Venerable Chang Wu

Venerable Chang Wu is the Director of Dharma Drum Vancouver Center in Richmond, B.C., a branch monastery of Dharma Drum Mountain (DDM), founded by Chan Master Sheng Yen.

In 1993, Venerable Chang Wu began practicing with Master Sheng Yen in New York while she was a business professional holding an MBA. She started her teacher’s training with Master Sheng Yen in 1999 and entered monastic life the next year. In 2003 she started teaching as Dharma and meditation instructor and a few years later leading 1-day to 3-day retreats. In 2009, she moved to Taiwan and initiated a translation project of Master Sheng Yen’s Complete Work. A few books on meditation practice have been published now. While working on translating books, she was active in leading meditation activities and teaching classes in Dharma Drum Sangha University. Currently, she teaches meditation and Dharma classes, gives public lectures and leads retreats at Dharma Drum centers, meditation groups and Dharma centers in west coast North America, London, Luxembourg and Switzerland.

Other than meditation practice, Chinese Buddhism, inter-religious dialogue, she also enjoys being in nature, walking in the woods and artworks.

Venerable Guo Yuan

Fluent in Mandarin, Vietnamese, and English, Venerable Guo Yuan started to practice with the renowned Chan Master Sheng Yen in New York in the 1980’s. He later joined Master Sheng Yen’s monastic sangha and began to accompany and translate for Master Sheng Yen in many Chan meditation retreats around the world.

In 1991, upon returning from a one-year study in Thailand on the Theravada Buddhism, Guo Yuan Fashi was elected abbot of both the Chan Meditation Center (CMC) in Queens and the Dharma Drum Retreat Center (DDRC) in Pine Bush, New York. He was appointed the chief the director of the International Chan Retreat Center in Dharma Drum Mountain, Taiwan in 2006 and later became the head monk of the Chan Hall. In 2016 he returned to Pine Bush to become once again the abbot of DDRC.

Currently, he is active in leading Silent Illumination retreat and Huatou retreat, and is welcomed as a speaker on many aspects of the Chan Buddhism, in Europe, North America, Mexico, Taiwan and other Asian countries.

Founder of the Buddhist Center in Zagreb, Croatia, Zarko first encountered Buddhism in 1975 and has been a martial arts and yoga teacher since the 1970s. In 1985, he started the first Buddhist study and meditation group in Croatia, which in time, grew into the first Buddhist community there, now known as the Dharmaloka Chan Buddhist Community.

In 1996, while seeking a new teacher, he met Chan Master Sheng Yen, attended one of his seven-day retreat, and, in the end, became one of his students. Seeing Chan as the very core of the Buddha Dharma and Master Sheng Yen as the man whose teaching stems directly from the meditative experience, he has dedicated himself to the practice of Chan meditation and has attended Master Sheng Yen’s retreats regularly. In June 2001, during a two-week retreat in the USA, Zarko received Dharma transmission from Master Sheng Yen, thus becoming one of his five Dharma heirs in the West.

Dr. Rebecca Li, a Dharma heir in the lineage of Chan Master Sheng Yen, is the founder and guiding teacher of Chan Dharma Community.  She started practicing with Master Sheng Yen in the 1990s and served as his translator until his passing in 2009.  She later trained with and
received full Dharma transmission from one of his Dharma heirs, Dr. Simon Child, in 2016. Currently, she teaches meditation and Dharma classes, gives public lectures, and leads retreats in North America and the UK. Her talks and writings can be found at www.rebeccali.org.  She is a sociology professor at The College of New Jersey, where she also serves as faculty director of the Alan Dawley Center for the Study of Social Justice.  Her new book is titled Allow Joy into Our Hearts: Chan Practice in Uncertain Times.

Guo Gu (Dr. Jimmy Yu) first began learning meditation from Master Sheng Yen in New York in 1980. In 1991, Guo Gu was ordained as a monk and became Master Sheng Yen’s first personal monastic attendant and assistant. He was then given permission by the master to teach Chan independently in 1995, and began actively teaching meditation and leading retreats at Chan Meditation Center in New York, Dharma Drum Retreat Center in upstate New York, and various cities in the U.S. and Europe.

Guo Gu left monasticism in 2000 and re-entered the world. In 2008, he received his Ph.D. in Buddhist Studies from Princeton University and began teaching Buddhism and East Asian religions academically at Florida State University. In 2009, Gou Gu founded the Tallahassee Chan Center. He is the guiding teacher for the Western Dharma Teachers Training course at the Chan Meditation Center in New York and the Dharma Drum Lineage.

​David Listen has been sharing Chan/Zen meditation and Buddhist teachings for over 15 years, leading intensive meditation retreats, classes, and activities at various monasteries, college campuses, and private institutions throughout North America, Europe, and East Asia. Previously known as Venerable Chang Wen（常聞法師） he was one of the few Western monastic disciples of Chan Master Sheng Yen. He had been a monk for over a decade, and has since returned to lay life to share the insights of the Buddha in his own creative way. David is fluent in Mandarin Chinese, and has done extensive work translating the teachings of Chinese Buddhism into English, both on retreat and in published works. He holds a Bachelor’s in Environmental Studies, a Master’s degree in Mental Health Counseling, and is currently a New York State licensed counselor at a clinic for people suffering from severe mental illness. He also has his own life mentoring/coaching practice, guiding people in their cultivation of wisdom and compassion on an individual basis.