Awareness, or mindfulness, is the keystone of the Buddhist path and of any truly human life. The Buddha's teaching on what awareness is and how to practise it is vast, and profound, and takes us far beyond what we might usually associate with the word 'mindfulness'. It requires a willingness to open our hearts and a good deal of courage to enter upon this way. Are you up for the challenge? Prajnahridaya explores how cultivating awareness is central and crucial to our existential situation, as well as evoking some of the wonders and treasures we can expect to discover if we dedicate ourselves to this practice. This talk was given at Sheffield Buddhist Centre, 2025.

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Join our Buddhist community in the beautiful Quantock Hills.

An exciting opportunity for enthusiastic cooks to join our kitchen team for 6-8 weeks during our summer retreat season. You’ll develop vegan cooking skills with our experienced chef, Jimmy, learning everything from simple salads to complex curries and delicious desserts. In the summer months, the majority of our produce comes from our wonderful walled garden. You’ll work with our garden team growing and harvesting, bringing fresh organic food from soil to plate. 

For more information, contact volunteer.alfoxton@gmail.com

£6,000 raised help raise another £2,000 to reach the target

Ratnavandana is a much loved and appreciated meditation retreat leader, kalyana mitra, preceptor to 29 people and friend to many others. She worked in the Order and Movement from 1980 until 2006 in various roles - at a time when there were no Triratna workplace pensions or opportunities to save for later life.   

Ratnavandana has been living in the depths of rural Wales for the past 17 years – and is therefore completely dependent on a car to reach the nearest shops as well as her doctor, dentist, optician and so on. Also to get to and from Taraloka for example, where she continues to lead retreats. Now her 17-year-old car finally needs replacing.

Through Abhayaratna Trust we are aiming to raise £8,000 to enable Ratnavandana to buy a reliable secondhand car and also, importantly, spend a few hundred pounds on a new website to sell her beautiful 'fleeting world cards' to help towards her future living costs.

 By supporting this appeal, you will enable Ratnavandana to continue living in a setting she both loves and shares with her many visitors.

 To donate to Ratnavandana today please click HERE to donate in sterling and HERE to donate in other currencies.

Thank you very much,

Sanghadevi and the Abhayaratna Trust Team

Could you be our next cook or do our publicity?

Bhante Urgyen Sangharakshita envisioned Adhisthana as a place of blessings, where the worldwide Triratna Buddhist Community would gather and engage wholeheartedly with his radical vision of the Dharma in all its breadth, depth and clarity. As we move out of the 10th anniversary year of Adhisthana’s opening and into celebrating the 100th anniversary of Sangharakshita’s birth, our founder and teacher’s vision remains dynamic and alive.

Central to unfolding this vision are Adhisthana’s two single-sex residential communities, committed to a life of Dharma service in supportive semi-monastic conditions. Here work, play and practice all blend into a unified whole; a total and integrated spiritual life. Sangharakshita’s vivid presence lies at the centre of a broad mandala of activity benefiting the Order, the movement and beyond.

The Adhisthana Operations Team supports this stream of blessings by tending to the practical running of the site: from cooking to cleaning, from gardening to online communication. We give ourselves freely in the spirit of open-handed generosity, our actions performed in devotion to The Three Jewels. We are supported financially to live a beautifully simple yet rich life: working together for the good of Buddhism, immersed in Bhante’s distinctive presentation of the Dharma, deepening our spiritual friendships. The Operations Team is wonderfully diverse in age, experience and character, yet united in our dedication to seeing Bhante’s vision radiate out into the world.

As the Adhisthana mandala expands, so do the opportunities to serve. We want to hear from any Order member or mitra who has asked for ordination who feels a calling to realise this vision of community living and team-based right livelihood alongside us.

While we want to hear from you regardless of a particular role, we are actively offering two opportunities: firstly, a cook to work alongside our kitchen manager in offering nourishment to all who visit; secondly, someone to help tell Adhisthana’s story to the world through publicity. Experience in these areas is helpful but not essential. The fundamental requirement is that you want to deepen your going for refuge to The Three Jewels in an intensive practice setting.

If you want to explore taking this precious opportunity, please contact me at prakashamitra@adhisthana.org. You can read more about the roles here. I look forward to hearing from you soon. 

Love,

Prakashamitra

Operational Manager, Adhisthana

Padmavajra's wonderful series on the Dhammapada, the most popular of early Buddhist texts. All of the Buddha's core teachings are here - held in heart and mind there's more than enough in the Dhammapada to take us as far in our practice as we can imagine, and then on beyond...

Excerpted from the talk Mindfulness is the Way to the Deathless as part of the series The Dhammapada - the Buddha's Way of Truth given at Padmaloka Retreat Centre, 2007, as part of the Dharma Training Course for Mitras.

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Subscribe to our Dharmabytes podcast:  On Apple Podcasts | On Spotify | On Google Podcasts

Bite-sized inspiration three times every week.

Subscribe to our Free Buddhist Audio podcast:  On Apple Podcasts | On Spotify | On Google Podcasts

A full, curated, quality Dharma talk, every week. 3,000,000 downloads and counting!

Subscribe using these RSS feeds or search for Free Buddhist Audio or Dharmabytes in your favourite podcast service!

Help us keep FBA Podcasts free for everyone: donate now!

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Beautifully read by Sangharakshita, these readings are taken from the oldest scriptural texts and evoke the real spirit of early Buddhism - the struggles, the joys and the triumphs of ordinary people who followed the path to Truth. Appears in Readings from the Pali Canon recorded in 2000 to mark the Digital Legacy project to begin transferring Dharmachakra's archive to digital format!

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Subscribe to our Dharmabytes podcast:  On Apple Podcasts | On Spotify | On Google Podcasts

Bite-sized inspiration three times every week.

Subscribe to our Free Buddhist Audio podcast:  On Apple Podcasts | On Spotify | On Google Podcasts

A full, curated, quality Dharma talk, every week. 3,000,000 downloads and counting!

Subscribe using these RSS feeds or search for Free Buddhist Audio or Dharmabytes in your favourite podcast service!

Help us keep FBA Podcasts free for everyone: donate now!

Follow Free Buddhist Audio: YouTube  |  Instagram  |  Twitter  |  Facebook  |  Soundcloud

We are delighted to announce the release of a brand new edition of Living with Awareness, Sangharakshita’s well-loved exposition on the Satipatthana Sutta.

This new edition, available in paperback and eBook formats, uses text updated during the Complete Works of Sangharakshita project, and is the first in a new ‘Classic Sangharakshita’ series launching this year to mark the centenary of the author’s birth.

In Living with Awareness Sangharakshita outlines the transformative power of mindfulness communicated in the Satipatthana Sutta, linking it to the Four Noble Truths and the Eightfold Path. Sangharakshita offers practical advice for integrating mindfulness into daily life, fostering wisdom, compassion, and peace. The book encourages us to live with presence, deepening understanding of impermanence, and improving relationships.

New editions of Living with Kindness and Chapter One of A Survey of Buddhism, will be published later in the spring and summer 2025, with more to come in 2026.

Order your copy now!

26 de abril, sabado

16:00-17:30 

En Sala Dāna, Calle de Luis Vélez de Guevara 9, Madrid (metro Tirso de Molina)

Los cuatro niveles de conciencia con Vasily

¿Realmente vemos la realidad tal como es? 

En nuestra vida cotidiana, solemos estar tan atrapados en la prisa y la distracción que apenas percibimos el mundo, a nosotros mismos o a los demás con claridad. En esta charla exploraremos los Cuatro niveles de conciencia, una enseñanza profunda basada en la tradición budista de la Atención plena.

A través de ejemplos, reflexiones y meditaciones guiadas, aprenderemos a despertar una mirada más clara y profunda, transformando nuestra percepción del mundo y nuestra conexión con la realidad.

Te invitamos a descubrir una nueva forma de ver y experimentar la vida.