New Chan Forum

Welcome to the autumn 2020 issue of New Chan Forum.

It’s a rather special issue, as it marks the departure of the Western Chan Fellowship from Maenllwyd, the ancient mid-Wales farmhouse where we’ve held retreats for many years. Maenllwyd is a beautiful and special place, and I think that the memories in this issue form a fitting farewell to a place that has been important for so many of us. I…

Hello everybody, and welcome to the spring edition of New Chan Forum.

'Journeying' is a major theme of this issue: Hughie Carroll gives a graphic account of the first part of his pilgrimage to Ladakh, which leads into Eddy Street's contemplation of the Zen of Making a Journey and Jane Spray's moving and enjoyable account of visiting Huangshan.

My thanks to everyone who has contributed to this…

In this issue there are teachings on the Buddha's perceptual theory of the Five Skandhas, and on two Sutras. In a dharma talk given on retreat at Maenllwyd Simon Child elucidates how our perceptions can be construction from seeds of habit, and how they can be distorted or mistaken. Then we have two essays on fundamental texts for the Chan school, the Sutra of Complete Enlightenment, and the…

Welcome to the summer edition of New Chan Forum.

In this issue Simon Child gives a dharma talk that navigates a range of subtle distinctions to clarify what ‘silent illumination’ means – and warns of the rocks on either side of the channel. Being With is an elusive state in which the mind flows freely, and it is not quite what we might suppose.

Anna Jedynak’s third article on meditation…

Welcome to the Winter 2017 issue of New Chan Forum, which leads with a spiritual autobiography by Fiona Nuttall, Simon Child’s first dharma heir. Fiona also offers a poem in honour of the late John Crook, our founder and original inspiration, as does Didi Crook, John’s sister, in memoriam six years on from his death in 2011.

Anna Jedynak writes about meditation, this time setting it in the…

Welcome to the summer issue of New Chan Forum. It is a pleasure and a privilege to introduce Rebecca Li, Simon’s second dharma heir who was given the transmission in a ceremony in New York on June 5th 2016. Many of you will not yet know her, but we hope to see more of her on our British retreats. I am sure you will find her spiritual biography interesting.

Simon’s own retreat talk this time…

"Zen is a special transmission outside of words and letters". This saying is attributed to Bodhidharma the supposed founder of Chan Buddhism in sixth Century China. However the first record of the phrase appeared in the tenth Century, and was a literary counter to the more traditional understanding that Chan Meditation and Buddhist teachings are interdependent. In 2008 a group of Western Chan…

In this issue of The New Chan Forum we publish the second, culminating part of Simon Child’s account of koan practice, Shattering the Great Doubt, and the third in our series on ‘Right Livelihood’, this time reflecting on the moral context of the life of a solicitor. Eddy Street helps us by offering an illuminating way to read difficult texts by Dogen, using terms from The Heart Sutra. In…