MURYOKO

'Infinite Light'

Journal of Shin Buddhism

REFLECTIONS ON THE DHARMA

Harold Stewart

Harold Stewart (1916-1995) is well-known as a highly-accomplished Australian poet even though he spent the last thirty years of his life in Japan. What is not as well known about him was his strong adherence to the Pure Land tradition of Mahayana Buddhism. His writings on this school of Buddhism (the most popular in Japan yet among the most misunderstood in the West) must rank as one of the most incisive and eloquent accounts of the Dharma ever written by a Western writer. In order to make his prose writings on Buddhism more accessible, a selection of passages from the commentary on his By the Old Walls of Kyoto (1981) have been reproduced on this website.

The photographs which accompany the text of Harold Stewart's writings on this site have been kindly provided by Mr Barry Leckenby of Melbourne. They were taken of the various sites in Kyoto referred to in Stewart's poetic work By the Old Walls of Kyoto.

• Please select articles by clicking on links to the left of this page.
• Before browsing Harold Stewart's articles, you may like to read two introductory works:
• Peter Kelly's biography of Harold Stewart
• Barry Leckenby's article entitled 'Keeping Faith: The Narrative and Metaphysical Poems of Harold Stewart.'

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