The story of someone who just wouldn't let it lie. More accurately, the interesting part of the story in the context of this page's title.

Our esteemed teacher, Zen master David Ferguson, retired in 2007. He asked me to take over some of his work. So I'm on duty now as Zen master.
For more information on groups, sessions, retreats...., e-mail me

Contemporary Zen

Whilst we work with old, ancient even, insights and methods, from Buddhist and Zen Buddhist tradition, we acknowledge fully that we live in the western world with its culture and peculiarities. Our minds are conditioned by us growing up in this culture and to our minds we have to turn to observe and get to know our selves.
There is also great help in that from new developments in neuroscience, psychology, but also from the implications of developments in physics, cosmology and mathematics. After all, science tells us how we perceive the world, and how, through communication, we concur about appearances, and in this, form our concept of reality.
Therefor we consider the nature of suffering and how it arises from desire and also look at the reward cycle in the brain, cognitive systems; the effect of neurotransmitters like dopamin, noradrenalin, serotonin and acetylcholin among other things. Trying to understand the self, its functions and nature, it is helpful to learn how we form attachments all through our lives.
One example is the search for meaning. I read about this first in a psychology book, in connection with conditioning in childhood and how a sense of self is (necessarily) forming. Looking at our lives and mental activities, we easily see what importance we give to this search for meaning. And of course, it is 'I' who looks for meaning, and any meaning I find, is put there by me. Meaning is not intrinsic to the world, the things we perceive, it's the mind receiving the perception that ascribes meaning. The consequence of this is rather profound. Try to catch yourself every time you place meaning on something... and whilst you are at it, find out who that is exactly.

On this page I will try to keep up with current events, provide information about groups and retreats, and post the occasional text about an interesting discussion or a theme that came up in a group.

The other pages on this site are historic, the oldest texts are the poems on "falling off the cliff" followed by "What happened", which is an e-mail I wrote to someone who wanted to know exactly that. I decided to leave those pages, since I can't find anything wrong with them, and they might provide an insight into the subject matter.

Links:
The New School of Contemporary Zen
(David Ferguson's website): http://peacefieldsretreat.co.uk
(Maria and Mirek Kovar's website):http://www.being-awake.org