The Buddhist Centre

Our guests this week come together for a thoughtful, provocative conversation occasioned by Vishvapani‘s recent article for Tricycle Buddhist review looking at the arresting, perhaps astonishing, fact that one of the most powerful people in the UK – Home Secretary Suella Braverman - is also faithfully involved as a Buddhist practitioner within the context of the Triratna Buddhist Community. Candradasa is joined by Lokabandhu, deputy mayor of Glastonbury, UK, Vajratara from Tiratanaloka Buddhist Retreat Centre for Women, and Vishvapani, writer and broadcaster, to explore the perspectives and frameworks within which we see and experience the world and discuss how Buddhism and politics relate.  Buddhism offers a deeply transformative path of ethical practice that does not engage at the level of specific politics. Instead it calls for the radical re-orientation of our being in light of a recognition of the roles impermanence, deeply complex conditionality, and interdependence play in our sense of personal and societal happiness. So how does such a broadly environmental approach to the mind and reality itself sit in relation to political views that often tend to individual and collective rigidity, polarization, and the fragmentation of community?  The panel evokes what we as Buddhists have to contribute in the face of diverse dangers that threaten society as we know it: challenges to liberal democracy, consequences of current responses to climate change, and a growing mental health crisis afflicting millions around the world. We open up the idea of Buddhists as a potential force for good, an active body within the wider community made up of people who live and act as examples of compassion and sanity in the world. Members of a ‘new society’ who might take leading roles without being compromised by division and the application of personal or group-based power. Is it all a pipe dream, or is this a tantalising, achievable possibility? At the very least, how can Buddhist approaches to life that actively envision the wellbeing of people and communities influence our personal engagement with political culture in ways that are of broad benefit? Join us for a podcast of ideas, values, and considered reflection on the most tricky of areas. This is how we can harmoniously talk about politics with each other - as full members of society spanning different cultures, perspectives and views. Show notes Suella Braverman Is the UK’s Buddhist Home Secretary and a Right-Wing Culture Warrior by Vishvapani (Tricycle Buddhist Review) Vishvapani’s episodes of the BBC’s ‘Thought for the Day’  Mindful Cities Initiative Buddhism, World Peace, and Nuclear War by Sangharakshita (Free Buddhist Audio) The Nucleus of a New Society by Sangharakshita (Free Buddhist Audio) What Is Buddhist Activism? (The Buddhist Centre Podcast) Sangharakshita, Dr. Rewatta Dhamma, Sogyal Rimpoche, and Thich Nhat Hanh in conversation (Clear Vision Archive)  Doctor Bhimrao Ambedkar as a Buddhist social activist (The Buddhist Centre Online) The Rest Is Politics podcast episodes with Yuval Noah Harari:  Crisis and Tragedy in Israel The Dangers  of AI and the Future of Humanity This week’s guests  Lokabandhu as Deputy Mayor of Glastonbury Vajratara at Tiratanaloka Buddhist Retreat Centre for Women Wise Attention by Vishvapani (website) Mindfulness In Action (website) *** Visit The Buddhist Centre Live (events year-round on Buddhism, mindfulness, meditation, and culture) Come meditate with us online six days a week! Theme music by Ackport! Used with kind permission.

Filmmaker Hartley Woolf discusses his poetic documentary on renovating Alfoxton House and living in a Buddhist community. The film explores the connections between poetry, spiritual practice, and physical work. Woolf shares the challenges of being both a community member and filmmaker. The podcast also discusses the joy of watching the film, the influence of landscape on artistic practice, and the changing atmosphere of the place.

Vidyamala and Vishvapani discuss mindfulness, imagination, and the importance of awareness. They explore creating a sacred space for inner exploration and the integration of body and mind. The hosts express delight in the passionate guests and promote the upcoming retreat on mindfulness and imagination.

We’re coursing this week in the heady, fascinating realm of generative and assistive AI, already seemingly omnipresent in our lives via undeniably productive next gen software tools like ChatGPT and Stable Diffusion. How do our not-computer-generated guests from different walks of Buddhist life engage with this rapidly evolving area of tech in their own work - as humans, as Dharma practitioners? Here we discuss the genuinely cutting edge world of large language models and the advances they enable, exploring AI’s impact on our understanding of consciousness and Buddhism’s quest for a transformative freedom of heart and mind.  Given the limitations of language itself in expressing the depth and breadth of human experience, are companies like OpenAi claiming a level of intelligence for their technology that it simply does not have? And what do we even mean by intelligence anyway…? Our guests consider the foundational critique of AI thinkers like Professor Emily M Bender, a computational linguist at the University of Washington, and sci-fi writer Ted Chiang, who both argue persuasively that the big questions underlying all this are not so much about computers as about us.  The AI bots are coming! Join us for a thought-provoking conversation that challenges our understanding of ourselves at the apparent dawn of a new technological age. *** Show notes Professor Emily Bender (on Twitter and Mastodon) On the Dangers of Stochastic Parrots: Can Language Models Be Too Big 🦜? (Original PDF) | eBook and other formats Recode Media with Peter Kafka: How worried—or excited—should we be about AI? (podcast) You Are Not a Parrot, And a chatbot is not a human (Intelligencer) Ted Chiang ‘Sci-fi writer Ted Chiang: The machines we have now are not conscious’ by Madhumita Murgia ChatGPT Is a Blurry JPEG of the Web (The New Yorker) Silicon Valley Is Turning Into Its Own Worst Fear by Ted Chiang (Buzzfeed News) *** Stable Diffusion ChatGPT The Measure of a Man (Star Trek: The Next Generation) Do Androids Dream of Electric Sheep? by Phillip K. Dick *** Visit The Buddhist Centre Live (events year-round on Buddhism, mindfulness, meditation, and culture) Come meditate with us online six days a week! Theme music by Ackport! Used with kind permission.

The construct of race is an integral part of Western society’s DNA and if we are to address the social injustice of racism, we need to have the race conversation. Yet all too often, attempts at such a dialogue are met with silence, denial, anger or hate. Is it possible to navigate diverse conversations about race without confusion? Can we authentically create a culture capable of responding to the pain and discomfort caused by racism for both people of colour and white people? These questions lie at the heart of this heartfelt conversation between Bodhilila, Chair of the West London Buddhist Centre and Eugene Ellis, acclaimed author of 'The Race Conversation: An essential guide to creating life-changing dialogue’. Eugene’s work encompasses trauma theory and the vital need to resource inner conditions in engaging with others. Exploring the Buddhist perspective of conditionality, he emphasizes the significance of intention and working with discomfort within our conversations. As Bodhilila brings to bear her own profound experiences around race, intersectionality and Dharma practice, the discussion delves deep into the race construct, examining the profound impact of prejudice, colonialism, and slavery on individuals of all races.  The creation of safe environments where people can openly share their experiences is vital, allowing us to acknowledge the fear that can arise when engaging in these conversations. This, in turn, enables us to move past blame towards repairing relationships and alleviating the more negative forms of shame. What emerges is a passionate advocacy for personal introspection and doing the work to understand our own racial conditioning and perspectives. Only then can we take responsibility and actively seek avenues for redress and healing. Recorded live in London, November 2022. *** Bodhilila has been meditating and practising mindfulness for over 25 years. She is a fully accredited Breathworks mindfulness trainer as well as a qualified counsellor, teacher and massage therapist. She also worked for many years as a classical musician and as a nursery manager. She is currently Chair of the West London Buddhist Centre, where she has been teaching meditation, mindfulness and Buddhism, as well as helping to run the Centre, since 2012. She regularly leads retreats for the WLBC and at Taraloka women’s retreat centre. Eugene Ellis is an activist, writer and public speaker on issues of race, difference and intersectionality. He is also the founder and director of The Black, African and Asian Therapy Network (BAATN), a network of therapists committed, passionate and actively engaged in addressing the psychological needs of Black, African and South Asian people in the UK. *** Show notes 'The Race Conversation: An essential guide to creating life-changing dialogue’ by Eugene Eliis The Black, African and Asian Therapy Network Events in London and Online for People of Colour More conversations about race in Triratna *** Visit The Buddhist Centre Live (events year-round on Buddhism, mindfulness, meditation, and culture) Come meditate with us online six days a week! Theme music by Ackport! Used with kind permission.

We're delighted to share a special Triratna Day 2023 podcast episode with you, recorded earlier this week and hosted by our friend Jnanadhara. He's joined by Saddhanandi and Nagabodhi to discuss the upcoming online gathering of the Triratna Buddhist community on the 8th of April, which celebrates its founding in April 1967.  Saddhanandi and Nagabodhi reminisce about past Triratna Day celebrations, recalling the excitement of travelling in large groups from Glasgow to London or Birmingham for the day or weekend. These events were like big festivals, with talks, book stalls, and the opportunity to meet people from the wider movement who might only have known through their books. Whilst often the talks given at events such as these, shaped the discourse of our community as a whole. Sangharakshita, the founder of the Triratna Buddhist community, emphasized the importance of celebrating Buddhist festivals such as Buddha Day and Dharmachakra Day etc but also wanted the community to have its own traditions. Heeding the Buddha's famous call to come together in large numbers. We also discuss Sangharakshita’s place within our tradition. Explored through the perspective of Is a Guru Necessary? A talk he gave in 1970.  The theme of the day and the podcast is "Roots in the Earth, Roots in the Sky." Since its founding, Triratna has become a truly international sangha, with special - even sacred - spaces. Collaborating in the creation of these spaces has been crucial to our individual and collective growth. This Triratna Day, we celebrate the significance of such spaces in our history and the work being done to establish roots in new places today. From Bhante's early work in England to the current efforts of Order Members in countries as diverse as New Zealand, Finland, Poland, Mexico, India, and Brazil, our community recognizes the importance of establishing and nurturing new ground for practice. As Bhante once said, for our Sangha to thrive, we need really deep roots - roots in the sky! This way of speaking about bodhichitta is embodied in the image of the cosmic Refuge Tree. Show notes: View the full programme of events and Join us April 08 online for a truly international gathering The day is a collaboration between Adhisthana, FutureDharma Fund, and The Buddhist Centre online. Nagabodhi’s new book: Sangharakshita: The Boy, the Monk, the Man Check out photos from the early days of the movement at Triratna Picture Library *** Visit The Buddhist Centre Live (events year-round on Buddhism, mindfulness, meditation, and culture) Come meditate with us online six days a week! Theme music by Ackport! Used with kind permission.

A wonderful conversation highlighting the themes of a brand new Home Retreat – the latest addition to our growing archive of in-depth, beautifully resourced online spaces to help take your practice of meditation and Buddhism deeper.  Balajit, Singhashri and Viveka join us to discuss the opportunities and challenges of engaging with the gnarlier bits of our emotional lives, amid so much pressure of so many kinds in the world. A sparkling exchange about ways into integrating embodied practice where our guests collectively flip the script on how we might habitually relate to some emotions as more valuable than others in the process of getting to know ourselves. What if we could uncover the potential for integrity at the heart of emotions like fear, grief, and anger?  It’s a strong invitation, one to be met at your own pace. And a chance to get curious about where challenging emotions come from as parts of us–and what they might need to liberate the energy usually bound up in them in some direct relationship to the wish for a more liberated world. We also get an excellent practical sense of this kind of heart work. How do you do an online retreat? Will I find a genuine sense of community? Will it be too hard to let difficult emotions in? These and other excellent questions are engaged with in a beautifully thoughtful way, from Dharma teachers holding the experience of many years of Buddhist practice, including online-first contexts.  The most important thing to know is: you are trusted, you are welcome! Come take part and be with whatever arises in a kindly, gracious space, looking at what it is to be simply a human being with a body and an emotional life. This podcast ends with a short guided practice to help us imagine what it is like to be truly supported. 🧘‍♀️ 🧘‍♂️ Listen and join us for seven days of meditation, soulful exploration, and strong, supportive friendship! Find out more: Forces for Good – Challenging Emotions as Portals to Liberation *** Visit The Buddhist Centre Live (events year-round on Buddhism, mindfulness, meditation, and culture) Come meditate with us online six days a week! Theme music by Ackport! Used with kind permission.

Dharmachakra has been a going concern since Dharmachari Ananda first strapped a reel-to-reel tape recorder on his back in London in 1967 to record the first public lectures by Urgyen Sangharakshita under the auspices of the then Friends of the Western Buddhist Order. It has evolved over the decades to become an amazing Triratna Right Livelihood team – most importantly, a team of friends, working online together across the globe to bring the world the best of Buddhism and meditation from our new Buddhist Community. We hear from the team in Mexico City, the United Kingdom and the United States about their work on the brand new Free Buddhist Audio, recently relaunched in its third major version for mobile devices with an archive that has swelled in 15+ years from 450 titles to over 5,500. Some magic recommendations follow (see the prodigious show notes below) – but also an evocation of the importance of working together, of taking part in a lineage of practice, and of passing on to the next generation the many treasures of the Dharma. At its best, the new FBA is just this: a chest of jewels, rich and surprising, whose light illuminates not just our history as modern Buddhists and how far we have come, but shows the way to the future of Buddhism as it adapts to new contexts, countries, languages and cultures.  Take a deep dive with us into a world of outstanding generosity, amazing technology, and beautiful collective effort over many years to bring the words of the Buddha and the voices of diverse community to life online. Dharmachakra may already be a great Triratna institution – and Free Buddhist Audio a much loved resource and space online – but it’s just getting started. Try the new Free Buddhist Audio Donate to Dharmachakra and support the future of Free Buddhist Audio Show Notes David has now been ordained as… Dayaketu! Which means, ‘Comet of Kindness or Compassion’ ☺️ Kusaladevi’s picks The Transitoriness of Life and the Certainty of Death by Vajradarshini Rambles Around Reality by Subhuti Rambles Around Consciousness by Subhuti Rambles Around the Yogachara by Subhuti Talks on White Tara Talks by Vajrashura Talks by Vajratara Dayaketu’s (David’s) picks  Seminar texts on Life and Liberation of Padmasambhava (1987): Cantos 37 & 39 Seminar texts on Life and Liberation of Padmasambhava (1987): Canto 38 Sevenfold Puja by Sangharakshita (1968) Sangharakshita’s poetry Talks from Cuernavaca Buddhist Centre, Mexico Talks in Spanish  Kamalavajra’s picks Mind Reactive and Creative by Sangharakshita (1967) The Inconceivable Emancipation - Themes from the Vimalakirti Nirdesha by Sangharakshita (1979)  Sangharakshita’s Memoirs (audiobooks) | Sangharakshita’s Memoirs (books from Windhorse Publications) Viriyalila’s picks Talks on The White Lotus Sutra Ritual and Devotion in Buddhism by Sangharakshita (1967) Readings from the Pali Canon by Sangharakshita (2000) Mind and Mental Events - A Series by Subhuti Seven-Point Mind Training - A Series by Dhammadinna Brahma Viharas and the Key Moment by Kulaprabha Becoming a Citizen of the Present by Srivati Early talks by Sangharakshita Late talks by Sangharakshita Sophe’s picks Recordings of Mantras and Chanting Vidyamala’s guided meditations and Dharma talks Zac’s picks The ‘Lost’ Padmasambhava Talk by Sangharakshita (1979) *** Visit The Buddhist Centre Live (events year-round on Buddhism, mindfulness, meditation, and culture) Come meditate with us online six days a week! Theme music by Ackport! Used with kind permission.

A real beauty of a ‘lost’ episode from our archives! Recorded in a very lovely garden in Mexico in 2019, with nature sounds all around, Bodhikamala and Sanghadhara, who’ve been soul mates of a sort since before the age of 10, explore with us their long history of friendship as young people. A shared love of the arts, of musicals, and Harry Potter brought them together in summer camp and, eventually, led them to explore Buddhism together. Now as ordained members of the Triratna Buddhist Order they discuss their strange routes to the Dharma life, taking in auras, fear of aliens and the apocalypse, and early struggles with social despair that found only limited expression in other kinds of activism. A magic story of how intuitive philosophy and a feeling for truth developed from a sense that while pain is inevitable in life, suffering is optional. Early insights turn into a meaningful, lived experience of Buddhist practice where mind is seen and felt as primary, and it makes all the difference. Our two “Cookie Searchers” take us from Plato’s Cave to yoga retreats with grandmothers and, eventually, across continents. What is constant – through challenges with acceptance by parents and all questioning and doubts – is a friendship where love and vital interest are irrepressible. Join us for laughter, sparkling reflection, and an uncommonly strong, easy evocation of friendship as a path that can transcend even time itself. Recorded at Chintamani Retreat Centre, Mexico 2019. *** Visit The Buddhist Centre Live (events year-round on Buddhism, mindfulness, meditation, and culture) Come meditate with us online six days a week! Theme music by Ackport! Used with kind permission.

What do you get when you invite a set of experienced American Dharma teachers and friends from different Buddhist traditions to gather together post-Covid and share their practice and experience of American Buddhism? Well, something like this! The bright joy and sense of common tradition is palpable. Hear four Gen-X Triratna Order members with deep connections to our community, both in the UK and US, in a round-table conversation with other Dharma farers from Vajrayana, Vipassana, and Zen traditions. We explore kaleidoscopic difference and beautiful sameness in our various approaches to Dharma practice – and are united in grappling with being the “middle generation” of Buddhists in some of the new lineages of the West. Perhaps the central image from this conversation is of people needing to make sure they are carrying their culture with them, which allows us to be truly radical and ensure the revolutionary change we strive for as Buddhists is a genuine possibility for everyone in future. It’s genuinely inspiring to hear the voices of “future ancestors” openly embracing the reality that long, deep change may not happen in their own lifetime, yet persisting with delight in Dharma practice. Gratitude for what we have inherited is key to that, and shines through in this fascinating meeting recorded at the end of a long, hot summer near the Catskills in New York State. Featuring Ananta, Candradasa, Claire Villareal, Tenzen David Zimmerman, Singhashri, Stephanie Tait, Vimalasara, Upayadhi, Lama Zangmo. Recorded at the Won Dharma Center, NY, USA. Show notes Gen-x 2019 Podcast Be the Refuge: Raising the Voices of Asian American Buddhists by Chenxing Han Sankofa (pronounced SAHN-koh-fah): a word in the Twi language of Ghana meaning “go back and get" My Grandmother's Hands: Racialized Trauma and the Pathway to Mending Our Hearts and Bodies by Resmaa Menakem The Wisdom of Uncertainty by Kurt Spellmeyer (Tricycle) *** Visit The Buddhist Centre Live (events year-round on Buddhism, mindfulness, meditation, and culture) Come meditate with us online six days a week! Theme music by Ackport! Used with kind permission.