New Chan Forum 24

Experience and Time

This issue is devoted to personal experience. Chan is everywhere and anytime. It only needs the mindfulness of the right perspective to bring up the vision, the lessening of self-absorption and the opening to vastness.

However much we talk philosophy or worry about social ills everything in the end boils down to experience in time now, time remembered or time hoped for. How do we practitioners handle our own experiencing? In this lies the skill of Chan.

We devote this issue to surveying different ways in which our friends in the Dharma cope with varying aspects of their lives - in learning, teaching, in day to day events, on retreats with others and in solitary contemplation alone in the hills.

Learning from one another through understanding each other's paths is a helpful way to reflect on our own endeavours.

The context of experience is time - so we begin by a reflection on time itself. We follow with an account of two teachers' experiences of training and the problems of  providing teachings essential for deeper practice. How do practitioners experience Chan? The rest of the issue will tell you. Each report is like a refreshing glass, taste them one by one. Not too many all at once!