New Chan Forum 4

Continue! Continue!...

We have at last found an excellent room for our weekly meditation evenings in Bristol. It is a peaceful place, the meditation room of a Yoga centre and after our various other rooms we now feel we have a place that is really good for our group to sit in. We welcome you to come out and join us, even on a wintry evening. Group sitting gives an encouragement to personal practice and allows us to meet with one another for instruction and friendship. Last term John was present for most of our meetings and gave a variety of talks focusing especially on the Koan stories to be found in the Book of Tranquillity. There is also the opportunity for Dokusan interviews and guidance on personal meditation practice.

Our weekend retreats at the Mendip Painting Centre are well received and enable people from further afield to meet with us. In November Richard Hunn inspired us with insights that stem from a profound knowledge of Chinese Chan literature of which he is a leading translator. We intend to maintain contact with him and perhaps run some retreat "exchanges" between Bristol and Lancaster where Richard is now living. We hope to invite other retreat leaders to join us from time to time.

1992 will be a busy year at the Maenllwyd. The retreat to be led by Master Sheng-yen over Easter is fully booked with a long waiting list. Those of us who have a place are certainly fortunate to be able to participate and to receive instruction from Shifu. It promises to be an auspicious occasion. Throughout the year John will be running a programme of Western Zen retreats, a Chan retreat and an Introduction to Tantra. Details of these are printed at the end of this newsletter.

John will be having a busy year. In May he is going on a pilgrimage to Mount Kailas in Tibet. He will be attending a conference on The Precepts in the Modern World arranged by Shifu in Taiwan and a symposium on Buddhism and Modern Thought at Emmanuel College, Cambridge. He will lead another journey to Ladakh in September. His book, with James Low on The Yogins of Ladakh is nearing completion. Last October he was asked to join with Reb Anderson, Abbot of the San Francisco Zen Centre, in presenting Zen teachings in relation to Ecology during a study course at the new Schumacher College at Dartington. The Bristol Chan Group pays tribute to its teachers.

• New Chan Forum issue 4