A new podcast from The Buddhist Centre, with good company to help in your daily life. Dharma inspiration when you need it most!

www.thebuddhistcentre.com/live

The Buddhist Centre Podcast

Welcome to The Dharma Toolkit Daily, our new podcast from The Buddhist Centre to keep you company through the weeks or months ahead in these extraordinary coronavirus times. 

We'll be with you every week day with a diverse range of guests and voices to renew your sense of a wider Dharma community standing with you. What better way to stay connected than to hear the voices of friends and strangers who understand something of what you may be going through in your particular lockdown situation?

In our pilot episode, you'll hear tales and impressions from Scotland, Ireland, England, Mexico and the U.S.A. The strangeness of physical loneliness alongside too many Zoom calls; the positive effect on the natural world of less human presence; the surprising normalcy of meditating online; the deep need for community, beyond the boundaries of language itself; the collective versus the individual; the consequences of a cancelled long-term retreat; and, of course, the great reality of interconnectedness.

Join us for 30 minutes of great conversation!

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:
https://soundcloud.com/rascal-press/06-make-room-for-fun

Follow the podcast

Turning Towards Uncertain Times (The Dharma Toolkit Daily, Episode 1)

Today's episode brings friends together from Ireland, England and the USA to look at the very technology that connect us for use in things like this. Come and get meta with us about Zoom!

With the launch of our daily meditations we discuss how better versions of the Internet and its underlying technologies mean an evolution – and possibly a revolution – in how we conceive of Buddhist practice (and everything else) in community. 

What does a mature web context for practice look like on its own terms? How might going on retreat work online? In exploring all this we shine a light on the unexpected experience of intimacy to be had with people who come to classes online looking to create and be open to a genuine depth of connection. 

We also gather some favourite cultural highlights from the past week around the corona web. Things to cheer the heart! Featuring:

Samuel West's free daily readings of poetry on Soundcloud
Laura Marling's guitar lessons on Instagram
Rufus Wainwright's daily songs on Instagram
Adrian Tchaikovsky's free eBooks via Twitter
Marco Polo app

Join us for 30 minutes of great conversation!

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: 
https://soundcloud.com/rascal-press/06-make-room-for-fun


#coronoavirus #Covid19 #Buddhism #Buddhist #Buddha #Dharma #Triratna #community #sangha

The Unexpected Intimacy Of Online (The Dharma Toolkit Daily, Episode 2)

A perfectly formed wee diamond of an episode featuring response and analysis from someone who knows what it's like at the sharp end of working with viruses in a laboratory setting.

Danabhadri is our guest today, helping us move past the clinical language of "quarantines" and "isolation" towards a practical experience of interconnectedness. Evoking beautifully why that matters, she says:

"The virus is not the monster from the deep. It evolved on this planet the same way we did." 

Hers is an urgent, challenging, ultimately empathetic perspective that embraces seeing our species as interdependent in ways that can mean we as individuals take a step away from horrified anxiety, opening up to a positive relationship to mortality itself.

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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: https://soundcloud.com/rascal-press/06-make-room-for-fun

A Scientist's Tale (The Dharma Toolkit Daily, Episode 3)

"What went before — let go of that!
All that's to come — have none of it!
Don't hold on to what's in between,
And you'll wander fully at peace."

The Buddha

Today we look a key aspect of this most strange of times: fear itself. Whether it's the virus, other people, or your own mind that sometimes gets to you. Whether you're oddly calm, having to work with mild anxiety, or find yourself in the throes of full blown panic – this is a podcast for you. 

A conversation amongst friends that neither shies away from the issue of fear nor tries to talk down its significance in our lives. And yet, there in the holding of it we catch glimpses of a much bigger perspective, one that comes out of everyday small acts of courage and kindness, and opens out into a full flowering of love. Moving accounts from our guests of personal challenges and the practice that helps overcome them. 

Join us for a good look at what scares and also at the hope that lies beyond fear's false horizon.

ps. Sorry about the audio gremlins at various points in this episode. Bandwidth contracts, Zoom struggles, computer fans kick in... Happily, it is all very listenable!

Read the full sutta extract quoted here: https://www.accesstoinsight.org/tipitaka/kn/snp/snp.4.15.olen.html

***

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:
https://soundcloud.com/rascal-press/06-make-room-for-fun

The Fear Issue (The Dharma Toolkit Daily, Episode 4)

The Internet doesn't always make things better! What do you do in the face of 24 hour news media that is just not going to stop? 

Join us for a conversation about how to guard the gates of our senses when it matters in order to stay sane. Inspiring words about the practice of beauty, being rooted in the body and the senses, staying centred in a storm of input and opinion and views. And a practical pathway towards life done differently, steeped in appreciative awareness of the simple, the good and the true, whatever that looks like to you.

Also discussed today:

Fear of Covid-19 is a mental contagion – and that's something we can fight by Ben Okri
Thought for the Day from Dublin
A one-take journey through Russia’s iconic Hermitage museum

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.
https://thebuddhistcentre.com/toolkit/

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

***

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

Guarding The Gates (The Dharma Toolkit Daily, Episode 5)

Standing in the idyllic gardens of Chintamani Buddhist Retreat Center in México and Manjupriya from São Paolo, via Dublin, is telling us, "Time is poetry in Brazil." Listen to the birdsong, close your eyes and you can almost smell the blossom.

Tom Jobim used to say "Brazil is not for beginners". Manjupriya attests to this in the best of ways, describing frankly what it's like to change culture and learn the long lessons of experience away from all you know. We discuss the lifelines of mindfulness training and of Skype; the loneliness and togetherness of a Buddhist Order; the "martial art of the heart" that is the cultivation of kindness towards our enemies; and the great project of awakening to profound compassion in your life, meeting all disappointment with forgiveness and with love.

The first of our Friday excursions further afield as part of this series of podcasts designed to keep you in touch with a sense of community and with your own delight as we navigate uncertain times together.

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.
https://thebuddhistcentre.com/toolkit

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

***

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

Podcast Brasileiro! (The Dharma Toolkit Daily, Episode 6)

Dr. Paramabandhu Groves is the co-author with Dr. Jed Shamel of 'Mindful Emotion - A Short Course in Kindness', and the pioneering spirit behind the Breathing Space project in London. Using mindfulness-based cognitive therapy he specialises in recovery work with those suffering from long-term depression and addiction issues.

As you might expect from someone who has lived for 30+ years in Dharma-centred community, Paramabandhu has also turned to developing resources for mental health based around core Buddhist practices designed to cultivate radical kindness (mettā). His practical, courses in Kindness Behaviour Training have broken new ground in the mindfulness field, and in this episode we get to hear the story of how they developed.

A lovely conversation about great, quietly compassionate effort - and about his books that capture the fruits of this for everyone to access.

Buy 'Mindful Emotion - A Short Course in Kindness': https://www.windhorsepublications.com/product/mindful-emotion-a-short-course-in-kindness/

***

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.
https://thebuddhistcentre.com/toolkit/

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

***

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

Breathing Space (The Dharma Toolkit Daily, Episode 9)

A crucial and rather beautiful conversation about how we relate to our bodies in relative isolation. Some down-to-earth, open-hearted sharing of experience about things physical: the signs and symptoms and weathers of our bodies; the beneficial effect on our mental health of imaginative connection with other embodied beings; and the kindly wisdom in learning to see and name our actual physical experience instead of becoming lost in speculation.

We're joined for an all Southern Hemisphere affair by Suvarnadhi from Auckland, NZ and her fellow Kiwi Vidyamala, founder of Breathworks, and pioneer of mindfulness work for people dealing with chronic pain.

Life is flowing through our bodies and through everything else. An encouraging, practical episode about how much we might open up to this reality. Includes a beautiful reading of Derek Mahon's poem 'Everything is Going to Be All Right'. And we also learn how to play "rummy cup". Sort of!

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.
https://thebuddhistcentre.com/toolkit/

Come meditate with us any week day!
https://thebuddhistcentre.com/stories/toolkit/meditation/
***

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

The Blue Sky at the Heart of the Body (The Dharma Toolkit Daily, Episode 7)

Pleasure and Pain
Gain and Loss
Praise and Blame
Fame and Infamy

Today we look forward to the start of our first Home Retreat of these coronavirus times in the company of Dassini and Vajragupta, sailing through our human relationship to the Worldly Winds (lokadhammas), a lesser known gem of a Buddhist teaching we think will be a useful tool for anyone living through our current shared crisis.

Vajragupta's book will be the basis of our online course, designed for you whether you have a lot of time or hardly any at all in the lockdown. The book itself was born in the midst of family grief and has been a touchstone of Vajragupta's own practice for many years. What he has to say about it in today's episode is worth the time. 

The challenges of trying - and sometimes failing - to be kind and pliable in the face of great uncertainty and loss of control are urgently relevant. The plan is, there is no plan! The message is: give yourself to the flow of life as lovingly as you can in any given moment.

Join us for another great conversation - and for some serious practice at home. 

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.

www.thebuddhistcentre.com/toolkit

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

***

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

Sailing The Worldly Winds (The Dharma Toolkit Daily, Episode 8)

An emergency appeal from us to you, dear friends. Will you help?

The humanitarian crisis unfolding in India is of a scale that can seem overwhelming. It is understandable that, in the midst of our own undoubted trouble, we may wish to turn away. Perhaps we may even feel a sense of hopelessness. But when you listen to our guests from the Karuna Trust and the India Dhamma Trust, the moral force of their work is itself a bright example of the best kind of human response to suffering. 

Working with 50+ NGOs on the ground in India and Nepal, the Karuna Trust has set itself the aim of raising £200,000 in 6 weeks. This money will enable local people to alleviate immediate food shortages affecting 300-400 million day-labourers left without work or money after the sudden lockdown. In this episode, we hear about amazing work going on in densely packed slums right now that you could support from wherever you are. And how your donation will bolster the longterm planning that's already happening to set up conditions for dealing with the aftermath of it all. Help Karuna's partners in India rebuild broken lives.

If you do one thing this weekend, please hear this appeal marked by proper urgency and surprising hope. Witness how we can all make a difference, even when things are as tough as they are. 

***

Give now to the Karuna Trust and help some of the poorest people in India: https://www.globalgiving.org/projects/karuna-coronavirus-appeal/

Donate to the India Dhamma Trust and their work to support the highest dignity and freedom for all:
https://indiadhammatrust.org/donate/

Support FutureDharma: transforming lives around the world:
https://futuredharma.org

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.

www.thebuddhistcentre.com/toolkit

Come meditate with us 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

Covid Emergency In India (The Dharma Toolkit Daily, Episode 10)

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 of care for others - engaging as fully as we can
Working with hyperactive thought processes (papanca) in meditation
No expectations, only possibilities - control and influence in relation to the worldly winds
Connections between the five hindrances in meditation and the worldly winds
Joy and pain are woven fine - potentially hopeful aspects around the consequences of the pandemic
Human beings forget very easily - the urgent value of commuinity and conditions as a context for remembering what matters
Final thoughts on keeping your practice going

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.
https://thebuddhistcentre.com/toolkit

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

***

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

A Buddhist Way Through the Ups and Downs of Life: Live Q & A (The Dharma Toolkit Daily, Episode 11)

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 midst of devastation, is one of the great historical contributions of humankind."

We close today's episode with a minute's silent meditation.

***

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.
https://thebuddhistcentre.com/toolkit

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

***

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

The Ministry Of Presence (The Dharma Toolkit Daily, Episode 12)

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 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. 

***

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.
thebuddhistcentre.com/toolkit

Come meditate with us 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 Money Issue (The Dharma Toolkit Daily, Episode 13)

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:
https://www.musee-orangerie.fr/en/node/152

***

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.
thebuddhistcentre.com/toolkit

Come meditate with us 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

Painting Into Reality (The Dharma Toolkit Daily, Episode 14)

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 can be changed through consistent, simple generous acts, one person at a time.

Find out about Jai Bhim International and donate:
http://jaibhiminternational.org

The Lokuttara Leadership Academy:
https://www.lokuttaraleadership.org

The Blossom Projects (girls' education):
https://www.blossomprojects.org

***

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.
thebuddhistcentre.com/toolkit

Come meditate with us 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

Global Community India! (The Dharma Toolkit Daily, Episode 15)

How has the early promise of the Internet held up when it comes to new forms of global community and ways of Buddhist practice? Join us for some wonderful sharing around what community means – at least for today!

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.
thebuddhistcentre.com/toolkit

Come meditate with us 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

Emergent Community Online (The Dharma Toolkit Daily, Episode 16)

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.
thebuddhistcentre.com/toolkit

Come meditate with us 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 Hero's Journey To The Food Bank (The Dharma Toolkit Daily, Episode 17)

This week on The Buddhist Centre Online and the Dharma Toolkit we are celebrating 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 from Wendell Berry's 'A Vision'. And then Akuppa becomes a great-uncle, live on air!

"The only way we can face the suffering in the world is to be involved in ending it."

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.
thebuddhistcentre.com/toolkit

Come meditate with us 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

Earth Day, Earth Week! Return To Nature On The Inside (The Dharma Toolkit Daily, Episode 18)

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":

https://audioboom.com/playlists/4631424-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 Conversations

A Buddhist Response to the Climate Emergency
(Ed. Gyurme Dorje, John Stanley, David R. Loy)

***

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.
thebuddhistcentre.com/toolkit

Come meditate with us 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 Making of 'Hair On Fire' with Mary Salome (The Dharma Toolkit Daily, Episode 19)

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 Community Toolkit for more resources on these meditations:
https://thebuddhistcentre.com/community-toolkit

***

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.
https://soundcloud.com/rascal-press/06-make-room-for-fun

Being Divine Online: Q & A with Ratnavandana (The Dharma Toolkit Daily, Episode 20)

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 ! 🙏🏻