Prajñā or paññā in Buddhism is wisdom, understanding, discernment, insight, or cognitive acuity. It is one of three divisions of the Noble Eightfold Path. Such wisdom is understood to exist in the universal flux of being and can be intuitively experienced through meditation. In some sects of Buddhism, it is especially the wisdom that is based on the direct realization of such things as the four noble truths, impermanence, interdependent origination, non-self and emptiness. Prajñā is the wisdom that is able to extinguish afflictions and bring about enlightenmen

Venerable Zhankong (湛空) is well-trained in Buddhist texts and cultivation, and, moreover, through her work and academic studies in China, she understands well the physical and mental suffering of ordinary people. She was tonsured in 2002, when she completed her BA in medicine. Having spent three years in relative isolation on the Zhongnan Mountains, she decided to put the bodhisattva ideal into practice through charity and social work. Ven. Zhankong is now a lecturer at the Buddhist Academy of Guangdong, while pursuing her PhD in Managerial Psychology at the Chinese Academy of Sciences. At the 2013 National Buddhist Sutra Interpretation Contest, Ven. Zhankong referred to examples in the Platform Sutra of the Sixth Patriarch (六祖壇經) to illuminate how the principle of non-duality in Chan Buddhism can resolve mental issues in our modern times. In this interview, she shares some of her stories and work practices.

Staring blankly into space, Pat Sorm sits on the steps of her house, hugging a photo of her son who died just a week earlier. Khon Kha was working in the military and had just turned 40. He had battled with AIDS for the last 10 years of his life. A funeral ceremony was performed in a simple, yet dignified manner, with support from a donation of US$30 that Pat Sorm received from the Salvation Centre Cambodia (SCC). Cremation alone had cost some US$50, but she was at least comforted that the proper Buddhist rituals would allow her son to move on in peace.

“ . . . I accept all religions that were in the past, and worship with them all; I worship God with every one of them, in whatever form they worship Him. . . .” – Swami Vivekananda (Green Message)

What is “sexual misconduct” (kamesu micchacara)? Here are two definitions in the Buddha’s own words.

Since we are subject to birth, old age, sickness, death, and we suffer from dissatisfaction and unhappiness, we are sick people. The Buddha is compared to an experienced and skilful physician, and the Dhamma is compared with the proper medicine; but however efficient the physician may be, and however wonderful the medicine may be, we cannot be cured unless and until we ourselves actually take the medicine. It would seem that many of us are in need of some medicine to cure us of our misunderstanding of one another, our impatience, irritability, lack of sympathy and metta.

Metta, loving-kindness, is to be started within ourselves. If we can say that we love ourselves, can we harm ourselves by having angry thoughts within ourselves? If we love a person, will we do harm to him? to love the self means to be free from selfishness, hatred, anger, etc.; and unless we ourselves possess metta within, we cannot share or radiate, we cannot send this metta to others.

I tell you, monks, there are two people who are not easy to repay. Which two?Your mother & father.

Many Westerners, when new to Buddhism, are struck by the uncanny familiarity of what seem to be its central concepts: interconnectedness, wholeness, ego-transcendence. But what they may not realize is that the concepts sound familiar because they are familiar. To a large extent, they come not from the Buddha’s teachings but from the Dharma gate of Western psychology, through which the Buddha’s words have been filtered. They draw less from the root sources of the Dharma than from their own hidden roots in Western culture: the thought of the German Romantics.