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The Sword of Wisdom – Shodoka


Wordle: Shodoka - Song of Freedom

Wordle image of Shodoka  Creative Commons License

Sad news. Feb. 2, 2009 Chan Master Sheng-Yen passed from this life. I never met him yet was deeply touched by his teaching. Last year I spent many weeks with good friends, looking at the Chan text called “Shodoka” or variously “Song of Freedom” or “Song of Enlightenment”. Master Sheng-yen’s commentary in his book “The Sword of Freedom” illuminated the text clearly. Below is his “death poem”.

without busy affairs, I grow old
empty within, i have both laughter and tears
originally, there was no I,
therefore, both life and death can be cast aside.

This entry was posted on Saturday, February 7th, 2009 at 9:00 pm and is filed under Personal, Song of Freedom, Zen. You can follow any responses to this entry through the RSS 2.0 feed. Both comments and pings are currently closed.

2 Responses to “The Sword of Wisdom – Shodoka”

  1. Jordan Says:
    February 8th, 2009 at 10:03 am

    Hi Will,
    Yeah I feel the loss of Master Sheng-Yen pretty deeply. It is hard to find people as sincere as he was.
    I miss our song of freedom discussion. Seems like forever ago.

    Take care,
    Jordan

  2. Will Says:
    February 8th, 2009 at 5:20 pm

    People like him are rare.

    I miss our discussion too.