Dharma Library

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…

Chinesisches Zen

Chinesisches Zen oder Chan, wie es in China heißt - ist eine Lebensweise, welche geistige Klarheit, Mitgefühl mit allen fühlenden Wesen, und eine Art von Weisheit ermutigt, die aus der Überschreitung der Anliegen des Selbst hervorgeht. Diese kurze Einführung heißt alle willkommen, die versuchen, neue Zugänge zu persönlicher Erfahrung zu entwickeln, und schlägt auch einen Weg der…

Chinese Zen, or Chan as it is called in China, is a way of life that encourages clarity of mind, compassion to all sentient beings and a wisdom that comes from going beyond the concerns of self. This short introduction welcomes those seeking to develop fresh approaches to personal experience and suggests a way of practice.

Buddhism

Buddhism originated in India some 2500 years ago as a result of…

The time seems ripe to put a suggestion to the readers of New Chan Forum that has been germinating for some time. Practitioners have often remarked that they would like some form of community based on their experience of retreats at the Maenllwyd with which they could feel closer identification. There are indeed now many people who have come and continue to come to the Maenllwyd regularly for that…

Part I - The World We're In

Introduction

To appreciate the role that the Buddha Dharma may come to play in Western culture we need to have an understanding of the way our lives are framed by the world that both shapes us and within which we play a part. So momentous have been the changes in recent years that our suppositions about who and why we are need a constant updating. To appreciate such a…

Roger Housden was taking a tour party down the river Ganges. Half way they stopped in Lucknow and Roger took the participants to visit one of the truly insightful gurus of modern India, a man of no-nonsense clarity. All but one of his party stayed on. Even the Ganges was forgotten. Poonja is a Hindu without a label. Whether derived from Sankaracharya or the Buddha or both his thought is direct,…

Before we try to understand Linji, from whom our tradition derives, then are some things to be said. Linji seems strange to us; we who are used to cause and consequence and well-drawn argument. We sit and giggle over the delicious way in which the master affronts his questioners. Yet we have no understanding of why he does it. We marvel over the cleverness of a Zen paradox, but we have no insight…

1.

You carry me on your shoulders 
through the dark 
and explain to me 
the stars. 
The owl in the old oak 
calls in the night.
You chuckle, joyful 
in that mysterious bird. 
One day you received a stuffed fox 
and, to everyone's horror,
set it up in the hall. 
You wanted to put tiny 
light bulbs in its eyes and make it see.
Later the owl came 
to sit above the grandfather clock 
striking the hours 
with its…

Written during a solo retreat.

In the practice of the Dharma it becomes essential to understand that within the everyday lies the Great Joy. It is not that Joy is elsewhere nor that it has to be laboriously worked for. It is not that one is worthless, undeserving, wicked and hence unable to discover it Dharma Joy itself lies within the everyday.

Why then are we so normally cast down, anxious,…

In Memoriam GMC.

One day this summer, standing in one of the temples of Phugtal Gompa hidden deep in the Zangskar mountains of the Himalaya, I asked my companion, Nathaniel Tarn, American poet and participant on my cultural tour to Ladakh, whether he was a Buddhist. Nathaniel was inspecting the extraordinary 12th century paintings on the walls, paintings he had laboured hard and with difficulties…