Dharma Library

Thank you all for coming, and for your trust in appointing me as the second Teacher of the Western Chan Fellowship. This is of course a significant responsibility, but one that I am happy to undertake.

As well as being our first meeting since John Crook’s passing last year, it is also the third anniversary of the passing of Chan Master Sheng Yen, our Shifu. It is natural that we remember both of…

Sunday

Courgette, coconut and Lemon soup.
Bread rolls
Citrus and poppy seed cake.
Mushroom and Lovage stew
Creamy polenta
Green allotment salad.

The beginning of a Hua-Tou retreat, my first retreat of the year and I feel I really need it. Somehow, I’ve lost focus and cannot see beyond grey clouds. There is a nice group of people, balanced; John and Jake as teachers, which is quite a treat.

I came a…

I’m not quite sure why it has taken me until now to write this report, nor why I have decided this moment to do it. Maybe it will become clear as I write it.

The retreat was a Silent Illumination retreat at Maenllwyd with John Crook and Fiona Nuttall in July 2010. Today is 5th November 2010. Maybe the lapse of time is portentous? I can see this as I write it.

The weather was totally beautiful…

Searching for the way 
Gate on gate until 
A fenced enclosure of the self 
Spiky membrane of a mutating cell. 
This single Centre with two nuclei 
One old and dark, a sort of hell 
One new and lit, yet secretive.

Old dark labyrinth of the nightmare mind 
Tomb of hanging beams and creeping things 
Hidden ghouls and swinging bells 
Dull black axes over torture fires 
Eyeless skulls and human bones
Devil’s…

I must have met David Fontana at a psychological conference where several of us decided to form a small discussion group to have a look at the then growing interest in Meditation and Zen. We worked closely together to set up an international conference on “Psychology: East and West” in Cardiff and David and I edited and contributed to the book that followed “ Space in Mind” (Element Press, 1990).…

I clamber over the stile, and climb toward the Callow Drove, which runs along the ridge above me. The path follows a farm track across a field. Sheep are grazing on grass still frosted where the winter sun doesn’t reach it. A heavy tractor has left deep grooves, hatched with the marks of coarse tyre treads, in the frozen mud. Leaving the field, the path becomes more rugged as it climbs steeply…

October days of sunshine, nights of frost,
The chestnut leaves fan golden by the gate
With early mists, when all below is lost
Save field-tree tops. To us, the sun seems late,
Or is it just we rise and have a pee
And venture out in still dark air
To taste the day and feel the ground a while,
Before damp sheep begin to stir?
All standing, waves of movement, like the sea,
Then fingers curling round a mug of…

In April 1997, the Western Chan Fellowship held a retreat in Scotland on Holy Island off Arran. St Molaise was a Christian hermit there in the 7th Century. During the retreat, we celebrated his feast day and held a ceremony in St Molaise's cave hermitage in the Saint's honour. This article is based on a talk that was given on the retreat.

The world was deeply shocked by the terrible catastrophe in Japan. We send our condolences to all who have lost loved ones and are still suffering there at this time. When I think of a 30 foot wave striking the Somerset coast, I see the land lost to the sea all the way from Weston super Mare to the Dorset hills, lapping up the valleys below Winterhead Hill and leaving Glastonbury Tor as a lonely…

Žarko Andricevic is the Teacher of Dharmaloka – the Chan Buddhist Community, Croatia.

Our incapability to live in harmony with others, the environment and ourselves is a consequence of deep ignorance of our nature and the nature of existence in general. All human suffering, misery and discontent, be it personal or collective, arises out of a fundamental ignorance that is called avidya…