The Buddhist Centre

"Deserving a place in a realm where miracles happen"Let's start with this image: there's a river under the river. Then follow it via the works of William Stafford and the creative lives of members of the Wolf at the Door group: poets and writers exploring the interplay of modes of attention in their chosen art forms, mediated by the practice of Buddhism. The wolf is there too. Alive and real and, sometimes, scary. But this is the true place of greater safety, and of a deeper freedom too.  Join us for another inspiring conversation, part of our mini-series on how to access the heights and depths of experience via the Arts, myth, symbol and story. "To be willingly fallible is a creative act in which the imagination participates." Wolf at the Door William Stafford on YouTube William Stafford's poetry *** Check out our Dharma Toolkit space for details of all we have on offer to help you make it through the weirdness and stay inspired. Come meditate with us any week day! *** Theme music by Ackport! Us

To mark the start of a Home Retreat on the theme of turning towards difficulties and moving through them well, a great, practical conversation with Yashobodhi about the meditative, reflective work of the Seven-Point Mind Training tradition in Buddhism. A mythic image to sum up and symbolize this is that of the Buddha on the cusp of his Enlightenment. He is sitting still at the point when Mara attacks him with all the weapons he can muster. But, as the story goes, even though the Buddha is attacked he does not react with anger, hatred or defensiveness. Instead he sits in complete peace and openness; the arrows from his opponents drift and float down around him as flower petals. Drawing from the Tibetan traditions of lojong (Dharma slogan) and tonglen (meditation sending and receiving kindness in an awareness of suffering), we explore ways to transform adversity. How do we face up to difficult emotions? Find the opportunities inherent when there are obstacles in our lives? Considering the central role of bod

Shimmering images, and no less shimmering experiences. Today's episode begins a series on beauty, poetry, myth, art and symbol as a response to crisis. Taking our cue from W.H. Auden's poem, September 1st, 1939, and his recognition of the need to "love one another or die", we ask how, in the midst of fear – even of death – we can exercise our agency as human beings? Poetry leads the way in and out of the questioning. Joining Auden in the circle is Rumi and William Stafford, providing images to shelter and transform. A conversation amongst friends, opening up to wider vistas of perspective and relationship: with our kids, with ourselves, with all our fellow beings. All reflected in each other like jewels in a great net thrown across the universe. *** Check out our Dharma Toolkit space for details of all we have on offer to help you make it through the weirdness and stay inspired. Come meditate with us any week day! *** Theme music by Ackport! Used with kind permission. #coronavirus #Covid19 #crisis #pa

Cuatro amigos budistas se reunion en zoom y exploran como su practica budista les ayuda en tiempos de pandemia y tambien como el mundo cambiando ha cambiado su practica. Parami (en Glasgow, Escocia), Saddharuchi (en la ciudad de Mexico),  Nagapriya (Cuernavaca, Mexico) y Sanghadhara (Manchester, Inglaterra) son Miembros de la Orden Budista Triratna apasionados en compartir su entendimiento y practica del budismo por el beneficio de todos los seres. *** Check out our Dharma Toolkit space for details of all we have on offer to help you make it through the weirdness 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 #budismo #budista #español #México #españa 

As we come towards the end of our Being Divine Online Home Retreat it is our great pleasure today to share with you some beautiful closing reflections from Ratnavandana on the theme of the retreat: love itself. She beautifully evokes where and how she is currently spending this time of lockdown in rural Wales, UK, and shares how the Brahma Vihara meditations on love have been helping her at this strange and difficult time. What she gives us is her deep confidence in these practices and a rich tapestry of images rooted in the poetry of the natural world:   I remember a few years back when we had an experience of an eclipse, the only one I have seen in my lifetime, just how it felt when darkness fell and the sun’s light was no longer present. It was only for a short time but it was eerie and I knew in that moment that nothing could live without the sun. I think this is true of love too, that nothing can live without love. So sit back, have a listen and as Ratnavandana herself advises, take a moment to stop

Today's episode looks at how to handle the cornucopia – the veritable smorgasbord! – of Buddhist teaching and resources now online. How do we offer the depth experience of the Dharma as well as the breadth of it? Join our friends from Berlin, Germany, Glasgow and Oxford in the UK, for thoughts, tips, and wry reflections on navigating a sea of content in ways that might leave us feeling more free. A great, encouraging primer on the possibilities and pitfalls of online Dharma. And a wonderful testament to the surprise of just how much a sense of magic can transmit when people gather on the web to tune in with their imaginations, connect, and share together what matters most. Visit: Buddhistisches Tor Berlin Glasgow Buddhist Centre Oxford Buddhist Group *** Check out our Dharma Toolkit space for details of all we have on offer to help you make it through the weirdness and stay inspired. Come meditate with us any week day! *** Theme music by Ackport! Used with kind permission. #coronavirus #Covid19

"Pleasure is a thing that also needs accomplishing" from The Word​ by Tony HoaglandToday's episode of the Dharma Toolkit asks a collection of fabulous guests how we can meet the deep and urgently serious aspects of life and of the current times without jettisoning a similarly vital human sense of fun, pleasure, play, spontaneity, creativity – even joy.  From painting with a beautiful thrash metal soundtrack on as ecstatic backdrop, to re-watching favourite TV shows, to going for a walk in familiar places alive to beauties in new ways. All this plus evocations of online ukulele lessons, New Orleans street bands and "the laughter of the unchained mind".  We hope the delight of conversation amongst friends old and new lightens your day... This episode features reference to : The Word by Tony Hoagland read by Sadayasihi Phenom by Thao & The Get Down Stay Down Tuba Skinny *** Check out our Dharma Toolkit space for details of all we have on offer to help you make it through the weirdness and stay i

Loving Kindness (Metta) Compassion (Karuna) Joyful Resonance (Mudita) Equanimity (Upekkha) This week on the podcast we're in full-on love mode with our Home Retreat: Being Divine Online. Our guide to the series of meditations in focus - the Brahma Viharas - is Ratnavandana, and in this special episode recorded live online she's in discussion about a practice that has been one of the touchstones of her life. The sense of someone choosing to dwell inside a mythic vision of kindness - and the perspective it affords - is strong. From her down-to-earth advice about how to make these meditations a realistic part of your routine, to poetic evocations of them as both friends and teachers, this is an inspiring conversation about an integrated ecosystem of vision and transformation that is within the reach of anyone at anytime. Join your hosts Kusaladevi and Sadayasihi and walk around a great tree of practice rooted in love and empathy that, even in the face of suffering, can blossom into joy. Follow the Commun

This week on The Buddhist Centre Online and the Dharma Toolkit we are marking Earth Day - all week long! Check out our specially commissioned mini-series of podcasts: "Hair On Fire: Using the Threefold Way of Ethics, Meditation, and Wisdom to Turn Toward Climate Change". Rounding off a week of Earth Day podcasts we're delighted to be joined by the series producer, Mary Salome, for a 'making of' special. Think of it as a kind of Director's Commentary on a fascinating year-long journey in sound. We hear Mary's own history with the issues around climate, and how her Buddhist experience gradually began to impact the ways she herself turned towards them. And how recording and editing the words of her friends – of people whose views she sometimes disagreed with – became a deepening practice of gratitude. Resources for this episode Akuppa on Buddhism and Ecology Buddhist Action Month (BAM, Get involved in June!) Dhiramati's Collected Buddhafield Pujas Pujas used in Triratna around the world Carbon Conversati

This week on The Buddhist Centre Online and the Dharma Toolkit we are marking Earth Day - all week long! Here's the third and final episode in our specially commissioned mini-series of podcasts to be released through the week: "Hair On Fire: Using the Threefold Way of Ethics, Meditation, and Wisdom to Turn Toward Climate Change". Episode 3 considers Buddhist responses to climate change from the perspective of wisdom. *** These podcasts were produced by our friend Mary Salome in San Francisco. She writes: This series is not a debate about climate change. It's a reflection on practice in the context of climate change. Unless you are isolated from world news, you are likely practicing in contexts where discourse around climate change is prevalent. Even those who do not believe in climate change, or don’t believe that human activity impacts climate, are in range of this discourse. This series offers reflections from sangha members who answered an appeal for interviews on how they engage with the topic in th

This week on The Buddhist Centre Online and the Dharma Toolkit we are marking Earth Day - all week long! Here's the first episode in our specially commissioned mini-series of podcasts to be released through the week: "Hair On Fire: Using the Threefold Way of Ethics, Meditation, and Wisdom to Turn Toward Climate Change". Episode 2 looks at Buddhist responses to climate change from the perspective of meditation. *** These podcasts were produced by our friend Mary Salome in San Francisco. She writes: This series is not a debate about climate change. It's a reflection on practice in the context of climate change. Unless you are isolated from world news, you are likely practicing in contexts where discourse around climate change is prevalent. Even those who do not believe in climate change, or don’t believe that human activity impacts climate, are in range of this discourse. This series offers reflections from sangha members who answered an appeal for interviews on how they engage with the topic in their pra

This week on The Buddhist Centre Online and the Dharma Toolkit we are marking Earth Day - all week long! Here's the first episode in our specially commissioned mini-series of podcasts to be released through the week: "Hair On Fire: Using the Threefold Way of Ethics, Meditation, and Wisdom to Turn Toward Climate Change". Episode 1 evokes Buddhist responses to climate change from the perspective of ethics. *** These podcasts were produced by our friend Mary Salome in San Francisco. She writes: This series is not a debate about climate change. It's a reflection on practice in the context of climate change. Unless you are isolated from world news, you are likely practicing in contexts where discourse around climate change is prevalent. Even those who do not believe in climate change, or don’t believe that human activity impacts climate, are in range of this discourse. This series offers reflections from sangha members who answered an appeal for interviews on how they engage with the topic in their practice.

This week on The Buddhist Centre Online and the Dharma Toolkit we are marking Earth Day - all week long! Watch out for our specially commissioned mini-series of podcasts released through the week: "Hair On Fire: Using the Threefold Way of Ethics, Meditation, and Wisdom to Turn Toward Climate Change". We'll be book-ending these special episodes with some lively, thoughtful conversations around the whole area of Buddhist responses - human responses - to climate change, especially when in the midst of the current coronavirus crisis. Today then, join our guests Sara Khorasani and Akuppa on a mythic and personally practical journey, against a backdrop of glacial time that challenges all our notions of 'activism'. We are both ghosts and voyagers in the underworld of our own life as our guests explore what it might be like for a largely urban community to make awareness of nature and the land part of how we communicate the Dharma. And what sort of ancestors we may yet prove to be. We also hear Sarah's reading fro

Two great friends from Australia and New Zealand evoke a mythic vision of beautiful community, founded on, knit together by stories. Stories from school, from war, from the Shambhala Buddhist tradition, from long, steady personal and communal Dharma practice. We look at how technology can make people - kids! - more courageous. And the everyday challenges when trying to develop kindness in the face of fear. A re-definition of the heroic in the light of empathy, connection and the possibility of hopeful exemplification when imagining the future of our species. *** Check out our Dharma Toolkit space for details of all we have on offer to help you make it through the weirdness 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 #Shambhala #heroic #hero #heroism #empathy

We're several weeks into lockdown and, as we continue to explore the experience of global intentional community, today's star is the Internet itself. Our guests discuss the new online contexts for Buddhist practice, evoking the uses of imagination within transitional, liminal spaces. We riff on new emergent forms of practice and modes of engagement that are bringing our community to life in unexpected ways. We also look at how surprisingly well the early promise of the Internet seems to have held up – and the potential consequences for how we conceive of and organise communities, especially when also dealing with the grief and the losses involved when the world is re-made through crisis. Join us for some wonderful sharing around what community means – at least for today! *** Check out our Dharma Toolkit space for details of all we have on offer to help you make it through the weirdness and stay inspired. Come meditate with us any week day! *** Theme music by Ackport! Used with kind permission. #coron

This week we are celebrating the anniversary of the birth of Doctor B. R. Ambedkar, one of the great Buddhist leaders of modern times and the radical father of the Indian Constitution. Today's episode of the Toolkit Daily focusses on what it means to be a global community and explores Dr. Ambedkar's vision of common humanity based around the evolution of just societies. Our guests, Arun Bodh and Dayamudra, are from Jai Bhim International and Lokuttara Leadership Academy, two charities based between Kerala, India and San Francisco, USA. Their wonderful collaboration brings Dr. Ambedkar's vision to bear on educating girls and boys in English, and in Buddhist principles that serve social justice. Their students from the Dalit community (still regarded as "Untouchable" by the caste system in India) are enabled to become leaders in their own communities, breaking the cycle of institutional prejudice in their own lives and in those of many others. A moving testament to how, even in the midst of crisis, worlds ca

Abhayavajra loves painting. He loves paint itself. And sees himself more like an archaeologist, revealing something urgent and crucial about the human condition by adding rather than scraping away layers. A totally delightful conversation about the quest to integrate and unite Dharma practice with the steady, disciplined practice of an art form. We discuss how appreciating beauty itself is like a healing force at times of stress; and how art itself can be a properly adequate response to suffering in the kind of reality we are all taking part in. Encompassing the plasticity of paint itself; the inter-relationship between colour and form; and the presence of blossom and bare branches in a sense of beauty felt all year round. This is a magic window into how we can meet the challenges of our time by holding to our deepest sources of inspiration. Visit Monet's water lilies (Les Nymphéas) online Watch the last interview with Dennis Potter *** Check out our Dharma Toolkit space for details of all we have on o

Communities of all kinds all over the world have been facing up to the huge economic impact of Covid-19 and the ongoing lockdown. In the Triratna Buddhist Community this has meant financial stress at Buddhist Centres and an urgent need for help navigating the next few months, which will be crucial to the survival of many Centres, large and small. Enter our two guests! Amalavajra and Danayutta are two former investment bankers, now working hard with FutureDharma Fund to support Buddhist communities in their hour of need. While offering immediate support to folk looking to weather the storm, their message to everyone is about moving towards a bold sense of responsibility when it comes to fundraising - one that is confident and clear about giving people the opportunity to help out and protect valued services. Both in a time of crisis, and in the years ahead. Visit the the new Centre Fundraising Support space Check out our Dharma Toolkit space for details of all we have on offer to help you make it through t

A mythic sense of things is never far away in today's conversation about radical imagination: at the most intimate levels of close, personal friendship; and also culturally, historically, politically, and spiritually as we try to meet the moment of crisis to which we are all witnesses. With Viveka and Upayadhi we discuss taking cues from anticipatory communities who deal with systemic suffering every day, and who have stored up effective responses to some of the issues we are all now facing. The questions that arise are themselves hopeful: How do we love each other back into life when we stand in a place that feels almost impossible? How do we make actual the vision of a just, loving world? And how can we imagine that as the simplest thing rather than as the most difficult? A great, encouraging conversation from New York City and San Francisco, where the words of Grace Lee Boggs, activist and American revolutionary, ring out: "A revolution that is based on the people exercising their creativity in the mi

As part of our week-long Home Retreat on 'Sailing the Worldly Winds - A Buddhist Way Through the Ups and Downs of Life', we are delighted to host here for a live online Q & A, Vajragupta the author and Dharma teacher behind the retreat itself. A great, wide-ranging and practical discussion about what this classic Buddhist teaching has to say to us about caring for ourselves and each other during the current coronavirus / Covid-19 pandemic. And what communities can do to try and make sure the world does not simply forget all that's being learned when the crisis is finally over. Topics discussed are: Naming the worldly winds in your own way Gain and loss at the heart of change Where does fear come in? What can you do when the winds are blowing strongly? Spaciousness and reflection Considering pleasure and pain as the basis of all the winds; each of the pairs as possible root factors; fame and celebrity Poem - 'This is the time to be slow' by John O'Donohue The place of beauty in our response The intimacy