This week’s FBA Podcast is a wonderful Interview with Parami, Tiratna’s International Order Convener. Karunagita invites Parami to share snapshots from her decades in Triratna, starting with ordaining seven Mexican women the week before and going back through time and locations, roles, challenges, delights and contributions, including Spain to Glasgow and London in the late 1970s.

Recorded at the NLBC monthly women’s class in May 2017.

This week’s FBA Podcast, is a new talk on Writing As Spiritual Practice. Drawing on her experience as a poet, Varasahaya discusses creativity, imagination, and the writing process as a spiritual practice. She reads some of her poems, and explains the process by which they came to birth, and what she learnt about letting go of self as she grappled with writing. An excellent and very accessible talk given to Sangha night at the West London Buddhist Centre.

In this week’s FBA Podcast, Shifting to Indras Net, Parami evokes the reality of interconnectedness in relation to the second Dasadhamma – My life is dependent on others. I am sustained by the gifts of others – She talks about how the experience of interconnectedness is supported by wisdom, and results in compassionate activity.
This talk is part of the series The Order as Practice: Shifting Paradigms.

This week’s FBA Podcast, Letting Go of What Isn’t There is a gentle and insightful talk by Dhammarati on the Anapanasati Sutta given at the LBC’s Dharma Day festival on July 12th 2009.

This week’s FBA Podcast, Spiritual Death and Radical Transformation is a rousing talk by Maitreyabandhu that goes into where Buddhism begins: with ourselves as we are and with the awake Buddha. But we don’t really know either ourselves or the Buddha. He emphasises that we don’t know because we so easily assume we know, or fix or lessen the goal. So what do we do? There are three approaches we need to balance and four things we have to do, to close the gap between the awake Buddha and us who are as yet unawake. Given at Sangha Night, 13 May 2013.

This week’s FBA Podcast is by Triratna’s International Order Convenor, Parami, speaking on one of her favorite topics: The Group and the Spiritual Community. Parami has lived and worked within Triratna for many years of her life. Sangha is very important to her and her years of experience will help us to get a clearer idea of what makes a spiritual community, rather than a positive group.

In this week’s FBA Podcast, Three Ways to Insight – Working with the 3 Prajnas Subhuti considers afresh this traditional teaching of cultivating insight through hearing, reflecting and meditating.

This week’s FBA Podcast is entitled The Meaning of Spiritual Community Revisited by Mahamati. One of the talks given at Padmaloka during the 2016 ‘Urgyen’ retreat.

The retreat was part of the celebration of the fortieth anniversary of the founding of Padmaloka, and aimed to explore the life and teachings of our founder Urgyen Sangharakshita.

This week’s FBA Podcast is entitled The Buddhas Noble Quest by Dhivan.

In this talk given at a Sangha evening at Bristol Buddhist Centre, Dhivan considers what we can learn from the story of the noble quest of the Buddha. This story is recounted in the Discourse on the Noble Quest (Ariyapariyesana-sutta) in the Middle-length Discourses (Majjhima-nikaya). In it we can almost believe we are hearing a memory of the Buddhas own words, as he recounts his going forth, his study under great meditation teachers, his eventually leaving them, his austerities, and finally his awakening. Dhivan draws out some of the continuing significance of the story of the noble quest, as a kind of blueprint for the model of the Dharma life as heroic self-development.

This week’s FBA Podcast is entitled The Importance of Mindfulness by Kamalashila.

In this talk from September 1996, Kamalashila explores the centrality of mindfulness to the Buddhist path. He discuses the concept of intoxication, with reference to the 5th Precept and the Sutra of Golden Light. Kamalashila then considers the four foundations of mindfulness from the the Satipatthana Sutta and concludes that mindfulness is the basis of metta and allows us to embrace the realm of truth and beauty.

Croydon has been home to FWBO or Triratna Buddhist communities and centres since 1968. Many early talks by well known speakers were recorded, both at Aryatara, since 1979, and at the new Croydon Centre from 1981. These are now being transferred from their crumbling cassettes to digital format, as part of the Croydon Digital Archive Project, and are being made available to everyone.

This talk is in good condition but starts and ends abruptly.

This week’s FBA Podcast is entitled Sangharakshita, the Unenlightened Englishman by Ratnaprabha. A 1989 film on Sangharakshita was embarrassingly titled The Enlightened Englishman. He may not be enlightened, but he has had a fascinating life and a very positive influence on a huge number of people. This talk gives an account of his life, work and teachings, including personal reminiscences. It introduce a series on Sangharakshita.
This talk is part of the series Sangharakshita and his approach to Buddhism.

This week’s FBA Podcast FBA Podcast is part four of a series of talks on the Triratna Vandana by Subhuti entitled Sangha Vandana. The most striking point from this talk is the importance of taking the Sangha refuge as the possibility of an Ideal Society. It is so easy to get dis-illusioned with people and groups. Yet human relationships are such an integral part of our lives we need some vision that more is possible – the arya sangha exemplify this as they relate to each other on the basis of metta as opposed to self grasping and egoistic desire.

This week’s FBA Podcast FBA Podcast is a fabulous talk by Jnanavaca called The Wisdom of Words. The spiritual community, the Sangha, is the ideal context in which we can practise the Dharma. It is also a force for good in the world and an ideal in its own right. But how is the Sangha sustained? Continuing our exploration of ‘The Four Sangharavastus’ (or Means of Unification of the Sangha). Jnanavaca launches the year with a keynote talk on the second of these, Kindly Speech.

…There is poetry as soon as we realize there is nothing… Continuing the series celebrating the unique contribution of Urgyen Sangharakshita to modern Buddhism, Akasamitra explores his key teaching of Mind Reactive – Mind Creative in this week’s FBA Podcast.