10 Minutes with Chinese Buddhist Master Sheng Yen

Chinese Buddhist Master Sheng Yen has hardly led a charmed life.

As he recounts in his new memoir Footprints in the Snow, he grew up poor in rural China, was conscripted to fight communists in the nationalist army, and lived homeless on the streets of the Bronx, N.Y.

Nonetheless, Sheng Yen, a master of Chan Buddhism (more commonly known in the West by its Japanese name “Zen") has become one of the most influential contemporary Buddhist masters, with luminaries like the Dalai Lama and Thich Nhat Hanh singing his praises.

Sheng Yen answered questions by e-mail about Buddhism, meditation and politics. Some answers have been edited for length and clarity.

Q: How is meditation separate from faith?

A: When we use religious faith, we pray, and prayer has an object, such as God, who answers to our prayer. When one meditates, one collects the scattered mind and subdues it by focusing it. Read Article

By Daniel Burke