In today’s FBA Podcast, Kamalashila delivers: ‘Absorption – After the Enlightenment’.

How do you get used to being Enlightened? What happened to the Buddha in the weeks after his breakthrough experience? Kamalashila explores these questions in two ways – using the framework of the Western Buddhist Order’s system of meditation to shed light on the process that unfolded in the Bodhisattva’s mind and body as Enlightenment dawned; and connecting us imaginatively with the symbolism and image of Muchalinda, the great serpent, coiling his body protectively round the meditating Buddha.

Please note, there are a few words missing around the start of this talk.

Talk given on the FWBO International Retreat at Taraloka, May 2008

In today’s FBA Podcast, Parami delivers true to form: “Energy At Its Most Abundant” on the topic of ‘virya’ – ‘energy in pursuit of the good’. This talk was given as part of a three talk series at Windhorse:Evolution, a large and successful Buddhist team-based right livelihood business.

A good, strong (sometimes even idealistic!) evocation of the co-operative spirit of Buddhist work and of spiritual practice in general, with particular reference to Shantideva’s ‘Bodhicharyavatara’. With a thoughtful look at Padmasambhava, and an affectionate tribute to her own teacher, Urgyen Sangaharakshita, whose poem ‘The Song of the Windhorse’ forms the root text for this talk.

Talk given in Cambridge, 2002

In today’s FBA Podcast, we give you “The Buddha’s Vision”, the last talk in the “Gautama Buddha” series launching Vishvapani’s new book “Gautama Buddha: The Life and Teachings of the Awakened One”. (Quercus, 2011)

When the Buddha finally sat down under the Bodhi tree and saw deeply into the nature of things, what had brought him to that point? And what happened next? In his final take on the Buddha’s journey of the heart and mind, Vishvapani focuses in on the Buddha’s experience before, during and after Enlightenment, bringing his nuanced, perceptive reading to the words the Buddha himself is said to have employed in order to best evoke his experiences as he struggled to give voice to them. A fitting conclusion to a wonderfully insightful series.

Includes an adroit discussion of the issues around imagination and historical evidence, and how we can usefully approach the Pali texts as literature.

Talk given in Bristol, February 2011.

This talk is part of the series Gautama Buddha.

In today’s FBA Podcast, we give you the fourth talk in the  “Gautama Buddha” series titled: “The Buddha and Society”, from the launch of Vishvapani’s new book “Gautama Buddha: The Life and Teachings of the Awakened One”. (Quercus, 2011)

The Buddha as a radical, as a holy man, as pragmatist, as tamer of demons, as visionary – in this wide-ranging, riveting talk Vishvapani gives us all these and more, and all in relation to the society Gautama took part in. Some provocative words and questions from the Buddha and from our speaker as we try to get to grips with a world vastly different from our own. What was the Buddha’s social vision, and what can we learn from it? This is essential listening and holds some surprising insights into the life and times of a great sage in and out of his own culture and history.

Talk given in Birmingham, February 2011.