Chan – A Way of Tangible
Religious Practice
Chan (Zen), originated as a methodology of spiritual meditation, has played an important role in the history of Eastern countries. In recent centuries, with the fusion of various cultures in modern society, Chan has drawn attention of various ethnic groups for its focus on practice and direct effect on human’s lifestyles and health conditions. Chan itself has shown its religion neutral nature in the modern society. For the historic reason, Chan is regarded as a religious practice of a sect of Buddhists and its philosophy concords with Buddhism only. As a matter of fact, Chan is the result of a reflection on various philosophies including Buddhism and Taoism (Taoism is a system of Chinese philosophy) and became a practice oriented life philosophy. It is independent from any religions and customizable to any religious and cultural ground. For example, Confucianism adopted Chan and became a system that includes not only ethical teachings but spiritual exercises.
As
another aspect of the study, we study the core spiritual practices stipulated
in Buddhism and Christianity. Cross comparison finds out essential coincidence
between the two teachings. Correspondence between the two teachings ranges from
the origin of sin (or vexations) to the ways for recovering spiritual freedom
from sin (or enlightenment). As the primary way of Chan (the essential doctrine
of Buddhism), meditation has clear effects in bringing practitioners’ mind into
a tranquil state and promoting both the mental and the physical health. On the
other hand, meditation is approached in Christian’s prayer and a praying way of
life. The effect of Chan is measurable. Through these studies, we believe we
will be able to make Chan a beneficial practice to promote human’s life in
modern society.
We propose an attempt to study the tangible effects of meditation (an essential practice of Chan) on human body and behavior, and investigate possibilities of applying scientific methods to measure the effects. These studies should lead to models that can calibrate the routine and effect of meditation. A direct benefit of this study will be to extend psychology to develop new methods for healing various mental diseases. This objective is feasible because Chan is efficient in training human’s self control since its goal is having one’s every whim under observation. Through this study, it is anticipated to start a campaign to establish “measurable” meditation methods, applying scientific methodology to religions, and eventually making religions “tangible”.