Nagapriya takes an unusual angle as he speaks of the Dharma as a portal into the Buddha's mind itself...
From the talk Cherish the Doctrine given at Padmaloka Retreat Centre, 2022. Part 1 of a three part series based around the motto of the great Tibetan 20th Century teacher Dhardo Rimpoche - "Cherish the Doctrine, Live United, Radiate Love.”

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Cherish the Doctrine

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Dharmabytes Podcast #1123 "Stepping Through the Portal"

A conversation about race and the possibilities of connecting beyond fear towards hope.

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 own profound experiences around race, intersectionality and Dharma practice, the discussion delves deep into the race construct, examining the profound impact of prejudice, colonialism, and slavery on individuals of all races. 

The creation of safe environments where people can openly share their experiences is vital, allowing us to acknowledge the fear that can arise when engaging in these conversations. This, in turn, enables us to move past blame towards repairing relationships and alleviating the more negative forms of shame. What emerges is a passionate advocacy for personal introspection and doing the work to understand our own racial conditioning and perspectives. Only then can we take responsibility and actively seek avenues for redress and healing.

Recorded live in London, November 2022.

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Bodhilila has been meditating and practising mindfulness for over 25 years. She is a fully accredited Breathworks mindfulness trainer as well as a qualified counsellor, teacher and massage therapist. She also worked for many years as a classical musician and as a nursery manager. She is currently Chair of the West London Buddhist Centre, where she has been teaching meditation, mindfulness and Buddhism, as well as helping to run the Centre, since 2012. She regularly leads retreats for the WLBC and at Taraloka women’s retreat centre.

Eugene Ellis is an activist, writer and public speaker on issues of race, difference and intersectionality. He is also the founder and director of The Black, African and Asian Therapy Network (BAATN), a network of therapists committed, passionate and actively engaged in addressing the psychological needs of Black, African and South Asian people in the UK.

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

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The Race Conversation With Bodhilila and Eugene Ellis (The Buddhist Centre Podcast, Episode 441)

In this introductory talk to The Sutra of Golden Light,  Saddharaja gives us an historical overview of the sutra, and its extraordinary reputation, plus a story about his own meeting with the sutra in 1983. He introduces chapters 1&2 and also suggests how we might best approach the sutra ourselves in order to experience its riches.  Excerpted from the talk  Entering Another World, part of the series  The Sutra of Golden Light, given at  Padmaloka Retreat Centre, 2019.

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Entering Another World

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Dharmabytes Podcast #1128 "Going Deeper in Your Dharma Experience"

Från och med nu ska Maitripodden även finnas här på SoundCloud.

Shraddhashuri samtalar med Viryabodhi om sitt liv, hur hon kom i kontakt med den andliga vägen och med buddhismen, om en upplevelse där den vita buddhan Vairocana kom till henne och förde henne tillbaka till livet, och hur hon arbetat med smärta och sorg genom livet. De samtalar också om insikt och behovet att integrera upplevelser av insikt. De pratar redan om att följa upp detta samtal och borra lite djupare i något eller några teman.

Andra avsnittet i säsong 3 av Maitripodden, där vi får lyssna till avsnitt ur ljudboken JATAKA, 21 berättelser om Buddhas tidigare liv. I Inledningen berättar Viryabodhi kort om vad en jataka är och om deras plats i den buddhistiska traditionen, sedan läser Anna Vilén upp historien om Haren i månen. Jatakahistorierna är återberättade av Veronica Leo. Både ljudboken och den tryckta finns att köpa genom Bodhi-förlaget: bodhiforlaget.se

Maitripodden – säsong 3

Haren i månen

ladda ner

Sraddhasuri i samtal med Viryabodhi

What do Buddhists make of AI? And what does it all mean for our ideas of human consciousness? Check out our round table conversation about all things ChatGPT and beyond!

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 University of Washington, and sci-fi writer Ted Chiang, who both argue persuasively that the big questions underlying all this are not so much about computers as about us. 

The AI bots are coming! Join us for a thought-provoking conversation that challenges our understanding of ourselves at the apparent dawn of a new technological age.

Read the full show notes: 
https://audioboom.com/posts/8338641-buddhism-and-ai-the-buddhist-centre-podcast-episode-442

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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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Buddhism And AI (The Buddhist Centre Podcast, Episode 442)

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, physical work and spiritual practice. We hear how in the midst of knocking down walls and rebuilding foundational structures, Hartley treaded the sometimes difficult path between being both a member of his community and a filmmaker. And catch a glimpse of the shared wonder that emerges as relationships are forged in a project based on the deepest values of awareness, love and a common quest for the truth of reality.

Triratna has long posited a deep connection between Buddhist spiritual life and the Arts, ever since Sangharakshita first began to articulate a fresh vision of contemporary western practice in the 1960s. In the spirit of that tradition, the Alfoxton community has been working to restore the house, tend to the land and provide opportunities to go deeper into both Buddhist practice and the practice of music, poetry and philosophy. Their inspiring program of retreats and events sees them welcome hundreds of volunteers and visitors each year, bringing the electric thrill of the great English Romantics back to life for new generations of seekers.

Join us in the great oak-panelled room at Alfoxton, where Coleridge first recited 'The Rime of the Ancient Mariner', for this wonderful conversation! We’ll be hosting the online premier of ‘A Renovating Virtue’ by Hartley Woolf on The Buddhist Centre Online in September 2023.

Read the show notes and + follow the podcast:
https://audioboom.com/posts/8353195-a-renovating-virtue-hartley-woolf-his-alfoxton-film

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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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A Renovating Virtue – Hartley Woolf and His Alfoxton Film

Is it possible to engage in politics as a Buddhist? What might it look like - and not look like - if we do?

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, Vajtaratara 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 societal happiness. So how does such a broadly environmental approach to the mind and reality itself sit in relation to political views that often tend to individual and collective rigidity, polarization, and the fragmentation of community? 

The panel evokes what we as Buddhists have to contribute in the face of diverse dangers that threaten society as we know it: challenges to liberal democracy, consequences of current responses to climate change, and a growing mental health crisis afflicting millions around the world.

We open up the idea of Buddhists as a potential force for good, an active body within the wider community made up of people who live and act as examples of compassion and sanity in the world. Members of a ‘new society’ who might take leading roles without being compromised by division and the application of personal or group-based power. Is it all a pipe dream, or is this a tantalising, achievable possibility? At the very least, how can Buddhist approaches to life that actively envision the wellbeing of people and communities influence our personal engagement with political culture in ways that are of broad benefit?

Join us for a podcast of ideas, values, and considered reflection on the most tricky of areas. This is how we can harmoniously talk about politics with each other - as full members of society spanning different cultures, perspectives and views.

Read the show notes and + follow the podcast:
https://audioboom.com/posts/8361489-buddhism-and-politics

***

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

Buddhism And Politics

Triratna Storytime

The Burning House

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

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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 Tale Of Tipu's Tiger

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Viryabodhi är det namn som Subhuti jag fick när jag blev ordinerad in i Buddhistorden Triratna, under en 3-månaders retreat 1989 i de spanska bergen ovanför Benidorm.
Jag är fortfarande förundrad över Buddhas lära och alla övningar och inte minst alla utmaningar och möjligheter som vänskap och kommunikation med mina likasinnade bjuder på. 
Till vardags ägnar jag mig åt översättning av buddhistiska texter till svenska och allt i processen fram till publicerat verk. Se Bodhi-förlaget på nätet. 
Utöver detta leder jag oxå en del retreater på Dharmagiri Retreatcenter och undervisar en del på Stockholms Buddhistcenter. 
Kolla in min hemsida: Viryabodhi.se

New tracks tagged #Triratna