I want a magic bullet!

I often, like really often, catch myself wanting life’s challenges sorted out in my time and on my terms. 

Practice is slowly teaching me that this is unhelpful, wishful thinking and a better strategy is just to sit with life’s complexity and conundrums and let common sense and reality gradually emerge. 

I also learn that sometimes there is no outcome that will sit in the middle of the way I’d like it to be and that’s okay; perhaps even better!

Meditation helps me to work patiently...

ECA Winter 2016: Days 5 & 6

Yesterday the 35 or so European Chairs began the day with meditation as every day; followed by a presentation on the work of the College of Public Preceptors, from its Chair, Saddhaloka.

They looked at ideas for future international celebrations of Triratna: there’s the 60th anniversary of Dr Ambedkar’s conversion to Buddhism, which falls in 14th October this year and is so particularly important for our sangha in India. In April 2017 there is the 50th anniversary of the founding of the Friends of...

Buddhist Women’s Verses

We present below a review by Sarah Clelland of a new translation by Charles Hallisey of the Therīgāthā – verses by female followers of the Buddha, preserved in the Pāli language.

Therigatha: Poems of the First Buddhist Women (Murty Classical Library of India vol.3), translated by Charles Hallisey

Harvard University Press, 2015, 336pp., hardback £22.95

Review by Sarah Clelland

The Murty Classical Library of India is a new multi-volume series of translations of the great literary works of India. This third volume – and the only Buddhist text out...

ECA Winter 2016: Days 1-4

The first of the ECA’s two meetings this year began last Monday evening. 

The first day was spent, as usual, in groups sharing their lives as Order members and as Chairs of Triratna centres and other Triratna enterprises in Europe; friendship is at the heart of the ECA meetings, as well as the work itself. Many of the Chairs have been coming for years, or know each other from other Triratna gatherings. Thus business takes place in an atmosphere of...