Dates：2013-08-01 ~ 2014-03-30
Opening Hours : Tuesday–Sunday : 10 a.m. to 5 p.m.
Location：Special Exhibition AreasⅠ&Ⅱ, Hall of Harmonious Communion, sixth floor, Museum of World Religions
Closing Day : The museum is closed every Monday, and Chinese New Year’s Eve to Chinese January 3rd.
The auspicious origins of this exhibition lie in the Buddha’s Flower Sermon and Mahākāśyapa’s smile, two thousand years ago, on Vulture Peak. As Chan was passed down from the Buddha to our patriarchs, it was also transmitted from India to China. Chan adapts effortlessly to suit every time and every place. Chan subtly descends into our everyday lives.
What is Chan? Chan is mind. Chan is the easy serenity that arises from the mind. It is a transcendent liberation that brings one back to one’s true heart and mind and enables one to see one’s true face. Chan enables us to gather up inner peace (+ refers to the inner peace movement) and spread harmony and peace across the world.
Master Hsin Tao, who founded the monastery at Ling Jiou Mountain, demonstrates the beautiful ease of a peaceful heart through Chan practice. Today’s world is full of discord, peace never lasts, disaster follows on disaster—all because our minds are impatient and our thinking confused. By promoting Chan practice and teaching people about Chan, Master Hsin Tao hopes to enable people to undergo a positive transformation, turning selfish desires and inappropriate thoughts into a thirst for enlightenment, and ultimately arriving at a future where “a peaceful heart brings a peaceful world”. Thus, the world will attain untrammelled perfection, and every corner of the Earth will dissolve into the Pure Land of the Avatamsaka world of interconnectedness. (to be consistent with film and other materials)
The World of Chan Special Exhibition has been mounted on the occasion of the thirtieth anniversary of the founding of the monastery at Ling Jiou Mountain in order to give a deep look inside the world of Chan. We hope you will find this exhibition stimulating and thought-provoking and so become aware of the easy liberation and transcendence of Chan. Whether you are walking or at rest, sitting or lying, you can feel Chan’s beauty and ubiquity: there is no place that is not Chan, no thing that is not Chan. As long as you are attentive in your experience, you will be able to experience the joy of Chan anywhere and anyhow. In this way, you will come to an awareness of the Avatamsaka realm, the realm of consummate truth, where everything in the universe is connected to and penetrated by every other thing, where every thing reflects every other thing, limitlessly, forever.
The breath of Chan stirs the lamp of the mind. For thirty years, the breath of Chan has been blowing from Ling Jiou mountain across the whole world. This is the start: eventually, it will bring us into the Avatamsaka realm of ultimate truth—The World of Chan.
Website：http://www.mwr.org.tw/2013chan/
