Dharma Library

Extracts from Rebecca Li’s report on her breakthrough retreat 2010

I continued to hear the silence and maintain an open awareness of body, mind and environment. I found them to be arbitrary categories, none carrying more weight than the others. They arose like bubbles or ripples in a body of water and disappeared without a trace, leaving the mind back to silence. Yet I noticed a thought that…

At the age of fifty-six I have found myself in an insecure and troubled place for many reasons: broken long-term relationship, empty coffers, career collapse and a recent bereavement. Chronic insomnia was placing my problems on the brink of mental illness, of hopelessness; my troubled mind shouting loudly all the time to come up with solutions and not succeeding. My mind was so chaotic, troubled…

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…

The first day was just awful really. Sitting there, facing myself. It was like torture. No distraction, no ‘phone a friend’, no reading, no internet, no work, no walking the dog, no watching tv. Just sitting there, having to face what emerges in my mind. I found it unbearable. I really did think I could not bear to stay and started thinking about how I could just leave. I was cold; it didn’t…

I am not sure where or when the journey to Maenllwyd began, but it had its roots long before the day of our arrival for a Western Zen retreat in February. It was a relief to arrive on that darkened Welsh hillside, and somewhat surreal to enter the gas-lit farmhouse and find a small crowd of other retreatants, talking, laughing, drinking tea – all of whom had also made their own journeys there on…

Simon Child continues his account of koan practice, introduced in the last issue of New Chan Forum, by describing the breakthrough to enlightenment. We thank Jeanine Woodward who transcribed the original recordings of these edited retreat talks.

What do we think we’re playing at? We are sitting here, with our minds mixed up, confused, upset, tangled up, knotted up by words from a thousand years…

This is the first of two articles edited from retreat talks by Simon Child introducing koan-practice and explaining how to penetrate koans. The second article, in issue 52 of New Chan Forum, will be called The Shattering of the Great Doubt.

Why is it that you practise?

Why is it that you practise? It’s a relatively unusual activity amongst humanity for people to be doing this so it’s a fair…

An introduction for those new to meditation and for those who wish to develop their meditation further.

What is Meditation?

We are used to the concepts of training the body in a skill or for fitness or dexterity, and of training the mind in factual knowledge or in a mental skill such as arithmetic. Meditation is many things but it is none of these. Meditation is a training of the mind to be…

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…