New Chan Forum 15

Illuminating Silence

After the long delay in the production of New Chan Forum 14 we are pleased to be able to follow it quickly with an issue containing the edited text of Master Sheng-Yen's talks from the Chan retreat he led at Maenllwyd in 1995. These talks deal mainly with an in depth consideration of the practice of Silent Illumination as used within the Ts'ao-tung tradition of Chinese Chan. Shifu's exposition provides us with an insight into the stages involved in this practice and into the principles and attitudes needed to make progress along this path.

Those of you who read issue 14 closely will remember that it was intended that issue 15 should be an account of the formation of the new Western Chan Fellowship. However Shifu's retreat talks provided us with an opportunity to compensate our readers for delays in production of the last two issues by providing some first rate meditation instruction: something which has not featured prominently in recent issues. Also, it is proposed that Shifu's talks from the 1995 retreat will be included in a new revised version of Catching a Feather on a Fan and we are happy to be able to give readers of this journal a foretaste of a publication which may take some time to come out.

We have therefore decided to postpone the account of the formation of the Western Chan Fellowship until issue 16. In this we will provide a summary of main developments in building the new fellowship and of the meetings which have taken place over the last year.

This issue is devoted more or less exclusively to the talks from the 1995 retreat. However, there are also a number of noteworthy things in our usual programme and events section. We have a listing of the local groups affiliated to John Crook and the Western Chan Fellowship including two new ones. Also we have details of an extensive retreat programme into the middle of 1998 at both Maenllwyd and at a range of other venues. In addition we have information on a journey to Ladakh and Spiti proposed for 1998 and details of a new book by John and James Low on the practices of the yogins of this region.

• New Chan Forum issue 15