Dharma Library
A large collection of articles, from past issues of New Chan Forum and more besides.
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The Buddhist Legacy of John Crook
Simon Child |One day many years ago, in a short break on a retreat, I was standing outside the Chan Hall in the sun. I noticed a beetle stuck on its back, trying to roll over. I squatted down, flicked it over the right way up, and moved on. Later that day, in interview, John asked me, “How is your beetle?” I hadn’t known that he had observed me, and it seemed such an insignificant act not worthy of comment,…
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Hidden Assumptions, Fixed Views
Simon Child |The following Dharma Talk is from a Silent Illumination Retreat, November 2010 at Dharma Drum Retreat Center. It was transcribed by Catherine Burns and edited by Eddy Street. Published in Chan Magazine Spring 2012.
Perception and Sensation
At each morning service and evening service we chant The Heart Sutra together. In one part it says:
Form is precisely emptiness
and emptiness precisely… -
John's Life
Jake Lyne |John Crook was born in 1930 in Southampton into a moderately well-to-do family. He was educated at Oakmount School, a preparatory school in Southampton, and at Sherborne School, a boarding school in Dorset. At school he studied biology, physiology and physics. He frequently commented on the effect of the environment of “all male, firm discipline, a lot of sports especially Rugby football which I…
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AGM 2012 Teacher’s Address
Simon Child, Chuan-fa Jing-hong |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…
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Daily Menu - A Cook's Retreat
Anonymous |Sunday
Courgette, coconut and Lemon soup.
Bread rolls
Citrus and poppy seed cake.
Mushroom and Lovage stew
Creamy polenta
Green allotment salad.The beginning of a Hua-Tou retreat, my first retreat of the year and I feel I really need it. Somehow, I’ve lost focus and cannot see beyond grey clouds. There is a nice group of people, balanced; John and Jake as teachers, which is quite a treat.
I came a…
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Clarity and Confusion
Anonymous |I’m not quite sure why it has taken me until now to write this report, nor why I have decided this moment to do it. Maybe it will become clear as I write it.
The retreat was a Silent Illumination retreat at Maenllwyd with John Crook and Fiona Nuttall in July 2010. Today is 5th November 2010. Maybe the lapse of time is portentous? I can see this as I write it.
The weather was totally beautiful…
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Self Ascending
Paul Atherton |Searching for the way
Gate on gate until
A fenced enclosure of the self
Spiky membrane of a mutating cell.
This single Centre with two nuclei
One old and dark, a sort of hell
One new and lit, yet secretive.Old dark labyrinth of the nightmare mind
Tomb of hanging beams and creeping things
Hidden ghouls and swinging bells
Dull black axes over torture fires
Eyeless skulls and human bones
Devil’s… -
David Fontana - A Memoir
John Crook |I must have met David Fontana at a psychological conference where several of us decided to form a small discussion group to have a look at the then growing interest in Meditation and Zen. We worked closely together to set up an international conference on “Psychology: East and West” in Cardiff and David and I edited and contributed to the book that followed “ Space in Mind” (Element Press, 1990).…
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Chan and Writing the World
Peter Reason |I clamber over the stile, and climb toward the Callow Drove, which runs along the ridge above me. The path follows a farm track across a field. Sheep are grazing on grass still frosted where the winter sun doesn’t reach it. A heavy tractor has left deep grooves, hatched with the marks of coarse tyre treads, in the frozen mud. Leaving the field, the path becomes more rugged as it climbs steeply…
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Ode to 'It'
Jane Spray |October days of sunshine, nights of frost,
The chestnut leaves fan golden by the gate
With early mists, when all below is lost
Save field-tree tops. To us, the sun seems late,
Or is it just we rise and have a pee
And venture out in still dark air
To taste the day and feel the ground a while,
Before damp sheep begin to stir?
All standing, waves of movement, like the sea,
Then fingers curling round a mug of…
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