Is this Chan fever a temporary escape from pressure for modern-day people? Perhaps it is just a matter of famous "spiritual brandnames." Or is it the manifestation of an increasing desire to clarify the mind so as to understand one's true nature and face up to one's true self?

Summer days and the sound of cicadas (in Chinese "chan") can be heard as the temples busily hold all kinds of Chan activities so as to protract the great attention they have been receiving since the winter.

The famous gather and commoners crowd in: It was at the end of last year that Ling Chuan Temple in Taipei County's Wanli Rural Township held a series of ten sessions of intensive meditation, called "Chan Seven" (see box); then, this February, Peitou's Nung Chan Temple held a series of "Chan Three Classes for the Social Elite." What grabbed people's attention was that, among the black robed crowd, sitting erect with knitted brows on rush mats, were a string of famous names from the worlds of industry, academia and politics, including even Minister of Defence Chen Li-an. Naturally, the degree of media coverage was high.

Behind the backs of such famous people sat the much larger number of anonymous seekers who are fuelling today's Chan fever. Only two years ago, Ling Chuan Temple's Chan Seven classes had no more than 70 members and all you had to do was apply to take part; today, there are usually around 200 applicants, of whom only half are actually accepted. As for Nung Chan Temple, it is presently holding twenty Chan training classes throughout Taiwan to provide special instruction.

Take a look through the book sales charts and you can see that Purple Bodhi, the earliest book in Lin Ching-hsuan's nine-volume "Enlightenment" series, has already gone into its 68th edition; Compassionate Bodhi, his latest work, is in its 12th edition after only six months. Chan Life and the Smile of the Buddha, by psychologist Cheng Shih-yen, has climbed the nonfiction lists where it is currently hovering between first and third place. In the wake of Chan meditation, Chan books and Chan devotees, there have also come a number of products linked with Chan by name only, such as "Chan Tea," "Chan Travel" and "Chan Music." Are we really witnessing a movement towards Chan like that which occurred in the Tang dynasty?

Material wealth--spiritual thirst: "The time has come," says the Venerable Chang Sheng-yen of Nung Chan Temple. Looking at it from a historical perspective, the popularity of Chan has always risen when a nation is on the ascendent and life is fairly comfortable. Such was the case with Tang China and postwar Europe, America and Japan. It is at such times that people do not need to expend too much energy at work and can afford a lot of creature comforts. However, desire leads to fatigue and this burden becomes daily more heavy, with even originally simple things such as food and clothing becoming excessively complicated.

Today we thus see streams of coaches at every temple bringing housewives to burn incense, while others seek to promote and make a windfall from smaller, remote temples; in the metropolis, Buddhist temples squeeze in between the forest of highrise buildings and the sound of Sanskrit chanting is ceaseless; every holiday in the city of Hualien, eastern Taiwan, sees devotees making their way to the temples to do obeisance to the Buddha, bowing every third step as they go, punishing their bodies as an expression of the piety in their hearts; as for the Venerable Cheng Yen, she has some 360,000 followers and they have built the best equipped hospital in eastern Taiwan; half-page newspaper advertisements also provide buyers and sellers with peace of mind by stressing how auspicious ornaments, beads and icons have been imbued with the divine efficacy of a Chan master.

Such external activities directed at spiritual pursuits, along with Chan cultivation directed at the inner world, have developed into a new mode of seeking. Moreover, in attracting a large number of secular followers, especially intellectuals, this has become more than a religion.

According to Wu Ning-yuan, fellow of National Sun Yat-sen University's Sun Yat-sen Studies Institute, intellectuals might be very knowledgeable and highly skilled, but in the face of the materialism, commercialism and consumerism of industrial society, their growing disquiet and discontent leads to reflection on how to find true inner contentment.

Apart from industrialization, there remain a number of other factors that are giving people their thirst for Chan and fuelling the craze.

Colleagues and brethren: "Early Chan was not open to the masses, but was usually wrapped in mysterious clothing and was a kind of fanaticism," says Hung Chi-sung, one-time teacher of Chan meditation.

Lin Hsin-hsing, 46-year-old manager at Chung-hua Insecticides, who has been through four Chan Sevens, recalls that society 20 years ago was not really sure about the value of ancient Chinese culture, with Buddhism and Chan considered to be kinds of "superstition." The universal acceptance of Chan today, apart from being linked with the cultural confidence that comes from wealth, is also related to the opening up of Chan Seven to the world. When the Venerable Chang Sheng-yen began organizing Chan Sevens at home in 1978 there would be no more than about ten people. Under his leadership, the numbers increased daily.

With this opening up of Chan by the temples and the increasing possibilities for getting involved, the flooding onto the market of books about Chan has also converted a lot of interested people. "Previously people always thought Buddhism was very deep, and Chan even more so. The prose writings of Cheng Shih-yen and Lin Ching-hsuan, and cartoons of the Platform Scripture of the Sixth Patriarch by Tsai Chih-chung, have all opened up new windows," says Ho Chi-yi, manager of Texas Instruments Taiwan Ltd.

Then there is the influence of one's colleagues. Every Sunday a minibus leaves Ho Chi-yi's company for a Buddhist temple in Liukuei rural township, enabling employees to take part in Chan meditation on their day off. The Venerable Hui Man, who directs Chan meditation at Pei Hai Temple on Fokuang Mountain, says that two-thirds of the people who take part in meditation on their days off have been brought along by their friends to take a look. It is much the same with people from business and government circles.

Spiritual tranquilizer: Modern-day living is very tense, so some people use Chan meditation for a practical purpose--as a spiritual tranquilizer.

"In the past I was always looking for a way to relax. My work is very demanding and life was like a car race where you could only put your foot down hard on the accelerator," says Hsu Tsung-jen, general manager of President Convenience Stores.

In a holiday mood he took some books and went off into the mountains. To ease his anxieties he carried a portable telephone, never thinking that once he had arrived at the temple he would have to hand over everything. After three days of Chan training, he realized that "putting things aside" is possible, and that it will not result in any delay.

Ho Chi-yi, a Carnegie Foundation teacher trainer, had a clear cut career plan for himself, with health, mental development and expertise forming the "iron triangle of his life." It was out of consideration for the first two of these elements that he began Chan meditation.

The Venerable Hui Man of the Pei Hai temple also points out that students in the beginners' Chan meditation class tend to be people who are pursuing good health or suffering from lack of concentration, nightmares and other various disorders. But, obviously, those who come to use Chan for its practical value do not take second place to those who have come to pursue enlightenment as their ultimate goal.

"Although their aim is a practical one, their scope is cramped, but at least they can take a fresh look at themselves," says writer Lin Ching-hsuan, expressing no opposition.

Throwing open the door of convenience? As for those kinds of Chan cultivation and Chan books which have thrown open the door of convenience, people take differing views over the use of such relaxed and popularist methods to attract devotees and readers.

"The requirement of religion is that it be actively concerned with life and truly liberating from worldly affairs. If Chan books and Chan meditation only temporarily ease the pressure of life and bring about a kind of insidious relief, then is it not like a modern-day kind of opium?" suspects Yang Hui-nan, professor of philosophy at National Taiwan University.

Chan preaches the doctrine of Sudden Enlightenment, with records of debates between masters that are always revealing, enlightening and penetrating. However, they only talk about the end result and there are no records of the long months and years of meditation undergone by its master practitioners. Sudden Enlightenment can only come from the shock given by a Chan master to someone who is internally and externay completely ready for it. "If you want Sudden Enlightenment from holiday Chan, that is a kind of magic," says Chang Sheng-yen.

The study of Chan is not just a matter of a few days of purging the accumulation of 20 or 30 years of bad habits. As for practitioners of "instant" Chan, the writer Hsiao Yeh once wrote in an article entitled Cicada and Chan: "There is a kind of cicada called the 'Seventeen-year Chan' the pupa of which must stay in darkness underground for seventeen years, after which it crawls to the surface to slowly climb a tree trunk before it finally hatches out into a winged insect... If the process of the cicada hatching out is like that of Chan's Sudden Enlightenment, then this kind of Sudden Enlightenment is like the passing of seventeen dark years. Such a transformation can only be from grub to mature insect, from which there can be no going back to the grub." He goes on to point out that if it is because you are not content at heart that you want to use instant Chan, this is like sticking wings on a grub--as soon as it flies, the wings will fall off.

Lazy Chan and crazy Chan are not real Chan: As for the dissemination of Chan books, Chang Sheng-yen thinks that the Buddhist Law was originally easy for people to get into, being without any esoteric theory, and Chan is the same. It was only later on that people took the study of Chan and made it into something for academic discussion so that it gradually became the monopoly of great masters.

"Today's dissemination is just a recovery of Chan's original face. But to describe it has having such a beautiful face, giving people the mistaken view that it is that easy, is a way to lose face!" says Chang Sheng-yen. If everyone thinks they can just go through the motions and that is Chan, thinking they can achieve awakening in an instant or even interpreting Chan's pursuit of liberation as a kind of laxity, this is not only a dilution of the study of Chan, it is also a changing of its true nature. "All we say is that everyone can cultivate themselves, not that everyone can instantly become a Buddha," he points out.

Lin Yu-wen has been supervising Chan meditation for ten years and says it is because some people get the wrong teachers and get involved in a mysterious kind of "crazy Chan" that they are not concerned with morality and even cut themselves off from society. Then there is also "lazy Chan" for the indolent, which uses meditation as a pretext for doing nothing.

There is a Chan debate between the two masters, Huai Jang, a disciple of the Tang Dynasty Sixth Patriarch, and the monk Tao Yi, who spent every day braving wind and rain to sit in meditation on a mountain. One day Huai Jang asked Tao Yi, "Great virtuous one! Why do you put yourself through such suffering?" to which Tao Yi answered that he was seeking to become a Buddha.

At this, Huai Jang picked up a brick and stared to rub it. Tao Yi thought this very strange and asked, "Monk, why are you rubbing that brick?"

"I am making a mirror," came the reply.

"How can you make a mirror from a brick?" asked Tao Yi, thinking this was absurd.

Huai Jang stopped for a moment and retorted, "If I cannot make a mirror by rubbing a brick, how can you become a Buddha through Chan meditation?"

Enlightenment is in the mundane world: Chan is not just something that comes from "sitting," it must be a part of life, a frequent reflecting on one's heart and gradual progression towards the Truth. It is said that, "the mundane world is actually the Bodhi tree."

When Minister for Defence Chen Lu-an was asked by the media whether study of Chan would make him too negative, he replied, "As for eating, drinking and playing, fame and fortune, I am negative. But I actively rectify my heart, cultivate my body and study how to be a righteous and upright gentleman. If I use my time for work, am not hypocritical and look after those I should look after, can you say I am not being positive?" There are those who think that since famous people have started to practice Chan it has become a kind of "spiritual brandname" and rush in to take part in the fun. Chan Seven is even seen by some as a good opportunity to hobnob with the hoi polloi.

Just seeing Chan as a brandname to drop around the place or paying lip service to Chan in everyday life is naturally not Chan at all and is no way to open up a new life.

The Chan courses that are held in Taipei's Hsinyi Road usually see two thirds of the students skipping classes before the course is even half way through; since the master of the Nung Chan Temple has been in the media, the number of people submitting their names can only go on rising. But those students who only want to take part in the fun will mostly attend but once before they drop out. "They do not really want to study, they are just like people who are not thirsty. Give them one glass of water and they will drink it. Give them another and they cannot," is how Wu Ming-yuan sees it.

Searching for the Pure Land: Chan fever? Is there really a Chan fever? "It is just an illusion," says the Venerable Chang Sheng-yen. The number of people from industrial, government and academic circles is really a small minority, and the number of people who have been through Chan meditation at the Nung Chan Temple is not more than 20,000 or 30,000. Among these, not even as many as one-tenth continue to practice.

Compared to ten years ago, Chan is certainly flourishing. Nevertheless, if you want to compare this with its peak in the Tang dynasty, it is pure dedication that must be assessed, rather than just empty popularity.

If more people did sit peacefully to reflect on their inner beings in pursuit of true righteousness, cleansing themselves in this uncertain mundane world so as to bring out their pure, bright inner beings, one can only wonder what society would be like.

The "chan" cicadas can be heard in summer, let us hope the tranquility is not just temporary.

[Picture Caption]

Buddhist bracelet on wrist and peace at heart--with the increasing wealth and expectations of industrial society, people more than ever feel the need to search for clear self-possession.

Under the influence of colleagues, personnel of the Central Bank of China have organized Chan meditation classes for themselves.

Chan devotees at Nung Chan Temple gardening with their master. Chan is concerned not only with Sudden Enlightenment but also with daily introspection and progress towards Truth.

Where to find peace in this great world? You have to be careful, it is really too windy outside for Chan meditation.

With no foundation in Chan meditation, people of all ages alleviate the pressure of daily life by contemplating mountain scenery under the guidance of a Chan master at Peihai Temple.

A "no speaking" badge indicates not only that talking is forbidden but also that the mind must not give rise to any thoughts during Chan Seven and Chan Three courses.

Buddhist bracelet on wrist and peace at heart--with the increasing wealth and expectations of industrial society, people more than ever feel the need to search for clear self-possession.

Under the influence of colleagues, personnel of the Central Bank of China have organized Chan meditation classes for themselves.

Chan devotees at Nung Chan Temple gardening with their master. Chan is concerned not only with Sudden Enlightenment but also with daily introspection and progress towards Truth.

Where to find peace in this great world? You have to be careful, it is really too windy outside for Chan meditation.

With no foundation in Chan meditation, people of all ages alleviate the pressure of daily life by contemplating mountain scenery under the guidance of a Chan master at Peihai Temple.