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A Buddhist Way Through the Ups and Downs of Life: Live Q & A (The Dharma Toolkit Daily, Episode 11)

By Centre Team on Tue, 7 Apr, 2020 - 00:41

As part of our week-long Home Retreat on ‘Sailing the Worldly Winds - A Buddhist Way Through the Ups and Downs of Life’, we are delighted to host here for a live online Q & A, Vajragupta the author and Dharma teacher behind the retreat itself.

A great, wide-ranging and practical discussion about what this classic Buddhist teaching has to say to us about caring for ourselves and each other during the current coronavirus / Covid-19 pandemic. And what...

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The Community Toolkit for Uncertain Times

Covid Emergency in India: A Home Retreat Appeal (The Dharma Toolkit Daily, Episode 10)

By Candradasa on Sat, 4 Apr, 2020 - 00:12

I confess, when I sat down to record this podcast yesterday I somehow didn’t expect it to have the impact it did. I’d seen all the news stories, shaken my head, wondered at how human beings can meet such complex, painful realities as what’s unfolding in India right now. But here they were - my friends - talking about what I can do about it. What you can do too. 

We’re spending a week - in whatever ways we can manage...

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The Community Toolkit for Uncertain Times

Breathing Space (The Dharma Toolkit Daily, Episode 9)

By Centre Team on Wed, 1 Apr, 2020 - 16:30

Dr. Paramabandhu Groves is the co-author with Dr. Jed Shamel of ‘Mindful Emotion - A Short Course in Kindness’, and the pioneering spirit behind the Breathing Space project in London. Using mindfulness-based cognitive therapy he specialises in recovery work with those suffering from long-term depression and addiction issues.

As you might expect from someone who has lived for 30+ years in Dharma-centred community, Paramabandhu has also turned to developing resources for mental health based around core Buddhist practices...

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The Community Toolkit for Uncertain Times

The Blue Sky at the Heart of the Body (The Dharma Toolkit Daily, Episode 7)

By Centre Team on Tue, 31 Mar, 2020 - 11:04

A crucial and rather beautiful conversation about how we relate to our bodies in relative isolation. Some down-to-earth, open-hearted sharing of experience about things physical: the signs and symptoms and weathers of our bodies; the beneficial effect on our mental health of imaginative connection with other embodied beings; and the kindly wisdom in learning to see and name our actual physical experience instead of becoming lost in speculation.

We’re joined for an all Southern Hemisphere affair by Suvarnadhi from Auckland, NZ...

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The Community Toolkit for Uncertain Times

Podcast Brasileiro! (The Dharma Toolkit Daily, Episode 6)

By Centre Team on Fri, 27 Mar, 2020 - 22:33

Standing in the idyllic gardens of Chintamani Buddhist Retreat Center in México and Manjupriya from São Paolo, via Dublin, is telling us, “Time is poetry in Brazil.” Listen to the birdsong, close your eyes and you can almost smell the blossom.

Tom Jobim used to say “Brazil is not for beginners”. Manjupriya attests to this in the best of ways, describing frankly what it’s like to change culture and learn the long lessons of experience away from all you know. We discuss...

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Guarding the Gates (The Dharma Toolkit Daily, Episode 5)

By Centre Team on Fri, 27 Mar, 2020 - 01:18

The Internet doesn’t always make things better! What do you do in the face of 24 hour news media that is just not going to stop? 

Join us for a conversation about how to guard the gates of our senses when it matters in order to stay sane. Inspiring words about the practice of beauty, being rooted in the body and the senses, staying centred in a storm of input and opinion and views. And a practical pathway towards life done differently,...

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The Fear Issue (The Dharma Toolkit Daily, Episode 4)

By Centre Team on Thu, 26 Mar, 2020 - 01:07

“What went before — let go of that!
All that’s to come — have none of it!
Don’t hold on to what’s in between,
And you’ll wander fully at peace.”

The Buddha

Today we look a key aspect of this most strange of times: fear itself. Whether it’s the virus, other people, or your own mind that sometimes gets to you. Whether you’re oddly calm, having to work with mild anxiety, or find yourself in the throes of full blown panic...

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A Scientist's Tale (The Dharma Toolkit Daily, Episode 3)

By Centre Team on Tue, 24 Mar, 2020 - 23:26

A perfectly formed wee diamond of an episode featuring response and analysis from someone who knows what it’s like at the sharp end of working with viruses in a laboratory setting.

Danabhadri is our guest today, helping us move past the clinical language of “quarantines” and “isolation” towards a practical experience of interconnectedness. Evoking beautifully why that matters, she says:

“The virus is not the monster from the deep. It evolved on this planet the same way we did.” 

Hers is an urgent, challenging, ultimately empathetic...

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The Community Toolkit for Uncertain Times

The Unexpected Intimacy of Online (The Dharma Toolkit Daily, Episode 2)

By Centre Team on Tue, 24 Mar, 2020 - 11:41

Today’s episode brings friends together from Ireland, England and the USA to look at the very technology that connect us for use in things like this. Come and get meta with us about Zoom!

With the launch of our daily meditations we discuss how better versions of the Internet and its underlying technologies mean an evolution – and possibly a revolution – in how we conceive of Buddhist practice (and everything else) in community. 

What does a mature web context for...

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Turning Towards Uncertain Times (The Dharma Toolkit Daily, Episode 1)

By Centre Team on Sat, 21 Mar, 2020 - 00:51

Welcome to The Dharma Toolkit Daily, our new podcast from The Buddhist Centre to keep you company through the weeks or months ahead in these extraordinary coronavirus times. 

We’ll be with you every week day with a diverse range of guests to renew your sense of a wider Dharma community standing with you. What better way to stay connected than to hear the voices of friends and strangers who understand something of what you may be going through in your particular...