Dharma Library

On the wall of the dining hall in the Chan Center in Elmhurst, New York, hangs a notice summarising the attitude to be adopted by resident and visiting practitioners. These suggestions seem to provide very sensible guidelines for a life of appropriate relatedness with others, not only within but also outside the meditation hall. So we present them here, slightly edited, for your reflection. They…

I had always loved my father's hands. They seemed to be the only part of him I could love in safety.

I could love them in secret and in silence and my mother would never know. I could look at them when she was out of the room, cooking in the kitchen, banging the pots and pans as she worked.

She was an angry woman who had been forced to marry my father when she was only twenty years old because…

for Hughie

High in the hills of Wales
somewhere above Ceredigion
a fenceless gate swings in the wind.

Bold spirit are you?
A rugged glance, good boots or a 4 by 4
and you're away.

among sheep and ravens
cloudwise among crags
bogs and sudden mist

a falling white out
lost in the desert
chilly too.

Coming down a valley no one ever saw before
the dead still sing in the Inn.
Finding a way home not so easy…

Driving home from the January Mahamudra retreat I thought obsessively about taking up the opportunity to cook. Finally, decided to drop it, not think about it for a few days and just see if the situation clarified.

Next morning, the postman knocked and handed over a parcel. It turned out to contain a Christmas present from my brother - a teapot and a book on vegetarian cooking! I decided the…

In the last few months old hands at the Maenllwyd have lost two much loved retreat companions. Don Ball and Jane Turner had been coming to the Maenllwyd ever since we started retreats there. They both knew the days when accommodation consisted of a barn with a much holed roof through which snow might drift or an owl come in to share the shelter. They both knew the crowded retreats we used to have…

Up at the Maenllwyd -
funny how the days roll by.
I don't seem to be doing anything,
cleaning and writing and cooking
and sitting and walking
sleeping and waking.

Where does it all go?

The time so clear
nobody here
hours - hours
or merely minutes?
Today it is warm;
yesterday cold;
the wind changes,
clouds keep going -
in different directions.

Tonight a comet hangs over the yard
tail streaming in far off sunshine.
D…

                          Grey stone mountain
                          rain
                          and the gathering fogs
                          Drip drip the gutters
                          and the gurgling stream.
                          Two ravens out of the mirk
                          strut about warily
                          not seeing the face behind the window,
                    …

The Need for an Examination

The authority of experience depends upon authenticity. If we base our action or feeling in inauthentic experience it can only lead to play acting or pretence with potentially catastrophic consequences. Sadly, many of our justifications for action rest on the outcomes of past personal, familial and social tensions that have remained unresolved and which distort our…

To work the land or to gain one's living from the land is 99% hard work and, in the history of Man, the shift from hunting and gathering to settled agriculture was perhaps the most important change in our whole structure and way of thinking.

Without agriculture where would the monasteries be? To sustain such a complex there must be a stable local economy or at least a trade route nearby. The very…

A talk delivered at Tibet House in New York City, on 5 November, 1994 and edited by Linda Peer and Harry Miller, edited with permission for NCF by John Crook 1998. In this talk Shifu tells us about the traditional uses to which the Sutras are put in China. Some of us may like to make use of these methods. For Westerners Sutra reading is also important. In particular the oldest Sutras, the ones…