August this year saw the third meeting of the Triratna International Council at Adhisthana, UK. Twenty eight members of the Triratna Buddhist Order gathered from all over the world to discuss a range of current topics. A 5-minute slideshow summary of its proceedings is now available.

Triratna has an interestingly many-layered structure of governance, with each Centre being legally autonomous. As a worldwide whole it's arguable that Triratna exists solely in the hearts of its participants, through a network of spiritual friendships. Thus as we grow, it's ever more important to ensure good communication and coherence across the world. The International Council was instituted to meet this need, meeting every two years but staying in touch meanwhile by many other means, mostly online.

The Council delegates come from the six Triratna “Areas”: India, Latin America & Spain, Mainland Europe, North America, the South Pacific and the UK & Ireland. Each Area appoints two representatives (one woman and one man) for each of the “three strands”: the Order, the College of Public Preceptors (responsible for overseeing ordinations) and the Movement (Order members running local Centres).

Their discussions ranged across a number of topics previously identified by the Council's Steering group, which oversees business between Council meetings. These came under the very broad headings of

• the system of spiritual life
• maintaining unity and
• ethical and spiritual standards

If you'd like more detail, here's a very visual slideshow summary beautifully designed by Dhammarati, including the priorities the Council set for their work over the next two years. Or view the summary as a web pdf.

For a lot more detail including daily interviews and daily video summaries from the event as it happened check out the Council's page on The Buddhist Centre Online, where you may also click + Follow to keep up to date with the Council.