VENERABLE BHIKKHUNĪ THUẦN TUỆ
– THE ZEN DIGNITY
The Abbess of Diệu Nhân Zen Monastery (Northern California)
1.Diệu Nhân Zen Monastery
In 2002 on July 4, after accepting the offering of ten acres of land with a house from the Lục Hòa sisters, the Most Venerable Zen Master Trúc Lâm Thích Thanh Từ established Diệu Nhân Buddhist Meditation Association, which belongs to Viên Chiếu Zen Monastery in his home country of Vietnam. The Master entrusted Venerable Bhikkhunī Thích Nữ Như Đức to take charge of Diệu Nhân Buddhist Meditation Association with the purpose of meeting the needs of all Buddhists who can take refuge in studying and promoting the teachings of the Buddha, especially practicing according to Trúc Lâm Yên Tử Way, the famous Zen Buddhism in Vietnam. Four months later, the Venerable Master Thanh Từ came to hold a ceremony to place the stone to build the main hall on November 16, 2002 – the Diệu Nhân Zen Monastery[1] was officially born.
In 2012, the chief nun, Venerable Như Đức, appointed Ven. Bhikkhunī Thuần Tuệ as the abbess of the Diệu Nhân Monastery and Ven Thích Nữ Thuần Bạch as the deputy.
Diệu Nhân Buddhist Meditation Association
Abbess: Venerable Bhikkhunī Thuần Tuệ
4241 Duncan Hill Road, Rescue, CA 95672
Tel: (530) 676-7108; (530) 409-8336; (916)222-8784
P.O. Box 265, Rescue, CA 95672
Fax: (530) 672-2497
Website: www.dieunhan.net
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- Daily Schedule
3:45 am Wake up
4:00–6:00 am Meditation
6:30–6:50 am Exercise
7:15 am Breakfast
8:30–10:30 am Work offering
11:30 am Lunch ritual
1:00–2:00 pm Rest
2:30–3:40 pm Dharma class
4:30 pm Dinner
5:45 pm Confession
6:30–8:00 pm Meditation
Class Timetable:
Monday: Studying the Mahaparinirvana Sutra (Ven.Viên Chiếu) / Chinese Zen Masters (Ven.
Bhikkhunī Thuần Bạch (every other week)
Tuesday: Silent retreat day
Wednesday afternoon: CD Master Trúc Lâm, Zen Buddhism in Vietnam
Wednesday evening: Enlightenment Songs (Ven. Bhikkhunī Thuần Tuệ)
Thursday: Various activities (every other week)
Friday: Nuns' class: The Will Sutra
Saturday: Learning CD Teacher Thông Phương / Shurangama Sutta (Ven. Bhikkhunī Thuần Tuệ, every other week)
- Diệu Nhân Zen Monastery Activities
Saturday Practice Day every two weeks.
Monday night class for young Americans and Buddhists.
Four-day annual spring and fall retreat; each session may be longer in the future.
Occasional outdoor picnics, nights of watching the moon, drinking tea, sermons on the temple grounds, creating favorable conditions for young people and students to come and study.
Guiding the practice of meditation in prison (Volunteer Sangha) in the Buddhist Pathways Prison Project at Folsom State Prison.
Teaching and guiding retreats in other states and Canada, England, France, Belgium and Germany.
Teaching at Buddhist Youth Training Courses.
Although there are not many Diệu Nhân Buddhists, from young to old they practice wholeheartedly and zealously take care of constructing the center. The Diệu Nhân Zen Monastery has become as it is today thanks to many benefactors, the deep virtue of the Venerable Master Thích Thanh Từ, the protection of the Trúc Lâm Zen Sangha, the leadership and nuns of Viên Chiếu Zen Monastery, and the enthusiastic support of Buddhists for the Diệu Nhân Meditation Center. To repay these benefactors, Diệu Nhân Zen Monastery has diligently practiced following the Master Thích Thanh Từ’s method, maintained a long-term mind, shared the practicing joy with those who are interested in the Zen path, returning to the inherent mind.
- Purpose of Zen Practice – Theory Method:
- Diệu Nhân Buddhist Meditation Association belongs to the Trúc Lâm Zen School of Vietnam, restored by the Venerable Thích Thanh Từ in 1970.
- The foundation of the practice is the Shakyamuni Buddha’s
- Advocate: “Zen Practice –Theory ”
- Zen Buddhism does not focus on the sutras, because Zen is the mind of Buddha, the sutra is the mouth of Buddha.If the Buddha's mind and mouth are no different, then Zen and Dharma are inseparable.
- Trúc Lâm Zen Buddhism in Vietnam does not follow the later Chinese Zen Buddhism sects, such as Caodong (Tào Động), Linji (Lâm Tế), Gui Yang (Qui Ngưỡng), Yunmen (Vân Môn) and Fayan (Pháp Nhãn).
- Based on the treatises and sutras of the Buddha, Trúc Lâm Vietnam Meditation combines three important landmarks of Zen Buddhism tradition from China to Vietnam: The second Patriarch Huike (Huệ Khả), the sixth Patriarch Heineng (Huệ Năng) and the first Patriarch Ke Lin (Trúc Lâm) to apply and create the particular Vietnamese practice under the guidance of Zen Master Trúc Lâm:
- Knowing the delusion, we do not follow, because the delusion is the illusory mind.
- Mind does not appear, because it is a false temporary combining.
- Do not engage with the dualism, because it is not real.
- Living with the real, without following the false. Apply meditative care to realize there is a true mind.
- These are the four means the Zen Master Trúc Lâm made to guide practitioners. Depending on the capacity of the practitioner, the application is different in each instance.
- Diệu Nhân Zen Monastery’s teaching is based on the Venerable Trúc Lâm's method to apply the practice and instruct Buddhists.
- Venerable Bhikkhunī Thuần Tuệ:
Venerable Bhikkhunī Thuần Tuệ (aka Tôn Nữ Tịnh Tâm) was born in 1958 to a sincere Buddhist family in Huế. Thanks to her mother and father's instructions, every day the whole family recited sutras and meditated. When she was ten years old, she became a vegetarian, and at age fourteen, she asked to become a nun. Her parents promised to give permission whenever she finished her university studies. She was a student at the famous Đồng Khánh High School in Huế and the English department in Huế University. There are five renunciates in her family who follow the Zen Master Trúc Lâm (parents, two sisters and Ven. Thuần Tuệ).
In 1981, she became a nun under Zen Master Trúc Lâm Thanh Từ at Chân Không Monastery (Vũng Tàu, Vietnam).
In 1984, she received the bhikkhunī ordination at Đồng Nai Province.
In the nearly thirty years since she became a nun, she was blessed to study under the guidance of Master Thanh Từ at monasteries such as:
- 1981: Bát Nhã Meditation Center, Chân Không (Vũng Tàu)
- From 1983 to 1994: Viên Chiếu Zen Monastery (Long Thành, Đồng Nai)
- From 1994 to 2010: She became a Zen nun teacher at Trúc Lâm Phụng Hòang Zen
Monastery (Đà Lạt)
When the the master returned to Thường Chiếu Monastery in 2010, Venerable Bhikkhunī Thuần Tuệ returned to the Viên Chiếu Nunnery. At that time, the chief nun, Như Đức (abbess of Viên Chiếu Zen Monastery) sent her to the United States to take on a new position as abbess of the Diệu Nhân Zen Monastery in Rescue, California.
- Since 2012, she has dedicated herself to guiding the spiritual life for nuns and Buddhist students, wholeheartedly building a more spacious and more favorable Zen Monastery for the sake of the masses.
- Currently, there are ten resident nuns. Every week there are around thirty to fifty Buddhists studying meditation at the monastery and hundreds of people coming from all over on the occasions of the big holidays (Buddha's Birthday, Vu Lan) or the fall retreat and winter retreat.
Works and translations of Venerable Bhikkhunī Thuần Tuệ:
- Tâm bình thường (Normal Mind, 2016)
- Từ Một Tâm Trong Lặng (From a Quiet Mind, 2019)
- Keys to Buddhism (2008), Zen Master Thích Thanh Từ (English translation)
Nurturing the Zen seed from a young age with Master Trúc Lâm, the chief nun Như Đức and the venerable sangha in the Trúc Lâm Zen lineage, Venerable Bhikkhunī Thích Nữ ThuầnTuệ can share the Zen style with her nuns and lay Buddhists in three ways, such as the noble manner (the body teaching), dedication to sharing the Zen life (the oral teaching) with students of all ages and ethnic groups. Her instruction is simple, clear, practical, bringing the person straight back to “their inherent Buddha nature” and “their ownership” (the mind teaching). The Zen fame of nuns, descendants of the nun Patriarch Diệu Nhân (eleventh and twelfth centuries) are increasingly spreading throughout the United States, Vietnam, and around the world in this twenty-first century.
A thousand years ago, the Patriarch appeared,
A thousand years later, the high marks have remained,
Fresh wind with sweet scent,
Diệu Nhân Nun Patriarch forever grateful.
Hương Sen Temple, June 24, 2020
Respectfully,
Thích Nữ Giới Hương
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NGỌA VÂN HUT[2]
(Cloud Sleeping Hut, Thích Nữ Thuần Tuệ)
Ngọa Vân Hut!
Ngọa Vân Hut!
Mountain slope with the vast bamboo
Stone slanted
The road is long and still light
The wind comes
Mountain head
Ngọa Vân Hut!
Story of the ancient days,
At a wild jungle place
People looking for a place to hide
Far away the Imperial court,
alienate the distance
Just keep the bright pure heart
Blue sky
high mountains
Clouds shine throughout the months and years
Cloudy shadows cover the time traces
A small hut
wandering
A quiet sky.
Today we return
Look for the ancient footprints of patriarchs
Trace the small path in forest leaves
Step by step bumpy
high and low
low and high
Loving the skinny bamboo sticks!
A thousand years passed
Patriach came here to open the way
Old body like an ancient tree
Still looking for a way to live long
For the descendants later.
Oh, a small Ngọa Vân Hut!
On the mountain peak
Today
Any cloud cluster
leaning back to sleep
Ngọa Vân Hut!
My heart cherished
Which vow
high on top of Đông Sơn Mount
Which vow
Hard to fray
Partriarch went ahead
Anyone who keeps following?
Seven hundred years ago,
Your footprints
Why is it still clear?
In the sun and wind, the voice has not stopped
The Heart Sutra without words
The Heart Sutra that everyone has in mind
Never disappeared.
Ngọa Vân Hut!
Is hut in the pristine mountains?
Or is hut here
in the midst of my clarity?
Every moment
One second of exposure
There are no partitions
From the past
Present
Future
No trails
This one
This two
Voiceless
Here I am
Here you are
Ngọa Vân Hut!
A calm sky
Bright in the rhythm of life
Immense fluency
Flowering living
Throughout the empty mind
I am staying
Ngọa Vân Hut!
Cloud sleeping!
(1995)
Photos:
Zen Master Thanh Từ during the ceremony of laying the stone to build
Diệu Nhân Zen Monastery, November 16, 2002
Diệu Nhân Monastery in a white snowy winter
Ven. Bhikkhunī Thuần Tuệ at the entrance to the monastery,
under the autumn red maple leaves
Giving lucky money and fruit to Buddhists on Lunar New Year 2020,
Ven Thuần Tuệ (smiling with a bag of red envelopes).
The Venerable Nuns from Viên Chiếu Monastery (Vietnam) guiding the
Fall Retreat in 2019 at the Diệu Nhân Monastery,
(Front row from left): Ven. Thuần Bạch, Ven. Hạnh Như,
Ven. Giải Thiện, Ven. Như Đức, Ven. Hạnh Huệ and Ven. Thuần Tuệ
The Zen Tea Night at the Buddha’s Enlightenment Day in 2019
Meditation
Dharma talk in Montreal in 2019
Guiding a retreat in Belgium, 2020
Ven. Giới Hương (right) and a disciple Rev. Viên Tiến (left)
Visisted the abbess Ven. Thuần Tuệ (center) and Nuns at
Diệu Nhân Monastery in August 23 2020
(Left) Ven. Thuần Bạch, Ven. Thuần Tuệ, Ven. Giới Hương
and Rev. Viên Tiến at the Main Hall of
Diệu Nhân Monastery in August 23 2020
Ven. Thuần Tuệ (fourth middle)
With nuns in Diệu Nhân Zen Monastery in 2020
[1] Diệu Nhân is the name of the Vietnamese Zen Nun Master (1041–1113), seventeenth generation of the Vinitaruci lineage.according to historical data, her world name was Lý Thị Ngọc Kiều, the eldest daughter of Phụng Càn vương Lý Nhật Trung Prince (son of Lý Thái Tông King). At young age, she was very pure and gentle and was raised as a princess in the palace by Lý Thái Tông King. After the death of her husband, she volunteered to quit worldly life. One day she realized the worldly phenomenon were all vanity illusions, so she gave away all the jewels, then asked to become a nun and took the Bodhisattva ordination, as well as practicing under the guidance of Zen Master Chân Không. Zen Master Chân Không gave her Dharma name Diệu Nhân and appointed her to be the abbess of Hương Hải Nunnery in Phù Đổng Village, Tiên Du, Bắc Ninh Province (now in Gia Lâm district, Hanoi city). Every day, Ven. Bhikkhunī Diệu Nhân kept the precepts and meditated and attained the concentration state. Ever since the monks and nuns at that time respected her. She was the head of the seventeenth generation of the Vinitaruci lineage in the Lý Dynasty.
The Fourth Hội Tường Ðại Khánh Year (in the year 1113), under the Lý Nhân Tông King’s dynasty, Ven. Bhikkhunī Diệu Nhân became ill. Sheleft the enlightened verses to teach the nuns. At seventy-two, she sat cross-legged and passed away.
[2]Trần Nhân Tông King (1258-1308), after the completion of the army task of the north and south, his leading son ,Trần Anh Tông Prince took chargedof the administration the country in order that in 1299, his father, Trần Nhân Tông King could become a monk and practice asceticism. He took the title Hương Vân Đại Đầu Đà (the fragrant cloud practiced by the ascetic) with the name Trúc Lâm Đại Sĩ (Baboo Great Monk).
After the transmission of yellow robes and bowl to the next partriarch successor, Pháp Loa, in 1307, he went into seclusion at a small hut on the Am Mây Ngủ (Sleeping Cloud) Peak. In 1308, he passed away there. According to his will, his body was cremated there and Patriarch Pháp Loa built a stupa to worship a part of his master’s relics.
Ngọa Vân Đỉnh or Am Mây Ngủ is a peak located on Bảo Đài Mountain, belonging to the Yên Tử mountain range, Đông Triều District, Quảng Ninh Province.
Please kindly read this article and view all photos: 2.19._Ven._Thuan_Tue_-_Dieu_Nhan_Zen_Center-_TN_Gioi_Huong.pdf
