Cork Hanmi Esoteric Buddhist Centre

by Dechan Jueren

• 49th Dharma Lineage holder of the Chinese Esoteric School of Buddhism
• 47th Dharma Lineage Holder of the Linji Chan/Zen School of Buddhism
• 16th Lineage Holder of the renowned Zhaojue Monastery.

From: www.EsotericSchool.net

It is not easy that I have lived to now. I had experienced every kind of suffering.

There are 27 knife scars and two bullet scars on my body. I have died many times. Every time I died, in that hazy state, this old man always came to save me and brought me back to life.

When I was six years old I fell in the river and was drowned. Villagers found my body downstream. They recognized me – the son of a Traditional Chinese Medicine doctor. My father was working at the neighboring town when they told him the news. It was a moonless night. He had to walk miles in the wee hours of the morning over an old battlefield known by the locals to be haunted and infested with wild animals. No locals would ever venture through that area in the night.

When I was 38 years old, I was the factory head of a large machinery company in my hometown Chaoyang, in northeast China. On 24th Oct 1989, just after 3pm I had just finished my work in the office; suddenly there was a knock on the door. It was the Chief and Deputy Chief of police from the Chaoyang railroad station. They brought in an old man. The moment I saw the old man, I was dumbfounded! He was the man that came to help me every time I died. This was the first time that I met him in person. Instantly my mind went blank. I did not move until the cigarette I was smoking burnt my fingers.
After a brief conversation, I willingly resigned everything and followed the old man to the mountain.

Six months later, and after my guru attained the rainbow body, I left the mountain. With resolve and by my guru’s command, I began my journey to spread the Esoteric Dharma worldwide. I gave all my assets to charity and to the cause of reviving Buddhism.

I received the Dharma Lineage of Mahāvairocana Dharma King from the 48th Mahācharya Huiling of the Esoteric School. The initiation took place at Zhaojue Monastery in Sichuan China, with the renowned Master Qingding as the witness. I received all and every dharma instrument, sutra, tantra, robe, and crown of Subhakarasimha, Vajrabodhi and Amoghavajra. I am the 49th Mahācharya and the sole Lineage Holder.

Subhakarasimha, Vajrabodhi, and Amoghavajra, brought Esoteric Buddhism to China’s Tang Dynasty circa 716 to 720 A.D. They brought to the Chinese a mysterious and dynamic ancient culture, which includes methods for self-realization, to achieve enlightenment with this very body in one lifetime, to protect a person or an empire, to affect a person’s fate after death, and, particularly popular, to bring rain in times of drought. They had absorbed the essence of Confucian and Taoist teachings. All three masters were well received by the emperor Tang Xuanzong, and their teachings quickly became popular from the court to the commoners. The Esoteric School instantly flourished.

Vajrabodhi, a graduate of the famous Nālandā, studied all varieties of Buddhism, and received complete transmission from Nagabodhi, who in turn received from Nagarjuna. When Vajrabodhi and his soon-to-be-famous disciple, Amoghavajra, arrived in the Tang capital Chang’an, Subhakarasimha, who was in his eighties, had already been there for four years. Vajrabodhi was thirty something, and Amoghavajra a teenager. Subhakarasimha and Vajrabodhi had a proper Buddhist debate. Afterward, they bowed to each other as each other’s teacher. The Yoga Tantra, Sarva-Tathāgata-Tattva-Samgraha, partially translated by Vajrabodhi, along with the Mahāvairocana Sutra translated by Subhakarasimha, provides the foundation of the Mantrayana or Esoteric School in China, where the Shingon and esoteric branch of the Tendai came from.

Amoghavajra, a prolific translator and especially noted for rainmaking and stilling storms, was the most famous Yogācharya of his time. He was the disciple of Vajrabodhi and Subhakarasimha, and became the Lineage Holder of the ‘Not-Two Dharma Teaching.’ Empress Wu Zetian decreed the Daxing Shansi monastery, located in today’s Xi’an, as the first abhiseka-bodhi-mandala and awarded Amoghavajra the title ‘National Master.’ Tang emperor granted dharma instruments to Amoghavajra, thus began the Esoteric School in China. As the saying goes, “Good things are often turned about.” The immeasurable, virtuous Dharma had encountered defamation, and brought ruthless frost to the Esoteric School, the school that has the Buddha lineage and also the essence of the Confucian and Taoist teachings. The situation worsened to the point that even Amoghavajra’s most famous disciple, Huiguo, was rumored to go eastward with the famous Japanese monk, Kukai. Historically, the Esoteric School was thought to be lost when emperor Tang Wuzong, fearful of the popularity and the magical abilities of the practice, banned the teaching. In reality, Amoghavajra’s last disciple, Huisu, who received all the religious instruments and transmission, became the Dharma Lineage Holder. The lineage has continued in China. It is only for avoiding the severe cold that the Esoteric School had been shaped into a single master per generation and hidden away for twelve centuries. 1990, I began transmitting Dharma in China in order to reveal the exquisite spirit of the esoteric practice. I had journeyed everywhere, as the Chinese expression goes, “From the white mountain to the black water, through the south and the north of the great Long River.” Many have come to grasp the method to know oneself, the means to change oneself, and the courage to conquer oneself.

No one limits you except you, and because of this you are limited by the conditions of your environment. When you recognize the existence of your deep-rooted bad nature of non-receptiveness, vanity, envy, anger and lazy habits, and begin to apply the method of not allowing the bad nature to rise again, then the beastly nature can be withered. Only so will you liberate yourself from your self-limitation and the limitation by the conditions of your environment.

Esoteric practice can make you really see the ignorance, attachment, and limitation of human life that brought suffering to yourself. Only when you have truly grasped the method to know yourself and applied the means to change yourself, you will be able to liberate yourself from suffering.

Once you have grasped the esoteric practice, having good health, inner peace and wish fulfilled is very basic. There will be amazing discovery as you continue on entering the state. You will truly know that no one can give you wisdom, which can only be had by following the correct method of cultivation. Wisdom emerges on its own when you can truly enter the state of reality.

Dechan Jueren, Master Yu Tianjian, is Mahāvairocana Dharma King, the 49th Lineage Holder of the Esoteric School, and the 47th Lineage Holder of the Linji Chan School, Speaker at U.N. Millennium World Peace Summit of Religious and Spiritual Leaders, and Special Advisor First Secretary to the World Council of Religious Leaders. In 1989, a discovery was made in the sky chamber of the North Pagoda in Chaoyang – the bone relic of Buddha, sutra and tantra engraved in silver plates, and other ancient artifacts of the Esoteric School. Later, a mandala of the Esoteric School was also discovered in the crypt of Dharma Doorway Temple in Shaanxi Province. These discoveries predict the revival of the Esoteric School. Grandmaster Huiling found Dechan Jueren after the discovery and attained the rainbow body at the age of 107 six months later.

On 15th August 2008, the 105 years old Chan Master Fozhi, the abbot of Yingtian Temple in Chengdu Sichuan, and an old friend of Grandmaster Huiling, passed on the Dharma Lineage of the Linji Chan School, where the Rinzai Zen School came from, to Dechan Jueren.