News and reviews from across the worldwide Triratna Buddhist Community (formerly known as the Friends of the Western Buddhist Order (FWBO) and Trailokya Bauddha Mahasangha Sahayaka Gana (TBMSG) in India)
Free Buddhist Audio is the online source for Dharma talks and meditation resources from the Triratna Buddhist Community. We are visited by people all over the world, with 150,000 users every year accessing more than 1000 talks from 11 different countries. And since we launched at the end of 2006, we have served over 1 million Dharma downloads!
The FBA team has just revamped the home page with an important message from our Director, Candradasa:
Click to Listen!
In order to provide our services at Free Buddhist Audio, we depend on the support of our community of users. Websites like ours are complex and cost a lot to maintain, and while many have given generously over the years it still surprises us that less than 1% of people who download ever make a contribution to the site.
So, if you appreciate the work of Free Buddhist Audio please consider making a supporting contribution now. You make it possible for us to spread the Dharma throughout the world... Thank you!
This is the final part of our celebrations to mark the launch of Gautama Buddha, a major new series of talks by Vishvapani available now on Free Buddhist Audio with specially selected excerpts from the talks available below.
It’s fitting that this companion series of talks to ‘Gautama Buddha – The Life And Teachings Of The Awakened One’(Quercus, 2011) can be heard in the context of their source material and also of the great Indian oral tradition that remembered and reverenced Gautama over millennia. Everything we know about the Buddha has survived as a result of being passed on in that way, from person to person, and Free Buddhist Audio seeks to continue this essential work. This fresh re-imagining of the Buddha by Vishvapani is an ideal place to start for anyone who has ever wondered what Buddhism was all about or simply wished to listen for how one person’s quest after truth can resonate with their own, often in unexpected ways.
In talk 1, ‘Searching for the Buddha’, Vishvapani explores the presence of nature in the Pali suttas, exploring its significance in the texts, in our own contemporary mental landscapes and in the imaginative life of a country and its people. Ancient India comes alive as we wander with the Buddha, facing his fears amongst the ghosts of the jungle.
“There is value in seeing the Buddha as different from us, of unearthing the society and the culture in which he lived, that shows us things of actual meaning and significance: the value of changing our states of mind, and how that creates a whole world view, and the value of facing even the most difficult and dangerous fearful aspects of our experience.”
Listen to 'Hidden Treasures of the Pali Canon' FBA Dharmabyte:
In his second talk, ‘Imagining Gautama’, Vishvapani traces his own relationship to the Buddha, from early family connections arising out of the turmoil of war to his experience of writing the book itself. In doing so he explores the tricky work of trying to engage with the imagination constrained and disciplined by the historical evidence. What emerges from his work with the Pali texts is a portrait of the Buddha and his world where it's impossible to miss the vital sense of a man questing for a coherent vision of reality.
Listen to a 'Reading Of The Attadanda Sutta':
‘The Buddha’s Personality’, the third in the series, takes us past the traditional narrative and drama to ask what the Buddha was actually like. Great artists have tried and failed to grasp the essence of the Buddha's character, and beyond the veils of history, legend and the texts themselves we encounter a vivid, felt sense of the Buddha's personality. In a series of beautifully observed close-up drawings from the Pali Canon we are left with a portrait of spiritual genius that is both enigmatically distant and thoroughly human.
'What Kind of Person Was the Buddha?'
‘The Buddha and Society’ - in this wide-ranging, riveting talk Vishvapani gives us the Buddha as a radical, as a holy man, as pragmatist, as tamer of demons, as visionary - all these and more, and all in relation to the society Gautama took part in. Some provocative words and questions from the Buddha and from our speaker as we try to get to grips with a world vastly different from our own. What was the Buddha's social vision, and what can we learn from it? This is essential listening and holds some surprising insights into the life and times of a great sage in and out of his own culture and history.
FBA Dharmabyte: 'The Spirit World & The Taming of Mara'
‘The Buddha’s Vision’: A fitting conclusion to a wonderfully insightful series. When the Buddha finally sat down under the Bodhi tree and saw deeply into the nature of things, what had brought him to that point? And what happened next? In his final take on the Buddha's journey of the heart and mind, Vishvapani focuses in on the Buddha's experience before, during and after Enlightenment, bringing his nuanced, perceptive reading to the words the Buddha himself is said to have employed in order to best evoke his experiences as he struggled to give voice to them.
Subscribe to a weekly Dharma talk with our FBA Podcast along with our brand new Dharmabytes to hear more on this fascinating series.
FBA needs your support! Become a Supporting Friend to Free Buddhist Audio, dedicated to providing free access to Dharma talks.
Vishvapani
Vishvapani is a Buddhist writer and teacher based in Cardiff, Wales. He discovered meditation and Buddhism at the age of 14 and became a Buddhist soon after. He became a member of the Triratna Buddhist Order in 1992. Vishvapani is a regular contributor to BBC Radio 4’s Thought for the Day (a reflection on the news in 'Today' the main UK radio breakfast news programme). See Vishvapani’s 2009 Triratna Buddhist Order Convention talk, ‘Recollections of the Buddha’.
Vishvapani will be broadcasting on Thought for the Day on May 17 (for Wesak), May 25 and June 2 at around 7.48 am GMT. These will be available as a podcast and on the Thought for the Day Website. He will be a panelist on the BBC1 ethical debate programme 'The Big Questions' at 10.00 am on Sunday 15th May, available afterwards on BBC iPlayer.
This is the second part of our celebrations to mark the launch of Gautama Buddha, a major new series of talks by Vishvapani available now on Free Buddhist Audio.
Viriyalila, FBA’s head of community development, was present for the opening talk of the series, given in Manchester in the UK, where she picked up a copy of Vishvapani’s new book, Gautama Buddha - The Life and Teachings Of The Awakened One. She met with him at the local café to discuss the writing of a substantial piece of new work on the Buddha. Sitting with a cranberry scone and a latte, Vishvapani described how this book has become his main project over the last 3 years.
Commissioned to write the biography by Quercus, he quickly found himself involved in a much bigger endeavour than he had imagined:
“I thought there were already lots of books on the Buddha that you could turn to and get a reasonable idea about what he was like and what he did in his life. The first surprise was discovering that there actually aren’t books like the one I’ve written. There are many books that retell the legends and there are books that treat the historical Buddha fairly briefly, but I wanted to do more then just retell the legends…”
Vishvapani talked about wanting to get as close as he could take us to the Historical Buddha. “Being a Buddhist myself, I didn’t want to do it as a scholar would do, for me the Buddha was enlightened, that’s my starting point when I read those texts…The book is very thorough. In terms of using the Pali Canon as a basis for a biographical portrait of the Buddha there is no other book that is anything like as substantial as this…”
Viriyalila was interested in understanding how Vishvapani’s Buddhist practice influenced his writing of the book:
“Because I am a Buddhist, I don’t question that the Buddha was enlightened, I take it that he was Enlightened and that the suttas, to a more or less accurate degree, represent his efforts to explain his understanding of his life and communicate that to people.”
All of us on the team at Free Buddhist Audio have appreciated the opportunity to work closely with Vishvapani to bring this series to our audience, doing extensive work to provide you with the best quality audio recordings and highly detailed indexing of the talks themselves.
We'd like to bring you a special reading from the book, given in the talk The Buddha's Vision (Bristol Buddhist Centre, Feb 2011), the story of Bahiya set in the context of historical time, place and lifestyle:
There is much that is important for reflection here – the Dharma made fascinating by dint of the author's depth of engagement with Buddhist practice and the sheer breadth of his cultural reference.
Join the FBA Community!
Subscribe to a weekly Dharma talk with our FBA Podcast along with our brand new Dharmabytes to hear more on this fascinating series.
FBA needs your support! Become a Supporting Friend to Free Buddhist Audio, dedicated to providing free access to Dharma talks.
Vishvapani
Vishvapani is a Buddhist writer and teacher based in Cardiff, Wales. He discovered meditation and Buddhism at the age of 14 and became a Buddhist soon after. He became a member of the Triratna Buddhist Order in 1992. See Vishvapani’s 2009 Triratna Buddhist Order Convention talk, ‘Recollections of the Buddha’.
Vishvapani is a regular contributor to BBC Radio 4’s Thought for the Day. He will be broadcasting in that slot on Radio 4's 'Today', the main UK radio breakfast news programme, on May 17 (for Wesak), May 25 and June 2 at around 7.48 am GMT. These will be available as a podcast and on the Thought for the Day Website. He will be a panelist on the BBC1 ethical debate programme 'The Big Questions' at 10.00 am on Sunday 15th May, available afterwards on BBC iPlayer.
Over the past few months, Vishvapani has delivered a significant new series of talks, Gautama Buddha, to launch his book ‘Gautama Buddha – Life And Teachings Of The Awakened One’ (Quercus, 2011). Now available exclusively on FreeBuddhist Audio, this superb five-talk series highlights various key themes woven into the legendary accounts of the Buddha’s life and the historical records of his great vision of reality that have come down to us through the ages.
Listen to FBA Dharmabyte – "Engaging with the Historical Buddha”
Bringing a broad cultural awareness and a depth of personal practice to bear on his subject, Vishvapani's biography of Gautama takes us into the world he inhabited, offering glimpses of the Buddha's personality and exploring his relationship with nature and his own society as evidenced in the earliest Buddhist texts. The insights afforded into our own conditioning and cultural context are both profoundly revealing and challenging.
Gautama Buddha: The Life and Teachings of Awakened One
Vishvapani speaks eloquently throughout his series about the experience of writing his book and of his desire to portray the historical Buddha as closely as possible. For the more we see the Buddha in his own time and place – the more we can see him in his historical specificity –the more likely we are to understand his teachings. Vishvapani wished to bring to life: “The person who actually lived, walked, and breathed, who was involved in a society, the person who was trying to convince the people around him that he was telling the truth, that he had gained some kind of wisdom, that Buddha…”
He explains, “How can we write a life of someone who is beyond ordinary experience? The reason we can is that after his Enlightenment, the Buddha devoted himself to communicating what it was through his teachings, through his examples, through his actions, and through the character of community established. Writing about the Buddha, reading about the Buddha, is really a way of contemplating the Buddha.”
Vishvapani is a Buddhist writer and teacher based in Cardiff, Wales. He discovered meditation and Buddhism at the age of 14 and became a Buddhist soon after. He became a member of the Triratna Buddhist Order in 1992. See Vishvapani’s 2009 Triratna Buddhist Order Convention talk, ‘Recollections of the Buddha’.
Vishvapani is a regular contributor to BBC Radio 4’s Thought for the Day. He will be broadcasting on that slot Radio 4's 'Today', the main UK radio breakfast news programme, on May 17 (for Wesak), May 25 and June 2 at around 7.48 am GMT. These will be available as a podcast and on the Thought for the Day Website. He will be a panelist on the BBC1 ethical debate programme 'The Big Questions' at 10.00 am on Sunday 15th May, available afterward on BBC iPlayer.
Spreading the Dharma Sharing our Practice Connecting our Community Worldwide
Viriyalila's UK Centre Tour in Search of 500 Supporting Friends
Viriyalila’s been on a promotional tour to the UK this month, raising funds and awareness for our beloved Free Buddhist Audio. With visits to Liverpool, Nottingham, Sheffield, Manchester, Bristol, Glastonbury, Leeds, Birmingham and West London, she's been enjoying sharing stories about the history of the project, and the amazing transformation from Dharmachakra Tapes to the web space we have now. From distributing a few thousand tapes and cds a year to sending out over 400,000 talks annually via the internet we are awed by our collective success. Each practitioner who gives a talk, each person who listens, all our donors, all our volunteers working to make the site even better – we would not be here without all of your contributions! Together we bring this inspiring Dharma resource into being and share it with people all over the world.
And all of this is offered for free – for two important reasons:
Simplicity – we want to offer a simple and aesthetic experience when people visit fba. You will not find any advertisements or pop-ups windows when you visit our site. Just a clean, simple, beautiful web experience, one that we hope is conducive to supporting your practice as you deepen your understanding and seek inspiration in the many talks and texts we have available.
Accessibility – we want everyone who longs for meaning and looks to the Buddha, the Dharma, and the Sangha, to find the Triratna Buddhist Community ready and willing to share ourselves, our practices, and our understandings of the Buddha's teachings. We want to be there for anyone with access to a computer and an internet connection. And we reach far more people by giving access to our archives for free then if we were to charge for the service. Urgyen Sangharakshita, our Community's founder, is very happy knowing that talks he gave many years ago to relatively small audiences are now being listened to by people around the globe. Indeed, since we launched four short years ago, more than one million talks by many members of the Triratna Buddhist Order have been downloaded from 118 countries!
We offer fba freely to all, but we are dependent on our donors to keep it all going.If you use the site and appreciate it, please support it. We've worked out that if we can find just 500 Friends to give £10/€12/$15 each month, then together we will secure the future of free buddhist audio. This is an average – some people will give less, some more – but any amount is most welcomed. As of the start of this year, we have 125 'Supporting Friends' out of the 500 we need to continue our work effectively.
We love what we do, and we know many of you do too! We urgently need more financial support. If you have been considering taking out a standing order, or making a large one-off donation, please do so today. Our team needs your backing, the world needs your gift of the Dharma...
Spreading the Dharma Sharing our Practice Connecting our Community Worldwide
At Free Buddhist Audio our mission is to provide opportunities for people all over the world to receive the gift of the Dharma and connect with the Triratna Buddhist Community. As we bring our Seven Days of FBA to a close, we want to thank you for listening to our stories, meeting members of our community and celebrating our accomplishments with us.
Our team is passionate about providing free access to the Buddha's teachings and we rely on people's generosity in order to accomplish this goal. There are many people in the world, in our own community, who do not have the financial resources to obtain materials and resources for their Dharma study. In the words of Bhante Sangharakshita, "The spirit of giving permeates all aspects of life ... when you are giving in some form everyday, it does change our mind... we get into the habit of sharing, of thinking a little bit more about other people." Sangharakshita is so happy with our work he took the time out to send us some encouragement! Here's what he had to say about the vital importance of supporting Free Buddhist Audio:
Please consider Giving the Gift of the Dharma today by making a contribution to Free Buddhist Audio. Your gift will make a difference to so many people whose lives are changed through daily contact with the Buddha's teaching. Your gift will help more local Triratna Buddhist communities around the world share their own talks online, and allow us to continue translating our site into multiple languages. We will continue to be there for practitioners like you, providing our free Dharma service to thousands of people from all walks of life.
As always, we are passionately committed to maintaining free access to our talks, so that you and other practitioners can tune into the Dharma whenever you want, wherever you are, for as long as you like. We’d like that to be the case for generations to come…
Spreading the Dharma Sharing our Practice Connecting our Community Worldwide
Rose F. Kennedy wisely said, "Life isn't a matter of milestones but of moments." In reflecting on how far Free Buddhist Audio has come since its inception in late 2006, we can see the many years of setting up conditions to bring into being what many have come to experience as a dynamic, beautifully crafted, easy to use webspace full of amazing Dharma resources. We have enjoyed sharing some of our stories with you this week, and what these amount to are not just many milestones, but many moments marked by deep inspiration in the Dharma.
At FBA we aspire to provide free access to the Dharma for people all over the world. To provide the best service possible we need the help of many people in our international community - from those who have recorded Sangharakshita from 1964 to the present time, to those giving and recording talks all over the Triratna world today. We thank the ones who were willing to work with us in developing our Community Upload system that allows each local Triratna center and project to contribute directly to our growing archive. We thank our team and our volunteers who do indexing, transcribing, translating, promoting, and fundraising to help keep the whole system functioning and growing. And, of course, we thank all those who are able to contribute financially to support the team which holds the project together at its core, providing vision, structure and resources to preserve our treasure house of teachings and make them readily available to all who desire access to the Dharma.
FBA Moments and Milestones
How many people visit our site? How many downloads are completed each year?
Earlier this year, we anticipated reaching an important milestone. Based on a number of factors, we estimated that at some point this month, the one millionth Dharma talk will have been downloaded through our podcast and the site itself. To put this in perspective, we used to sell a few thousand tapes and cds a year! So this is an amazing accomplishment - and an amazing improvement!
What was our most downloaded talk?
'Just Sitting' by Subhuti, given last summer at the European Chairs Assembly with over 45,000 downloads. Our next popular download is Dhammadinna's 'What is Mind' talk given on the 2001 Triratna Order Convention with around 34,000 downloads.
Who are our visitors? Where are they from?
Our analysis shows that we had nearly 100,000 unique visitors over the past year, coming from 178 different countries, viewing over a million FBA pages on nearly 200,000 visits. The google map like the ones we showed during our Buddhist Center tours this year, can be viewed here: FBA's Top Ten Countries (and their top ten cities) and FBA's First 100 out of 178 Countries
Our top country this year was the UK with 65,175 unique visitors coming from nearly 800 different cities and towns. It's no surprise to the FBA team that the top city was London, followed by all the cities with major Triratna activites: Manchester, Cambridge, Birmingham, Bristol, Sheffield, Glasgow, Ipswich, Norwich, and Edinburgh.
FBA tracked 54,022 visitors from the United States last year, every state being represented in our user profiles! The top 10 states were California, New York, New Hampshire, Texas, Florida, Massachusetts, Arizona, Washington, Illinois and Pennsylvania. We have Triratna Centers in 4 of those ten states which indicates that FBA plays an important role in introducing new people to the Triratna Buddhist Community through the internet as a distinct medium in itself.
Mobile devices are seeing an increase in usage, with over 5000 visits from mobile devices, including the newly released iPad. Our new site is built on new standards that will make mobile use much easier in the years to come.
Emphasis on our growing International Community
Earlier this year we completely redesigned the site (FBA 2.0!) based on feedback from our community of users. Building on the original structures and functionality, we put in place a new menu system and redesigned the visual layout, at the same time expanding our capacity for organizing the growing archives. As you may have read earlier this week, we also improved and expanded our search engine to provide better access to our range of audio and text archives - over 1000 recorded talks and 17 million words! To further our vision of an international Buddhist Community connected online, the site now places more emphasis on local archives of talks and on community use of our resources. Our brand new Community sectionlets you join Free Buddhist Audio and get access to unreleased recordings, keep up to date with our Facebook and Twitter pages, and help us build the future with support for fundraising in your local community. In January, we anticipate our 1000th member... We are very happy indeed about that!
Aside from promoting ourCommunity Places project within the Triratna Sangha, we've also created our first translation team, and visited (or otherwise been in touch with) people at Buddhist Centers around the world, providing encouragement, resources and support to help them get what they need from our service. In October, our 500th talk was posted through the Community Upload System. This important milestone was accomplished when Vajratara delivered, recorded and uploaded, 'The Three Jewels of Buddhism' at the Sheffield Buddhist Centre. We now have talks in 11 different languages from 10 countries!
There are so many benefits to bringing our international community together in this way. Dhammarati, the chair of the College of Public Preceptors (those responsible for all ordinations into the Triratna Buddhist Order), appreciates the opportunity to have access to what other Triratna practitioners are doing in other parts of the world. Here's what he has to say about us...
Our Team
In response to our success of the past few years, we have increased the size of our team. We now have 5 members (3 full-time and 2 part-time) along with a great group of volunteers. We see this very much as an investment in people in order to take Free Buddhist Audio to the next level - so we can continue to provide high quality access to the Dharma, offer professional archival services to Triratna projects worldwide, and help build our international community online.
To support our team - and all these new developments! - we launched this spring a major fundraising campaign to secure the future of FBA, aiming to grow our regular income by finding 500 new Supporting friends able to give monthly contributions. We also conducted a promotional tour of Buddhist Centres in Britain and the United States, with plans for further visits in the coming year. Our aim is to get FBA fans and ambassadors working in teams around the world to help us with promotions and fundraising for this amazing resource. If you think you can help us in any way with that - please do get in touch!
Free Buddhist Audio's plans for 2011 include:
• Creating translated versions of the newly designed site, beginning with Spanish, German, and Hindi. • Working to make available more Dharma talks by women currently stored on cassette tapes in various locations around the world. • Developing an exciting partnership with the new Triratna webspace project thebuddhistcentre.com • Striving to provide support and guidance for more Triratna Centers, businesses and projects looking to create their own archival spaces on Free Buddhist Audio. • Creating customized FBA e-newsletters for Buddhist Centers around the world. • Continuing to build relationships with Triratna Centers including visits and FBA sponsored day retreats. • Emphasizing what is unique in our Triratna Community within the wider Buddhist world. • Introducing new services specifically for the Triratna Buddhist Order.
Spreading the Dharma Sharing our Practice Connecting our Community Worldwide
Like the thousand arms of Avolokitesvara, many hands work together to make Dharma talks available on Free Buddhist Audio. I'm Viriyalila, FBA's promotions and fundraising director, and I'm a great fan of all the people who work together to bring our service into being. I wanted to write something to celebrate our great 'Host of Volunteers' around the world who help the core team here develop the site. So here I am following a thread that began by listening to a talk originally uploaded through our Community Places system as a single long piece of audio. The talk is called Loving What Is by Vajrapriya, and its development is quite an amazing little story in itself that touches several people's lives in a profound way...
I immediately found Vajrapriya's talk to be very heartfelt, one that I resonated with my own approach to metta practice. As I listened a few times, I began to really appreciate being able to touch into another person’s Dharma practice so directly, just by listening to them give a talk. Afterwards, I began thinking about all the people who will listen to this talk, the person who recorded it, the person who made it into tracks for easier listening. Who are these folk who help create the services Free Buddhist Audio has to offer? So I decided to connect with three key volunteers involved with producing Loving What Is and asked them to share a bit about their experience of coming into contact with this bit of Dharma through FBA. Let me introduce you to: Vajrapriya, who gave the talk, Michl Britsch, who indexed the talk, and Mary Salome, who edited the talk into tracks. May their generosity in making this talk available on Free Buddhist Audio be of great benefit to many beings.
Vajrapriya, on Loving What Is…
“This talk called on a lot from me. I was due to support Padmavajra who was leading a Men's Event at Padmaloka. Just ring the bells in meditation I thought. But he became ill at the last moment, so I found myself with a talk to write in a couple of days (as did Jnanavaca who boldly stepped in for the companion talk "River of Fire"). But the hardest part was addressing the theme, which is basically about metta. Unlike Padmavajra, who rarely talks about anything else, I don't really feel very well qualified to talk about metta, as I'm a typical "hate type". I was very glad to be forced into that position, because it made me reflect about how I understand metta, and the way that it manifests differently for different people. In the talk I discussed those different types in terms of the five Jinas. Seeing things this way gave me more confidence in my own expression of metta: I'm not a big love bunny, but it comes out in its own way.”
“I also enjoyed sharing my own nitty gritty practice of dealing with hatred, clearing the way for a more mettaful response. The image of clearing the obstacles to metta, rather than slogging away to generate it, came spontaneously, and I was very grateful for that teaching from myself! People seemed to recognise a lot of the difficulties I described, and appreciated the honesty with which I expressed it. It's such a relief to realise we're not alone with our peculiarities!”
Giving of oneself in the form of a Dharma talk is a very generous act, and recording it to be able to preserve it as part of our oral tradition, sharing it with our worldwide community of practitioners...this is the act of an aspiring Bodhisattva.
Better Access to What we Love
On Free Buddhist Audio we love to have talks broken down into tracks (indexing), which helps our users in a couple of key ways. Having the talks indexed means we can return more accurate and helpful search engine results, as well as provide easy access to small bits of Dharma for use in personal or group study. I use them for playing relevant quotes while giving Dharma talks myself! So on the site we ask for volunteers to do tracking or indexing, which is a job in two parts: listening to and outlining the talk before tracking it, and then re-editing the original recording into its newly tracked form for re-uploading onto the site.
During the summer, Michl Britsch was inspired to get involved with FBA by tracking a talk. The connection was made with Eric, FBA's Community Liaison team member who co-ordinates the generous efforts ofour volunteers to make our service even better. Again, the desire to meet this aspiring Bodhisattva in person arose, so we contacted Michl to express our appreciation and invite him to share volunteer experience...
Volunteering with FBA - Listening Deeply to the Dharma
"I, [Michl Britsch], decided to volunteer this summer when I was surfing FBA and saw the 'get involved' button. That was exactly what I wanted - to get involved in something that makes sense.
At first it was a bit strange to listen to a talk which I hadn't picked out myself. I do not listen to a lot of Dharma talks each year but rather I listen to certain talks many times. They become a friend, a companion, like an album by a favourite band. By listening to a talk over and over again I can sense the layers of meaning sinking in more and manifesting on deeper levels.
Indexing a talk was a bit different, but just as enjoyable. I think for the first time I really was looking up words, checking background information on wikipedia and really (hand-)writing notes. It was amazing to listen with this kind of mindfulness. It was beautiful how with every listen the form and the structure of the talk became just a little more clear, like sculpting.
As a musician I can say indexing a talk can be just as much fun (and work for sure) as writing lyrics to a song or arranging a piece of music. Thanks Free Buddhist Audio for the opportunity to GET INVOLVED!"
The Final Bits - Only Techies Apply!
Mary Salome, an FBA volunteer since 2008, has put her extensive audio skills to work on transferring a number of DAT cassettes to more readily accessible digital formats. She has an interest in working through the archive of talks given by women in the 80s and 90s, which are stored in various places around the world on cassettes. I approached her to do the work of breaking the talk into tracks as part of this article, but the timing for her was of great personal challenge.
Metta and Difficult Realities
"Often when I edit audio, I stop listening to content because I'm focusing on other issues, such as removing microphone noise or coughing, correcting levels, filtering hiss, etc. When I began working on this file, I was grieving the recent loss of a cousin to suicide. While I was editing, a close friend attempted suicide, and I came home to his note. A week after that, one of my aunts died, and about a month after that, another aunt was diagnosed with breast cancer.
To say life interrupted my volunteering would be a serious understatement. When I was able to come back to the file, I found that I heard what was being said in a way I didn't in the beginning. The idea of loving what is resonated with my need to accept, with metta toward myself and others, the difficult reality of the situation. The file was a kind of companion to my process, and working on it was a healthy distraction on an emotional level. You never know how a recording is going to affect people later."
With Much Appreciation
As I finished off this article, I listened again to Loving What Is, and again reflected on all the conditions that go into sharing the Dharma in the ways Free Buddhist Audio does. Towards the end of his talk Vajrapriya shares something someone once said to him, that "Metta is what arises when you realize that being human isn't easy." With each of these stories from our three volunteers comes a bit of who they are, and who they became as a result of coming into contact with this Dharma gem.
On behalf of all of us at Free Buddhist Audio we thank our Host of Volunteers - your time and energy in helping to make FBA a better service is very deeply appreciated, your efforts benefit many beings.
Spreading the Dharma Sharing our Practice Connecting our Community Worldwide
Here at Free Buddhist Audio we are a thoroughly international team, with volunteers around the world and core team members in the USA (east and west coasts), England and Saudi Arabia! So we are very happy to let you know today that our efforts to turn the site into a more international platform are well underway.
Free Buddhist Audio serves an international community. And today we'd like to give you a bit of background on how we've been setting up conditions to move towards being able to support the many languages of the Triratna world.
We received a UK government grant in 2008 to create our Community Places and community upload system. (see: Community Upload System Gains Momentum). With this we were able to set up individual archives for Buddhist centres and projects around the world, allowing for centres to upload talks directly to the site in their local languages. Places quite active with this are: Essen and Berlin, Germany; Valencia, Spain; Pune, India; Ghent, Belgium; Krakow, Poland; Paris, France; Oslo, Norway; Dharmakranti, India. You can also hear many of Subhuti's talks with simultaneous translation into Hindi on our specialist Indian Pages.
Next, we took a fresh look at the structure of our site itself. If you look down in the lower right corner of the site, you will see five little flags. Seasoned users will remember that these little flags used to take you to versions of FBA in Chinese, German, Spanish, French, and Dutch. In fact, we had full translations of the site in each language but we discovered that people from those language groups didn't much visit as there simply wasn't enough local content available and easy to find amongst all the English language material. So we successfully set about promoting use of our upload system in non-English speaking Centres and replaced the full translations with some focussed content pages instead. This means that all the talks in a particular language can now be sorted together for quick access. In 2010 we've done this for Hindi, German and Spanish, and we're looking to extend the service to cover French talks (and possibly other languages) in 2011. Chinese, however, is a very special case! There are, as yet, no Triratna talks available in Chinese, but our site has modest use amongst English speakers in China and we're proud to provide them with a clear, Buddhist source of Dharma. And so far, the site remains unblocked by the Chinese authorities, which is also perhaps a feat to be celebrated!
In general in our promotional work this year, we are aiming to communicate more directly with sanghas all over the world. This work has included creating email newsletters for local communities, and we have worked with several generous volunteers to create translations of these where needed. So far, we have publicized FBA in the Spanish, Dutch, and Swedish. In undertaking our international promotional and fundraising work, it has also become clear that we need to create donation pages in local languages in order to encourage local support! So we're happy to report that we have now finished the Spanish versions, and will soon be hard at work on the German pages. We hope this will really help folk everywhere in the Triratna Community come to feel a genuine sense that Free Buddhist Audio is made for them too!
All this is, of course, only the start of what is possible. The new version of our website has been built to accommodate multiple language versions of all the text on the site, but it remains quite a complex task to make sure we have enough diverse content that will work in sync with different translations, and to consider how best to serve the needs of particular language communities. We are very much learning as we go, and we are learning in partnership with our international users! To that end we have set up a great working translation team, with technical assistance from one of our Spanish speaking community members, and we will look again at getting the whole site translated into as many languages as seems practically useful in the coming year. Getting all our FBA pages, features sections - and our search engine! - to work well across multiple languages is quite a technological challenge. But we are determined to serve our whole community and we're excited to be at the forefront of promoting a vibrant and coherent presentation of the Dharma for all in years ahead!
Spreading the Dharma Sharing our Practice Connecting our Community Worldwide
Engagement with the Arts has long been a distinctive feature of the Triratna approach to the Dharma and Sangharakshita's view of spiritual practice in general. Free Buddhist Audio is very pleased to announce our growing collection of talks in the realm of Art & Literature. As well as a keystone recording featuring Sangharakshita in discussion with the celebrated poet Kathleen Raine, our Triratna Arts section now features a fantastic series from the Poetry East project organised at the London Buddhist Centre.
Showcasing the work of well-known contemporary poets, exploring the relationship between poetry and spiritual life, Maitreyabandhu, Director of the London Buddhist Centre, hosts bi-monthly conversations between award-winning contemporary poets and himself, also a recently decorated poet. So far Fiona Sampson, Hugo Williams, Mimi Khalvati, and David Constantine interviews have been uploaded and shared through Free Buddhist Audio'sCommunity Places.
Essential listening for lovers of the Arts!
The Poetry East format is simple: each poet is asked to provide two or three poems from the canon that have influenced their poetry; which are read first, leading the audience into a short interview with the poet, hosted by Maitreyabhandhu. He explores with them their creative life and work with emphasis on their influences, and poets they admire. This is followed by a poetry reading and questions and answers from the floor.
As the live evening is preceded by a short led meditation in order to provide the best listening conditions externally and internally, the team at Free Buddhist Audio would like to offer the same for our listening audience. Browse our guided introductions, led practices and other meditation resources from practitioners all over the world.
The team at Free Buddhist Audio is working hard to create dynamic webspaces where our community of practitioners share their understanding of the Buddha's teaching. We need your generous contributions to continue our work. Please consider a donation to Free Buddhist Audio today!
Spreading the Dharma Sharing our Practice Connecting our Community Worldwide
Idealism - strong, radical, humane - doesn't belong to the past. It keeps being reborn, and it is blossoming online. Free Buddhist Audio is there as participant and documentarian in an energized, inspired community working across generations to cultivate change.
You'll likely know Free Buddhist Audio as a webspace for Triratna centres and projects around the world to share their working out of the Buddha's teachings. Free Buddhist Audio is the modern equivalent of the foundational oral tradition - a lively, user-friendly webspace where our community can share our inspirations, our understanding of the Dharma, and our Dharma work, in creative and evolving ways.
In October, the Young Persons Group in Cambridge, England organized a Padmsambhava Day celebration for the sangha and wider community. A series of Dharma talks were given on the theme of Taming the Demons of the Modern World, which have been uploaded to Cambridge Buddhist Centre's page on Free Buddhist Audio's Community Places. Viriyalila, promotions and fundraising team member of Free Buddhist Audio, was inspired to conduct an interview with one of the organizers of the event, Arthasiddhi, who works at Windhorse Evolution, a long standing Triratna (FWBO) Right Livelihood business.
Arthasiddhi explained that a team of five volunteers had organized the event, along with a series of outdoor talks and public meditations. The group's vision was to try "to get out there in our local community and meet people who had aspirations towards making the world a better place." In the spirit of Padmasambhava's legacy, they themed the day Taming the Demons of the Modern World and had planned to give a series of talks on Jesus Green near the city centre, but the weather was slightly uncooperative for that, so this was moved to the Cambridge Buddhist Centre. The Young People's team envisioned connecting with the wider community and had the slightly mad idea to create a papier-mache globe, four-feet in diameter, which they rolled through the streets, asking people to write on the globe what they thought they could do to Change the World. The team and participants were really energized by this, bringing a creative and playful expression of their Dharma practice into the world around them.
One of the talks given at this event, The Demon of Choice, by Aryadhara, has been released as a podcast through iTunes. If you are not already a subscriber, consider joining the Free Buddhist Audiopodcast.
What follows is the interview that Viriyalila conducted with Arthasiddhi, exploring why he is active in organizing Young People's events in the sangha. The Free Buddhist Audio team is hard at work actively creating webspaces to support this sort of cross-cultural, cross-generational, cross-continent sharing of our lives, our practices, our aspirations, and our Dharma work. Please consider a donation to Dharmachakra/Free Buddhist Audio today so that we may continue to develop interactive and supportive webspaces, as well as provide free access to Dharma talks for people all over the world.
Young People and the Dharma... An Interview with Arthasiddhi from Windhorse Evolution Viriyalila: Why is it important to you to have a specific Dharma voice, as it were, for Young People in the sangha?
Arthasiddhi: Initially, as of just a few years ago, I was a bit cold to the idea of talking about Young People's Sangha activities - but over the last year or so I've come to realize that retreats specifically for people under 30 have been instrumental for creating a context that I, and others, have found deeply inspiring. These, initated by Lokabhandhu in Birmingham and then Sheffield, have absolutely sold me and others on the the idea of Young People's Sangha activities.
My personal inspiration revolves around idealism - I want to hear the Dharma being communicated in an uncompromising and authentic way, and I think this is what young people want to hear as well - an uncompromising, idealistic, energetic and inspired exposition of the Dharma. We want to see and hear people who are passionate about what they are doing.
Young people are in a different phase of life. Teenagers are just starting to experience a sense of individuation and are taking in the world around them and coming to their own assessment of what life is about. It is easy to look around us and experience so much disappointment at the lack of awareness, the lack of empathy, the lack of kindness, lack of meaning - coming into contact with an idealistic community can have a big impact on individuals in this phase of life. To meet people engaging with their ideals in a very real way through talks and by example is very encouraging for youthful idealists.
Viriyalila: What do you think inspires younger people to commit more deeply to the spiritual life?
Arthasiddhi: It's really important not to squash people's idealism, the question is how to respond to it. Folks in their 40s and 50s have gained a lot of life experience, partly through making mistakes, and perhaps can see the naivety that young people may have inherent in their strong response to idealistic principles. Understandably they may fear watching someone make the same mistakes as they did, or perhaps new ones. Does one respond to the seed of idealism or the weeds around it? Will it help idealism mature to say I wouldn't do that? I guess there are not simple answers here but people obviously need to make some of their own mistakes and they can do this in relation with others who are more mature. Viriyalila: What do you think young people relate to most in the Dharma or the Three Jewels?
Arthasiddhi: The idea of the New Society, as described by Sangharakshita. It is noticeable that this has not been talked about much until just a couple of years ago and this was the theme that was very alive on the Young People's Retreat. This really struck me on a very deep level. It is understandable that this sort of idealism - Let's change the world! - would appeal to young people. And secondly, the sangha, the importance of friendship - people that can share their idealism and work together on projects. As someone under 30 you can sometimes feel like a lost soul, when you meet other people that share your ideals it can be a real boon and you start to experience some of your own individuality. You can feel a bit like the only person that cares about certain things. There is a real hunger to meet people who share your concerns and your values. It can really encourage young people to put more of themselves on those values through friendship with others.
It is important to have a context where young people can express their energy and inspiration and where they can find ways to connect. It is also important that this is in connection with people who are wiser - and there is plenty of opportunity in the Order to be with The Wise. The way that happens and evolves is important, and looking for ways to connect and share is of great value.
Check out what's happening in our global sangha by visiting Free Buddhist Audio's Community Places!
Free Buddhist Audio needs your support to continue developing webspaces that spread the Dharma and connect our community worldwide.
Spreading the Dharma Sharing our Practice Connecting our Community Worldwide
Free Buddhist Audio has been working hard all year to provide opportunities for people all over the world to receive the gift of the Dharma and connect with the Triratna Buddhist Community. We are pleased to share with you Seven Days of FBA - featuring some personal stories from members of our online community, as well as updates on new features and a celebration of our 2010 milestones. Stay tuned for articles on Young People, Our Host of Volunteers, New Spanish Translations and more!
Seven Days of FBA - New Features
Responding to suggestions received from our online community, our team has been rolling out several new features for our services - a new and improved search engine, for both audio and text, as well as new navigation features that allow talks to be viewed as images or text. The result is A-Zed Dharma at your fingertips!
New & Improved Search Engine
Q. How do you make 17 million words and 1000+ talks easily searchable? A. With a lot of constant effort!
We're happy to introduce here the latest and greatest version of our search engine. It's been re-written to allow more flexible keywords and search items to improve the results given. We hope you'll find it useful!
Located in the upper right corner of the site, a panel appears when you begin typing in your search item. The default search is for audio, but you can also specify 'text' and adjust a few other key things, and then you're off and running. And we'll remember the way you set things for your next search - though it's always easy to change with a simple click!
If you prefer, of course, you can easily do more advanced searches in the text archive (we provide clear, plain English instructions!), which contains all of Sangharakshita's seminars, and is growing with every transcription we receive from our volunteer community. And with this, let's take the opportunity to thank our host of volunteers - your work helps make FBA a more comprehensive service that benefits many beings!
A-Zed Dharma at your Fingertips
We are also very pleased to announce new navigation features we've added to many of the pages within the site. Collections of talks can now be viewed as images or text lists, depending on what you prefer. You can also view the talks alphabetically, chronologically, or even (in relevant places) by date they were uploaded.
Themes sorted alphabetically by images...
Titles sorted alphabetically by text, newest first...
Our team is constantly working to think ahead about the needs of the community - five, ten, fifty years! As our archive grows with each new talk given around the world, we are developing systems to maintain our oral history and keep it flourishing and readily available to all. Modern innovations on the web helps us provide you with better access today and preserve our teachings for many generations to come. Please support us in our efforts!
The Triratna Buddhist Community - formerly known as the Friends of the Western Buddhist Order (FWBO) - was founded in 1967 by Sangharakshita. It is now an international movement with activities in more than 20 countries, including India. The Triratna Buddhist Community is a non-sectarian Buddhist movement which seeks promote the practice of Buddhism in a form appropriate to the modern world.
Triratna means "Three Jewels", specifically the Buddha, Dharma, and Sangha, which are the central foci of a Buddhist's life and practice. They've long been represented in our logo and we're delighted that our name will now reflect them as well.
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