Sometimes, while sitting, I thought, "What should I be doing? Should I be reciting Buddha's name? Should I be doing something else? What really is meditation?" I kept asking myself these questions until I became a big ball of doubt. However, while at this seminary my doubts never got resolved.

Eventually, I left mainland China for Taiwan, where I was conscripted into army service. Despite my duties as a soldier, I took time to meditate everyday. My doubts, still unresolved, caused all kinds of questions to come up. There were many contradictions in the Buddhist teachings that I could not resolve. This was very disturbing since I had deep faith in the Buddha's teachings and believed that the sutras could not be wrong. I was burdened with such questions as "What is enlightenment?" "What is Buddhahood?" Questions like these were very numerous in my mind, and I desperately needed to know the answers.

This underlying doubt was always there. When I was working it would disappear, but when I practiced, this suffocating doubt would often return. This situation persisted for years, until I was twenty-eight, when I met my first real master. I was visiting a monastery in southern Taiwan, where I sometimes lectured. I learned that a famous monk, Ling-Yuan, was also visiting. That night we happened to share the same sleeping platform. Seeing that he was meditating instead of sleeping, I sat with him. I was still burdened by my questions and was desperate to have them resolved. He seemed to be quite at ease, with no problems in the world, so I decided to approach him.