Zen and Ice

Without water no Buddhas!

Zen Master Hakuin says: ‘All beings from the very beginning are Buddhas, it is like water and ice, without water no ice, without living beings no Buddhas’. This suggests that metaphorically living beings are water and the Buddha ice. In one way this is appropriate because liquid water is the general case, the form we normally find, and ice is a special case under particular conditions. A Buddha is a special case of a sentient being, a sentient being who is awake and knows who they really are. However, there is much to be gained from reversing the metaphor. Continue reading “Zen and Ice”

Editor’s Blog – notes from an English village

In praise of a Victorian suburb

Red brick villas with the coal smuts long since polished away

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Editor’s Blog – notes from an English village

Bela Tarr – the ultimate director of European existential film-noir?

Are you a fan of long, slow European art movies with strong symbolic overtones, shot in black and white or at the very least shades of murky sepia, in which the main character walks down deserted white roads in the mountains at dusk, or through deserted city streets at night, where the occasional candle at an upstairs window seems to signify both their utter and final loneliness and the distant possibility of some kind of redemption mediated but not bounded by the outworn rituals of a discarded faith? Continue reading “Editor’s Blog – notes from an English village”

Chomsky, Seldon and authority

Last Tuesday night’s Night Waves, Radio Three’s intellectual discussion program was unusually good. Philip Dodd spoke separately to the philosopher Noam Chomsky then the biographer of Blair and Thatcher and Public School Headmaster, Anthony Sheldon. The theme in both cases was authority. What is it? Can it be a force for good? How can its abuse be prevented? The stance of the two interviewees made a very nice contrast and this made up for Dodd’s occasionally irritating interviewing style.Continue reading “Chomsky, Seldon and authority”

Editor’s blog – Notes from an English Village

A misty moisty morning today, as we used to say on misty days when I was growing up. I think we got this from Maddy Prior – we often listened to Steelye Span on Saturday mornings, and I recall what was then Maddy’s crystal clear, high, pure voice, with a hint of danger, like a fast rushing mountain stream, singing something like ‘One misty moisty morning when cloudy was the weather, I met a ragged old man all dressed up in leather’. Quite what the ragged old man was up to I don’t remember, but I expect he was up to no good and that Maddy was more than a match for him.

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Editor’s blog (notes from an English village)

Mist rising off the damp dark fields at the front of our cottage this morning. Not river mist, but fine wraithlike tendrils of mist rising from the strength of the sun on the damp earth. Not easy to photograph, but a fine sight, telling of the increasing power of the sun, and the waning of winter. The monochrome drama of the drifting white mist over the raw, inert black earth holds my attention for some time. Then my eye is drawn to a lonely farmstead on the horizon, with its guardian oak. The day is widening, and hazy blue skies are promised.Continue reading “Editor’s blog (notes from an English village)”

The Unanswered Question: Chretien De Troyes and the first Story of the Grail

NEW POSTING: The Unanswered Question

Chretien De Troyes and the first Story of the Grail

Just posted on this site under ‘Literature’ a major essay on the mythos of the Grail legend, as found in the original medieval text.

“I want to open this piece with an image rather than ideas about the Grail. Picture this scene: a young knight, in full armour, is riding through a wild and remote area of forest somewhere in the British Isles. But this is not really the Britain of history – the scene is set in that mythical version of the British Isles known as Logres, the realm of King Arthur. Now this knight’s story is to be found in a long poem written in medieval French by Chrétien De Troyes, The Romance of Perceval or The Story of the Grail (Le Roman De Perceval ou le Conte du Graal)¹, which is in fact the first full-length work from the Arthurian cycles to deal with the subject of the Grail quest. ” ( For continuation of essay see ‘Literature’ pages.)

Editor’s Blog 7th Feb 2013

We are already hard at work on issue 30, which is going to be a celebratory issue, Urthona is 21 years old! We will allow ourselves the indulgence of a little reminiscence about the early days of the magazine, and how its vision was originally forged. We plan also to have some material on William Blake, our guardian mentor, as well as two big features on great movies.

Ratngarbha

Editor’s Journal 8th September 2009

Issue 26 is out and about in the shops, and we are looking into a distributor on the East Coast of the USA. We are starting to think about issue 27, which will be on the theme of Buddhism, culture and ecology. Views of nature, and the natural, are as many and various as there are human beings. In my article for the upcoming issue I will attempt to interrogate the notion that nature is the only valid category of reality, which is a reaction to the previous notion that all values must come from the human. Buddhism has an amelioritive stance, which is that man is a particular node of being within the much vaster natural cosmos, which includes the imaginal as well as the physical. I will be looking at how the romantic stance of Blake has definite affinities with this view.Continue reading “Editor’s Journal 8th September 2009”

NEWS: Issue 26 – Landscapes of the Mind

Urthona printed version issue no. 26: ‘Landscapes of the Mind’ is now out in UK bookshops and Buddhist centres around the world. If you have a local book store or Buddhist temple / meditation centre you think would like to stock it please let us know!Continue reading “NEWS: Issue 26 – Landscapes of the Mind”