Dharma Library

This talk is dedicated to the memory of Georgina Marjorie Crook. It was delivered to the assembly of practitioners at the Two Day Retreat in Rickford, October 24th 1992.

Two things are omnipresent in our lives and yet day after day we fail to notice them - death and the sky. Every day people are dying: if they are our dear ones we know and feel it but the fact of everyday dying, next door, in the…

from the "Sermons to the Stones and Trees" tapes, Summer 1992

There comes a moment in Zen training, a moment both shocking and surprising, when one realises intuitively that there is no path at all.

Ho! What then is Zen practice?

Practice is the realisation that there is no path at all, yet one keeps on going, going on, going on beyond, always becoming being.

Listening to a talk on Buddhism on…

Hebe Welbourne, who died a few months ago at the age of 100, was one of the first people to attend John Crook’s retreats at the Maenllwyd and continued to sit with the Bristol Chan group until just before the Covid lockdown. Even then she went on meditating alone with the group in her room every Thursday evening until her death, and we always lit an extra candle to symbolise her ‘presence’ with…

This dialogue is reprinted with permission from the Institute of Chung Hua Buddhist Culture in New York. It was first published in Chan Magazine Volume 12, Number 4, Fall 1992.

Question: How is Chan similar or different from psychotherapy? Is the relationship between student and Master similar to that of patient and therapist?

Shifu: There are similarities and differences. The goals of Chan are…

Christianity lies at the root and heart of Western culture. Today intellectually rejected because of its failure to relate effectively with science, and sentimentalised by those who seek popularity within a world of adolescent values that last a lifetime, the traditional European religion none the less continues to stir the heart. Perhaps it is the story of Christ himself, rather than the…

It's a dark night
The trees stretch their limbs in the breeze.
The air is cool and the nostrils flare.
Suddenly, the clouds part
And there stands the moon, bright and serene.

A poem in old Welsh style

I am chief doctor unto six thousand,
My country of origin was the Land of Angles.
Ruth and Hilda called me Roger.
I was the question set Sir Gwain;
I am the father of three doctors;
I am the husband of their mother;
I am the voter much misled;
I am a debtor, yet a householder;
I am little Gwion's hurt child;
I am a sleeket cowering timorous beasty;
I am a dense thicket of thorne;
I…

A Western Zen Retreat Poem

The Universe is as the Boundless Sky,
I should have had another piece of bread and jam
As lotus blossom above
I wonder if we'll have tea after this meal
unclean water,
Pure and beyond the World is the mind
Bloody Buddhist Ceremonials
of the trainee,
O Silence of Nature
Don't like him
We take refuge in Thee
Here we go again.

Calm and Clear

Cars converge on Swindon station,
Strained commuters clamber on,
Briefcase, mala, travel passes,
"Sorry, power unit problems."
I take refuge in the jewels,
Generating Boddicitta,
Through the virtues I, by giving,
"Train departing, Platform one."

Free from hatred and attachment,
"Passengers who've just got on,
Please, your tickets for inspection."
Offer objects of attachment,
Visualise, arrayed before me
All…

A haiku diary of a tour through Uttar Pradesh by bus, boat, plane and rickshaw in the winter of 1992.

The plane stops at Abu Dhabi.
White faces recede;
The Fast floods in.

Against a high-rise backdrop,
Two vultures on a pig's back.
Third World.

The fawning rickshaw wallah's
Smile
Frames my guilt.

A black bull
With a white egret on his back;
Time out of mind.

Muzzafarnagar -
Dust and Chaos
No, not chaos.
Everybo…