Crook subsequently trained with many Chan, Zen, and Tibetan Buddhist teachers. In 1975 he established a retreat centre at Maenllwyd in Wales where he continues to lead intensive Chan retreats.
Crook established a new style of retreat, referred to as the Western Zen Retreat. This takes a traditional Chan/Zen retreat structure but incorporates other techniques, in particular a 'communication exercise', to assist the Westerneducated mind to go beyond thinking and cultivate Chan experience.
He also leads Mahamudra retreats, having received instruction and permission to teach this practice from his Tibetan teachers.
Another of Crook's innovations has been a new approach to koan practice, taking some of the lessons from the Western Zen Retreat to find new ways to assist Western minds to practice with traditional gongan (Japanese: koan) and huatou (Japanese: wato).
From the community of practitioners who attended retreats with Crook there grew an organisation called the Western Chan Fellowship, which was founded in 1996 and registered as a UK charity in 1997.
External link
Western Chan Fellowship website (http://westernchanfellowship.org)
John H Crook was the son of Richard Hermon Crook, who had an architect's practice in Bolton, Lancashire and Irene Heald- a well read woman who wrote poetry, studied world religions and became a dedicated pacifist.
John H Crook was actually signed up as an articled clerk (trainee solicitor) in Thomas Heald's firm of solicitors in Wigan at the age of 19 in 1934.
JohnCrook married Sylvia Napier in May 1943, two years after she was widowed by the death of her first husband, Alan Brian - an Australian pilot - during a bombing raid in Italy.
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