EDITOR’S NOTE

Venerable Yin Shun’s expertise and writings in Buddhism have been widely acknowledged by the Chinese Buddhists this century. The "Miao Yun Collection" written by the Venerable provides us with important information and a systematic approach to Buddhism, giving us a better insight and understanding of Buddhism. We would like to take this opportunity to thank the Triple Gem, and hope that more people may benefit from the Venerable’s writing.

In Australia, there are very few English books on Mahayana Buddhism. In order to introduce the Buddha’s teachings to Westerners, members from the University of New South Wales Buddhist Society, the Sydney University Buddhist Society and the Hwa Tsang Monastery Inc. thought about translating the Mahayana sutras and texts, and chose Venerable Yin Shun’s work as the choice of translation. The collection of this translation will be called "Selected Translations of Miao Yun Part I".

We have selected and translated eight articles from five books in the Third volume of the Miao Yun Collection; namely "The Dharma is the Saver of the World", "The Three Essentials in Practising the Teaching of the Buddha", "The Buddha lives in the world", "To investigate the Dharma according to the Teachings of the Buddha" and "My view on Religions". Some of these articles were translated before and were collected in the book "A Translation of Works by Venerable Yin Shun", published by the Mahaprajna Buddhist Society, Singapore.

We apologise for not being able to contact and consult the original translators but we have obtained the approval from the original publisher, Venerable Hao Zhong, and edited these articles in accordance with the interests of Western readers. To aid readers, we have chosen to translate according to the meaning instead of direct translation in some circumstances.

This is our first attempt in translation and it is possible some passages may seem difficult to understand. Your advice would be most appreciated. To ensure the consistency of the translated works and the original articles, and to ensure the fluency of the translation, we have repeated the process of editing and proofreading several times. We have also invited an Australian Buddhist, Mr. Kiddle to assist us in this aspect.

We would like to take this opportunity to thank Venerable Tsang Hui for his guidance and encouragement, Mr. Khoo Cheang Jin for his design, and Mr. Mick Kiddle, Mr. Chai Gao Mao, Mr. Mok Chung, Mr. Lin Yang, Mr. Beng Tiong Tan and other members for assisting in the translation. We would also like to thank Venerable Xing Ying, Mr. Xu Yang Zhu and Mr. Guo Zhong Sheng for their proofreading and suggestions, and Mr Gregg Heathcote and Mr. Simon Paterson for refining the articles.

It is hoped that with the publication of this book, more Buddhists who are well versed in both English and Chinese will take the initiative to participate in tasks like this, so that more people may benefit from the work of Venerable Yin Shun and hopefully appreciate and practise Mahayana Buddhism.

Neng Rong, June 1995