“We've not been in touch for a while, as the team behind the scenes at Free Buddhist Audio have been busy little bees. We've been focusing on wider web communications for Triratna, the global Buddhist Community which we’re part of, launching www.thebuddhistcentre.com, and conducting our first online retreat!
The international online urban retreat was a test launch for an exciting new Buddhist social network we're planning, with over 500 participants helping try things out! The retreat is now over, but you can still view all the course material, as well as blog posts from the team.
Our Community archiving program has met with huge success. We now have over 900 new talks shared by Triratna Buddhist Centres and projects from all over the world. Here are two recent gems:
* "Imagination and Fantasy in the Spiritual Life", by Maitreyabandhu, given at the Manchester Buddhist Centre.
* "This Being, That Becomes", a fabulous five-week seminar from the London Buddhist Centre's Dharma Night class featuring Jnanavaca, Lilamani and Dhivan.
We're also really excited to bring you Buddhist Audio Books, featuring (to date) fourteen titles by Windhorse Publications read aloud including The Three Jewels, The Drama of Cosmic Enlightenment, Tales of Freedom and more!
The Dharma Tape History Detectives
Behind the scenes, over the summer months Mary Salome and a group of volunteers from the San Francisco Buddhist Center started up a DIY fundraiser with a dual purpose: raising funds and making more talks from the FBA archives become available online. The Dharma Tape History Detectives is a group of volunteers from the San Francisco Buddhist Center sangha organized by Mary who set out to reveal what's on the cassette tapes while raising money for Free Buddhist Audio. As an avid user of Free Buddhist Audio Mary once inquired as to why there weren’t more talks by women available. She expressed an interest in wanting to help with this, and the project was born.
She shared with us, “Originally we thought we would not be able to restore the audio to broadcast quality and so wanted to provide transcripts alongside the audio. I knew that it would not be possible for me to do this all on my own so I saw it as an opportunity to engage with other people around the work - and put a call out for more volunteers from the San Francisco Buddhist Center sangha. The process itself has been meaningful as a way to make what could be very solitary work into community work. Just speaking for myself, I find it inspiring that people are spending time writing out the words to a talk with a very dedicated and committed practice of mindfulness”.
Find out how to join in on Free Buddhist Audio's 'Get Involved' page.