Free Buddhist Audio

Our FBA Podcast today brings us to the core of our practice: "The Heart Sutra, Sangha and Spiritual Death" by Kamalashila. Beginning with a shared understanding of spiritual practice that is Sangha, we are led through a revisioning of our practice that includes the deeper, darker more mysterious perspectives of insight and wisdom. This talk was given at the London Buddhist Centre's Tuesday evening drop-in meditation class on 6th Dec 2011.

Today's FBA Podcast, "The Buddha, Hakuin, Birth and Death", is the second in an excellent 8-talk sequence by Padmavajra on Zen Buddhism. The series is full of colourful stories and challenging insights from the lives of the great Masters of China and Japan. In this talk, Padmavajra takes us into the strong experience of Going Forth into homelessness. Through personal reminiscence and classic Zen poetry that evokes a truly rich awareness, we see the Buddha, Hakuin, Dogen and Ryokan as they struggle to make sense of this fleeting world of form. This talk is part of the series "Tangling Eyebrows with Zen Masters."

This weeks FBA Podcast, "Spiritual Death and Rebirth, a New Perspective On the Dharma Niyama", takes us deeply into the stages of spiritual death and rebirth that are key to the system of meditation, representing the culimination and fulfilment of the Buddhas vision. During this talk given at Padmaloka Subhuti explains some new elements of Sangharakshita's thinking about how they relate to the Niyamas, particularly the Dharma niyama – exciting, and challenging stuff.

Today's FBA Podcast, "The Transitoriness of Life and the Certainty of Death", is by Vajradharshini who brings us a beautiful piece on the hardest of subjects. The third talk in a five-part series from Tiratanaloka's retreat on the 'Four Mind Turnings' of the Tibetan tradition. Using zen poetry and a happily wide-ranging series of quotations (from Tibetan lamas to Ezra Pound), Vajradarshini explores her own father's death as a way to approach attitudes to death and dying. She considers death in the light of the four mind-turning reflections of Atisha: the result is an inspiring, funny, truly challenging look at the heartbreak of our mortality, and how the Dharma helps us to meet and be present with the ultimate experience. Talk given at Tiratanaloka Retreat Centre 2005. This talk is part of the series The Four Mind-Turning Reflections.

Today's we introduce Atula in our weekly FBA Podcast with "Mending the Broken Ladder" a very thoughtful talk long-time by this practising Buddhist and psychotherapist. The nature of the 'psyche' and our sense of self-view is explored with reference to the Fourfold Vision of William Blake, T.S. Eliot, Charles Bukowski, Edward Conze, and Humpty Dumpty! Expect some stimulating words around the role of myth, metaphor and all our ways of cognizing, thinking about and expressing experience in what we call 'spiritual life' – and a clear encouragement to see that process as one that is profoundly relational. Talk given Monday 8th March 2010.

Welcome to this weeks FBA Podcast, "Fields of Creativity", a sparkling talk by Sangharakshita on a theme close to his heart. Full of warmth, wit and stimulating ideas. Talk given in 2001.

Today's FBA Podcast, "In the Bleak Midwinter", Parami delivers a gem of a talk, with a wintery theme. With a song to open followed by metaphors on bleakness, with the earth as hard as iron and water like a stone, times when we struggle and it seems as if no growth is possible. She talks about her early experience of doing the metta bhavana and what a radical practice it is, leading to beauty, magic and angels. This talk was given in December 2010 at the Glasgow Buddhist Centre.

In today's FBA Podcast, we are taken deep into the mythical magical world of Milarepa, Tibet's great yogi saint, in "The Life of Milarepa," by Paramartha. First talk in a series of 4 talks on 'Milarepa'. Talks given at Padmaloka Retreat Centre, Winter Retreat 2010.

In today's FBA Podcast, "Renunciation – Tasting Freedom," Saddhanandi says at the beginning of this talk that she's concerned she won't fully convey the depth of inspiration she feels about her theme – she shouldn't have worried, she does it full justice. Her various approaches to her subject include renunciation as giving up unreal expectations, as giving up compulsion, as continuity of purpose and commitment to values, as establishing freedom, as not being blown by the worldly winds. One of her telling quotes is " … there is no spiritual development without renunciation, and no renunciation without spiritual development …" This is the first of three talks given on the 2009 UK Women's Order / Mitra Event. It's based on the first section of Tsongkhapa's short text "The Three Principle Aspects of the Path". The other talks in the series are "Generating Bodhi Mind" by Vajratara, and "The Path of the Buddha's Delight" by Samantabhadri. Given at Taraloka, May 2009.

Today's FBA Podcast is titled: "Getting It," by Vidyadevi. Her brief here is 'study as a way to Wisdom', and she comes to it with a delightfully playful straightforwardness. As a means of exploring the 'Middle Way', she speaks of the various dualities and juxtapositions she has encountered in her own engagement with Dharma study over the years: theory and practice, metaphor and literalism, authority and personal experience, utility and beauty, etc. But she also speaks (and sings! Paul Simon…) of the need for a lightness of heart and of mind at the root of it all… Talk given at Taraloka Retreat Centre, Great Gathering 2000