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The Community Toolkit for Uncertain Times

Earth Day, Earth Week! Return to Nature on the Inside (The Dharma Toolkit Daily, Episode 18)

By Centre Team on Tue, 21 Apr, 2020 - 02:08

This week on The Buddhist Centre Online and the Dharma Toolkit we are marking Earth Day - all week long! Watch out for our specially commissioned mini-series of podcasts released through the week: “Hair On Fire: Using the Threefold Way of Ethics, Meditation, and Wisdom to Turn Toward Climate Change”.

We’ll be book-ending these special episodes with some lively, thoughtful conversations around the whole area of Buddhist responses - human responses - to climate change, especially...

Community Highlights
The Community Toolkit for Uncertain Times

The Hero's Journey to the Food Bank (The Dharma Toolkit Daily, Episode 17)

By Centre Team on Sun, 19 Apr, 2020 - 01:16

Two great friends from Australia and New Zealand evoke a mythic vision of beautiful community, founded on, knit together by stories. 

Stories from school, from war, from the Shambhala Buddhist tradition, from long, steady personal and communal Dharma practice. We look at how technology can make people - kids! - more courageous. And the everyday challenges when trying to develop kindness in the face of fear. 

A re-definition of the heroic in the light of empathy, connection and the possibility of hopeful exemplification when...

Community Highlights
The Community Toolkit for Uncertain Times

Emergent Community Online (The Dharma Toolkit Daily, Episode 16)

By Centre Team on Wed, 15 Apr, 2020 - 23:49

We’re several weeks into lockdown and, as we continue to explore the experience of global intentional community, today’s star is the Internet itself.

Our guests discuss the new online contexts for Buddhist practice, evoking the uses of imagination within transitional, liminal spaces. We riff on new emergent forms of practice and modes of engagement that are bringing our community to life in unexpected ways.

We also look at how surprisingly well the early promise of the...

Karuna Fundraisers
Karuna Fundraisers

Ambedkar Jayanti! Support Karuna's Emergency Appeal

By Padmadaka on Tue, 14 Apr, 2020 - 03:14

Ambedkar Jayanti! Support Karuna's Emergency Appeal

By Padmadaka on Tue, 14 Apr, 2020 - 03:14

Sanghanath has been connected with Karuna throughout his life. When he was a child he benefited from a Karuna project in his village in India and now he works for the Karuna fundraising team here in the UK

Today is “Ambedkar Jayanti” and, like many people across India and the rest of the world, Sanghanath will be celebrating Dr Ambedkar’s legacy today from home. Ambedkar not only gave India its constitution but he also did so much for the liberation of women,...

Community Highlights
Community Highlights

Global Community India! (The Dharma Toolkit Daily, Episode 15)

By Centre Team on Mon, 13 Apr, 2020 - 19:46

This week we are celebrating the anniversary of the birth of Doctor B. R. Ambedkar, one of the great Buddhist leaders of modern times and the radical father of the Indian Constitution. Today’s episode of the Toolkit Daily focusses on what it means to be a global community and explores Dr. Ambedkar’s vision of common humanity based around the evolution of just societies.

Our guests, Arun Bodh and Dayamudra, are from Jai Bhim International and Lokuttara Leadership...

Community Highlights
The Community Toolkit for Uncertain Times

Painting Into Reality (The Dharma Toolkit Daily, Episode 14)

By Centre Team on Sun, 12 Apr, 2020 - 01:05

Abhayavajra loves painting. He loves paint itself. And sees himself more like an archaeologist, revealing something urgent and crucial about the human condition by adding rather than scraping away layers. 

A totally delightful conversation about the quest to integrate and unite Dharma practice with the steady, disciplined practice of an art form. We discuss how appreciating beauty itself is like a healing force at times of stress; and how art itself can be a properly adequate response to suffering in the kind...

Community Highlights
The Community Toolkit for Uncertain Times

Aryaloka Corona Relief Emergency Appeal

By aryaketu on Sat, 11 Apr, 2020 - 17:12

Aryaloka Corona Relief Emergency Appeal

By aryaketu on Sat, 11 Apr, 2020 - 17:12

The Covid19 pandemic affects all of us and highlights our global interconnectedness. We are all suffering but those suffering most are those with the fewest resources – the poorest and most vulnerable in our societies. Nowhere more so than in India where the rapid nation-wide lockdown on 22 March has resulted in untold misery and hardship for many millions of daily labourers unable now to leave their homes to work and feed their families. Even worse hit are the many...

Community Highlights
Karuna Fundraisers

Corona Crisis Appeal

By Padmadaka on Fri, 10 Apr, 2020 - 19:37

Corona Crisis Appeal

By Padmadaka on Fri, 10 Apr, 2020 - 19:37

Yesterday, Thursday 9th April, we released additional emergency grants totalling £48,000 to 19 Karuna partner organisations. 

While necessary, the current lockdown in India - the largest in history - has left millions struggling to access food or sanitary supplies. This initial set of grants will be used for distributing emergency food (like rice, dhal and oil) and sanitary supplies (like soap, masks and gloves) to at least 18,000 daily wage labourers and migrant workers. 

Many of the people receiving this support will...

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The Community Toolkit for Uncertain Times

Personal Reflections from the Week - Sailing the Worldly Winds Home Retreat

By kusaladevi on Fri, 10 Apr, 2020 - 19:21

Personal Reflections from the Week - Sailing the Worldly Winds Home Retreat

By kusaladevi on Fri, 10 Apr, 2020 - 19:21

It’s been quite a busy week for me - I started two new jobs in the last three weeks and have had various deadlines this week. But despite that, I have still enjoyed and benefited greatly from the Home Retreat. Thinking about Vajragupta’s reflections has given me a very particular focus to my Dharma practice this week, and helped me...

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

Post-Retreat Resources - Sailing the Worldly Winds

By Centre Team on Fri, 10 Apr, 2020 - 17:29

Post-Retreat Resources - Sailing the Worldly Winds

By Centre Team on Fri, 10 Apr, 2020 - 17:29

We hope you have enjoyed Sailing the Worldly Winds with us this week! Whether you have had the time and space to engage in a full retreat, or you have just dipped in and appreciated a few lines of Dharma here and there, we hope the material has been inspiring and helpful while you are spending more time at home.

One of the highlights of the week was the...

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