Dharma Library

Book review by Pamela Hopkinson

Not living very close to a local group, I place great store by the books I read on Buddhism. I picked this one up because Surya Das has constructed the book following the Eight-Fold Path, and I'd been meditating on parts of this for a long time.

Inside I found one of the liveliest and most enjoyable books on Buddhism that I have read for a long time. With the aim…

At the culmination of retreats led by Shi-Fu the opportunity is usually given to participants to take the Precepts. Retreatants are told that they may take all the precepts, or they may choose to take only some. I think without exception participants unhesitatingly recite their intention to keep all the Precepts until the recitation reaches the Precept that states the intention to "refrain from…

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…

Eric Rommeluere (b 1960) has practised Zen since 1978. He is the author of a collection of major Zen texts entitled 'Les Fleurs du Vide' (Paris, Grasset 1995), which he translated directly from the Chinese or Japanese. Recently he published 'Guide du Zen' (Paris, Hachette 1997) detailing all the Zen groups currently active worldwide. John Crook met and stayed with Eric in May 1997 at the first…

'Ploughing the Bright Field' was the title of an exhibition of contemporary Buddhist art, held at the Create Centre, Bristol, in November 1997.

The exhibition attracted around 500 visitors during a fortnight. It showed the work of 20 artists from all over the country. Most were professional artists whose work is either partly or wholly inspired by Buddhist practice. A few were artists whose work…

There seems to be a question: 'Can I be enlightened if I'm not a monk/nun?' Possibly not often for lay people, but can Buddhist teachings and practice improve the quality of our lives - the answer is a resounding 'Yes'.

A lay practitioner is constantly faced with personal obstacles, disagreements, tensions and difficulties which can lead to days and weeks of self analysis or can be ridden over…

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…

This was my first retreat of any kind and it was very difficult to start with the rigorous Chan approach. However, I felt very privileged to be accepted onto the retreat and I did not want to miss such an incredible opportunity to improve my practice. I undertook the retreat on the basis of intuition; it seemed entirely the right thing to do and the right time to be doing it.

Three years ago Zen…

Who are you?
You pretend to not know.
Of course you know who you are!
It is you, holding the page
reading the marks on this piece of paper.

It is you, reading my mind
with the sound of your voice.

And who am I?
I am you.
Sharing thought.
E V E R Y T H I N G .

You, in manifestation,
are on the frontier
of your/self.

You will see yourself,
out there,
in the world,
doing so many things.

Make them all…

beyond words
sometimes too numerous
at other times not enough
beyond time
beyond its dynamics,
divisibility
into what was
into what is.
beyond forgetfulness
beyond the danger
of taking the past for the present
illusion for reality.
beyond the mind
feeding on words, concepts,
beyond imagination
pulsating with images, dreams,
beyond emotion, uncertain, fecund
beyond escape,
beyond departure
beyond everything
there is…