Chan Meditation Center Led Followers in Repentance Prostrations and Prayers for Peace, Successfully Completed the 7-day Water and Land Dharma Service Group Practice

On the morning of November 30 (EST), the New York Chan Meditation Center 2025 Water and Land Dharma Service Group Practice came to a successful conclusion. This year, a total of 262 followers came to the Center to participate. Dharma Drum Mountain Vice Abbot Ven. Guo Guang (果廣法師) rejoiced in everyone's diligent efforts in her Dharma Talk following the successful completion of the event. She stated that this year's assembly coincided with the Thanksgiving holiday in America. Numerous participants specially took time off from work making the round trip every day—some from a long distance away--, so as to complete the remarkable annual Liang Huang Repentance Ceremony and accumulate massive merits. She implored everyone to believe that being able to come to a monastery for Dharma practice and repentance prostrations is the greatest karmic reward for anyone.

Ven. Guo Guang pointed out that the core of Dharma Drum Mountain's vision is "Protecting the Spiritual Environment". Dharma practice is the process of purifying the mind, performing Liang Huang Repentance prostrations, taking a Dharma shower to cleanse our mind, and completely flushing out our inner vexations. Together, these constitute steps in how to protect our spiritual environment. Through purifying our mind, we strive to "uplift the character of humanity, and build a pure land on earth".

From "Protecting the Spiritual Environment", DDM founder Master Sheng Yen went on to develop and expand "Protecting the Social Environment", "Protecting the Living Environment" and "Protecting the Natural Environment". This together with the "Fivefold Spiritual Renaissance Campaign", and "Six Ethics of the Mind", are based on the fundamentals of "Protecting the Spiritual Environment". Amongst them, the "Fivefold Spiritual Renaissance Campaign" contains the concentrated essence of Buddha's wisdom, carefully extracted and ingeniously applied by Master Sheng Yen, as a guiding rule for our routine practices and daily applications. Ven. Guo Guang brought up the "Four Steps for Handling a Problem: Face It, Accept It, Deal with It, Let It Go" as a means to rectify deviated views. In addition, she mentioned the "Four Guidelines for Dealing with Desires: Need, Want, Ability, Propriety" to stand firm in the face of temptation. Finally, she mentioned the "Four Practices for Helping Oneself and Others: Feeling Grateful, Feeling Thankful, Reforming Oneself through the Dharma, Influencing Others through Virtuous Action", to pacify a flaring impulse.  Using the "Four Ways to Cultivate Blessings: Recognizing blessings, cherishing blessings, nurturing blessings, sowing the seeds of blessings", the Venerable encouraged everyone to cultivate blessings through practicing virtue. As a result, we will very naturally reach the "Four Fields for Cultivating Peace: Mind, Body, Family, Activity" in which we elevate and purify our actions of body, speech, and mind.”

Ven. Guo Guang encouraged everyone to practice consistently every day. Just as our daily shower cleanses our body, our mind requires purging too. Since our minds often harbor impure thoughts and dishonorable intentions--- accumulating layers of vexations, greed, anger and ignorance-- our daily scheduled practice is there to take out the trash and practically "Protect Our Spiritual Environment".

After seven days of Group Practice, the followers were filled with Dharma happiness and shared their experiences. Shi Ming (史敏), who completed the entire course, reflected, "previously, I was unclear about repentance prostration, but after this experience, I finally grasped its meaning and significance, understood my past hesitations in truly accepting karmic causes and effects, and rediscovered my faith in spiritual practice." A long-time practitioner revealed that his knees were constantly in pain. In addition, some participants were in the process of recovery from injuries while others were still jet-lagged from their flight to America. However, everyone felt an increase in dharma happiness as the liturgy went on, their spirits even more elated with time, until the final conclusion of the Liang Huang Repentance Ceremony. When everyone sang, "we have now finished the tenth scroll of the Liang Huang Repentance Liturgy. We dedicate our merits to our four benefactors and all those in the three existences (realms)", the happiness felt within was indescribable. The energetic efforts invested in the past seven days of repentance prostrations finally paid off.

The senior volunteers responsible for providing meals to the assembly vowed to support the participants in their practices. Even though they lacked the opportunity to fully participate in the liturgy themselves they were also filled with happiness. Everyone was also especially grateful to the monastics of the Chan Meditation Center and the group of volunteers for their full support, allowing the followers in America to share in the successful experience of completing the Liang Huang Repentance.

◎ Original text in Chinese and photos: Chan Meditation Center
◎ Translation: 張振郁 (Cheng-Yu Chang)
◎ Editing: Keith Brown, YKL