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Community Guidelines
Here are key excerpts from our community content guidelines, which are designed to help create a positive environment for everyone:
1. Please be courteous at all times. If you’re engaged in any kind of discussion, be as prepared to listen as you are to express yourself. Remember that there’s always a real person behind a computer/device screen, and they are likely quite different from you.
2. Think twice before posting anything that’s likely to give offence or be inflammatory. That doesn’t promote good conversation. If you’re upset at something you see here, perhaps let a little time pass before responding. Bear in mind this isn’t a space to vent our views, it’s about exploring respectfully with others what it means to be a Buddhist within our community and in the modern world generally.
3. We may remove posts or comments that are considered off-topic.
4. Everyone has off-moments, and we’ll always try to be in friendly dialogue with you if a problem arises with one of your contributions. But we reserve the right to remove posts and comments (or even suspend user accounts) when we feel these guidelines are not observed.
5. Our current editorial policy around Safeguarding is aligned with the advice given by those tasked with developing Triratna’s approach to this important area of ethical life. If anyone breaches current policy by posting in ways that mean The Buddhist Centre Online potentially break the law by hosting the material, then we will have to remove their posts or comments. We respectfully request that all users bear this in mind when posting. If in doubt, please feel free to ask first before posting. It will save time, energy, and lead to less potential polarisation in these spaces, even if there is disagreement.
Whatever you contribute we very much encourage you to think about it in the light of the Buddhist ethical precepts around 'Right Speech'. These encourage communication that is: truthful, kindly and gracious, helpful and harmonious. We look forward to all you have to bring to the site!
Moderation
We try to keep things light when it comes to moderation of posts and comments within this shared space. And we ask the community itself to lead with this. If you have seen something that concerns you, please feel free to contact us. However, we do ask that you bear in mind the following guidelines, which will help preserve a harmonious atmosphere throughout the site:
Remember there is always a person behind the post or comment you’re objecting to. They may just be having a bad day… If you’re upset, perhaps let a little time pass before responding to them or us.
Try contacting the person first in a spirit of open, courteous engagement to see if hearing their perspective changes your own view of things, or if hearing yours changes theirs.
Take care to make sure what you are asking us to look at is actually against the spirit of the group or the site itself, rather than simply a difference of view or of personal taste. If in doubt, ask a friend and/or the administrator of the group.
The most important things about this is the first bit: we ask the community to lead with this. That means you! Thanks for helping us promote good conversations on The Buddhist Centre Online.
Read the full set of Community Guidelines
A contribution to the Book of Gratitude - Ashvajit
Imagine, if you will, a young man, tolerably well-educated, ambitious, energetic but increasingly frustrated at finding himself in a strange, perplexing and sometimes hostile and dangerous world. He lacks the ability to pay skilful and sustained attention to what surrounds him and to what lies within. He sees only a swirl of fleeting and conflicting impressions and ideas. His emotions are a disturbing flux, sometimes manifesting as craving, sometimes as noble aspiration, sometimes as hatred, sometimes simply as confusion; he has given up trying to make friends with people, they are so inconstant, unreliable and reactive. Put rather starkly and dramatically, such, far too often, were my own mental-cum-emotional states, even though I managed to conceal them quite successfully from others and even from myself for much of the time, before I met Bhante Sangharakshita.
From the time I first heard Bhante speak, conducting a question and answer session in the basement of Sakura, Monmouth Street, not far from Trafalgar Square in London in October 1970, to his death at 10:00am in Hereford Hospital on 30 October 2018, almost exactly 48 years passed. They were years in which I came to know one of the most remarkable men it has been my privilege to meet; the one who was to have by far the most profound, far-reaching and life-changing influence on my character and conduct. Such was his dramatic and psychic impact on me that for the first year or so after meeting him, I thought that we were in telepathic communication. Whether that was so or not, he soon taught me to recognise what was truly my own mind: he taught me by personal example how to meditate and how to reflect. A year and a half after we met he ordained me, gave me my name and introduced me to the mandala of Avalokiteshvara, the archetypal bodhisattva of compassion, thus making me one of his personal preceptees and acknowledging me as a disciple of the Buddha. He taught me how to live with mindfulness, kindness and wisdom, though often at first I ignored his teachings. He taught me how my inner turmoil arose, and how it might come to an end. And I began to pass on, to whatever extent I was able, the gift of the Dharma to others. He gave my life meaning and purpose, and though at times I found him uncomfortably, even painfully strict, he gradually became a very special friend, showing me unparalleled kindness and patience. I am glad that he was strict. Had it not been so, I would not have learned, not have realised what had to be overcome, what abandoned, what developed and what attained.
Urgyen Sangharakshita’s passing has been yet another life-changing event for me. He leaves me with a paradox: on the one hand, a void, an emptiness, an absence, yet on the other, an overwhelming sense of gratitude and joy. Early on, he introduced me to his mother, his sister Joan and her daughter Kamala - a wonderful token of his confidence in me. Whether being his chauffeur, servant, student, cook, publisher, correspondent, secretary or companion, I learned the extent to which I could trust my own mind, and, though comparatively recently, to pay no attention to the attacks and blandishments of Mara. He helped me build unshakeable confidence in the Buddha-dharma, and taught me how to apply it to myself and to others, with compassion, in the midst of contemporary affairs. He has left a huge corpus of teachings redolent with insight that are now in course of publication as his Complete Works, as well as a large number of wonderful poems. He has left me with a host of personal recollections of him that I will reflect upon for the rest of my life. He has opened my eyes to the timeless beauty of the spiritual world, to the world of art and literature, and even to the lesser, fleeting beauty of the world of the ordinary senses. And last but by no means least, he enabled me to enjoy the company of countless numbers of friends near and far, young and old all over the world, as well as to cherish a small number of very close ones.
Urgyen Sangharakshita has helped me transform my breath, my blood, my flesh and my bones. He has taught me to listen to my own wise inner voice and to pay no attention to the stupid one. And now, whether in the midst of activity, with friends or in solitude, reflecting or meditating, I feel he is there encouraging me, protecting me and yes, even admonishing me should I for a moment fail to follow his precepts.
With love and profound gratitude to Bhante and to everyone else who has helped me transform my life in the direction of Enlightenment, and in whose company the bodhichitta has surely arisen.
Ashvajit
28th November 2018, 4 Bronhaul, Y Fan, Llanidloes, Powys, UK