Dharma Library

Based on a talk given at the Scout Hut, Canton Cardiff May 2014

There are many Zen stories that are important for us to know. These stories are often dialogues between Masters and their students with the most well-known of them found in the collections of koans such as ‘The Book of Serenity’ and ‘The Blue Cliff Record’. These collections were assembled by the compilers, who then provided…

This is a questioning koan that John Crook referred to many times in his talks. His story about his encounter with this was that when he was in Hong Kong doing his national service in 1954, he was taken to Po Lam Chan Monastery on Lantau Island and over an arch leading to the monastery there were inscribed some Chinese characters. Under the arch these were translated as ‘There is no time. What is…

In this book George Marsh, one-time editor of this journal, presents a collection of haibun. Those familiar with the muse and process of haiku and haibun will know, however, that you do not collect them, they collect you. So here we have the assembled work of someone that has been collected through the experiences and activities of his life including those of a Buddhist practitioner.

For readers…

The Pang family lived in China in the 8th century and all were lay Zen practitioners. The father is the most well-known with many of his encounter dialogues and poems being recorded. His wife was also an accomplished practitioner as were his son and his daughter, Ling Zhao, and she also has a number of her Zen conversations recorded and used as koans. This story is from those recorded sayings and…

For a few moments I believe I’ve forgotten what day it is. The pandemic has removed an element of usual time for me as my accustomed props and punctuations of the week have become redundant and my old map for time spent has become obsolete. Global and local are now not so separated as ‘remote’ acquires a new meaning and I can spend time, described as real, with distant friends. I idle away at bits…

I've had a sense that in the past weeks things have emotionally changed. I seem to get fewer silly videos through whatsapp, I receive and send out fewer e-mails and I know I'm reading the news about coronavirus less avidly. People that I talk to on the telephone appear to be just waiting for things to change. Initially there was a great feeling of the need to be creative and flexible with how life…

A Book review

Of the art forms that are associated with Zen the writing of haiku is the most accessible. Surely anyone can write a brief three-line verse which pointedly does not rhyme. But it is not as easy as that; it requires a motivation to express what is arising and a self at ease to allow the clarity of that expression. The Redthread Sangha is a group of Zen practitioners who between…

In terms of our ceremonies, as lay practitioners, we only undertake a small part of what occurs in monastic communities, but as with everything we need to examine and question what it is that we actually do. We need to discover the larger sense of what constitutes our liturgy and to appreciate its place within the totality that is Chan Buddhism. Our liturgy reveals a history of the tradition of…

In Chan practice everyone's experience of retreat and its processes are different. No two people sit exactly the same retreat and no two people follow the same personal path over the course of their Buddhist practice. On retreat, however, the group requires instruction and teachings that bring the Dharma to life so talks and lectures are designed for all practitioners in a general way. But because…

A feature of most Buddhist retreats and certainly an important part of our retreats is work practice. It is so natural an element of what we do that we do not think about the way the practice originated, and we certainly do not think about the Chan Master who instigated the practice as, originally, it was not a part of the activity of Buddhist monastics.

At the time of Buddha and in the Indian…