On-Line Buddhafield Dharma: part III

In the last of our three-part series featuring essays from the newly-released Buddhafield Dharma Series I, Triratna News brings you three more essays from Order Members in the Buddhafield Sangha.

Khemasuri, in ‘Building an Ethical Underworld’, undertakes a fascinating exploration of the synergies between modern Systems Thinking and the Dharma, asking the question “how can we set up the conditions for change?” Provocatively subtitled, ‘Lessons from the Mafia’, she draws parallels between the Mafia and the Sangha: both originate outside the traditional institutions of civil
Society, and being ‘outside the box’ are not bound by convention or traditional values and behaviour - the difference being, of course, that the Sangha exists to promote what she calls an ‘ethical underworld’ rather than a criminal underworld!
(click here for the PDF version)

Kamalashila, in ‘Community, Nature, and Reality’, offers a set of guidelines for creating effective and satisfying community - which he defines as perhaps the most urgent and difficult challenge facing our individualistic, disconnected world. Significantly, this comes out of his eighteen-month solitary retreat in the Welsh hills, where he discovered that “being close to nature provides wings for my fledgling understanding of things”.
(click here for the PDF version)

Finally, Lokabandhu, in ‘Shouting Out Beauty - listening to the Wisdom of Nature’, explores how the natural open-air settings of Buddhafield retreats provide the perfect - though challenging conditions to explore the Buddha’s classic teaching of the Noble Eightfold Path.
(click here for the PDF version)

Buddhafield Dharma Series I is a collection of on-line essays exploring Buddhafield’s approach to the Dharma and its application of the Dharma to the great issues of our time, both individual and collective.