Remembering Richard Hunn - 12th Anniversary (1.10.2018)

[Shi Da Dao]

Richard Hunn (Upasaka Wen Shu) was not interested in titles, statues or being remembered. As an Englishman he was very humble as well as being quite brilliant as a thinker. This combination drew many people to him in the physical world, but this is not how I became acquainted with him. I was looking for a Chinese Ch’an teacher in the West and was not interested (for various reasons) in the practice of Japanese Zen. Whilst in my early twenties, (in the late 1980’s), I was being drawn ever more powerfully to looking within my own mind and abandoning my academic studies. At that time, it seemed to me that the world of academia was purely ‘external’, but that I wanted to become acquainted with the ‘internal’ functioning of my own mind. Whilst academia used the mind, I wanted to know what it was that was being ‘used’ as the mind. Psychologists and psychiatrists could only give me more objective images and concepts which failed to penetrate into this deep yearning for a different type of knowledge. I spent hour upon hour in libraries (before the internet), reading the philosophies of East and West, and looking for loopholes within conventional science. When I look back now, I see that this was the best of times, even though there were terrible problems in the world (as there is today), and that most other people thought that my preoccupation with the inner workings of my mind was a little odd, and that if I settled down into a convention profession and started a family, all this nonsense would simply dissolve into irrelevance.

This is the psychological context to my first communication with Richard Hunn in late 1988. I had discovered the Norwich Ch’an Association situated in Thorpe Hamlet, Norwich, and had written to the address. A week or so later I received a reply from Richard Hunn (about four sides of typed A4) which introduced me to the work of translator Charles Luk (1998-1978), and his eminent Ch’an teacher – Great Master Xu Yun (1840-1959). Richard Hunn explained to me that what I was seeking was the empty essence that lay just behind the words that emerged as thoughts in my mind, and that further ‘words’, regardless of the cleverness of their construction, was not the answer. This wisdom struck me like a lightning bolt, more so as I learned that Richard Hunn was a respected British academic. Richard – although ‘spiritual’ (like myself) – was not particularly ‘religious’, and yet possessed a precise and intricate knowledge regarding world religion and religious culture. All this was wrapped-up in a cloak of advanced consciousness studies, and a firm grasp of material science. For a few years Richard Hunn would instruct me exactly, always returning my words to their empty essence (until I finally understood what he was doing).

Although he relocated to Japan in 1991 (studying the roots of Ch’an in that country), we kept in regular contact and then he started visiting and staying at my family home in South London for a week or so, once or twice a year. We would stay up until three or four in the morning, and discuss profound philosophical issues, history and politics. On occasion we would sit on the floor face to face during times of intense meditative practice. Richard Hunn fitted-in with the Chinese side of our family, the members of which were amazed at his ability to read, write and speak the Chinese language, and to be able to translate Chinese texts into meaningful (and accurate) English renditions. Together we set-up the ‘Ch’an Form’ on the net in 2004, which we renamed the ‘Richard Hunn Association for Ch’an Study UK’ following his death in 2006. Since then I have made extensive academic and spiritual contacts within Mainland China and have translated a number of Chinese language Ch’an texts into English for the general reader. Richard Hunn demanded ‘precision’ and ‘expansive’ awareness as a simultaneous manifestation. A direct awareness of the empty essence of the mind, whilst allowing that mind to fully manifest in the material universe. To see the ‘emptiness’ of words, whilst using words expertly. In this rarefied state, conventional concepts of time and space have no meaning. To be stood next to the Buddha or reading his words two thousand years later has no quantifiable difference if the empty mind ground is perceived. Having living teachers in close proximity can be as troublesome as having no teachers at all (and vice versa). All we are really conveying is the reality of the empty mind, the fact that it can be realised, and the perspective that facilitates this realisation. Couple this achievement with perpetual non-attachment to sense objects and non-identification with thoughts (and thought patterns), and the Ch’an Path shines brightly infront and all around you!