Dharma Library

A Book by Rebecca Li

When faced with uncertainty that seems unbearable do you panic? Do you worry? Do you put things off? These are some of the all too human responses Rebecca Li discusses in her book Allow Joy into Our Hearts: Chan Practice in Uncertain Times. This delightful book is a series of essays written from recordings of talks Rebecca gave to her Zoom Chan Group in New Jersey at the…

Book by Yongey Mingyur Rinpoche with Helen Tworkov 

A friend gave me a copy of this book when I was recovering after an operation. What a brilliant gift and what an engaging book! Far from being a stuffy Buddhist text, it is an adventure story, describing one man’s journey towards enlightenment, exploring the mind of pure awareness and finding himself in love with the world. The author, Yongey…

We introduce Simon Child’s second dharma heir, Rebecca Li, interviewed by Skype from New York in January 2017. She edited the text and added some content that was not covered in the interview.

It is with sadness that we announce the death of Ken Jones at his home in Aberystwyth on Sunday August 2nd 2015

Ken was a superb teacher and a good friend to many of us. He was a founder member of the WCF and supported Chan Master John Crook in establishing the WCF in its early years. Ken led many retreats at the Maenllwyd. His main focus for teaching was to bring the practice of Zen into…

The sangha is important for Buddhist practice. It is the third Jewel of Refuge. However, it is not always possible for people physically to come together either for short meditation sessions or for longer periods on retreat. In order to address this and as part of the invitation to develop new ideas and experiments in Chan, the Western Chan Fellowship offered a “virtual” sangha event to allow…

Summary of conference presentations by Hilary Richards

I would like to bow to you all and to thank everyone for attending. All the speakers have told us how they planned their talks. My plan for summing up was to take some key points from each of the talks and the odd quotation or two, note them down and tell you about them again now. But this plan is not going to work as everything we have heard…

We had been curious about the Western Zen Retreat after hearing about it - it was a process that had been developed by Dr. John Crook, Master Sheng Yen's (Shifu's) first Western Dharma heir. At first we thought the retreat was for beginners, only because we had been told that the retreat was a good way for those new to Chan to start their practice. But after taking part in a number of Western Zen…

When I arrived in Hong Kong (1953) on my National Service during the Korean War, I soon set about trying to meet Chinese people. I wanted to follow up my reading of Buddhism carried out during the several weeks' voyage on the troop ship from Southampton. Through contacts with the HK university I met Professor Ma Meng who introduced me to a Mr Yen Shi liang, a Buddhist merchant with an embroidery…

Last year Bruce Stevenson took himself off to Japan for a period of practice in a Zen monastery. This was not Bruce's first such expedition but it is the first he has written about for us. Let us continue this issue then with a further account of experiences in the distant East. Bruce tells us Sogenji is, as far as he knows, the only monastery in Japan full of Westerners - well this includes a…

Where is the wisdom we have lost in knowledge?
Where is the knowledge we have lost in information?

T.S. Eliot - The Rock

The open door of the shabby little Hotel de la Gare. The municipal street washer has just clattered over the cobbles, freshening the air before the sun gets up. On their way to work, the locals drop in for a  petit noir or a shot of something stronger. Hands are briefly shaken…