Dharma Library

Rushing off to begin a solitary retreat last month, I suddenly remembered that I wanted to check something in the liturgy so, in a hurry (yes, I know!!), I grabbed the first copy I could find and set off to my hut. Only later, once I’d settled down, did I take a look and realise that it was a very old copy indeed. To my surprise, there, on the front cover (see overleaf), is some writing in John’s…

For a few moments I believe I’ve forgotten what day it is. The pandemic has removed an element of usual time for me as my accustomed props and punctuations of the week have become redundant and my old map for time spent has become obsolete. Global and local are now not so separated as ‘remote’ acquires a new meaning and I can spend time, described as real, with distant friends. I idle away at bits…

Hughie Carroll’s public début as a poet began on social media during the first national lockdown in May 2020. The variety of direct, colloquial, honest, and tender poems were immediately engaging: pared to the core and punchy. I joined with the many who encouraged what rapidly became two books of poetic memoir: Yarn and Sunshine and Shadow. 

The early poems take us to the perilous edges of being…

Covid 19 restrictions have meant that WCF’s normal retreat programme has had to be abandoned. Instead we have developed a format for online day and week retreats, which are proving to be very valuable. 

WCF’s first online retreat – and I loved it! 

I found the whole process of bringing the retreat out into my ‘market place’, into my living room, was really wonderful. And I enjoyed the experience…

I've had a sense that in the past weeks things have emotionally changed. I seem to get fewer silly videos through whatsapp, I receive and send out fewer e-mails and I know I'm reading the news about coronavirus less avidly. People that I talk to on the telephone appear to be just waiting for things to change. Initially there was a great feeling of the need to be creative and flexible with how life…

A Book review

Of the art forms that are associated with Zen the writing of haiku is the most accessible. Surely anyone can write a brief three-line verse which pointedly does not rhyme. But it is not as easy as that; it requires a motivation to express what is arising and a self at ease to allow the clarity of that expression. The Redthread Sangha is a group of Zen practitioners who between…

This book had been winking at me since the beginning of the year. For several years, Norman Fischer’s writing in Tricycle and elsewhere has been a source of pleasure to me. He writes lucidly and with a poet’s eye and phrase. Eventually, a couple of months after it was published, I gave in, bought this book, devoured it and then just reread it straight away. That’s rare for me. 

Its subtitle,…

The image that comes to mind when I try to sum up the retreat is of a triple: a three-legged stool, a tripod, a triptych. This represents what were for me the three components of the retreat: the huatou, the brushwork, and the sitting. Each locked into the other.

I can’t remember the exact words of the huatou but in essence Joshu asks Nansen how to pursue The Way. Nansen tells him that making…

I arrived not knowing what the retreat was going to be like. I knew we would investigate the question “who am I?” but preferred to find out how once I got there to avoid expectations or anxiety. I was very much looking forward to the luxury of having everything organised for me. I would not have to make any decisions, just follow instructions and bells. This time, I didn't even wear a watch and it…

Introduction 

In terms of our ceremonies, as lay practitioners, we only undertake a small part of what occurs in monastic communities, but, as with everything, we need to examine and question what it is that we actually do. We need to discover the larger sense of what constitutes our liturgy and to appreciate its place within the totality that is Chan Buddhism. Our liturgy reveals a history of…