A great story of passion and inspiration in a 1990s American Buddhist restaurant. The trials, triumphs and tremendous impact of running an ethical business on the lives of those who served and came of age in their Dharma practice together.

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 has fallen away. Listen closely, hang onto the tail of the tiger, and you can still almost taste the best chai and channa this side of Mumbai…

Recorded in Ahuatepec, Mexico, October 2023.

This week’s guests
Aryadrishti
Buddhapalita
Varada
Viriyalila

Read the show notes and + follow the podcast:
https://audioboom.com/posts/8403012-the-tale-of-tipu-s-tiger

***

Visit The Buddhist Centre Live (events year-round on Buddhism, mindfulness, meditation, and culture): thebuddhistcentre.com/live

Come meditate with us online any week day!
thebuddhistcentre.com/stories/toolkit/meditation/

Theme music by Ackport! Used with kind permission.
https://soundcloud.com/rascal-press/06-make-room-for-fun

The Buddhist Centre Podcast

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The Tale Of Tipu's Tiger

Recordings of ceremonies used in the Triratna Buddhist Community.  Translated and recorded by Ligita Montvilaitė

Three - Fold Puja In Lithuanian

The Refuges And Precepts In Lithuanian

The Dedication Ceremony In Lithuanian

Journey into love and the amazing potential for freedom of heart and mind with us...

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 uncultivated, unlimited, and unconditional nature of them as ways to engage with ourselves, with other beings and with reality itself. 

Tejananda is interested in a non-abstract, earthed, experiential relationship to ‘emptiness', and in the transformative power of compassion for our consciousness. The ensuing conversation opens a seam of truly rich material: from constructed realities (yes, we talk about the Apple Vision Pro and Meta Quest) to how we can work with difficult emotions, to the relief of resting in a developing experience that we are fundamentally okay. Even as we are all subject to impermanence in the luminous emptiness of this reality, “Let there be unconditional love” is Tejananda’s quietly encouraging rallying call. 

This is a fascinating glimpse into the work waiting for us when we close our eyes in meditation, experience more fully sensed and in potentially higher resolution than any fancy-pants headset can render!

+ Follow the podcast, book the retreat and get the show notes:
https://audioboom.com/posts/8459356-a-luminous-emptiness-meditating-and-loving-in-reality-with-tejananda

***

Visit The Buddhist Centre Live (events year-round on Buddhism, mindfulness, meditation, and culture): thebuddhistcentre.com/live

Come meditate with us online any week day!
thebuddhistcentre.com/stories/toolkit/meditation/

Theme music by Ackport! Used with kind permission.
https://soundcloud.com/rascal-press/06-make-room-for-fun

+ Follow the podcast

A Luminous Emptiness - Meditating And Loving In Reality with Tejananda

Kamalashila is dying. So are we - we are dying. Really. 

In this recent conversation with Kamalashila following his diagnosis of terminal cancer - and in the closing guided meditation reflecting on death - this is the core theme to which we keep returning: the value of familiarising ourselves with our impermanence: dying and death are going to happen to every single one of us. As Kamalashila says, “Taking it out of the taboo cupboard”.

We hear Kamalashila’s perspective starting out on what he refers to in his cancer blog as “A Voyage into the Unknown”. What it’s like to be in relationship to other people’s responses as he himself comes to terms with what’s happening. What he is carrying with him by way of reflections on a path of Buddhist practice, regrets in relationship to his own Dharma life and community, and thoughts on the nature of sangha itself.  Exploring how, as Buddhists, as humans, we can work effectively with the intimations of our own mortality that are there if we only choose to look.

We revisit the themes of previous conversations: modes of Buddhist practice and ways of seeing community; the effect of landscape as a space of practice; the ongoing life of a particular spiritual context (the Triratna Buddhist Order) and his sense of sometimes being “a square peg in a round hole” within it. We hear Kamalashila’s sense of Triratna’s history, its up and downs, its many gifts, its changes for better or worse, its historical dynamics, its tensions and contradictions - all with a temperamental leaning towards personal agency in practice, trust in community, and finding unity through diversity. 

The exchanges here are grounded in Kamalashila’s present experience - but his thoughts on the past are naturally part of it. And as anyone who knows him might expect, we are never too far from his sense of depth connection to the importance of playful, curious, committed meditation practice and teaching, one of the great love’s of his 50+ years as a Buddhist. Whether he’s talking about life back in the London of his childhood or the nature of agnosticism in relation to the teaching of Padmasambhava, Kamalashila is always a good companion in attending to what matters.

This is a fascinating and generous hour of engaged conversation - followed by a beautiful 20 minute gently guided reflection on how our bodies and our consciousness (parsed by Kamalashila as “manifesting a world”) might, in time, come into relationship with our own dying and death.

***

+ Follow the podcast and get the show notes with links: https://audioboom.com/posts/8520575-mindfulness-of-death-and-dying-kamalashila-in-conversation-with-guided-meditation

***

Visit The Buddhist Centre Live (events year-round on Buddhism, mindfulness, meditation, and culture): thebuddhistcentre.com/live

Come meditate with us online any week day!
thebuddhistcentre.com/stories/toolkit/meditation/

Theme music by Ackport! Used with kind permission.
https://soundcloud.com/rascal-press/06-make-room-for-fun

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Mindfulness of Death and Dying (Kamalashila in Conversation with Guided Meditation)

Prayer to Manjushri, Bodhisattva of Wisdom

May all beings experience happiness and its causes
Be free from suffering and its causes,
Never be parted from happiness
And dwell in the condition of equanimity

Ever since his introduction to Buddhism in 1976, Mahamati has been attracted to collective, collaborative contexts. He was, from the start, delighted to find a group of people with whom he could live his whole life, practising and working together with a vision for the transformation of both self and the world. This has long characterized his relationship with the Triratna Buddhist Order and with its founding teacher, Urgyen Sangharakshita, whose lecture The Meaning of Spiritual Community ignited something magic in Mahamati’s life that continues to find new expression today.

This vision of transformation is what Mahamati will be bringing to a major role in our community as Chair of the College of Public Preceptors, starting in November 2024. Mahamati speaks about Triratna’s primary mission - and his own spiritual life - in terms of responding to suffering in the world and a vision of ‘transcendent happiness’. Understanding what that might mean - and how that works, both at an individual level and at the level of serving a spiritual community - is key. 

We hear about the many-layered role of the College of Public Preceptors: its central role in welcoming new members into the Order, upholding an established lineage of practice (particularly after the death of Sangharakshita in 2018), and addressing ethical issues. What shines through most is the deeply personal lifelong connection that marks ordination into our particular community; how people are transformed through a shared sense of common project ready to meet the challenges and sorrows of the world. Happiness and the potential for it is never far away throughout the conversation as Mahamati unfolds his own sense of how that initial act of commitment - choosing to become a Buddhist - blossoms and fruits over time into a path of service and of responsibility capable of changing a life in quite profound ways.

An encouraging, inspired evocation of the opportunities to serve that light up a life lived on the Buddhist path.

***

+ Follow the podcast and get the show notes with links: https://audioboom.com/posts/8553981-taking-responsibility-happiness-and-transformation-with-mahamati

***

Visit The Buddhist Centre Live (events year-round on Buddhism, mindfulness, meditation, and culture): thebuddhistcentre.com/live

Come meditate with us online any week day!
thebuddhistcentre.com/stories/toolkit/meditation/

Theme music by Ackport! Used with kind permission.
https://soundcloud.com/rascal-press/06-make-room-for-fun

Taking Responsibility - Happiness And Transformation

The mind liberated from the pressure of the will is unfolded in symbols
W.B. Yeats

These days, mindfulness is everywhere. How can engaging with images - with imagination itself - take our awareness deeper and help us connect with something truly transformative? 

Join our guests Vishvapani and Amitajyoti to explore how a Buddhist perspective on consciousness can help move us towards a life touched more fully by a sense of creativity and freedom. 

In this episode, we look at imagination within the framework of Triratna’s system of practice, an approach to Buddhism that represents a naturally unfolding process of experience emerging from the dedicated cultivation of awareness and kindness:

- Integration, meaning embodied awareness.
- Positive emotion: an open, loving and empathic heart.
- Spiritual Death: releasing limiting attitudes, and finding a more authentic way of being.
- Spiritual Rebirth: the realm of imagination that brings an expanded experience of ourselves and opening to a sense of mystery
- Spiritual Receptivity: resting in the freedom of open, spacious awareness and creative flow

Each stage here is a doorway to a more creative realm that we can access whatever our circumstances. 

We also evoke the place of nature as intertwined with the life of the imagination. Resonance, empathy, connection with the world around us - with practice, these qualities in experience can be sustained as a flowing, organic, enriching state of being. 

The hopeful, practical vision here - the efficacy of cultivating a heart of imagination - can give us the confidence to allow our images, symbols and myths to open us up to new ways of living.

Enlightenment is the state of irreversible creativity
Urgyen Sangharakshita

Get the show notes with links and subscribe: 
https://audioboom.com/posts/8555873-the-heart-of-imagination-in-buddhism

***

Visit The Buddhist Centre Live (events year-round on Buddhism, mindfulness, meditation, and culture): thebuddhistcentre.com/live

Come meditate with us online any week day!
thebuddhistcentre.com/stories/toolkit/meditation/

Theme music by Ackport! Used with kind permission.
https://soundcloud.com/rascal-press/06-make-room-for-fun

Download and subscribe

The Heart Of Imagination In Buddhism

A joyous conversation today with Buddhist artists and practitioners about illustration, animation, puppetry, model making and art - how all of these can help bring to life the Buddhist path in the most beautiful, moving and inspiring ways!

Mandarava has always been a maker. Her way into puppetry came initially through trying to make sense of deep family grief. Mandarava’s work is brimful of magic - filtered through fairy tales, her own deep immersion in illustrative art and the realm of stories accompanying long-cherished images, both from childhood and her further adventures as a grown-up. We hear about her exploration of female figures from the Buddhist and other mythic traditions, including the resonances between old mythologies and certain kinds of visualisation meditations that feature imagery representing a rich seam of possibilities for transcendent Buddhist practice.

Aryajit, animator extraordinaire, was inspired as a boy by Star Wars’ retelling of classic mythology. It was a major influence on his deciding to live out the Buddhist path as “the adventure of my life”; and to help make the tradition new in his own work animating many aspects of that path. His work appears extensively on The Buddhist Centre Online, explaining and evoking in brilliant ways both the nuances of the Dharma and the life of the Buddha as a set of nested myths and stories that still resonate today when re-presented in this way. Watch any of his animations (see the show notes below!) and you can feel his own quietly passionate heart in the work. 

Prasannavira from The Windhorse Trust was instrumental in helping fund Aryajit’s new animated series, ‘The Legend of the Buddha’. We talk about helping shape a Buddhist context to fund creators and innovators. And how bringing up his own children within a broadly Buddhist culture informed by classic stories and images has helped him as a parent. We also hear about Prasannavira’s own trove of mythic reference points, including Studio Ghibli’s ‘The Tale of the Princess Kaguya’. And about his early days as a Buddhist in London, profoundly affected by modern evocations (inspired by Tibetan tradition) of the great guru Padmasambhava.

There’s so much to enjoy in these thoughtful exchanges: from the legacy of classic British children’s television and theatre to the life of the imagination itself. We explore how stories can help us work with past trauma to figure out a realistic path through life in relation to our ideals. And the connections between new work in animation, illustration, puppetry, drawing and painting and established traditions of folk and classical Buddhist art (from India, China, Japan and elsewhere). Whether it’s the value of dramatization, theatre and ritual for evoking the best of Buddhism, or how being “good” at art isn’t the point - everything flows in this fun episode about how to never lose touch with the sense of wonder and creativity we have as kids, and need now more than ever.

***

+ Follow the podcast and get the amazing show notes  with links for this episode: 
https://audioboom.com/posts/8557360-animated-by-the-dharma

***

Visit The Buddhist Centre Live (events year-round on Buddhism, mindfulness, meditation, and culture): thebuddhistcentre.com/live

Come meditate with us online any week day!
thebuddhistcentre.com/stories/toolkit/meditation/

Theme music by Ackport! Used with kind permission.
https://soundcloud.com/rascal-press/06-make-room-for-fun

Subscribe and download

Animated by the Dharma

Home Retreats help us inject some of the powerful teachings of the Buddha directly into our everyday lives. This week we’re joined by Balajit, Singhashri and Viveka to talk about what lies behind their latest week-long collaborative venture with The Buddhist Centre [Live] - the enigmatically titled ‘The Three Bodies of Belonging’. 

In this episode we dive into the the traditional Buddhist teaching / images / metaphors / experiences of the three kayas (‘bodies’): Dharmakaya, Samboghakaya and Nirmanakaya. These are correlated respectively, via Urygyen Sangharakshita’s reading of the Tibetan yogi and mystic Milarepa, with human mind, speech and physical body. The discussion that arises out of this takes in not just what it means to belong - but also questions of longing: what the heart yearns for, how we conceive of liberation itself via an embodied and relational approach to Awakening.

We explore what individuality and collectivity look and feel like in the light of the trikaya - how the whole of the teaching is pointing to human potential where we have the same faculties, senses, heart, body and mind as the Buddha and everyone else who has ever trodden this path. In that sense, like Buddhism at its best, it’s a profoundly hopeful, healing conversation requiring honesty, vulnerability and a new perspective on ‘self’, ‘other’ and our relationships in the face of the universe.

How do we change our stories to allow for genuine and profoundly transformative connection in a suffering world? How might we resource ourselves to blow open wide our own “window of tolerance” for whatever arises in life and become beings with a boundless heart? Join us on the Home Retreat - live or after the fact - to discover with other seekers the luminous and boundless possibilities beyond trauma, fear, anxiety, heartbreak and all that holds us back from a true sense of belonging.

N.B. The audio quality in some parts of this recording were affected by a poor connection at times.

Download and get the show notes with resource links:
https://audioboom.com/posts/8557960-the-three-body-solution-belonging-within-a-community

***

+ Follow the podcast and get the amazing show notes with links for this episode:
audioboom.com/posts/8557360-animated-by-the-dharma

***

Visit The Buddhist Centre Live (events year-round on Buddhism, mindfulness, meditation, and culture): thebuddhistcentre.com/live

Come meditate with us online any week day!
thebuddhistcentre.com/stories/toolkit/meditation/

Theme music by Ackport! Used with kind permission.
Rascal-press – 06-make-room-for-fun

The Three Body Solution - Healing and Belonging In Community

The Buddhist Centre Online is the home on the web for the Dharma Toolkit from the Triratna Buddhist Community. Thanks for supporting us as we work to keep you and many thousands of people around the world connected to community throughout the crisis ! 🙏🏻

New tracks tagged #Triratna