The Buddhist Centre

The Triratna International Council has been a going concern for 11+ years–but in many ways it's just getting started. Meeting again in person for the first time since the Covid-19 pandemic, it's undergoing something of a renaissance; renewing itself through the work of Buddhists from around the world, all united in their heart wish to work together to help exemplify a path of everyday practice for a planet that really needs a humane path out of suffering. We meet friends from India, Latin America, Oceania, Europe and the UK–as well as the hard-working team who help pull such an ambitious endeavor together every couple of years; convening interim gatherings at regional and national level to make sure we get the best out of this great assembly. We hear why it all matters–what relevance such meetings have for our own community and for anyone interested in genuinely consensual ways to approach questions of leadership, strategy and direction. Perhaps most importantly of all, we hear evoked what it means to share a common interest and work with each other based on something other than power. If you're interested in success stories about human beings coming together to make a difference in all the right ways, this one's for you! Show Notes Watch the #IC22 story on Instagram  + Follow The International Council channel on The Buddhist Centre Online Listen to the keynote talk, 'Serving the Bodhisattva' by Nagapriya That definition: "The International Council brings together the perspectives of those holding key responsibilities across the Triratna community, to develop strategy, provide guidance, and enable collaborative decision-making worldwide." *** 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.

Welcome to a new season of the podcast! ❤️ Since the 1970s Kamalashila has been exploring meditation and, as an author and teacher in the Triratna Buddhist Order, shaping our understanding of meditation in all its practical magic and mystery. These days he spends much of his time at home in rural England, leading in-depth meditation retreats online for members of the Order. Join us in his garden amongst the summer birds and wildflowers of Suffolk for a conversation about how sadhana – a lifelong, 360º approach to Buddhist meditation and practice – transforms our consciousness and our whole way of experiencing the world. You can't understand it all rationally, Kamalashila says, and this perspective sits comfortably with his embrace of technology and the Internet as effective, if imperfect, tools with which to pursue a personal and communal exploration of the Dharma. What emerges is a vision of Buddhism that knows to be genuinely learning we must also accept that how we see things is often simply wrong. In giving himself to a relationship with something truly mysterious, Kamalashila invites us to be open to a kind of magic whose roots in Indian and Tibetan tradition are made most meaningful today by our own sustained, faithful practice.    Show Notes This podcast includes a short closing meditation on the sounds of nature! Listen to episodes of Kamalashila's Quarterly from the podcast Visit Kamalashila's website for resources on Buddhist meditation Buy ‘Buddhist Meditation: Tranquillity, Imagination and Insight’ by Kamalashila *** 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.

In this final episode of the current season of the podcast, Bodhilila, Chair of the West London Buddhist Centre, is in conversation with Lama Rod Owens, bestselling author of ‘Love and Rage: The Path of Liberation Through Anger’.  Their exchange weaves across a number key Dharma threads, beginning with a sense of how being in the body can be a way to step out of systems that stop us reaching our full potential as human beings; a way to reclaim agency and autonomy; and a place for the aspiration to grow beyond our own sufferings and limited self-views. Diversity in its fullest, most positively abundant sense, is never far away; nor is a sharp awareness of the need to turn aside from hatred towards empathy and compassion, always from a place of being well resourced. “It’s a hard thing to hear,” says Lama Rod. “When you think you’re normal but your normality comes at the expense of large groups of people, to the detriment of other people. But that’s not the same thing as hate.” We hear how vital it remains to continue to see that everyone deserves to be happy. All this is particularly relevant to conversations about race, power and injustice, of course, but this episode keeps us clearly in the realm of Buddhist practice and the perspectives it has to offer a world both deeply familiar with suffering and simultaneously longing to escape it. Empathy is the key to humanizing people, and here two friends and respected Dharma teachers from different traditions open up the deepest possibilities of that empathy for all of us: liberation of the body, mind and heart. Show Notes Love and Rage: The Path of Liberation Through Anger by Lama Rod Owens   Watch the full event on YouTube–and subscribe! West London Buddhist Centre   Lama Rod Owens also featured on 'The Gen-X 2019 Podcast' (Episode 362)   Conversations About Race - A series from The Buddhist Center Online, curated by Vimalasara Visit Lama Rod Owens' personal website Get the Buddhist Voices podcast Follow the Free Buddhist Audio podcast Follow the Dharmabytes podcast *** 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. #Buddhism #Buddhist #Buddha #Dharma #Triratna #community #sangha #meditation #Dhamma #Triratna #mindfulness #kindness #pain #stress #grief #suffering #race #racism #diversity #power #anger #rage #peace #empathy #body

We're on the road this week with a festive episode of the podcast to celebrate Vidyamala: the extraordinary inspiration behind Breathworks who has just been made an Officer of the Order of the British Empire (OBE) in the Queen’s Birthday 2022 Honours List. She has been honoured for her Services to Wellbeing and Pain Management as Co-founder of Breathworks, an organisation which teaches mindfulness-based approaches to people coping with pain, illness and stress. In a riot of birdsong, on a beautiful day in early summer, we were delighted to be able to join Vidyamala in her garden just after the news broke, along with her partner Sona, and her friend Aryajaya. As well as marking the occasion, we remember the very hard road travelled through pain that led to the foundation of Breathworks and its vital contribution to the welfare of so many people. Having passed on her wisdom to over 600 accredited trainers in 35 countries, Vidyamala's work isn't "just mindfulness"—it's now a whole transformative movement capable of reaching deep into society. In Vidyamala's approach the simple application of awareness and kindness becomes an emotionally intelligent and deeply responsive re-imagining of the Buddhist path itself, ready to meet the huge challenges of suffering in the 21st Century. Vidyamala has brought this beautiful work to bear in her own life with great courage, grace and equanimity, opening up portals to freedom in hearts and minds all around the world. Show notes Visit Breathworks See the Breathworks' course on Mindfulness for Managing Long Covid Read more about Vidyamala's OBE Listen to Vidyamala on this podcast back in March 2020: The Blue Sky at the Heart of the Body Visit Vidyamala's personal 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. #Buddhism #Buddhist #Buddha #Dharma #Triratna #community #sangha #meditation #Dhamma #Triratna #mindfulness #kindness #Breathworks #pain #stress #grief #suffering

When tens of thousands of Ukrainian refugees began to cross the border with Poland, the Triratna community at Krakow Buddhist Centre got involved with the same great generosity that has marked the Polish people's response to war flaring up uncomfortably close to home. In this episode we hear from Saddhajala and Nityabandhu on the ground in Krakow—not just about the war in Ukraine but about how Buddhist practice has enabled them to meet the crisis and try to bring to life "a blueprint for a new world". By turning their Centre into a place of refuge they have been able to help with families seeking shelter and live out their own ideals. It has made a difference. A moving conversation about practical love and a community of friends finding new cultural expression for Buddhism in their own language as a way to get ready to meet the worst of the world with the best of it. And save Simon the bulldog! Show notes Sanghaloka - Buddhism in Krakow and Warsaw (Polish) Sanghaloka -  Buddhism in Krakow and Warsaw (English) Gallery from the creation of a Buddhist Centre for Krakow *** 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. #Ukraine #Poland #war #peace #Krakow #Buddhism #Buddhist #Buddha #Dharma #Triratna #community #sangha #meditation #Dhamma #Triratna #mindfulness #kindness #Sangharakshita

Some of the team at the Urgyen Sangharakshita Trust join us for a deep dive into the art of digital storytelling and biographical work online, as we hear about the ongoing creative challenges involved in helping a spiritual community hold the legacy of their teacher across generations. Sangharakshita was a brilliant, complex, sometimes provocative and controversial figure. He was also a friend, a thinker, a writer, and a hundred other things besides. Prajnaketu and Suryanaga discuss with us the making and remaking involved in creating a new web-based life of the founder of the Triratna Buddhist Community and Order. The conversations steers between reverence for what has been given and experimentation around what's ahead as we plot a course through the digital landscape of Tik Tok, dank memes, and new social media. The modern web opens up new possibilities for carrying the learnings and lessons of the past. This is a great collective reflection on lineage, history, and possibility as we continue Sangharakshita's great work of renewing an approach to the Dharma for the modern world. *** Show Notes Visit the new Sangharakshita.org Explore and subscribe to the new online life of Sangharakshita The archive project at Urgyen House Triratna Picture Library (Sangharakshita's photograph archives) Sangharakshita's essay reflecting on gratitude in the Garava Sutta *** 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. #Sangharakshita #Buddhism #Buddhist #Buddha #Dharma #Triratna #community #sangha #meditation #Dhamma #Triratna #mindfulness #kindness  #biography #storytelling

This week's episode is a wonderful conversation from our archive of live events here on The Buddhist Centre Online, featuring our host Paramananda and his guest Maitridevi, Chair of Taraloka Buddhist Retreat Centre for Women in Wales. Starting from a poem by W.S. Merwin, an initial conversation about gratitude for life despite all our knowledge of sorrows blooms into a shared set of reflections on impermanence, on our lack of centrality as a species, and on meditation as an exchange of gifts between us and the earth. How do we activate a sense of everything being alive? Maitridevi evokes ideas of a 'Buddhist Animism', and of the personification of the earth as Green Tara, derived from Dridha, the ancient Indian earth goddess. She and Paramananda explore the shamanic, the punk, the Delphic and oracular; all in the service of uncovering how genuinely sacred wisdom and energy might be said to come up out of the earth. This is an intimate, ultimately encouraging exchange about the great conundrum and tension there to be experienced in anyone's spiritual practice: that the world is a mess, and yet the world is always awakening. Join Paramananda and Maitridevi under the great tree of life, beneath the vast, open sky... *** Show notes Download all the notes from 'Sources of Inspiration and watch the series on YouTube W.S. Merwin, 'Thanks' (from ‘Migration: New and Selected Poems’) W.S. Merwin, ‘Thanks’ (slightly different version) ‘The Blue Marble’ (the earth seen from Apollo 17, original photograph, 1972) ‘The Blue Marble’ (updated image, 2002) The concept of ‘Viriditas’ or 'Greenness' (as employed by Hildegard von Bingen) Entangled Life by Merlin Sheldrake About Timothy Morton ‘A reckoning for our species’(on Timothy Morton) Maitridevi and Taraloka on YouTube *** 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. #Buddhism #Buddhist #Buddha #Dharma #Triratna #community #sangha #meditation #Dhamma #Triratna #mindfulness #kindness #earth #ecology #climate #environment #wisdom #Tara #trees #poetry #Merwin

Sometimes a new Dharma book turns up that manages to seem both effortlessly profound and very funny. Of course, Satyadasa's The Sound of One Hand is actually the product of hard-won experience, and we're delighted to welcome him to the podcast to talk about his wonderful memoir as a tale of struggle, inspiration and the meeting of twin lineages in his life: Dharma practice and family. We hear Satyadasa's account of the challenges and joys to be had figuring out how to find a spiritual path when you have a "visible disability" (he was born without his left hand fully formed). Learning to do this within established communities, institutions, and set ways of conceiving of a Buddhist life was the cause of much soul-searching, but Satyadasa has wry anecdotes to spare as he freewheels like his hero Bob Dylan from childhood meditation experiences with his grandfather to studies at Oxford to Buddhist London in the early part of this century. No one is fixed, Satyadasa reminds us, and this conversation is also a reflection on telling your life story as a deeply creative act: a way to discover more about the past than you could ever have known otherwise. And to bring into the light your own trove of learning about friendship, love, loss, doubt, and the courage needed to transcend the constrictions of self-view. Join us to discover the sound of one hand as it echoes across the airwaves and around the world. Show Notes Buy The Sound of One Hand by Satyadasa Read a review of The Sound of One Hand Visit the London Buddhist Centre *** 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. #Buddhism #Buddhist #Buddha #Dharma #Triratna #community #sangha #meditation #Dhamma #Triratna #mindfulness #kindness #books #memoirs #koan 

To mark Earth Day 2022, we’re joined by four friends who, one way or another, are involved with Buddhist activism. From the Buddhafield project to XR Buddhists to Silent Rebellion, we hear tales from the edge of socially engaged Buddhist practice, exploring what, if anything, Buddhists have to offer the world of protests, disruptions and often polarized issue-based politics.  Amaragita, Katja Behrendt, Priyadaka and Yogaratna offer a thoughtful set of reflections in articulating why a distinctive Buddhist approach to urgent issues like climate change and racism can be effective; both at transforming ourselves as we move deeper into Dharma practice—and at attracting anyone looking to speak out but wanting to avoid negative cycles of violence and harmful speech or action. As you’d expect, we hear a number of key questions held without easy answers; and in them also a call to action rooted in kindness, awareness and the desire to connect. This is an inspiring conversation moving from curiosity to empathy, resilience to a vision of the ‘Ecosattva’ as an ideal for anyone who aspires to to change the world. *** Show notes Buddhism and Politics by Vajragupta (audio series) The Earth is Our Witness: Loving Self and World Through the Climate Crisis Triratna Earth Sangha Buddhafield *** 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. #Buddhism #Buddhist #Buddha #Dharma #Triratna #community #sangha #meditation #Dhamma #Triratna #mindfulness #kindness #Ecosattva #ecology #environment #climate #climatechange #engagedbuddhism #climatecrisis #climateactivism 

Karuna USA believes that every individual deserves a decent life and the opportunity to achieve their potential, regardless of caste, race or ethnicity. Social and economic systems with high levels of inequality hurt everyone’s progress. That’s a fact. Working together we can challenge these systems and ensure access to a fair and decent life for all. Karuna USA stands in solidarity with those communities barred from achieving this right, and especially with women whose empowerment is key to the transformation of societies. Together with our local community partners in South Asia, we work tirelessly to ensure that those living in abject poverty, forced into bonded labor, or dehumanized by a social designation such as “low caste” can access opportunities for a better life. *** Support Karuna USA: https://www.karuna-usa.org Support Karuna in the UK: https://www.karuna.org Support Karuna Deutschland: https://www.karunadeutschland.org/de/ *** 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. #India #caste #Dalit #Buddhism #Buddhist #Buddha #Dharma #Triratna #community #sangha #meditation #Dhamma #Triratna #mindfulness #kindness