"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 and, sometimes, scary. But this is the true place of greater safety, and of a deeper freedom too. 

Join us for another inspiring conversation, part of our mini-series on how to access the heights and depths of experience via the Arts, myth, symbol and story.

"To be willingly fallible is a creative act in which the imagination participates."

Wolf at the Door

William Stafford on YouTube

William Stafford's poetry

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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 attacks him with all the weapons he can muster. But, as the story goes, even though the Buddha is attacked he does not react with anger, hatred or defensiveness. Instead he sits in complete peace and openness; the arrows from his opponents drift and float down around him as flower petals.

Drawing from the Tibetan traditions of lojong (Dharma slogan) and tonglen (meditation sending and receiving kindness in an awareness of suffering), we explore ways to transform adversity. How do we face up to difficult emotions? Find the opportunities inherent when there are obstacles in our lives? Considering the central role of body and breath awareness in this, Yashobodhi also emphasizes the importance of a sense of imaginative connection to the suffering of others.

Referring to the classic fairy story of Rumpelstiltskin, if we do this work, she says, we too can turn the straw of our lives into gold with the spinning wheel of the Dharma... Delightful!

Connect with the Turning Arrows Into Flowers Home Retreat anytime!

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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!

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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 out of the questioning. Joining Auden in the circle is Rumi and William Stafford, providing images to shelter and transform. A conversation amongst friends, opening up to wider vistas of perspective and relationship: with our kids, with ourselves, with all our fellow beings. All reflected in each other like jewels in a great net thrown across the universe.

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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!

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Theme music by Ackport! Used with kind permission.

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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 practica del budismo por el beneficio de todos los seres.

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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!

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Theme music by Ackport! Used with kind permission.

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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 strange and difficult time. What she gives us is her deep confidence in these practices and a rich tapestry of images rooted in the poetry of the natural world:  

I remember a few years back when we had an experience of an eclipse, the only one I have seen in my lifetime, just how it felt when darkness fell and the sun’s light was no longer present. It was only for a short time but it was eerie and I knew in that moment that nothing could live without the sun. I think this is true of love too, that nothing can live without love.

So sit back, have a listen and as Ratnavandana herself advises, take a moment to stop - and enjoy this glorious evocation of what dwelling in the Divine Abodes can, and does, offer.

Includes a final song from Ratnavandana to bring a beautiful week to a close.

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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!

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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.

A great, encouraging primer on the possibilities and pitfalls of online Dharma. And a wonderful testament to the surprise of just how much a sense of magic can transmit when people gather on the web to tune in with their imaginations, connect, and share together what matters most.

Visit:

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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!

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"Pleasure is a thing that also needs accomplishing"

from The Word​ by Tony HoaglandToday'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 metal soundtrack on as ecstatic backdrop, to re-watching favourite TV shows, to going for a walk in familiar places alive to beauties in new ways. All this plus evocations of online ukulele lessons, New Orleans street bands and "the laughter of the unchained mind". 

We hope the delight of conversation amongst friends old and new lightens your day...

This episode features reference to :

The Word by Tony Hoagland read by Sadayasihi

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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!

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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

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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!

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Theme music by Ackport! Used with kind permission.

#coronavirus #Covid19 #crisis #pandemic #Buddhism #Buddhist #Buddha #Dharma #Triratna #community #sangha #meditation #mindfulness #love #compassion #joy #equanimity #suffering #empathy 

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' 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.

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)

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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!

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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 perspective of wisdom.

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These podcasts were produced by our friend Mary Salome in San Francisco. She writes:

This series is not a debate about climate change. It's a reflection on practice in the context of climate change.

Unless you are isolated from world news, you are likely practicing in contexts where discourse around climate change is prevalent. Even those who do not believe in climate change, or don’t believe that human activity impacts climate, are in range of this discourse. This series offers reflections from sangha members who answered an appeal for interviews on how they engage with the topic in their practice. It is my hope that the framework of ethics, meditation and wisdom will provide something useful to people across a spectrum of beliefs.

As a kind of disclosure I will add that I do believe climate change is happening, that it is impacted by human activity, and that turning toward it is helpful on many levels. Every creative effort comes from a point of view, and that is mine. I am certain my beliefs have informed these pieces, as has everything else that has shaped my becoming.

I included the details presented in these interviews to provide context for how people understand the topic of climate and engage with it in their practice, rather than as fact. I encourage everyone to do their own research. I appreciate the work that many sangha members are doing to clarify their understanding and turn toward the issue (or not). I am deeply grateful to the people who allowed me to include their voices here.

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Speakers:

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