When I was asked to write something for New Chan Forum about how I ended up as Simon’s Dharma heir I took a sharp intake of breath. How could I get that down in sentences? It has been a long, perhaps even tortuous, journey with many side roads and incursions into various unexpected places. I discussed this with some Christian friends of mine who I consider to be part of my wider Sangha and whom I turn to periodically for reflection and consideration. The three of us have been on journeys that could be called spiritual or seeking or some such, and it is helpful at times to look at both our similarities and our differences. We looked at the inherent difficulties in attempting to journal such transitions and agreed that it was problematic. At the end of the day, my journey has been my own but the one feature that I am acutely aware of is the connection with certain individuals who made a difference at critical points along the way. Not all of those people have been obvious connections; some are not Buddhist or even meditation practitioners and yet they have still been a source of inspiration, hope or support. Others might be more those expected. But all had a significant role along my life line.
I remember as a small child being fascinated with the natural world: the way the grass moved in the wind, the fall of light on a wall, or the shafts of sunlight cutting through clouds and sending beams of light down to earth at an acute angle. I had no idea what any of this meant, but I knew at some level that these things and I were not separate and that it was important to ‘see’ these things and notice them. I was sent to Sunday school at St. Francis Church in Manchester and learnt the standard Christian stories – and also some elements of imperialism as we collected money for ‘poor African babies,’ which makes me cringe nowadays to recall. Religion was just a cultural aspect of my life at that point.
When I was ten we moved to Cheshire and my world changed. I knew no one there apart from my family and the social and cultural framework altered as I became aware of class differences. I went to Sunday school at St. Cross and began to meet people from a wider range of backgrounds. The Sunday school there included reciting parts of the Daily Office – including Evensong with its references to death – and I was ripe for realising that religion and life were inextricably linked. I joined the church choir, eventually becoming head choir girl, and I fell in love with liturgical music. However, entering adolescence I looked for more than the weekly and yearly routine of services and festivals with the colours, music and emotive aspects that were drawn out in that liturgical calendar. The standard offering of the Church of England had something missing for me.
I struggled with the need for priestly mediation that the Church imposed. Surely there was a way of having some kind of personal, unmediated connection with God? So I began a series of experiments with this: a regular practice of prayer (daily), reading and silent contemplation. This was a kind of expectant waiting for connection. I also enjoyed the outdoors and felt some kind of ‘communion’ there, though with what, I would have been hard-pressed to articulate. Despite my close connections with the established Church, there was no one to speak with about any of this, apart from a couple of school friends who were similarly inclined. This shift in my focus from an establishment base to a singular, individual one suited me but I had no frame of reference for it. With hindsight I would say that I was seeking a more mystical approach. The books I read made no reference to any of this and no one I knew seemed to practise anything like it. One of the things that did come my way, however, was a retreat at the Diocesan Centre in Chester run by nuns. This was my first experience of a silent retreat! It was for a youth group and there were lots of activities in amongst the silence, but that opportunity to be still and quiet felt very precious. I almost resented the rest of the programme, being quite happy with this new thing I had discovered. I remember talking to one of the nuns while I was there and frankly don’t recall much of the conversation except that I was encouraged to return and be a part of my local Church community, which was not what I wanted to hear.
As I grew older the discrepancies between my world view and that presented by the Church grew larger and more frequent. I could not tolerate the view of women as either virgins or harlots, necessarily dependent on men and preferably attached to them both legally and in the sight of God. The only acceptable women were married either to men or the Church. I had flirted with the idea of being a nun, but could see that this was too restrictive for me. That was the only option of active engagement in the Church and this seemed to me to be quite wrong. At that time women could not even be deacons in the Church, let alone priests. All spiritual activity had to be mediated through a male and my growing feminist tendencies did not sit easily there. In late adolescence I realised that I was gay and that further separated me from many Christians who were convinced that I and those like me were not ‘in a state of grace’ or, worse, were possessed by the Devil. Eventually I just stopped my active connection with the Church and threw myself instead into politics and community work. Periodically I would venture into a church feeling that I had lost something, but still failed to find it. I enjoyed (and still do enjoy) being in Cathedral spaces especially places like Durham or York Minster but I always veered towards sitting silently in a side chapel rather than attending a service, though I still like church music!
Community work gave me an outlet for being alongside people in trouble, disenfranchised, or suffering. I worked in a voluntary capacity with adolescents in mental health care, disadvantaged kids who would not otherwise have had a holiday, adults needing literacy skills and people needing legal help via a law centre. This seemed more practical than any religious activity and as a student I had the time to do it. I entered the world of work and sexual politics and once again felt that I belonged.
But still there was something missing. I started attending Quaker services which were less hierarchical and patriarchal and involved silence. They were also committed to social action and peace work and were accepting of various sexualities. I made friends in the gay wing of the Quakers, then called Friends Homosexual Fellowship (FHF). I went to a Yearly Meeting: a national gathering where, that year, the focus was on women’s issues and women self-organising. I thought for a time that I had ‘come home’. Some friends I made there are still very important to me. But there was still more ‘God’ than I wanted and after a time I drifted away again.
After a couple of near misses with violence on the streets I decided that I needed to learn some self-defence and ended up at a karate school. I went to a women’s self-defence class and enjoyed the sense of agency that gave to me. The teacher was a black belt and she was a woman. At the end of the course I decided to go for the normal karate classes and the discipline that imposed was highly formative. I went from a women’s class once a week to training five days a week in the space of a couple of years. I went to competitions and joined the display team. I also started reading more about Japanese culture and came across my first Zen book, ‘Moving Zen’ by Paul Nichols, which was actually more about karate than Zen. There was also a monthly column in one of the magazines I read, ‘Combat’, that was about the mind in karate which from memory was called something like ‘The still voice’. Zen became lodged in my memory, but I knew no way of finding any Zen.
In 1991 I had a picture calendar called ‘Prayer’. Each month was assigned to a different religion and an associated photograph depicted some feature of that faith. One month had a picture of a Soto Zen monk in zazen in a traditional Japanese garden. He looked so serene sitting there in his robes and the picture made me weep. Here was someone who had access to something that was missing from my life. I wanted some of that.
I found a Buddhist group nearby run by a nun in Tibetan robes. I started attending with a work colleague, Julie. We went regularly and I began to get some sense of the principles behind Buddhism, though the meditation was very short and focussed around whatever it was that was being taught that week. I got more involved and went to regional teachings and was being encouraged to go to a meeting with the main teacher. For some reason, I baulked at this. Roundabout this time my work colleague told me that she had found a Zen group advertised in Bury. So we went to the Mosses Community Centre in Bury, one Friday night and walked into a very plain setting, with a man in normal clothes: Simon Child. So I was introduced to sitting with eyes open, looking at a wall. The thing that really grabbed me though was the walking meditation. Perhaps it was the link with movement and karate, perhaps it was the idea that meditation was not static, but I fell, hook, line and sinker at that point. As we walked out at the end of the session, I asked Julie what she had made of it. “I hated it” she said. “I’m never going back.” Well I loved it and have been going ever since.
Simon lent me dozens of books, pretty well judged in terms of my understanding. I would devour these, we would talk about the content and then I’d ask for another. I also found Joko Beck for myself and finally found a book on Zen that made sense to me. She wasn’t esoteric, she was practical and yet also very deep. After some time attending the group and subjecting Simon to all manner of questions week on week, which he was always able to answer, I decided it was time to try a retreat. I had no real idea what a retreat would be like, but I felt that some kind of total immersion would be a good thing.
It was October. It was a Western Zen Retreat. It was run by John Crook. It was at Maenllwyd. And I had no idea what I was walking into. I gave a lift to another first time attender and we got lost en-route. We eventually pulled into the yard in the pitch black and a figure came out to meet us. I instinctively knew that this was John, despite never having met him or seen a picture of him. It was as though I had known him before. I slept in ‘Barn North’ on an airbed. I loved the ancient nature of the place and the lamplight, candles and fires, the nooks and crannies, the Green Man on the wall, the metal candle sconces, sadly now removed and even the absence of places for ablutions. I hated getting up at five, having to run up the hill before the morning exercises and the sheer exhaustion of sitting hour on hour. I thought about running away. I was convinced everyone else was sitting in bliss and that it was only me suffering so badly.
John’s talks were, however, inspirational and highly motivating to me. His interviews were insightful, penetrating and supportive. I didn’t run away. Suddenly apropos of nothing identifiable, the misery lifted and I began to enjoy the process. Every time I thought I had found the answer to the question ‘Who am I?’ I realised that I had not. Eventually this became funny and I laughed to myself. I couldn’t understand why John would not just tell me what to do in order to find this elusive answer. Other people were ‘answering’ their questions and getting new ones. Why wasn’t I? At the end of one frustrating interview John said ‘Go up the hill Fiona’. I couldn’t tell if this was another metaphor or a simple instruction. I took it as the latter and found my ‘answer’ in a heart-opening transcendent experience with a tree. My next interview was a different experience, with me describing rather than asking and actively stopping John from interjecting too much! It was a delightful sharing. At the end of the retreat, as we were all chatting and unwinding, John suggested that I try a Silent Illumination retreat since I seemed to fall into that practice naturally. I ignored that suggestion for three years, fearing the extra discipline, the even earlier start and the absence of the communication exercises with the accompanying sense of connection with another. But prompting from Simon made me go along to one and the rest as they say is history. Later I met Master Sheng Yen, first at Gaia House in 2000 and again at Dharma Drum Retreat Centre in New York State.
I also had contact with a number of other teachers from other traditions. Following a karate injury and subsequent surgery I couldn’t ‘sit’ in the usual fashion. So I took myself off to the Buddhist Summer School run by Dick and Diana St. Ruth at Leicester University. There I met Ajahn Sumedho (now Lung Por Sumedho), Geshe Tashi and Jisu Sunim. Indeed Geshe Tashi was the first teacher I took refuge under, as it was not offered in the WCF at the time. This exposed me to the Theravada, Tibetan and Son traditions, with their different emphases and teaching styles. It also introduced me to the monastic approach, rather than the lay approach of the Western Chan Fellowship. There was more in the way of teaching on philosophy, theory and the Vinaya under these teachers. The other aspect that came to the fore at Summer Schools was the peer support and learning that went on there. I developed a number of Dharma relationships that survive to this day and that continue to be a source of support to me, most notably, perhaps with a friend who went on to become a monastic in the Korean tradition and who is now known as Mu Sang Sunim. Annie, Gloria and another Fiona were in a group with us too and it was that grouping that led to me seeing the benefit of Dharma Buddies in terms of mutual support and challenge. I learnt a lot at those summer schools and I owe a debt to Dick and Diana for the work they put into those events and to the straightforward and honest support I’ve had from them over the years. Indeed when I was made Dharma heir, one of the first phone calls I made was to Dick and Diana to discuss it. Over the years I’ve visited a number of teachers; Geshe Damcho, Thich Naht Hanh, Geshe Thinley, Sul Gok Sunim, His Holiness the Dalai Lama, Ken Jones and gained much from them. But I kept returning to the WCF because of its unique approach and because it was a lay organisation, but within an established tradition and lineage from Master Sheng Yen through John Crook and Simon Child.
After one particular retreat with John, I realised that it was time I gave back rather than continue to merely take. I wanted to be part of offering this marvellous opportunity for retreat. I said to John that I would learn to cook the Maenllwyd way. I did my cook training under Pete Lowry and then fledged at the Silent Illumination week of a three week retreat. In those days we had to coax the Rayburn into flame each day, heave solid fuel around and time the baking of bread to coincide with a sweet hot spot in the Rayburn’s day. We cooked on camping stoves and it took easily an hour to get a pan of rice to boil for twenty people. We had to be proficient with Vapalux and Tilley lamps and be able to cook in near darkness at times. I loved it. A year or so on from that, Simon asked if I would take on being guest-master. I laughed, saying he only wanted me to do it so I could fill in for the cook in an emergency and because I could take apart and reassemble a Vapalux lamp. He agreed that I was correct in my assumptions! So my retreat time became filled with guest-mastering rather than cooking and yet another skill set had to be amassed. The opportunity to provide support to the retreat , retreatants and to the Leader was precious. It was an expression of the Bodhisattva Vow. Master Sheng Yen had often said that we could be ‘baby bodhisattvas’ and learn as we went along and that was what I did. Along the way I fell in love with koans, continued to process my own life and history and developed an interest in Everyday Chan: the application of Chan in ordinary life. For me, if there was no impact on how I lived my life, there was no point in any of the practice. I was more interested in being in a ‘Pure Land’ in this life than waiting for another life.
At one point I questioned whether I should become a Buddhist monastic myself. Would that be the ultimate offering to the Dharma? I struggled with this for some years, having many conversations with Simon about it. I considered training under Shifu at Dharma Drum Mountain, going to Korea, and staying in Britain as a trainee. Eventually, after some helpful conversations with Ajahn Sumedho, one of his senior nuns and others, I made the decision that I need not go down that route, but could still cleave to a Dharma-based life. The nun I spoke to was particularly helpful with this decision, saying that she felt it was possible maenllwyd by didi e m crook to live a Dharmic life as a lay person. I guess that was what I wanted to hear. So my commitment to the WCF increased as a vehicle for expression of that style of committed Chan life.
In the early years of this century I went on two of John’s trips to Buddhist sites. The first was the Silk Road tour across China from the eastern seaboard to the western borders near Kazakhstan, taking in the caves at Dunhuang and several Tibetan monasteries. Each of the trips had special moments of connection with either the people or landscape of a place and I felt blessed to be in such company. At an airport somewhere, John and I had a discussion. He said he’d heard that I had given a talk at Gaia House and asked me how I had found it. I remember replying that it was terrifying, not because of the public speaking aspect, but because it mattered that I made sense to people because it was the Dharma I was talking about. The responsibility felt enormous. Interestingly, John agreed. The second trip was to Himachal Pradesh in North Eastern India. Again we were headed for a Tibetan monastery in time for a festival and again there were moments: sharing red rice with festival- goers, presenting white khatag scarves to lamas and losing my fear of heights in the foothills of the Himalayas. Spending that time with John and others made me realise the value of pilgrimage: another form of total immersion in a different culture, time away from the usual and an opportunity to connect with places and people, both present and past. John was, of course a master at gaining access to lamas and places normally forbidden. Without him I would never have sung Chinese Buddhist chants in a cave full of Buddhas at Dunhuang before the official site opened. Nor would I have gazed on a statue of Padmasambhava in a monastery museum and felt as though I was thrown into the Timeless. John was someone who knew not only how such things ‘felt’ but also what they meant: spiritually, empirically and neuro-physiologically. You might say that John was who I was looking for when I was fifteen.
John asked me if I’d like to start training in leading retreats. With my work background in Social Care, I had some appropriate training and I began sitting in on interviews with both John and Simon. I had been going to the Leaders’ retreat each year for some time and started taking an interest in how dharma talks were put together and how to engage people on a one to one basis and in groups.
Years later I ran my first five day Chan retreat, later still a Western Zen retreat and then seven-day Silent Illumination retreats. Along the way I also started the Manchester Sutra group that has been meeting monthly for years. It has been a great source of peer exchange and is an example of Sangha building in the ‘ordinary’ world. I continue to learn as well as to lead retreats. Simon continued to be a source of information, a role model and a shining example of equanimity, one of the characteristics that I knew I was deficient in. One day, on a train, he confirmed my kensho experience.
In 2013 I attended an event in Escondido for newer Buddhist teachers called the Gen X event. There were teachers from America, South America, Canada and Europe attending. It was here that I first got to spend time with Rebecca Li who had been Master Sheng Yen’s interpreter over many years. Rebecca and I have become firm friends since then and I appreciate her understanding of the Dharma, her openness and her support. Since Rebecca’s own transmission we are officially Dharma sisters under Simon Child, but in reality we were Dharma sisters prior to that by virtue of our shared connections and commitment to the lineage of Master Sheng Yen in western society.
I was at a WCF committee meeting in Stroud when we heard that John had died. It was devastating news, so soon after Shifu’s demise too. But as we sat around together, coming to terms with what we had heard, I recall a real determination arising within me. The main thing John would have wanted was for us to carry on. Everything he had given us over those years was about continuing to make the Dharma accessible. It was our job to continue, to teach, to lead and find ways to bring Dharma to the world we live in. We had to stand on our own two feet and get on with it as best we could. I miss John greatly. I wish he was still around to ask advice of, or just to watch and absorb his presence. I like to see Ros’s portrait of John at Maenllwyd. The image really captures some of his compassion, humour, erudition and insightfulness. It reminds me that these are qualities that I need to develop in my own way as I, with all others, make our contribution.
I continued to fit my retreats into my annual leave allowance while I worked for a Local Authority. This was tiring and limiting, but was the only way I could do it all. It was about a pragmatic solution. One weekend, driving back from another committee meeting with Simon, we stopped for coffee at a motorway service station. Chatting about the future development of the WCF, Simon said he’d been meaning to ask me something. Would I take on being his Dharma heir? He wanted to give me the option rather than just putting it onto me. Such sensitivity is typical of Simon. There were lots of reasons to decline. Was I ready? (Is anyone ever ready?) Was I worthy? (No one is.) Did I have the skills? (Who knew what they even were?) What did it mean? (It meant being an independent teacher and needing to find my own heirs.) How would others respond? What would be involved? Did I have the time? Simon agreed to give me time to mull it over. After sitting with it a few days the only answer that came was ‘Why would I say no?’ It wasn’t about me, it was about the Dharma. I had set a wheel in motion years before when I’d said to John that I wanted to give something back. I went to Simon and said ‘Yes.’ Some time later the ceremony happened at the Pointing Out the Great Way course that we ran at Barmoor.
Since then I’ve become increasingly aware of the need to start training up more, younger, people to become the retreat leaders of the future. I want there to be ‘John’ and ‘Simon’ figures for the fifteen-year-old ‘Fiona’s’ of the current age. I want our wonderful opportunities to continue to open up into the future, for people to find ‘who they are’, to find release from suffering. To continue to provide a space to open the heart and feel the love that is unconditioned, unbounded, universal. I am immensely grateful to the people I have met along the way: teachers, guides, fellow practitioners, fellow retreatants, authors, monastics, thanka painters, Dharma friends, friends from other spiritual traditions, and non-Buddhist mates who have done their best to keep me level-headed. I hope to continue to learn, since approaches to Dharma are numberless. I have made and will make mistakes, inevitably. I hope for forgiveness when I do.
The journey continues.
