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 an...

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 atta...

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 ou...

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 pract...

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 s...

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....

"Pleasure is a thing that also needs accomplishing" from The Word ​ by Tony Hoagland Today'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 meta...

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 o...

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' s...

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 pe...

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 o...

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...

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...

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...

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 unexpe...

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...

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  is like a healin...

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...

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 ev...

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 dur...

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 t...

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-c...

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

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 exp...

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...