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Bristol Chan Group
Dharma Advisor:
The Venerable Chan Master Dr.
Sheng-yen
(Please see below )
Teacher: Dr John Crook (Ch'uan Teng Chien Ti)
Visiting nun: Venerable Jin-Ho, from Dharma Drum
Mountain, Taiwan
Welcome to the Bristol Chan
Group. We are a small loosely-defined group formed in 1989 to practise
Chan meditation. ('About the group'). As
you'd expect from our name, we are based in Bristol. Chan is the Chinese forerunner of
Japanese Zen and we draw on the wisdom and meditation techniques of
both traditions.
We welcome anybody to our
meetings who is interested in meditation, whether or not they have
meditated before. For details of our weekly meditation evenings and
other events please go to 'Meetings'
.
'An evening with the Chan Group'
describes what we do during these meditation evenings.
We are affiliated to the Western Chan Fellowship ,
through which we have links with other Chan groups, throughout the UK and Europe and with the Chan Meditation Center of the Institute of Chung Hwa Buddhist Culture in New York and Dharma Drum Mountain Chan Centre in
Taiwan. The WCF runs a programme of 5 and 7 day intensive retreats in a
variety of styles at the Maenllywd, a retreat centre in central Wales. See WCF Retreat
Programme
We are very pleased to have The
Ven. Jin-Ho in our group, a nun from Dharma Drum Mountain who is
studying in Bristol. She runs a meditation evening every Saturday at
the University of Bristol Chaplaincy at No.1 Woodland Road and weekend
one-day retreats. Please see entries in 'Latest News' below about
this.
From time to time, there is
a Dharma
Discussion Group,
usually organised and run by Alysun Jones. Please see
occasional entries in 'Latest News' below about this.
Personal retreats under the
guidance of John Crook may be undertaken at Winterhead
Hill Farm near Shipham in the Mendips, about 45 minutes to
drive from Bristol. Follow the link (WHF)
or phone 01934 842231 for details.
We
actively encourage newcomers to the Bristol Chan Group. If you would
like to find out more about it, please telephone :-
Sally and Mike Masheder
(0117 924 8819)
Or email : enquiries@bristolchan.co.uk (Please
mention 'Bristol Chan' in the 'Subject' of your email and please put
your message in line rather than as an attachment. This avoids it being
deleted as a possible virus carrier or being treated as unwanted spam.)
We are very sorry to
announce the passing of our Dharma Advisor, The Venerable
Chan Master
Dr. Sheng-yen on Monday 2nd Feb. at Dharma Drum Mountain in
Taiwan. He was the mentor and spiritual inspiration for many members of
the Western Chan Fellowship. For a fuller account, please see the news
panel on the WCF website at WCF. Various Chan Groups around the
country held
memorial events and/or dedicating their meditation meetings to
the remembrance of Master Sheng-yen and to graditude for his teaching
of the Dharma. There was a special
memorial event at the Coach House at
2:30pm on Sunday 15th February. Please see below.
Latest News (1st December 2009)
- We are pleased that our "Living and Loving" conference on the
weekend 31st Oct to 1st Nov 2009, went so extremely well. The 70
delegates who came seemed to enjoy the talks and the workshops and
discussions. We were pleased to see that we attracted a good number of
people from outside the BCG and WCF.
The full title of the event was 'Living and Loving in the 21st
Century- Buddhist Enquiries' and it aimed to explore the
role of Buddhist and Buddhistic teachings in the 21st
century global society and how they may help to illuminate the nature
of the mindsets that have led us to where we are today.
It is intended to publish transcripts of the talks in a special
edition of the New Chan Forum, probably the issue after the next one.
We also hope to publish the talks in audio format on this website or on
the WCF one.
If you visit the conference website at Living
and Loving
you can see some further reflections on the weekend's doings.
Alternatively, look at Reflections.
Should you have any further enquiries, please email bookings(at)bristolchan.co.uk
- Jin-Ho is
planning two one-day retreats on 19th December 2009 and 3rd January
2010. For details please see the flyer at pdf or MS-Word
Events in the recent past
- last six months or so :
- See above or the links Reflections and
Living
and Loving for a report of our recent conference, "Living and
Loving"
Please note the change in domain name to
bristolchan.co.uk . Please change any reference to bristol-chan.co.uk
in any bookmark file or in any email address books. The old domain name
will continue in parallel until it expires in November 2008 and maybe
beyond. Later: it has been renewed and therefore continues for the time
being.
Comments, reports of difficulties with this site and helpful
suggestions to webmaster@bristolchan.co.uk
please.
Last update on 1st December
2009
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