Ken Jones Zen - an introduction

Here you will find practical help in writing (and appreciating) haiku, and an introduction to haibun - a fascinating new form which combines haiku with prose. Secondly the site offers you edited versions of eight of Ken’s Dharma talks, given on retreats. These provide a sound understanding of “Everyday Buddhism” and help in how to practice it. There is also here a brief introduction to socially engaged Buddhism of which Ken is a pioneer.

Interleaved between the haiku and the Buddhism pages is a rare introduction to haiku as a traditional Zen Buddhist practice. This is based on Ken’s experience of workshops on this theme, and it includes two illuminating essays on “existentially liberative haiku”. These are the haiku (and haibun) which, in however a modest way, can enable us to experience insights which can help make us more at ease with ourselves and with others. This can be the beginning of a wisdom ripened steadily over the years by a Buddhist practice which gives us clarity and liberation from the seemingly endless struggle to sustain a needy self. It can break the “mind-forged manacles” of which William Blake spoke so eloquently, and thereby ”cleanse the windows of perception”.

Finally there is a short page on Ken’s publications.

You may wish to start first with exploring the haiku and haibun pages and then the “Buddhism and haiku” hinge page, or else to approach the site from the other direction. Or you may prefer to stick to the haiku or Buddhism pages only. Either way the site should work for you satisfactorily. And, of course, some browsing and dipping here and there may be the best way for you to explore what is probably a unique website.

Ken’s career has been mainly in higher education, with most of his spare time spent as a peace, ecology and social justice activist, as well as a period on the Samaritans’ telephone helpline. Beginning as an old fashioned anarchist, he has, over seventy years, worked his way through the Communist Party of Great Britain (expelled), the Labour Party (Victory for Socialism Group) (and very nearly expelled) and the UK Green Party (for which he retains an abiding affection). He is a founder of the UK Network of Socially Engaged Buddhists, and now its president, and a member of the International Advisory Committee of the Buddhist Peace Fellowship. He intends to die (in the not so distant future) as an unrepentant phenomenological Marxist. Now well embedded in the Land of His Fathers, he was recently received into Plaid Cymru – as the only socialist party of any significance in the island of Britain. Like his fellow Welshman, David Lloyd George, he enjoys the gift of the gab, though now much tempered by years of sitting on his black Zen cushion. Nonetheless he holds playfulness to be one of the greatest spiritual virtues.

In middle age Ken decided the time had come to try to combine his work for social emancipation with practice for an inner liberation from himself, in order to be more useful in the world. After many years of Buddhist training, he is now a Zen and Ch’an practitioner and teacher of thirty years’ standing. He has facilitated numerous workshops and retreats on different aspects of Buddhism and has published widely. His best known book is The New Social Face of Buddhism (Wisdom Publications, 2003).

Ken Jones is a co-editor of the quarterly Contemporary Haibun Online. He contributes regularly to UK and US haiku magazines, as well as being represented in British and American anthologies. For his contribution to Pilgrim Foxes: Haiku and Haiku Prose, co-authored with Jim Norton and Sean O’Connor, Jones was awarded the Sasakawa Prize for Original Contributions in the Field of Haikai. His haibun “Travellers” won first place in the 2005 English Language Haibun Contest. And in 2011 he won joint first place in the British Haiku Society’s Haibun Contest. Other Collections: Arrow of Stones (British Haiku Society, 2002); Stallion’s Crag (Iron Press, 2003); The Parsley Bed (Pilgrim Press, 2006); Stone Leeks (Pilgrim Press, 2009); and Bog Cotton (Alba Publishing, 2012)'. Gone Away (Alba Publishing, 2015) was published posthumously at Ken's request and contains 24 haibun "which trace the trajectory of the author's engagement with cancer of the prostate from diagnosis in 2001 to his death on August 2nd 2015."

A reading of Ken’s published haiku and haibun collections will tell you a lot more, and more entertainingly. “Is this really true?" is a common response.