The Buddhist Centre

In this latest episode of the Buddhist Centre podcast, we are delighted to welcome back Tejananda, one of the most experienced meditation teachers within the Triratna Buddhist Community. Tejananda will be bringing insights from decades of practice to his upcoming Home Retreat on The Buddhist Centre Live, ‘Emptiness and Compassion: The Divine Abodes’, starting March 29th.  The retreat is part of a trilogy (so far!) exploring the Buddhist concept and experience of ‘emptiness’ (shunyata - pointing to the lack of an “objectively” fixed essence or selfhood in anything). This time around we are approaching the great field of contemplation and reflection from the meditative perspective of the 'divine abodes' (brahma viharas)—unconditional love, compassion, joy, and equanimity–all seen as pathways to liberating the mind. By cultivating these beautiful qualities, Tejananda says, we can find a larger context for our afflictive emotions—craving, hatred, and ignorance—and in the process gradually find unveiled the uncul

Join us for a ‘90s story of inspired Buddhist practice in Missoula, Montana - of great friendship, fierce love, burnout and life lessons learned in the fire of idealism and spiritual adventure. There’s nothing quite like going through a big experience together - and Tipu’s was a very big one for so many people as a new Buddhist community took root in the United States. Founders Buddhapalita and Varada witness to the joys, trials, sacrifices and lasting consequences of starting the first (east) Indian restaurant and explicitly ethical Buddhist ‘Right Livelihood’ business in a small midwestern city. Old friends and colleagues, Aryadrishti and Viriiylila, bring their own accounts of fortitude, loss, abandonment and resolution to the reunion. Grief and cherishing, naivety and wisdom go hand in hand as we hear the tale of Tipu’s Tiger and how much it still means all these years later. Listen to this beautifully, sometimes achingly, resonant conversation about the good that survives long after a shared project

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 s

Alfoxton House in Somerset, England has a long and rich history stretching back over 1000 years. It was mentioned in the Domesday Book of 1086, and is where the young William Wordsworth, his sister Dorothy and their great friend Samuel Taylor Coleridge helped birth the radical new Romantic movement during a magical year there in 1797. In June 2020, a new Triratna Buddhist community received the keys to this astonishing property set within 52 acres of ancient woodland complete with herds of red deer grazing the hillside. This week on the Buddhist Centre podcast we hear from that community - and particularly from film director and Alfoxton community member Hartley Woolf on his affecting and poetic documentary capturing a year in the life of the inspired band of souls who have taken on the ambitious task of renovating a once great estate.  Following the seasons, Hartley’s film reveals the changes in the land and the travails of this huge building project, weaving connections between the poetry of the Romantics

If you enjoy this conversation, come explore the theme online on our Home Retreat with Vidyamala and Vishvapani! “Imagine an enormous subterranean chamber all lit up from within. We are living in a tiny chamber next to – indeed, part of – the larger one. We can see nothing at all of what’s going on in the large chamber. In fact, we have no idea that the large chamber is even there.” Sangharakshita This week we’re opening portals to awareness and the wonders that can arise when we really start to pay attention to everything that’s going on in the world around us. What would it be like to experience yourself without restrictive concepts? What dimensions might open up in your life as you engage with myths and symbols? Awareness, or mindfulness, is an essential foundation for all spiritual growth. And through knowing experience directly we can transform difficulties and become happier, calmer and more fulfilled. But awareness offers much more: it also provides a doorway to other dimensions in the large chambe

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 Universi

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 o

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

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

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

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

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 insp

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

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

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 t

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 capa

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 (Eng

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 Sangharakshi

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 t

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 r