The Buddhist Centre

Samādhi is the Sanskrit word for a state of peaceful, integrated absorption the mind can reach through meditation.And people’s faces in meditation have been a source of fascination (and distraction) for documentary filmmaker Hartley Woolf since he began his own Buddhist practice. “I can’t help but enjoy taking in all the different expressions around me in the shrine room,” he says, “and wondering what’s going on inside the mind behind.”Join us for a delightful conversation between an artist and some of his subjects (Bhadra, Eugene Furniss and Maitrijyoti) as we explore the beautiful intimacy of this unique art project. In the most mindful way, Hartley sets out to capture something of the mystery of meditation, expressed in the faces of a diverse set of humans trying to be present with their experience. The result is an extraordinary book of portrait photography and we are privileged to hear reflections after the fact from some of those sitting and from the artist himself.Self-consciousness and self-perception, what we look for in people’s faces and expressions, the vulnerability of meditating with others and of being witnessed – this conversation flows, you might say, like the breath, opening into a space of genuine shared gratitude for a memorable shared experience of sitting in stillness, and being in relationship.Produced and presented by Candradasa, edited by Zac Pomphrey and Candradasa***"When I began this project, it was simply about capturing the subtlety of human facial expression. It quickly became about much more than that, however: my emotional connection to the sitter in that moment; the impact the lights, camera and my presence had on their meditation; the very act of watching for those subtle changes and deciding when to press the shutter. All these things became just as interesting—if not more so.I saw all kinds of emotions play out on my sitters’ faces. They may not have all reached such advanced states as samādhi, but I did see a lot of vulnerability, pleasure, discomfort, and courage. I’m very grateful to them all for allowing me (and you) into their intimate worlds of practice for a brief moment."Hartley WoolfShow NotesOrder ‘Portraits of Samadhi’ by Hartley Woolf (Hardback)Revisting the Romantics by Vishvapani (free with sign-up)Alfoxton Park Retreat CentreA Renovating Virtue: Hartley’s film about the Alfoxton projectListen to The Intimacy of Art and the Dharma on painting as practiceEisenstein on co-creating films as art | A Dialectic Approach to Film Form by Sergei Eisenstein Hartley Woolf’s website | Follow Hartley on Instagram***Visit The Buddhist Centre Live (events year-round on Buddhism, mindfulness, meditation, and culture)Come meditate with us online six days a week!Theme music by Ackport! Used with kind permission.

In Triratna, learning to understand what is truly beautiful is seen as a path to Enlightenment itself. In this episode we find ourselves exploring this in an unexpected and extraordinary way at the seat of all Buddhist paths and myths, Bodh Gaya in India. Not far from the bodhi tree, where the Buddha’s great achievement is said to have taken place, you’ll find us deep in conversation with visitiing leaders from the Dublin Buddhist Centre about their vision of building a Buddhist retreat centre in Eire: a realm of beauty and a fitting home for distinctively Irish Dharma practice in the heart of County Clare.We hear about the retreat centre’s name Shubha Vihara—The Place of Beauty—and how it sits alongside the legendary mythic names, spaces and stories of Ireland, before and after St. Patrick. We meet Brigid, Cuchulain (Setanta), and Fionn mac Cumhail as he catches the Salmon of Knowledge; and visit in our imagination Lough Derg, the ancient passage tomb of Newgrange, and the Hill of Tara—crowning place for the High Kings of Ireland. All while exploring aspects of Christianity’s impact on the country’s pagan spiritual history, and the role of positive warrior culture as it manifests and is transformed in both Buddhist and Irish contexts. It’s hard work building magic spaces and the team give us a glimpse into what’s involved on the ground trying to transmute spreadsheets and fundraising calls into the magic of genuine community, alive with deep possibilities, where practice is—somehow—palpably rooted in the native earth and energies of a specific land and a society ready for change.Join us for an inspiring episode for the ages about a distinctively Buddhist contirbution to Irish culture. As a bonus, we close this conversation with a recitation of the traditional Buddhist ethical precepts rendered into Gaelic. Beautiful indeed!Show NotesSupport the creation of Shubha Vihara, the Irish Triratna Retreat CentreExplore key stories from Irish mythologyDublin Buddhist CentreThe Windhorse TrustFutureDharma Fund***Visit The Buddhist Centre Live (events year-round on Buddhism, mindfulness, meditation, and culture)Come meditate with us online six days a week!Theme music by Ackport! Used with kind permission.

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.Show Notes🧘 Join us live for ‘The Three Bodies of Belonging’ Home Retreat (October 25-31 2024)👥 Staci Haines - Exploring Trauma and Resilience in the Body👥 Prentis Hemphill - Embodiment and Community📖 ‘Mending Wall’ by Robert Frost (‘Good fences make good neighbors.’)🎧 ‘The Inconceivable Emancipation - Themes from the Vimalakirti Nirdesha’ (lecture series by Sangharakshita)🎧 The Sangha or Buddhist Community by Sangharakshita🧘 Forces for Good: Challenging Emotions as Portals to Liberation (Home Retreat to do anytime!)🧘 Explore the archive of Home Retreat on The Buddhist Centre Online ***Visit The Buddhist Centre Live (events year-round on Buddhism, mindfulness, meditation, and culture)Come meditate with us online six days a week!Theme music by Ackport! Used with kind permission.

The mind liberated from the pressure of the will is unfolded in symbolsW.B. YeatsThese 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 creativityUrgyen Sangharakshita Show Notes🧘 Join us live for the ‘Heart of Imagination’ Home Retreat (or catch up later!)📖 W. B. Yeats, ‘The Symbolism of Poetry’🎧 Listen to talks on the system of practice in Triratna🖥️ Vishvapani is a writer, broadcaster and mindfulness teacher with over four decades’ years experience of Buddhist practice🖥️ Amitajyoti is a visual artist and a teacher of art and mindfulness with over 30 years experience of Buddhist and art practice.🧘 ’Mindfulness and Imagination' Home Retreat with Vidyamala and Vishvapani (2023)***Visit The Buddhist Centre Live (events year-round on Buddhism, mindfulness, meditation, and culture)Come meditate with us online six days a week!Theme music by Ackport! Used with kind permission.Podcast episode image by Amitajyoti

We are sitting in an East End art studio talking about death. The London tube rolls by outside, surfacing momentarily from tunnels dark as Hades, trundling its occupants inexorably on to somewhere. You can hear at intervals its soothing, almost womb-like background rumble and hush as a reminder of sorts - fitting sound as backdrop to this conversation with Buddhist artist Hugh Mendes, whose celebrated series ‘Obituaries’ we are exploring in a new online ‘Story’ space: ‘The Impermanence of Everyone’.Explore the work of Hugh Mendes and watch the accompanying film about the Buddhist aspects of his workFar from being grim or at all didactic, these canvases light us up when we see them: whether with recognition of a famous face; startled apprehension that this is the artist’s dead father not long after the moment of death; or fascination at the mysterious techniques of oil painting and how on earth it survives and thrives as a medium in the contemporary art world. Mendes - ordained Buddhist name, Paramabodhi (“Supreme Enlightenment“) - loves painting, loves meditating, and loves teaching both. His practice - as artist and Buddhist - is fused in the ongoing contemplation of impermanence as a core aspect of whatever it is we mean when we say “reality”. Equally at ease immersing himself in the Satipatthana Sutta, with its exercises contemplating the decomposition of our own body as a corpse, or becoming deeply absorbed in the physical act of painting for hours on end every day, Mendes is usually in touch with something both intimate and detailed, vast and universal.We hear about his time teaching art in in San Francisco, where he also co-founded the San Francisco Buddhist Center in the city’s Mission District. His years of training and counter-cultural experiment at Chelsea Art school in the 1970s, where he booked the Sex Pistols for one of their first ever gigs. And his return to London following the death of his father to focus on art practice and, latterly, public Buddhist teaching at the London Buddhist Centre. We also discuss the challenges for both Buddhism and art of reaching a more diverse group of people - finding ways to cross class, racial, gender and financial boundaries. One of Mendes’ great heroes in this is the Indian Buddhist leader and author of the Indian Constitution, Dr. Bimrao Ambedkar. It’s fascinating to watch the artist very much at home in his studio, surrounded by inspirational figures mythic and human, all looking back at him as he tries to capture both their own versions of themselves and our culture’s gaze as they exit life and are being memorialized. We get to dwell with Mendes as he continues his decades-long meditation on the elusive nature of selfhood and identity that slips in and out of light and shadow yet may - sometimes - be beautifully and usefully reflected in the eye of the beholder.Show NotesThe Impermanence of Everyone: In Studio With Buddhist Artist Hugh Mendes (Paramabodhi) + Follow Hugh Mendes on InstagramVisit Hugh Mendes’ websiteSatipatthana Sutta: The Foundations of MindfulnessFind out more about Dr. AmbedkarFollow us on YouTube and Instagram***Visit The Buddhist Centre Live (events year-round on Buddhism, mindfulness, meditation, and culture)Come meditate with us online six days a week!Theme music by Ackport! Used with kind permission.

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!🧘 Reserve your place on ‘Emptiness and Compassion: The Divine Abodes' with Tejananda and friendsShow NotesLike all our Home Retreats Tejananda’s week-long meditation event is designed to support you in exploring in-depth Buddhist practices and teachings in your own time - during the live retreat or at any time after in the archive.Visit our Home Retreat spacesListen to ‘Meditating in the Mandala’, a previous episode with Tejananda about Triratna’s System of Practice‘Being Divine Online’ - a Home Retreat space with Ratnavandana on the Brahma ViharasHome Retreat spaces with Paramananda and Bodhilila focussed on the body in meditation: ‘The Alchemical Heart’ ‘The Myth of Meditation’ ‘The Poetics of Awakening' 'Following the White Deer: Answering the Mythic call in Meditation’ Paramananda’s books on Buddhism and meditation from Windhorse Publications‘Forces for Good – Challenging Emotions as Portals to Liberation’ with Balajit, Singhashri and Viveka‘Entering the Mandala: Mindfulness and Imagination’ with Vidyamala and VishvapaniFollow us on YouTube and Instagram***Visit The Buddhist Centre Live (events year-round on Buddhism, mindfulness, meditation, and culture)Come meditate with us online six days a week!Theme music by Ackport! Used with kind permission.

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, Vajratara 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.Show notesSuella Braverman Is the UK’s Buddhist Home Secretary and a Right-Wing Culture Warrior by Vishvapani (Tricycle Buddhist Review)Vishvapani’s episodes of the BBC’s ‘Thought for the Day’ Mindful Cities InitiativeBuddhism, World Peace, and Nuclear War by Sangharakshita (Free Buddhist Audio)The Nucleus of a New Society by Sangharakshita (Free Buddhist Audio)What Is Buddhist Activism? (The Buddhist Centre Podcast)Sangharakshita, Dr. Rewatta Dhamma, Sogyal Rimpoche, and Thich Nhat Hanh in conversation (Clear Vision Archive) Doctor Bhimrao Ambedkar as a Buddhist social activist (The Buddhist Centre Online)The Rest Is Politics podcast episodes with Yuval Noah Harari: Crisis and Tragedy in Israel The Dangers of AI and the Future of Humanity This week’s guests Lokabandhu as Deputy Mayor of GlastonburyVajratara at Tiratanaloka Buddhist Retreat Centre for WomenWise Attention by Vishvapani (website)Mindfulness In Action (website)***Visit The Buddhist Centre Live (events year-round on Buddhism, mindfulness, meditation, and culture)Come meditate with us online six days a week!Theme music by Ackport! Used with kind permission.

If you enjoy this conversation, come explore the theme online on our Home Retreat with Vidyamala and Vishvapani!“Imagine an enormous subterranean chamber all lit up from within. We are living in a tiny chamber next to – indeed, part of – the larger one. We can see nothing at all of what’s going on in the large chamber. In fact, we have no idea that the large chamber is even there.”SangharakshitaThis week we’re opening portals to awareness and the wonders that can arise when we really start to pay attention to everything that’s going on in the world around us. What would it be like to experience yourself without restrictive concepts? What dimensions might open up in your life as you engage with myths and symbols? Awareness, or mindfulness, is an essential foundation for all spiritual growth. And through knowing experience directly we can transform difficulties and become happier, calmer and more fulfilled. But awareness offers much more: it also provides a doorway to other dimensions in the large chamber of our being. Awareness of the body, heart and mind can blossom into awareness of boundlessness, love and mystery, as Buddhist teachers have taught down the millennia.Imagination is a key to this opening. When our minds are clear and we’re alive to what’s within us and around us, our imaginations wake up to new possibilities. Kusaladevi joins Vidyamala and Vishvapani in a conversation exploring the theme of their upcoming Home Retreat, Entering the Mandala: Mindfulness and Imagination.This Home Retreat is an opportunity to live for a week with mindfulness, kindness, poetry and creativity, even in the midst of our daily lives. An exploration of mindfulness and imagination through talks, meditation, creative activities, discussion and shared ritual, particularly focused on the richly evocative symbol of the mandala. Come join us in the vastness of the present moment!***Show notesMindfulness-Based Cognitive Therapy (MBCT)Urgyen SangharakshitaDharma talks by Vidyamala | Dharma talks by VishvapaniMore about the Five Buddha mandalaListen to 'Vidyamala, OBE! - A Platinum Jubilee Honour for Breathworks'From Lines Composed a Few Miles above Tintern Abbey, On Revisiting the Banks of the Wye during a Tour. July 13, 1798 by William Wordsworth—And I have feltA presence that disturbs me with the joyOf elevated thoughts; a sense sublimeOf something far more deeply interfused,Whose dwelling is the light of setting suns,And the round ocean and the living air,And the blue sky, and in the mind of man:A motion and a spirit, that impelsAll thinking things, all objects of all thought,And rolls through all things. William Wordsworth***Vidyamala was ordained into the Triratna Buddhist Order in 1995 and is co-founder of Breathworks, a leading mindfulness organisation and she focuses particularly on using awareness and kindness training to work with pain and illness. This draws on her own experience of managing spinal pain and disability. She is an award-winning author of three books and was awarded an OBE in 2022 for her services to pain management and well-being. She regularly leads retreats and workshops, and speaks at international summits, events and webinars.Vidyamala has long had an interest in the creative mind and heart and how to access this through myth, ritual and non-conceptual approaches and looks forward to deepening this even more on this online retreat.www.vidyamala-burch.comwww.breathworks-mindfulness.org.ukVishvapani has practised meditation and Buddhism for over 40 years. He’s a writer, best known for Gautama Buddha: the Life and Teachings of the Awakened One and as the Buddhist contributor to Thought for the Day on BBC Radio 4. He’s a prominent figure in the UK’s mindfulness world and has taught over 150 mindfulness courses.He loves to explore poetry, myth and imagination, along with Buddhism, in his writing, teaching and practice.www.vishvapani.orgwww.mindfulnessinaction.co.uk***Visit The Buddhist Centre Live (events year-round on Buddhism, mindfulness, meditation, and culture)Come meditate with us online six days a week!Theme music by Ackport! Used with kind permission.

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.***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.***Show notes'The Race Conversation: An essential guide to creating life-changing dialogue’ by Eugene EliisThe Black, African and Asian Therapy NetworkEvents in London and Online for People of ColourMore conversations about race in Triratna***Visit The Buddhist Centre Live (events year-round on Buddhism, mindfulness, meditation, and culture)Come meditate with us online six days a week!Theme music by Ackport! Used with kind permission.

A wonderful conversation highlighting the themes of a brand new Home Retreat – the latest addition to our growing archive of in-depth, beautifully resourced online spaces to help take your practice of meditation and Buddhism deeper. Balajit, Singhashri and Viveka join us to discuss the opportunities and challenges of engaging with the gnarlier bits of our emotional lives, amid so much pressure of so many kinds in the world. A sparkling exchange about ways into integrating embodied practice where our guests collectively flip the script on how we might habitually relate to some emotions as more valuable than others in the process of getting to know ourselves. What if we could uncover the potential for integrity at the heart of emotions like fear, grief, and anger? It’s a strong invitation, one to be met at your own pace. And a chance to get curious about where challenging emotions come from as parts of us–and what they might need to liberate the energy usually bound up in them in some direct relationship to the wish for a more liberated world.We also get an excellent practical sense of this kind of heart work. How do you do an online retreat? Will I find a genuine sense of community? Will it be too hard to let difficult emotions in? These and other excellent questions are engaged with in a beautifully thoughtful way, from Dharma teachers holding the experience of many years of Buddhist practice, including online-first contexts. The most important thing to know is: you are trusted, you are welcome! Come take part and be with whatever arises in a kindly, gracious space, looking at what it is to be simply a human being with a body and an emotional life.This podcast ends with a short guided practice to help us imagine what it is like to be truly supported.🧘‍♀️ 🧘‍♂️ Listen and join us for seven days of meditation, soulful exploration, and strong, supportive friendship!Find out more: Forces for Good – Challenging Emotions as Portals to Liberation***Visit The Buddhist Centre Live (events year-round on Buddhism, mindfulness, meditation, and culture)Come meditate with us online six days a week!Theme music by Ackport! Used with kind permission.

A real beauty of a ‘lost’ episode from our archives! Recorded in a very lovely garden in Mexico in 2019, with nature sounds all around, Bodhikamala and Sanghadhara, who’ve been soul mates of a sort since before the age of 10, explore with us their long history of friendship as young people. A shared love of the arts, of musicals, and Harry Potter brought them together in summer camp and, eventually, led them to explore Buddhism together. Now as ordained members of the Triratna Buddhist Order they discuss their strange routes to the Dharma life, taking in auras, fear of aliens and the apocalypse, and early struggles with social despair that found only limited expression in other kinds of activism. A magic story of how intuitive philosophy and a feeling for truth developed from a sense that while pain is inevitable in life, suffering is optional. Early insights turn into a meaningful, lived experience of Buddhist practice where mind is seen and felt as primary, and it makes all the difference. Our two “Cookie Searchers” take us from Plato’s Cave to yoga retreats with grandmothers and, eventually, across continents. What is constant – through challenges with acceptance by parents and all questioning and doubts – is a friendship where love and vital interest are irrepressible. Join us for laughter, sparkling reflection, and an uncommonly strong, easy evocation of friendship as a path that can transcend even time itself. Recorded at Chintamani Retreat Centre, Mexico 2019.***Visit The Buddhist Centre Live (events year-round on Buddhism, mindfulness, meditation, and culture)Come meditate with us online six days a week!Theme music by Ackport! Used with kind permission.

The Triratna International Council has been a going concern for 11+ years–but in many ways it's just getting started. Meeting again in person for the first time since the Covid-19 pandemic, it's undergoing something of a renaissance; renewing itself through the work of Buddhists from around the world, all united in their heart wish to work together to help exemplify a path of everyday practice for a planet that really needs a humane path out of suffering.We meet friends from India, Latin America, Oceania, Europe and the UK–as well as the hard-working team who help pull such an ambitious endeavor together every couple of years; convening interim gatherings at regional and national level to make sure we get the best out of this great assembly. We hear why it all matters–what relevance such meetings have for our own community and for anyone interested in genuinely consensual ways to approach questions of leadership, strategy and direction. Perhaps most importantly of all, we hear evoked what it means to share a common interest and work with each other based on something other than power.If you're interested in success stories about human beings coming together to make a difference in all the right ways, this one's for you!Show Notes Watch the #IC22 story on Instagram + Follow The International Council channel on The Buddhist Centre Online Listen to the keynote talk, 'Serving the Bodhisattva' by Nagapriya That definition: "The International Council brings together the perspectives of those holding key responsibilities across the Triratna community, to develop strategy, provide guidance, and enable collaborative decision-making worldwide." ***Visit The Buddhist Centre Live (events year-round on Buddhism, mindfulness, meditation, and culture)Come meditate with us online six days a week!Theme music by Ackport! Used with kind permission.

In this final episode of the current season of the podcast, Bodhilila, Chair of the West London Buddhist Centre, is in conversation with Lama Rod Owens, bestselling author of ‘Love and Rage: The Path of Liberation Through Anger’. Their exchange weaves across a number key Dharma threads, beginning with a sense of how being in the body can be a way to step out of systems that stop us reaching our full potential as human beings; a way to reclaim agency and autonomy; and a place for the aspiration to grow beyond our own sufferings and limited self-views.Diversity in its fullest, most positively abundant sense, is never far away; nor is a sharp awareness of the need to turn aside from hatred towards empathy and compassion, always from a place of being well resourced. “It’s a hard thing to hear,” says Lama Rod. “When you think you’re normal but your normality comes at the expense of large groups of people, to the detriment of other people. But that’s not the same thing as hate.” We hear how vital it remains to continue to see that everyone deserves to be happy.All this is particularly relevant to conversations about race, power and injustice, of course, but this episode keeps us clearly in the realm of Buddhist practice and the perspectives it has to offer a world both deeply familiar with suffering and simultaneously longing to escape it. Empathy is the key to humanizing people, and here two friends and respected Dharma teachers from different traditions open up the deepest possibilities of that empathy for all of us: liberation of the body, mind and heart.Show Notes Love and Rage: The Path of Liberation Through Anger by Lama Rod Owens Watch the full event on YouTube–and subscribe!West London Buddhist Centre Lama Rod Owens also featured on 'The Gen-X 2019 Podcast' (Episode 362) Conversations About Race - A series from The Buddhist Center Online, curated by VimalasaraVisit Lama Rod Owens' personal websiteGet the Buddhist Voices podcastFollow the Free Buddhist Audio podcast Follow the Dharmabytes podcast***Visit The Buddhist Centre Live (events year-round on Buddhism, mindfulness, meditation, and culture)Come meditate with us online six days a week!Theme music by Ackport! Used with kind permission.#Buddhism #Buddhist #Buddha #Dharma #Triratna #community #sangha #meditation #Dhamma #Triratna #mindfulness #kindness #pain #stress #grief #suffering #race #racism #diversity #power #anger #rage #peace #empathy #body