Editor's Note
Yan Liu, a volunteer with Dharma Drum Mountain in San Francisco, participated in a fourteen-day Silent Illumination Retreat in June 2025. The retreat was led by Venerable Guo Goang at Bodhi Monastery in New Jersey. In this reflection, Yan Liu shares her experience of practice during the retreat. The article was translated and edited by Albert Yan-Huang and edited by Edward Lin.

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With sincere gratitude for all wholesome roots, virtues, and conditions, I was able to participate in this fourteen-day meditation retreat led by Venerable Guo Goang in June, from which I benefited greatly.

Having just completed my father's final stage of care and the funeral proceedings days before the retreat, I was left with a complex mix of concealed emotions and profound physical fatigue. The first days were spent adjusting the body and the mind. Venerable Guo Goang stayed close to the method, steadily deepening the teachings in response to our conditions. As most of us gradually settled, the teachings turned toward deeper practice—addressing experiences and remedies. This opened our eyes and slowly led us to touch the subtle work of refining the mind.

Transcending Inner Demons

After a few days of rest and strength returning, my perfectionist nature began to tangle with whether I had regrets in caring for my father. I reviewed every detail, hopelessly, as if only in that way could I hold on to a reason to keep him. My mind was tightly bound by thoughts, unable to stop. That evening, the Venerable spoke of breaking through demonic states during her six-year retreat. I suddenly saw: what I faced was also an inner demon. Any small attachment in diligent practice can grow immense. Logic and reasoning are only delusions. The mind at once became quiet, without even the impulse to think. From then on, such delusions no longer arose. The experience was marvelous: a problem ceased to be a problem, not because it was solved, but because it was revealed as only the mind’s chatter.

The Knowing Naturally Subtle

Though I had practiced it many times, I’d never felt anything special with direct contemplation before. One just keeps quietly looking, clear and plain, no different from the usual. But one afternoon, when the Venerable asked us to practice it, I thought: let me sincerely try. When I gathered the method of gaze-on-wall contemplation wholeheartedly, the entire panoramic view before me suddenly jumped closer. The details became so sharp as if the resolution had suddenly shifted from 1080p to 4K. Two falling leaves and a tiny insect flying by were particularly clear and distinct. Truly, “without encountering things, a subtle knowing arises of itself.” As the Venerable said, we do not see with the eyes but with the mind. A clear mind and a clouded mind see differently. This experience completely changed how I understood the working of sense, object, and consciousness.

The Nature of Emotions

After two steady days of practice, one night I woke from a dream. It seemed to mend a regret over my father’s passing, yet it stirred deep loneliness. I thought of both parents gone, myself an only child, with no one who knew from where I came. The emotion grew so strong that I could not sit. During mealtime I walked outside, tears overflowing. In the empty mountains and fields, I cried out in my heart: “Who am I? What am I doing?” Suddenly in the gap between two thoughts, I returned to the method. The mind came back. The emotion remained, but its cloud of thoughts slowly vanished. Thoughts are rootless, not inherent. Only clear awareness remained. Everything was clear, as it is. That very evening, Venerable Guo Goang talked about how emotions are made of countless thoughts, dissolving like clouds.

This retreat gave me full confidence in the method, and a glimpse of the function of silent illumination. The path is long, but I will carry zeal and faith to practice. I am deeply grateful to the Venerable, who devoted herself wholeheartedly joining profound Dharma principles with meditation methods and protective practices, and carrying them through every stage of cultivation. Such teaching has principles to rely on and methods to follow, uniting knowledge and action. It stands in Chan’s simplicity and sharpness yet restores the Dharma’s original plainness and harmony—so that in this age the Dharma shines as a jewel of ultimate liberation in both mundane and supramundane realms.