Dharma Library

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…

I've been throwing basketballs for almost as long as I have been sitting. At about the same time that I began to sit regularly I started attending a Keep Fit evening class where basketball is the staple diet. So most Thursday evenings will see me along with a group of similarly middle aged and slightly overweight (?) men running up and down a gym trying to throw a ball into a suspended basket.

So…

Some years ago, when I was younger and cleverer than I am now, I would have known exactly what to write when invited to contribute an article on Chan.

As it is, I thought to write of counselling and psychotherapy, for there is no doubt that the Buddha dispensed a powerful medicine, strong enough to quench the fever in this world and the next; to examine the nature of what arises, moment by…

Among the glens, bogs and lochans of the western Highlands of Scotland the dividing line between the natural and the supernatural is thin indeed. Beside Loch Shiel

A dagger and a ram's skull
in the summer tanglewood
no birds sing.

That was the explanation why, several years previously, we had camped overnight on the trackless shore too weary to go further, yet each gripped by too much inner terror…

The opening words of the retreat "Where the path stops, you go on into the snow alone" have an enormously powerful effect on me and the combination of the clear Welsh air, the burning incense, the peace, and the clarity of the bell bring tears to my eyes and a lump in my throat so that I am unable to join in the words myself.

The retreat begins, the guest master cheerfully and conscientiously…

Chan Buddhism is undergoing a marked revival in mainland China. Monasteries are renewing their fabric and providing services to the public. Meditation is starting again for young monks in the Chan halls. In July 1997, with my old friend Yiu Yan-nang as interpreter, I visited two of the most famous monasteries in southern China and was surprised by what we found.

When I entered China from Hong…

A 3-week Dzogchen retreat with Lama Surya Das: Canandaigua, New York, 1997

Perhaps it was hearing John Crook talking about the Tibetan practice of Dzogchen which first sparked my interest. For some time I had been practising Tibetan Buddhism in the Karma Kagyu school, finding its gentler approach a welcome complement to the more rigorous practice of Chan/Zen. Dzogchen, which is sometimes referred…

First meeting: June 1996: In June 1996 John Crook called an assembly of Chan practitioners to a meeting at the Maenllwyd to consider his proposal to respond to numerous requests for a development in the field of Chan practice in the UK by setting up a charitable institution to promote Chan in Great Britain.

The following persons attended: Tim Paine, Frank Tait, Caroline Paine, Simon Child, Sally…

Copper whispers blowing in the wind,
beech leaves chase the rough grasses down the field.
At ninety two, I ask myself,
will she see another spring?
She rests there, quiet, her busy conversation gone,
anxieties softened now in forgetfulness of age.
Beside her in the garden, dozing off,
I see her smiling in a ray of autumn sun.
She set my character in grooves
so like her own, wakeful mornings worrying;
skille…