Buddhist Centre Features
The Community Toolkit for Uncertain Times

Bringing Online Learning to the Slums of India (The Dharma Toolkit, Episode 36)

By Centre Team on Thu, 4 Feb, 2021 - 20:07

This episode was recorded in October 2020 when the project to bring online learning to kids from Nagpur’s poorest communities was just getting started. Please support this vital work now if you can:

https://www.justgiving.com/fundraising/aryaloka

***

Aryaketu is amazing. For 20 years he has been forging a life of extraordinary service in India with the Buddhist ‘Bodhisattva Path’ as the main context for his work. His vital, pioneering computer training school - the Aryaloka Institute - is all about the...

Triratna Safeguarding
Triratna Safeguarding

Safeguarding in online activities

By ECA Safeguarding on Tue, 24 Nov, 2020 - 15:24

We’re all used to teaching on Zoom these days.

So what do you do if a 15 year-old turns up unexpectedly? Do you know why pairs are not a good idea in classes where the participants aren’t already known to you?

And what can we do to help those finding themselves spending more time at home with depression, or with abusive parents and partners?

In April the Safeguarding team wrote to all the Safeguarding officers on its database with Safeguarding advice related to Coronavirus. That was before the creation of...

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Coronavirus Safeguarding 78.2 KB
Community Highlights
The Community Toolkit for Uncertain Times

For Nothing Is Fixed - Getting Real with Viveka and Paramananda, Episode 1

By Centre Team on Tue, 2 Jun, 2020 - 02:16

For Nothing Is Fixed

For nothing is fixed,
forever, forever, forever,
it is not fixed;
the earth is always shifting,
the light is always changing,
the sea does not cease to grind down rock.
Generations do not cease to be born,
and we are responsible to them
because we are the only witnesses they have.
The sea rises, the light fails,
lovers cling to each other,
and children cling to us.
...

Community Highlights
The Community Toolkit for Uncertain Times

The River Under the River (The Dharma Toolkit, Episode 27)

By Centre Team on Tue, 26 May, 2020 - 22:27

“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...

Bump elbows, say hello!
The Community Toolkit for Uncertain Times

Ironic Points of Light (The Dharma Toolkit Daily, Episode 25)

By Centre Team on Sat, 9 May, 2020 - 00:21

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...

Community Highlights
The Community Toolkit for Uncertain Times

Reflections on Love (The Dharma Toolkit Daily, Episode 23)

By Centre Team on Sat, 2 May, 2020 - 06:00

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...

Community Highlights
The Community Toolkit for Uncertain Times

Hyperavailability (The Dharma Toolkit Daily, Episode 22)

By Centre Team on Thu, 30 Apr, 2020 - 23:58

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....

Community Highlights
The Community Toolkit for Uncertain Times

Make Room For Fun (The Dharma Toolkit Daily, Episode 21)

By Centre Team on Wed, 29 Apr, 2020 - 00:07

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 metal soundtrack on as ecstatic backdrop, to re-watching favourite TV shows, to going for a walk in familiar...

Community Highlights
The Community Toolkit for Uncertain Times

Being Divine Online: Q & A with Ratnavandana on the Brahma Viharas (The Dharma Toolkit Daily, Episode 20)

By Centre Team on Tue, 28 Apr, 2020 - 01:58

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 of her life. 

The sense of someone choosing to dwell inside a mythic vision of...

Community Highlights
The Community Toolkit for Uncertain Times

The Making of 'Hair On Fire' with Mary Salome (The Dharma Toolkit Daily, Episode 19)

By Centre Team on Fri, 24 Apr, 2020 - 20:29

This week 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...

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