New Chan Forum 13

What is Genuine Buddhism?

In this month's New Chan Forum we address one of the most difficult questions for any religious practice; namely when is practice genuine?

In our most recent issues we have given some consideration to the fact that the growth of Western Buddhism has been  predominantly lay practitioner based and we have published a number of articles on the integration of Buddhist practice into everyday life. Though this explosion of the Dharma in the West has many positive aspects it may also have a darker side. The proliferation of teachers and doctrines has resulted a number of instances where, possibly with good intentions, inauthentic Buddhism and poorly qualified teachers have been portrayed as the real thing. Some of the consequences of such situations have been discussed by Stuart Lachs in NCF 10.

Clearly the question of authenticity in Buddhist training goes to the core of our assesment of our own experiences and may raise the most profound dilemmas as to the role of our teacher in our practice. In this issue we offer the views of several practitioners who address the issue of authenticity in  a number of ways. Ken Jones considers the rise of large and doctrinal Buddhist organisations in Britain and Simon Child discusses the process of integrating spiritual practice into everyday life. In our main piece  John Crook assesses the nature of authenticity in practice and the role of personal honesty in its attainment. We also have a short article by Shifu in which he discusses how we view and interpret spiritual experience.

It must be stressed that these discussions are only the views of individual practitioners. You may disagree or have things to add. If so please write. We hope that these articles will stimulate debate. Many of you may have wrestled with these issues. If so, write and tell us!

In addition to polemic be reassured that this issue contains the usual mix of poems, retreat reports and advertisements.

On a final, more practical, note we are still short of drawings and  photos for the New Chan Forum. If you have anything to submit or any articles, poems, letters or comments the addresses of the editors are, as always,  given on the back page.

• New Chan Forum Issue 13 text