Fall Term Monastic Retreat: The Original Mind Free from Conceptual Fabrication

From August 10 to 20, 2026, the monastics of Ling Jiou Mountain undertook their Fall Term Monastic Retreat. It was a great joy that everyone could return and participate in these ten days of retreat. The main purpose of retreat was to cut off external conditions and minimize contact with outside influences. It also provided an opportunity to learn how to safeguard our body, speech, and mind.

It is precious to have ten days of such purity and seclusion, allowing the space for meditation to become fully present. With regard to the body, we simply settle the body and sit steadily, remaining right where we are. With regard to speech, we refrain from senseless chattering during the retreat. With regard to mind, we allow awareness to abide in the emptiness that is a state of referencelessness, resting in the original face.

What, then, is the original face? Our mind, in its original condition, is already abiding naturally; there is no need to arrange it or make it do anything. In fact, our body, speech, and mind all need to become unoccupied and at ease, allowing body and mind to relax, let go, and settle. In this way, body, speech, and mind can become still and tranquil. Chan practice thus enables body and mind to enter a state of ease. Can we allow ourselves to become genuinely relaxed and at ease in both body and mind?

Ten days is neither long nor short. We can make good use of these ten days to allow body, speech, and mind to become completely pure. Purity of body, speech, and mind means freedom from conceptual fabrication. When body and mind abide in their original state, in which there is nothing to begin with, from where could any dust arise? If we sincerely attend to the original face that is intrinsically free from fabrication, we uncover that our original mind has always been just as it is. What is required is simply to allow the mind to return to its original state—to return to this unfabricated primordial state.

We can take these ten days to bring back the mind that has become scattered and habituated to distraction, bringing it back to the original face that is free from fabrication. Generally, if we lack a method by which to settle the mind, it is not particularly stable. But if we can recognize body, speech, and mind in their original state, just as they are, then body, speech, and mind naturally return to their original place, without any fabrication whatsoever.

Therefore, first we must examine what the mind is and where it is. The mind cannot be seen: it is without form or notions. Yet it is simply that which is clear and knowing. Every day, we remain within this clarity and knowing; there has never been a moment when we were completely without awareness. The nature of mind is precisely this clear and lucid knowing. We observe this mind as clear, lucid, and free from delusion.

Chan practice allows us to work directly with our own mind. The experiential insight that arises from this is the knowing that the mind is luminous in its clarity and emptiness in its nature. This union of clarity and emptiness is the mind itself; it is a return to our original mind. What does “original” mean? It means unfabricated and inherently perfect. No one needs to seize or possess this mind, nor can we point to any particular form or appearance and say, “This is what the mind looks like.”

Thus, the mind is formless, vividly awakened, and dynamically enlivened. It requires no fabrication whatsoever; its clarity and lucidity manifest naturally, just as they are. To observe it as it is means to recognize and directly see its original condition: a state that has never been fabricated.