- The clean power of shikantaza: Within upright posture, silence, and punctuality, the subject–object habit loosens on its own; total exertion is not a slogan.
- Seize the conditions: Teacher is advanced in age, yet his Dharma speech is vigorous and his thinking rigorous. If Chinese is your language, now is the time.
Want to Follow Up?
- Teacher generally gives public talks twice a month; retreat dates are announced according to conditions.
- If you’re interested in joining or inquiring about the next session, please message the organizer here:
👉 Right Dharma Eye Treasury Shikantaza Zendo (Facebook):
https://www.facebook.com/profile.php?id=100064895641674
May this be a condition for more friends to draw near to a good teacher, and to personally verify no-self and the total functioning that is already present.
