Kin Cheung on "Blurry Boundaries Between Breath/Qi/Ki and Buddhism"

This conversation will consider Seng Kan Cheung, a contemporary Chinese American religious healer who uses qigong, reiki, and Buddhist spells. He shares these practices and exchanges healing with a community of relatives, friends, students, and patients in the New York City area. Breathing is involuntary, yet can also be voluntarily controlled. Agency in his healing is difficult to determine because he experiences involuntary movements that trigger during the practice of qigong, application of acupressure on patients, and encounters with Buddhist temples in New York and Japan.

This presentation is part of the Buddhism and Breath Summit, which took place online in 2021, with a group of researchers exploring Buddhist practices of working with the breath or the “winds” of the body. The event was co-hosted by Frances Garrett and Pierce Salguero, and co-sponsored by the Robert H.N. Ho Family Foundation Centre for Buddhist Studies at the University of Toronto and Jivaka.net. You can watch the video of this talk and find other resources from the Buddhism and Breath Summit at Jivaka.net