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Calendar November 2016

2016 Calendar image: November

I had walked from Trehebert to Treorchy on a grey wet day. As I went over a railway bridge I saw a discarded loaf of sliced bread lying in the gutter, it's open and the slices are lying there soaking up the dirty water from the rain. You can just make it out, in the middle, toward the bottom of the image. I become interested in the discarded food and the people walking past it and I take some…

Western Chan Fellowship CIO

Categories: 2016 , WCF News

Calendar October 2016

2016 Calendar image: October

We were visiting Hong Kong and we went to the Po Lin Monastery on Lantau island. The monastery sits on a hill overlooking the island. There is a Buddha on top of the hill known as Tian Tan Buddha, whose hands are in the Abhaya Mudra, which symbolises protection, peace and the dispelling of fears. The Buddha is 113 feet tall and we climbed the 286 steps to reach the base around which there are…

Western Chan Fellowship CIO

Categories: 2016 , WCF News

Calendar September 2016

2016 Calendar image: September

At the beach watching two people playfully chasing each other in the sea. They are lost in their playfulness, oblivious to all around them, happily splashing each other. In taking the photograph, the nature of the exposure results in one person appearing as if a shadow. A shadow cannot leave the object that casts it and that object cannot lose its shadow. When the sun shines, there are always…

Western Chan Fellowship CIO

Categories: 2016 , WCF News

Calendar August 2016

2016 Calendar image: August

So here we are at Barry Island, a favourite place for people to go for a walk. Like most when I set out for this beach, I have no idea whether the tide will be in or out. Barry is one of those places with a very high tidal range, so when ‘in’, the sea is often squashing the beach up to the promenade wall and when it is ‘out’, it is several hundred yards away, almost stretching across to the other…

Western Chan Fellowship CIO

Categories: 2016 , WCF News

Calendar July 2016

2016 Calendar image: July

On one of our many visits to Pembrokeshire, we found that the Welsh Triathlon Championships was to begin and start at Broadhaven. I undoubtedly had a number of preconceptions about the competitors of this swimming, cycling, running race in that I was expecting a group of muscular, athletic, fit-looking young men ready to race against each other. I was surprised to discover men and women of all…

Western Chan Fellowship CIO

Categories: 2016 , WCF News

Rebecca Li receives Dharma Transmission

Rebecca Li receiving the transmission robe from Simon Child

We are pleased to announce that WCF Guiding Teacher Simon Child, Jing-hong Chuan-fa, has appointed his second Dharma Heir.

Rebecca Li, of New Jersey USA, was a regular practitioner with Chan Master Sheng Yen from the late 1990s until Master Sheng Yen’s passing in 2009, as well as acting as his translator on many occasions and also as a member of the Board of Dharma Drum Retreat Center. She has…

Western Chan Fellowship CIO

Categories: 2016 , WCF News

Calendar June 2016

2016 Calendar image: June

A visit to Barcelona. We had been to see the Miro Museum; we stood in awe at the unfinished church by Antoni Gaudi - La Sagrada Familia - and we had walked along Las Ramblas looking at the items being sold to tourists. We were now tired and wished to sit down with a cup of coffee. In a side street, we found a cafe with tables outside and as it was a hot day, we choose to sit in the shade. A woman…

Western Chan Fellowship CIO

Categories: 2016 , WCF News

Calendar May 2016

2016 Calendar image: May

I was walking along Porth High Street and I noticed two photographs advertising a woman's hairdressing shop. I wanted to photograph these photographs. As I got ready to take my picture a woman walked past and her blonde hair mirrored the images in the shop window so I included her in the frame. Then just as I pressed my shutter release the woman turned and looked at me and her young child looked…

Western Chan Fellowship CIO

Categories: 2016 , WCF News

Calendar April 2016

2016 Calendar image: April

We have all done it; watch somebody skimming stones across the water and many of us have tried it ourselves. Of course there are several things that are required in order to skim the stone. The stone itself must be flat, the water requires calmness without any waves and you need to bend your body at the right angle in order to throw the stone such that it hits the water and bounces again and again…

Western Chan Fellowship CIO

Categories: 2016 , WCF News

Download talks by Chan Master Sheng Yen

Group photo, outside Gaia House following the 2000 retreat with Chan Master Shengyen

Recordings of the talks given by Master Sheng Yen at Gaia House in 2000 are now available for listening online and download

Talks from the 2000 retreat at Gaia House have been digitized and are available freely online from Dharma Seed.

Western Chan Fellowship CIO

Categories: 2016 , WCF News

Calendar March 2016

2016 Calendar cover March

Overlooking the harbour entrance at Antibes, South of France is a very large statue. It is made of many bits of material which are in the shape of the letters of the alphabet, all stuck together to make an image of a person sitting. It is possible to walk inside the sitting statue and look out through all the letters of the alphabet. You can sit inside the sitter and look out through the jumble of…

Western Chan Fellowship CIO

Categories: 2016 , WCF News

Calendar February 2016

Calendar February 2016

I'm a great lover of the paintings of Ferdinand Leger and one summer my wife and I visited the museum dedicated to his work in Biot in the South of France. The museum is in a small village a little off the main tourist route. We arrived by public bus and there did not appear to be any other visitors at the museum. It felt as if the museum had just been opened for us - just a few attendants and the…

Western Chan Fellowship CIO

Categories: 2016 , WCF News

Calendar January 2016

2016 Calendar image: January

I had just got off a train at Pontypridd. I walked outside the station, sat on a bench and was adjusting my camera. Nobody was on the bench and then when I looked up someone else was sitting at the other end. This is the image.

First the bench was vacant and then it wasn't. The sitter had become part of the bench and the bench was a part of him. I do not know what is waiting, the sitter for the…

Western Chan Fellowship CIO

Categories: 2016 , WCF News

WCF Calendar 2016

2016 Calendar cover

I had the idea that it would be good to let people know how the calendar images and verses came about, simply as a means of adding to the viewing and in this way enhancing a practice. So, as a beginning here is my view of what taking photos is all about. I see there as being three aspects

  • Firstly there is the occasion itself - the moment - that is present in the real world; the world that is out…

Western Chan Fellowship CIO

Categories: 2015 , WCF News

Fiona Nuttall receives Dharma Transmission

Fiona Nuttall receiving the transmission robe from Simon Child

On 1st November 2015 Fiona Nuttall received Dharma Transmission from Simon Child

Fiona received the Dharma name 智淨法宏 Zhi-jing Fa-hong, Wisdom Pure Dharma Greatness.

She becomes the first Dharma Heir of Simon Child, receiving the Dharma Drum lineages of Linji and Caodong Chan.

Western Chan Fellowship CIO

Categories: 2015 , WCF News

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