The Buddhist Centre

We're joined this week by Buddhist teacher and mentor, Danapriya, author of 'It’s Not Out There'. Most of us constantly look outside ourselves for something: happiness, love, contentment. But this something is not out there. ‘It’ is within us. We are full of these qualities: happiness, love, contentment and more. In 'It’s Not Out There', Danapriya, helps us to look inside ourselves in such a way that life becomes more vivid, joyful and extraordinary. As you'd expect, this is a profoundly optimistic conversation around the connections between love and grief, love and wisdom—and how we can live to pass on what we have been given. Get your copy of 'It's Not Out There' by Danapriya Visit Danapriya's website Connect with Windhorse Publications on Instagram for news of more Buddhist books! *** 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 #mentalhealth #books #selfcare #selfhelp #selfdevelopment #personalgrowth #personaldevelopment

We are delighted to announce a new episode of The Buddhist Centre Podcast, marking the start of a new season of curated conversations. We begin the new season with some role reversal! Instead of his usual place hosting guests, Dhammamegha from Windhorse Publications puts Candradasa in the hot seat to talk about his new book, 'Buddhism for Teens', just published by Rockridge Press. Download a sample chapter and get a copy of 'Buddhism for Teens' It's not always easy for teenagers to navigate their lives at home, at school, and with friends, but through Buddhist meditation and mindfulness practices they can discover a path to inner calm and awareness. Buddhism for Teens introduces teens to a Buddhist way of seeing things, and helps them build their emotional strength, their sense of self, and their connection to the world around them. Dhammamegha and Candradasa explore the themes of the book, looking at how Dharma stories and practice can help anyone—teen or adult—move past the things that restrict or constrain them towards an everyday sense of freedom and all its possibilities. This episode also features readings from stories in the book. Visit Windhorse Publications for great Dharma books! *** 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 #teens #teenagers #mindfulness #kindness #mentalhealth #books

A full Dharma life: you can come to it from anywhere, and it will lead you in unimagined ways... From the investment banking hothouses of the City of London, to visionary experiences in a field with Green Tara and the Chemical Brothers at the Glastonbury Festival, here are stories told by a team of people dedicating their work to setting up conditions for a future where the great hope of the Buddhist path is available to all. We hear why connecting across cultures and geographies is a practice of love and trust that's worth making your life's work, dissolving isolation and loneliness one connection at a time. If you think you know what fundraising is or who FutureDharma are—think again! This is how we really change the world: story by story, person by person. And a myriad of inspiring projects are born to renew the heart of a community. This is One World. Together we are One Sangha. Will you give so that our International Sangha can keep reaching out to more people than ever before? Give now the One Sangha appeal! *** Check out our Dharma Toolkit space for details of all we have on offer to help you stay inspired through the pandemic and beyond! Come meditate with us six days a week! *** Theme music by Ackport! Used with kind permission. #FutureDharma #fundraising #money #wealth #coronavirus #Covid19 #crisis #pandemic #Buddhism #Buddhist #Buddha #Dharma #Triratna #community #sangha #meditation #Dhamma #Triratna

Join us for a deep dive into the relationship between art, aesthetics, the environment, and the inner life of people, objects and houses! In this episode we discuss the current ecological and biodiversity crises with an artist and a poet, asking how an appreciation and fuller understanding of beauty itself can help us take action in our own lives. Be prepared to have your notions of "the beautiful" challenged and, hopefully, also affirmed as we range with our guests Padmacandra and Vilokini from the world of wabi-sabi to the lost stories of an old theatre, from the rainy streets of Venice to the re-wilding of a field and garden in England. Time to set out for "The Greater Mandala of Uselessness"! Show notes The Tale of the Whale by Karen Swann and Padmacandra The Many Jewels: Buddhism, Writing and the Arts (a podcast series with Padmacandra) Wisdom Beyond Words by Sangharakshita (source for the teaching on "The Greater Mandala of Uselessness"). Wabi-Sabi *** Check out our Dharma Toolkit space for details of all we have on offer to help you stay inspired through the pandemic and beyond! Come meditate with us six days a week! *** Theme music by Ackport! Used with kind permission. #Beauty #environment #ecology #rewilding #art #poetry #photography #wabisabi #aesthetics #climate #coronavirus #Covid19 #crisis #pandemic #Buddhism #Buddhist #Buddha #Dharma #Triratna #community #sangha #meditation #Dhamma #Triratna

A conversation exploring the central role of strong personal friendships in creating a culture that encourages women and girls in India to take seriously their own aspirations - whether in Buddhist training or life in general. Abhayanavita and Tarahridaya are wonderful leaders and exemplars in this work, speaking across generations, across gender, and across caste to help inspire the new Buddhists of India. From extremely difficult conditions each has forged her own path towards safety, respect and acceptance. And in a time of terrible challenge from the ongoing ravages of Covid-19 amongst the poorest people in their communities, both are beacons of positivity to anyone striving for liberation from suffering. This is a welcome message of hope from two great friends to all who hold India in their hearts. Help save lives in India and Nepal! Find out more about Karuna's work in India and Nepal *** Check out our Dharma Toolkit space for details of all we have on offer to help you stay inspired through the pandemic and beyond! Come meditate with us six days a week! *** Theme music by Ackport! Used with kind permission. #coronavirus #Covid19 #crisis #pandemic #Buddhism #Buddhist #Buddha #Dharma #Triratna #community #sangha #meditation #India #Nagpur #Maharashtra #Amravati #Dalit #caste #Ambedkar #women #gender #Dhamma #Triratna

A special episode of the podcast to invite you to Alive In Nature! - a series of live meditations and Dharma adventures from the Scottish Highlands! Find our more and reserve your space on Alive In Nature! For three Saturdays in spring or autumn - whichever hemisphere you are in, whatever state of lockdown you're living through - you're invited to sit with us and the amazing team from the Dhanakosa community in the birch woods of the Scottish Highlands. And to find your own "micro-adventure" in nature - in your own way, at your own pace (even if it's looking out your window!). By way of introduction to this experience, in this episode we go on a walk over the hillside at Balquhidder in the beautiful Trossachs region. The burn (brook) runs down the mountain through cataracts and waterfalls to the loch (lake) below; the snow in the pine forest crunches underfoot as we climb with Nayaka to a place of owls and foxes and roe deer... As he walks, Nayaka reflects on his own experience of a reciprocated relationship with nature, where our own being is invited in. A relationship in which our aliveness and the aliveness of the world around us are not two separate things; where letting go can happen, where emergence can arise. The sense of love and sheer delight is so strong here - and you are invited in! Come to Alive in Nature! Watch later on YouTube *** Check out our Dharma Toolkit space for details of all we have on offer to help you stay inspired through the pandemic and beyond! Come meditate with us six days a week! *** Theme music by Ackport! Used with kind permission. #coronavirus #Covid19 #crisis #pandemic #Buddhism #Buddhist #Buddha #Dharma #Triratna #community #sangha #meditation #nature #naturalworld #Scotland #Highlands

Live from Forest House near Rivendell Retreat Centre in the UK - we're not sure a podcast setting gets any more mythic than that! Our friends Mandarava and Nagasiddhi are running an online Home Retreat for us - with amazing puppets, original artwork for the event, and an abundance of magic images illustrating tales from the life of the Buddha. And you are invited! Register for a space on 'In the Footsteps of the Buddha' Meditation, storytelling, ritual, sharing collective spaces that can hold joy and difficulty - this will be an immersive, interactive space online like no other; a retreat to help keep you inspired at home that you can dip into or dive deep within, whatever your circumstances allow. You can hear just from how these two working artists talk about the  enchantment involved in gathering everyday materials to create objects replete with beauty and meaning that their approach to practice can help, especially through grief and life's sorrows. Join us and come dwell in a forest of imagination with the richly resonant, living images from the Buddha's story. Sit beneath the oldest trees in good company, feeling how close that story is to our own, and how much hope it contains for us all. Show Notes Watch the Brave Little Parrot: A Puppet Show by Mandarava Nagasiddhi's Artwork An Evil Cradling by Brian Keenan The art of Robert Rauschenberg The myth of The Descent of Inanna Bagpuss The Wombles Mister Benn The Clangers ** Check out our Dharma Toolkit space for details of all we have on offer to help you make it through the pandemic and stay inspired. Come meditate with us six days a week! *** Theme music by Ackport! Used with kind permission. #coronavirus #Covid19 #crisis #pandemic #Buddhism #Buddhist #Buddha #Dharma #Triratna #community #sangha #meditation #mindfulness #psyche #soul #art #puppets #puppetry #myth #symbol #images #Rivendell #LordoftheRings #ritual #Tolkien

Forty years of friendship around meditation, the Dharma, and a common interest in the workings of the 'psyche' - the human 'soul' - mark out this first pilot episode for a new series of live podcasts. Join Paramananada in conversation with a set of friends to explore and share together their 'Sources of Inspiration'. Our first guest is Atula (Richard Hudson), psychosynthesist and good friend to many in the Triratna Buddhist Community. Atula has made it his life's work to consider the place of darkness, descent, depth as  experienced aspects of spiritual life, rather than an obstacle to it. What follows is itself a soulful, insightful conversation about Atula's approach in therapy and in dream work (individual and collective); particularly looking at the inspiration he draws from James Hillman in considering the deep workings of human behaviour and of the mind itself. There's an urgent relevance here for anyone exploring ideas of integration and the felt tensions between "matter" and "spirit". William Blake meets Mickey Spillane, Sangharakshita and Northrop Frye as the conversation catches, sparks and flows in the space between the twin myths of 'authority' and 'freedom': two old friends, holding the two in balance as a creative force. You're invited to the rest of these conversations! Sign up for our newsletter and get notified when tickets become available. Read 'What the Thrush Said' by John Keats *** Check out our Dharma Toolkit space for details of all we have on offer to help you make it through the pandemic and stay inspired. Come meditate with us six days a week! *** Theme music by Ackport! Used with kind permission. #coronavirus #Covid19 #crisis #pandemic #Buddhism #Buddhist #Buddha #Dharma #Triratna #community #sangha #meditation #mindfulness #psyche #soul #therapy #psychotherapy #psychosynthesis #Hillman #JamesHillman

This episode was recorded in October 2020 when the project to bring online learning to kids from Nagpur's poorest communities was just getting started. Please support this vital work now if you can: https://www.justgiving.com/fundraising/aryaloka *** Aryaketu is amazing. For 20 years he has been forging a life of extraordinary service in India with the Buddhist 'Bodhisattva Path' as the main context for his work. His vital, pioneering computer training school - the Aryaloka Institute - is all about the social uplift of some of the most vulnerable young people in his home city of Nagpur. It is also dedicated to exemplifying the possibilities with the bigger ideas of freedom enshrined in the Buddha's teaching. Beyond the potentially life-changing qualifications they receive, it is this spirt of selfless service and liberation which Aryaketu tries to bring to the mentoring of students every day. In the pandemic, with schools closed or unsafe, Aryaketu's dreams of a better education and life for local kids have had to adapt to meet the sometimes harrowing situation facing Dalit and other at risk communities dwelling in Nagpur's 55 slums. With an unquenchable positivity and unstoppable ambition to be of use himself, Aryaketu and his Aryaloka Institute have set out to create safe and fully resourced online learning spaces in the slums for students who would otherwise be excluded. It's an inspiring project, one that deserves admiration and active support! *** Check out our Dharma Toolkit space for details of all we have on offer to help you make it through the pandemic and stay inspired. Come meditate with us six days a week! *** Theme music by Ackport! Used with kind permission. #coronavirus #Covid19 #crisis #pandemic #Buddhism #Buddhist #Buddha #Dharma #Triratna #community #sangha #meditation #mindfulness #India #Dalit #education #learning #onlinelearning #Nagpur #Maharashtra

Happy New Year! May 2021 prove a kinder, more hopeful year for all. In this first podcast of the year we turn to the magic of inner transformation, with a special episode to mark our forthcoming Home Retreat: 'The Alchemical Heart' with Paramananda. In our conversation around the work involved with an "alchemical" approach to meditation Paramananda explores the relationship between Buddhist perspectives on life and the social, political and psychological realms. And most importantly, its connection to a sense of reality as fundamentally poetic in nature. All in service to figuring out how we can live from a genuine, authentic place in our own experience. Aside from alchemy's place in various western wisdom traditions, if here it is all about internal change, then, says Paramananda, the body is the vessel: this is where the work happens - because it is the nearest bit of reality with which we can become intimate. And to do so we must engage with the language of the heart, which is the language of images. To hear Paramananda speak about meditation as a way to truly experience "the poetics of the breath", we know we're in for something extraordinary. Come and join ups on the alchemical journey! In your own time and way on Home Retreat, bring your own body, longing and love. Sign up for the 'The Alchemical Heart' Home Retreat *** Paramananda has been teaching meditation for over 35 years and is well known for his body-based, poetic approach. He has published a number of books on meditation including ‘Change Your Mind’ and, most recently, ‘The Myth of Meditation’. *** Check out our Dharma Toolkit space for details of all we have on offer to help you make it through the pandemic and stay inspired. Come meditate with us any week day! *** Theme music by Ackport! Used with kind permission. #coronavirus #Covid19 #crisis #pandemic #Buddhism #Buddhist #Buddha #Dharma #Triratna #community #sangha #meditation #mindfulness #alchemy #alchemical #imagination #images #transformation