Dharma Library

A large collection of articles, from past issues of New Chan Forum and more besides.

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Indian Pilgrimage 1996

Mount Kailash

The "Grand Tour of Buddhist India", a major contribution to our pilgrimage programme, visited nearly all the major sites of Buddhist history and archaeology in India: Elephanta, Kanheri, Bhaja, Karla, Nasik, Ajanta, Ellora, Sanchi, Sarnath, Bodhgaya, Rajgriha, Kusinagara and Lumbini, just over the border in Nepal. Along the way we wrote notes and poetry some of which we record here. Julia has…

Western Chan Fellowship CIO

Categories: 1996 , Poetry , Other Articles , John Crook , Others

Welsh Winter: Maenllwyd

John Crook sitting in front of the altar at Maenllwyd 

                          Grey stone mountain
                          rain
                          and the gathering fogs
                          Drip drip the gutters
                          and the gurgling stream.
                          Two ravens out of the mirk
                          strut about warily
                          not seeing the face behind the window,
                    …

Western Chan Fellowship CIO

Categories: 1996 , Poetry , John Crook , Highlighted

Authenticity and the Practice of Zen

John Crook sitting in front of the altar at Maenllwyd

The Need for an Examination

The authority of experience depends upon authenticity. If we base our action or feeling in inauthentic experience it can only lead to play acting or pretence with potentially catastrophic consequences. Sadly, many of our justifications for action rest on the outcomes of past personal, familial and social tensions that have remained unresolved and which distort our…

Western Chan Fellowship CIO

Categories: Highlighted , 1996 , Other Articles , John Crook

Willkommen im Chinesischen Zen: Eine Einführung in die Chan Praxis

John Crook sitting in front of the altar at Maenllwyd

Chinesisches Zen

Chinesisches Zen oder Chan, wie es in China heißt - ist eine Lebensweise, welche geistige Klarheit, Mitgefühl mit allen fühlenden Wesen, und eine Art von Weisheit ermutigt, die aus der Überschreitung der Anliegen des Selbst hervorgeht. Diese kurze Einführung heißt alle willkommen, die versuchen, neue Zugänge zu persönlicher Erfahrung zu entwickeln, und schlägt auch einen Weg der…

Western Chan Fellowship CIO

Categories: 1995 , Other Articles , John Crook

Welcome to Chinese Zen: An Introduction to Chan Practice

John Crook sitting in front of the altar at Maenllwyd

Chinese Zen, or Chan as it is called in China, is a way of life that encourages clarity of mind, compassion to all sentient beings and a wisdom that comes from going beyond the concerns of self. This short introduction welcomes those seeking to develop fresh approaches to personal experience and suggests a way of practice.

Buddhism

Buddhism originated in India some 2500 years ago as a result of…

Western Chan Fellowship CIO

Categories: For Newcomers , 1995 , Other Articles , John Crook

A Fellowship of Western Chan Practitioners?

John Crook sitting in front of the altar at Maenllwyd

The time seems ripe to put a suggestion to the readers of New Chan Forum that has been germinating for some time. Practitioners have often remarked that they would like some form of community based on their experience of retreats at the Maenllwyd with which they could feel closer identification. There are indeed now many people who have come and continue to come to the Maenllwyd regularly for that…

Western Chan Fellowship CIO

Categories: 1995 , Other Articles , John Crook

The Place of the Dharma in Our Time

John Crook sitting in front of the altar at Maenllwyd

Part I - The World We're In

Introduction

To appreciate the role that the Buddha Dharma may come to play in Western culture we need to have an understanding of the way our lives are framed by the world that both shapes us and within which we play a part. So momentous have been the changes in recent years that our suppositions about who and why we are need a constant updating. To appreciate such a…

Western Chan Fellowship CIO

Categories: 1995 , Other Articles , John Crook

Words of a Guru

John Crook sitting in front of the altar at Maenllwyd

Roger Housden was taking a tour party down the river Ganges. Half way they stopped in Lucknow and Roger took the participants to visit one of the truly insightful gurus of modern India, a man of no-nonsense clarity. All but one of his party stayed on. Even the Ganges was forgotten. Poonja is a Hindu without a label. Whether derived from Sankaracharya or the Buddha or both his thought is direct,…

Western Chan Fellowship CIO

Categories: 1995 , Other Articles , John Crook

There for the Taking - Introducing Linji

John Crook sitting in front of the altar at Maenllwyd

Before we try to understand Linji, from whom our tradition derives, then are some things to be said. Linji seems strange to us; we who are used to cause and consequence and well-drawn argument. We sit and giggle over the delicious way in which the master affronts his questioners. Yet we have no understanding of why he does it. We marvel over the cleverness of a Zen paradox, but we have no insight…

Western Chan Fellowship CIO

Categories: 1994 , Other Articles , John Crook

Dad

John Crook sitting in front of the altar at Maenllwyd

1.

You carry me on your shoulders 
through the dark 
and explain to me 
the stars. 
The owl in the old oak 
calls in the night.
You chuckle, joyful 
in that mysterious bird. 
One day you received a stuffed fox 
and, to everyone's horror,
set it up in the hall. 
You wanted to put tiny 
light bulbs in its eyes and make it see.
Later the owl came 
to sit above the grandfather clock 
striking the hours 
with its…

Western Chan Fellowship CIO

Categories: 1995 , John Crook , Poetry

Everyday Joy

John Crook sitting in front of the altar at Maenllwyd

Written during a solo retreat.

In the practice of the Dharma it becomes essential to understand that within the everyday lies the Great Joy. It is not that Joy is elsewhere nor that it has to be laboriously worked for. It is not that one is worthless, undeserving, wicked and hence unable to discover it Dharma Joy itself lies within the everyday.

Why then are we so normally cast down, anxious,…

Western Chan Fellowship CIO

Categories: Highlighted , 1993 , Other Articles , John Crook

Living Out the Life

John Crook sitting in front of the altar at Maenllwyd

In Memoriam GMC.

One day this summer, standing in one of the temples of Phugtal Gompa hidden deep in the Zangskar mountains of the Himalaya, I asked my companion, Nathaniel Tarn, American poet and participant on my cultural tour to Ladakh, whether he was a Buddhist. Nathaniel was inspecting the extraordinary 12th century paintings on the walls, paintings he had laboured hard and with difficulties…

Western Chan Fellowship CIO

Categories: 1993 , Other Articles , John Crook

In Chinese Mode: Thinking of a Friend

John Crook sitting in front of the altar at Maenllwyd

This poem, parts of which were written at various times in the 1960's and revised now in 1993, is dedicated to Yiu Yan Nang, JP, now (1993) Deputy Commissioner of Labour, Hong Kong.

Reading a book of Chinese translations
I remember my Chinese friend,
bamboo breezes drift though my study,
moonlight on the terraced temple shines again.
Climbing to those high places
sometimes you picked flowers
and in the…

Western Chan Fellowship CIO

Categories: 1993 , John Crook , Poetry , Highlighted

The Prajnaparamita Heart Sutra

John Crook sitting in front of the altar at Maenllwyd

Edited text of a series of three lectures on the Heart Sutra given by Dr John Crook to the Bristol Chan Group in 1992

Part 1 - 4th November 1992

Introduction and Background to the Sutra

When the Bodhisattva Avalokitesvara
was coursing in the deep Prajnaparamita,
he perceived that all five skandas are empty,
thereby transcending all sufferings.
Sariputra, form is not other than emptiness
and…

Western Chan Fellowship CIO

Categories: 1992 , Other Articles , John Crook

Not Noticing

John Crook sitting in front of the altar at Maenllwyd

This talk is dedicated to the memory of Georgina Marjorie Crook. It was delivered to the assembly of practitioners at the Two Day Retreat in Rickford, October 24th 1992.

Two things are omnipresent in our lives and yet day after day we fail to notice them - death and the sky. Every day people are dying: if they are our dear ones we know and feel it but the fact of everyday dying, next door, in the…

Western Chan Fellowship CIO

Categories: 1992 , Dharma Talks , John Crook

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