Thank you all for coming, and for your trust in appointing me as the second Teacher of the Western Chan Fellowship. This is of course a significant responsibility, but one that I am happy to undertake.
As well as being our first meeting since John Crook’s passing last year, it is also the third anniversary of the passing of Chan Master Sheng Yen, our Shifu. It is natural that we remember both of our past teachers today, so I’ll start off with a couple of stories about them.
Soon after we founded the Western Chan Fellowship the committee decided to ask Chan Master Sheng Yen to be our Patron. John wrote to him to convey that request and it happened to coincide with my being at the Chan Center in Elmhurst, NY, for retreat. One morning, I think it was a work period after breakfast on the morning before the retreat started, Shifu appeared with two of the resident monastics and told me that he had received this letter from John, and asked me what ‘Patron’ meant. I explained how it is often the case that important or famous people will express their support for an organisation by being named a Patron, and that for example the Queen was a Patron of several charities. Shifu asked, “Does this mean that you are asking for money?”! I said not, just that we were asking if he would agree to our using his name as Patron to indicate his support. He said, "In that case, I’ll be your Patron, and I’ll give you $1000"! And indeed after the retreat I was passed a cheque for $1000, though it was drawn on a local US bank and gave our Treasurer Tim Blanc a bit of a headache to get it cleared.
Since Shifu’s passing we have not had a Patron, but as it is not a post that we are required to fill we haven’t been too concerned about finding a replacement though we have discussed it a couple of times. On the most recent occasion I suggested to John that we leave the post unfilled and when he retired as Teacher he could be our Patron and that would be a way of him maintaining a formal link in retirement. As you may already be guessing, I got a very sharp response to that suggestion! "I'm not retiring any time soon; I plan to remain in control for at least 7-8 more years, to supervise the development of the WCF and our leaders."! And yet, less than three months after that conversation, John died suddenly and unexpectedly.
So John was expecting to be in charge for many years to come and I hadn’t expected to be sitting in this seat this year. But as Buddhists we are well aware that death can strike at any time and in a sense John’s planning for handover began nearly twenty years ago, and it is a tribute to the success of this planning that WCF has been able to carry on its activities with hardly a blip following John’s death, cancelling only the Holy Isle retreat which clashed with John’s funeral.
The WCF itself exists because of moves initiated by John in mid-1990s to found an organisation, recognising that this would give more security to the onward transmission of the teaching than if he continued just as a one-man show. But even prior to founding of WCF he had made some moves to ensure continuation. Around 1995 I booked to attend a Western Zen Retreat, having not attended one for several years, at John’s express request so that I could remind myself of the process with a view to starting to train to lead future events. On that WZR he assigned me the question 'What is Transmission?' I remember that I came to a very clear realisation which I presented to John by saying, "I am not a clone of you, John, and I shouldn’t try to be".
Being true to myself is important: it was clear that for me to try to clone John would be false and limiting and shouldn’t be my aim. Limiting because in that case I can only do less well than John at the things that John did well, and not give myself permission to do things that I can do well. Doing things the way John did them is not the only way and I should find my own way. I should present the Dharma in ways which are within my capacity, not being overly concerned that John might have done it differently, though of course also stretching myself to improve in areas where I felt less capable or less skilled.
I think the WCF as an institution is in this position now. We could fall into the trap of trying to be a clone of what we were in the past, doing what we always did and not doing what we didn’t do before. That would be a mistake. There has been change over the years and appropriate change needs to continue. We should not stagnate by trying to continue to be "John's WCF" as it was, but by being the WCF that is needed now and in the future.
As you know, John was an experimenter and innovator, but also grounded in traditional Dharma. As I put it in a phrase which Peter Reason picked up for his obituary for the Guardian, John was respectful of tradition but not bound by tradition. And this lack of binding was explicit in his transmission from Shifu, and also in mine. You will all remember the story of him asking Shifu how he should teach, and Shifu’s reply:
I'm Chinese, you're British, you find out how to teach British people.
I discussed this with Žarko Andricevic (Shifu's Dharma Heir in Croatia) when we met in France last September, and we also are not bound, including not by DDM. This may seem quite radical, but is the nature of transmission in Chan. To Bodhidharma’s saying about Chan, "A special transmission outside the scriptures, no dependence on words and letters", perhaps we should add, "and no dependence on others either."
I'm emphasising our independence as it bears on how we move forward. We need to respect the Chan tradition and John’s legacy to us, but where development is needed we also must not be bound by either by the historical Chan tradition or by the John Crook tradition. Indeed to fossilise where we are now would not be respectful of John’s innovative approach and would not be what John would have wanted.
It may sound as though I am preparing you to consider some major changes, but that is not the case though I do see a forward direction which includes some change and development from where we are now.
There must be a large element of continuity, and we are well placed to enable this. We have a good foundation for continuation:
- We have an established organisation and membership, and this is developing through our associate membership scheme which is beginning to take off
- We’re not very large, but we’re not a small one-town group either. For example, when I attended a large international meeting of Western Buddhist teachers last June at Garrison Institute in USA, there were of course representatives of the various large Buddhist movements, but many others were from smaller one-town Sanghas and these considered the WCF as a medium-sized organisation.
- We have an established retreat programme, with more retreat leaders than ever before, covering the full range of our retreat programme, including WZR and other 5-day retreats, Silent Illumination, Koan, Huatou, Mahamudra, and others such as Ken Jones’ retreats.
- Our local groups are active and there are some more new groups beginning to form.
- We have an established system of developing local leaders through mentoring and other training.
- New Chan Forum is well-established and appreciated and Eddy Street, who has professional editing experience, has offered to take over the editorship.
- We have a generally open outlook – which John referred to as ‘Open Buddhism’ – and perhaps especially through the process of our Western Zen Retreat we tend to have emotionally mature practitioners.
- You may not be aware, but we do have fairly wide-reaching connections with other Buddhist organisations.
- Of course we have our connections to Dharma Drum Mountain in Taiwan, and also to the Dharma Drum Retreat Center in New York where John, myself, and Hilary have led retreats once or twice a year for the last ten years.
- In the UK we are members of the Network of Buddhist Organisations (NBO) where our member the late Sally Masheder was Secretary for several years.
- There is a European organisation which is a bit like an NBO for Europe, the European Buddhist Union (EBU), which brings together national groupings such as NBO and also individual European Buddhist organisations: WCF have been members for the last three years and I have attended the AGMs as our representative.
- Coordinated through the EBU there is an annual meeting of Buddhist Teachers in Europe (BTE) which is a small but international and cross-tradition group. I have been attending this meeting annually since about 2002 and have been the convenor of it for the last five years.
- The international meeting at Garrison Institute in USA last June was another networking occasion, perhaps a little similar to BTE but over ten times the size and across two continents.
- Closer to home we also have friendly relationships with individual organisations such as with Throssel Hole Buddhist Abbey, the Abbot of which, Rev Master Daishin, led John’s funeral at the request of John in his Will.
- It is also important that John facilitated us meeting with his family and negotiating ongoing arrangements to use Maenllwyd after he passed ownership to them. They have been very supportive and cooperative both at the time of transfer and following his death.
- Lastly but by no mean least, we have a ‘clean’ reputation, we have managed to avoid the scandals which have affected several other Buddhist organisations. I say this not just as a frivolous comment. Some newcomers mention to me that they have checked us out very carefully before attending us for the first time, having either been hurt themselves in the past or having heard of problems with other organisations.
I see scope not so much for changing what we do – we can continue all that we are doing – but for building upon it, making additions to our range of activities and practice. What developments do I foresee being appropriate?
Future
For John intensive retreat was the gold standard and his prime focus. Other activities could seem to be regarded as secondary - perhaps supportive of retreat practitioners between retreats, and perhaps encouraging people towards retreat attendance, but not in themselves as important as retreat practice.
For me, intensive retreat practice is also very important, indeed crucial, but so also is daily life practice between retreats. And to be clear, I’m to referring not only to occasional formal sitting practice e.g. daily sits, weekly groups, but especially to ongoing minute by minute practice throughout the day. This both complements, and is complemented by, intensive sitting practice.
If our task is to discover and uproot our karmic tendencies, let’s take our opportunities when they present themselves as habitual responses arise in our everyday lives. On retreat some of them may not be provoked and may remain unobserved, yet haunt us once again as soon as we leave the retreat. Skills of investigation learned on retreat are to be carried on into everyday life, minute by minute.
There are undoubted benefits of retreat and I absolutely do not wish to diminish these:
- An environment where distraction is minimised so as to provide an opportunity to learn and practise methods of cultivating quietening of the mind.
- Opportunities to learn and practise inquiry, to understand and cultivate the skill of wordless meditative investigation.
- Opportunities to spot subtle samskaras which may only be apparent when the mind is very calm
There is also clear importance in off-retreat practice:
- There are lots of hours of it, lots of opportunity!
- It may be our only opportunity to notice a habitual response which is triggered only in specific circumstances.
- It is real-life, and it integrates practice and life to become ‘whole’ and continuous rather than our being fragmented part-time hobbyist practitioners.
What might help us develop our practice in this way?
Firstly we need an awareness of the issue. It happens too often that people talk about how much regular practice they do e.g. trying to do half an hour most days, or two half-hours or whatever. To that I sometimes respond, “What about the other 23.5 hours…?”
In the busyness of everyday life we often cannot, and it is probably not appropriate to try, to cultivate the same degree of quietness of mind that we may experience on retreat, as we need to engage with the world we live in. But we can and should aim to apply to our everyday life and interactions the skills of meditative investigation that we have learned and cultivated on retreat.
- How am I feeling at the moment?
- What are my reactions to this interaction?
- Is there some old habit of attitude or behaviour which is distorting my response to this situation?
This we can and should do throughout as much of the day as possible, and we should not see this as a lesser form of practice than sitting on retreat. We may learn the skills of investigation in the protected environment of retreat, but we should bring them home with us and continue to practise them.
What might be supportive of our development? John pointed toward an answer to this in his AGM talk last year where he spoke of having more community events such as celebrating festivals and having parties. This is the matter of Sangha, the third of the Three Jewels, and the third word in our name, ‘Fellowship’. We need to develop our relationship to the Sangha jewel.
Of course we can practise in the world even if we are entirely alone in our practising, but perhaps there is an edge when our interactions are with other practitioners – in this case it is less easy for us to excuse ourselves for being unmindful or breaking precepts by regarding ourselves as being ‘off-duty’ practitioners! Having a sense of being a practitioner in relation to other practitioners engenders a feeling of being supported, and gives a sense of identity as a practitioner. Sangha gives fellowship, a sense of belonging, a sense of support, and actual support on the Path, perhaps especially support for daily life practice.
In relation to precepts Shifu referred to placing a seed in the mind – it may be a small seed, but when in the future you are breaking a precept then you may be more aware of it if the seed is niggling in your mind like a grain of sand in an oyster. Likewise, having a sense of connection to others supports your practice, maybe in practical ways such as meeting up with others, but even if not able to meet often then it can still be supportive to know that others with whom you are in contact are also practising. In this way you may be better able to nurture the seed of practice in your daily life throughout 24 hours of the day, not confined only to formal practice situations.
Sangha can also be irritating too, when we rub up against others that we don’t get on with so well, and that also can support practice as we learn to be in touch with our reactions in the midst of our daily lives.
Of course we already have the basis of Sangha, as was in evidence with the turnout and sociability at John’s funeral and ashes ceremony. And some of us have contact with each other at our local groups. But for many this may be relatively limited, particularly for those who are not in contact with a local group. Not everyone at John’s funeral knew everyone else, and even when they recognised each other it was often only from the context of being in silence together on retreat. And those who attend local groups still often meet few from outside their area or group. For example, how do ordinary members of our Manchester group relate to Newbury or Devon group? Do they all even relate to what we perhaps tend to see as the core of our activities, to the retreats, to the retreat leaders, to Shifu or to John?
Some of you, particularly those of you who are active participants in your local groups, may feel that what I am saying is not relevant to you – you feel supported by your local group, and you are indeed practising well in daily life. Excellent! But there are many who are not in that fortunate situation, especially those who are not able to attend a local group whether for reasons of distance or of conflicting commitments – for these their practice can be quite lonely and feel unsupported, and risk tailing off when their only contact with other practitioners is a few days per year on retreat.
Rather than an Indra’s net, we have somewhat isolated islands of activity, so there are 'structural' reasons why practising Sangha refuge may be tricky for some of us. This is inevitable to some degree given our geographical distribution based on our history. As I mentioned earlier we are not and never have been a one-town organisation, where it is easier to cultivate a sense of belonging to the organisation through frequent local meetings, as we’ve always been a widely dispersed group with few meetings other than at retreats or local groups. And we don’t have a residential centre or community, or a property of our own, so have no regular meeting and mingling place which would act as the heart for many other organisations.
Perhaps also related to these same ‘structural’ considerations, we have not been a very diverse organisation. For example, we don’t really do family-friendly events, do we? So not only do we not attract young people who might otherwise grow up (for better or for worse) in contact with our practice, we also don’t make such good contact with the parents who are busy with child-care, and in turn this probably affects our gender ratio and the proportion of younger adults that we see.
Another way of looking at this topic might be to ask, what do we see the WCF to be? Do we see the WCF as merely as an administrative tool, e.g. as a retreat organiser and publisher, or do we see it as a mode of practice in itself, via Sangha jewel?
There are clearly several issues here which are inter-related and to which we could/should give more consideration, in addition to continuing our programme of intensive retreats. But I’m not going to present solutions to these issues here. I’m more interested in bringing them into awareness and discussion.
I’m not giving answers in part because there is not one correct answer, rather there are multiple things that we could consider, and maybe some have come to your mind whilst I’ve been talking. The main reason I’m not giving answers is because this type of thing is not something which is to be centrally-driven. It would be pointless for me or the committee to make some directive that you should all go and arrange family-friendly weekends, or whatever. What is appropriate depends on your local interests and initiatives and energies.
But if you feel that your daily-life practice would benefit from support, and feel that you would like to strengthen your local sangha, and indeed to help support others, then maybe you have some motivation and energy to try out some ideas that might work for you and for those around you. On the other hand, of course the committee and I would be very interested to help and support where possible in whatever ways you find might work for you, and to share ideas amongst the Fellowship so that others can learn from you – let us hear your ideas.
Cautions
We need to be realistic about our capacity for change; we are lay people with competing demands on our time. I’m not suggesting that we rush and try and run loads of events and expand hugely and so on, more that we consider an orientation in that direction, if we consider that it would help to strengthen a sense of Sangha and thereby support our daily life practice and that of others.
John expressed cautions about what he considered to be ‘lighter’ events, and over the last couple of years on a couple of occasions he spoke against events other than intensive retreats. He had been concerned that offering ‘easier’ events might lead people to drift away from intensive practice, but of course it can also work the other way – some may try 'lighter' events first then progress to intensive retreats. In the last AGM talk he was coming round to promoting social events, with cautions that they were not seen as a replacement for intensive retreat practice, and talking to him when we were together in Poland last May he was loosening up about this, his main concern being to protect the word ‘retreat’ to refer to intensive practice and not to slip into regarding other events as equivalent.
Next Steps
John felt it important to have ‘quality control’ to ensure authenticity, but he also allowed space to allow creativity of others to flower. He wanted quality to be developed and supervised in our group leaders, but also he recognised that he could not do or control everything and to a large extent local leaders had to take responsibility for activities in their own localities. I feel the same way – I cannot do everything in every location, and for that matter as a committee we cannot do that either, but we can provide a steer and encouragement and guidance to facilitate all of you in developing your practice and your Sangha for the benefit of yourself and others.
One practical development, as some of you will have experienced, is that we are beginning to introduce Refuge ceremonies in local groups, so that those who may not be able or ready to attend retreat can still have opportunity to express in a formal manner their commitment to the Path, and through becoming Associate members express their commitment to WCF. Our retreat leaders will be taking opportunities from time to time during the year to visit groups, for example at one-day or two-day retreats, so that they can lead Refuge ceremonies.
To end, let’s return to the question of doing your half-hour a day of formal sitting. John quite often commented on how people sometimes came to him and apologised for missing their daily sits at home for reasons of tiredness, busyness, or whatever excuse/reason it may be (and indeed I hear these tales too at times). His comment was to ask what on earth that is to do with him! It is up to individuals to take responsibility for their own practice. I’m saying the same, not only in relation to a daily half-hour sit, but to your practice in the remaining 23.5 hours of every 24 hour long day of your life. It can be difficult, but it is a crucial element of your practice and support could be available to you if you take responsibility to create and nurture it.
