Dharma Library

The question of lay Zen may appear difficult but it has a blindingly simple answer.

Pay attention!

Paying Attention is part of every practice that I know of, whether watching the breath, repeating the Buddha's name or practising bare awareness or mindfulness. My own practice is little more than just paying attention, greatly illuminated, especially in the early years, by John's magic…

1. The Privatisation of the Dharma

Buddhism comes to Westerners as a monkish other worldly religion of meditation embedded in a culture of monasticism. It brings with it all the assumptions of a traditional hierarchical culture where society and nature were perceived as an unchanging back drop to the human condition. Public virtues enjoined upon 'householders' (and even rulers), charitable…

It was a cliff overhang rather than a real cave. But the walls glowed with beautiful lichens, and at one end was a rockfall hung with ferns. I cleared out the sheep dung, set up a little shrine, cut a bed of reeds and laid out my sleeping bag. I was in business at least as a part-time hermit.

Notwithstanding two decades of tough Zen training, I still had a romantic itch for the hermit life - all…

(from a seven day solitary retreat on the Ystrad Estate in Radnorshire)

Surrounded by sprouts
stone cottage
labouring poor

Sleep so deep
I forget the names
of lovers long ago

Small birds sing their evensong
how sharp the incense!

Smoke drifts
from my neighbour's chimney
morning rain

Birdsong and rain
incense and solitude
day follows day

Young flames leap
in pale sunlight
it's Sunday morning!

Hanging up my old…

A haiku diary of a tour through Uttar Pradesh by bus, boat, plane and rickshaw in the winter of 1992.

The plane stops at Abu Dhabi.
White faces recede;
The Fast floods in.

Against a high-rise backdrop,
Two vultures on a pig's back.
Third World.

The fawning rickshaw wallah's
Smile
Frames my guilt.

A black bull
With a white egret on his back;
Time out of mind.

Muzzafarnagar -
Dust and Chaos
No, not chaos.
Everybo…