Fifty Years, Fifty Voices | From the Triratna Buddhist Community

Celebrating 50 years of the Triratna Buddhist Order (1968-2018)

Fifty Years, Fifty Voices: starting to capture the vibrant, messy reality of what it’s like to be part of co-creating the new lineage which is the Triratna Buddhist Order.

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Aloka & Surata: What Have You Got to Show For It?

Aloka & Surata: Communication Isn’t Words

Aloka & Surata: Sangharakshita’s Take on the Dharma

Aloka & Surata: Aloka’s Relationship to His Name

Aloka & Surata: Mind Reactive, Mind Creative

Aloka & Surata: Surata’s Relationship to His Name

Aloka & Surata: Kalyana Mitras & Rejoicing in Hridaya

Aloka & Surata: A Non-Verbal Friendship

Aloka & Surata: “You think you know your mind, but you’ve probably never had an original thought in your life.”

Karmavajra: Applying Sadhana to Daily Life

Karmavajra: How the Sangha Breeds Confidence

Karmavajra: The Search for Meaning

Karmavajra: Being Born A Buddhist

Karmavajra: “It’s very difficult to practice without Sangha. Because you can understand things, but you need to transform emotionally. So if you want to transform emotionally, you need to share with your friends and colleagues.”

Sanghadhara: Communication & Friendship as Practice

Sanghadhara: The Future of Humanity

Sanghadhara: Death, Urgency and The Three Jewels

Sanghadhara: First Meeting an Order Member

Sanghadhara: Becoming a Mitra

Sanghadhara: Where it All Began

Sanghadhara: “Every day I need to communicate, every day get into communication with people… Within that, holding lightly to my own views and sometimes just letting it go and ‘not taking myself so seriously. So that’s an area of explicit practice for me.”

Amala: What Does Going for Refuge Mean to You?

Amala: Day to Day Practice Nowadays

Amala: Receiving a Name

Amala: The Order As Practice

Amala: The Heart Sutra

Amala: Weaving and Self-awareness

Amala: First Encounters with Buddhism

Amala: “The Heart Sutra was my moment of conversion, when I was 17 years old.”

Satyadaka & Sarvananda: Apollo & Dionysus

Satyadaka & Sarvananda: Thoughts on Insight

Satyadaka & Sarvananda: Developmental & Immanence Approaches to Meditation

Satyadaka & Sarvananda: Music Practice

Satyadaka & Sarvananda: Receiving New Names at Ordination

Satyadaka & Sarvananda: What started it all for you?

Satyadaka & Sarvananda: Living Together

Satyadaka & Sarvananda: “I think it’s about 18 years we’ve lived together, in one form or another.”

Khemajoti: Lifestyle is secondary

Khemajoti: Ineffable Dharma and multidimensional practice

Khemajoti: Receiving a name and yidam

Khemajoti: Ordination

Khemajoti: Working in a Team-Based Right Livelihood

Khemajoti: Encountering the FWBO in Croyden

Khemajoti: Where it all Began

Khemajoti: “We used to do rituals in the basement of the shop, invoking Padmasambhava while we made egg sandwiches”

Abhaya: Making art and integration

Abhaya: Something greater coming through Sangharakshita

Abhaya: Spiritual meltdown and living in Tokyo

Abhaya: Sadhana

Abhaya: Meeting Sangharakshita

Abhaya: First encounters with liberation and the Dharma

Abhaya: “You have to balance or hold the bearer of the archetype with the ordinary human being, that’s very important. Because there’s no way you’re going to reconcile them.”

Sobhanandi: Zen and Dogen

Sobhanandi: Practicing as an anagarika

Sobhanandi: Meeting Vairocana

Sobhanandi: Ordination and receiving a name

Sobhanandi: Training for ordination in Holland

Sobhanandi: The Dharma life as a twin

Sobhanandi: “You come to a bridge. You look down. You see fish swimming in the water. But the fish don’t know you’re there, because that’s not their world. So the fish, their world is the water… there’s a completely different world.”

Samasuri: Being a doctor

Samasuri: Being a parent in the sangha

Samasuri: The Yellow Buddha Mamaki

Samasuri: Meditating with children

Samasuri: Buddhafield family retreats

Samasuri: What started it for you?

Samasuri: “It’s the wounded healer myth. I guess part of me wanting to be a Doctor is my psyche trying to sort all that suffering out… Helping others like I’ve been helped or am being helped.”

Jyotipala: Wandering in the wilderness

Jyotipala: What does Going for Refuge mean?

Jyotipala: Giving talks in India

Jyotipala: Without the precepts, I’d probably be dead by now

Jyotipala: Why I became a Buddhist

Jyotipala: My real Dharma life started when…

Manjuvajra: A time of experimentation

Jyotipala: “I must say, a couple of years before that, I’d actually – in one of my sober moments – not alcoholically, but… emotionally. I’d realised what an idiot I’d been in resigning.”

Manjuvajra: A crisis with the ‘group’

Manjuvajra: No Higher Teachings

Manjuvajra: What does Going for Refuge mean to you?

Manjuvajra: Faith and confidence

Manjuvajra: My relationship to the Order

Manjuvajra: “What’s happened over the years is I’ve got more and more confident in the existence of the Buddha, the effectiveness of the Dharma and the joy of the Sangha.”

Maitripala: Looking Into the Future

Maitripala: Seeing Through Dharmic Lenses

Maitripala: A View Seen Through

Maitripala: Being a Maitripala

Maitripala: First Meeting with an Order Member

Maitripala: What started it for you?

Maitripala: “I don’t need to go away from samsara to be really going for refuge. I can be right in the middle of it.”

Dhammadinna: What Do You Like About The Movement and Order?

Dhammadinna: Talking to Bhante Sangharakshita about Facebook and Twitter

Dhammadinna: Lifestyle, Marriage and Friendship

Dhammadinna: My First Retreat & Meeting Bhante Sangharakshita

Dhammadinna: Spotting Patterns in One’s Life

Dhammadinna: “I want people to have the freedom to do what they need to do to grow as individuals AND I want the movement to have that very strong collective dimension. That can be a source of tension for me.”

Suryaka: Individuality and The Order

Suryaka: Formless Connection and a Sense of Calling

Suryaka: Vairocana

Suryaka: Team-based Right Livelihood

Suryaka: What started it for you?

Suryaka: “I need some sort of channel in my life, so that my energy can flow into it, really strongly.”

Rijumayi: The Bodhisattva Ideal

Rijumayi: Not Wasting Time

Rijumayi: Visiting Adhisthana, going deeper on retreat

Rijumayi: Receiving the name

Rijumayi: What started it for you?

Rijumayi: “No-one was ‘sugar-coating’ things, or trying to give me priorities I didn’t subscribe to. I think there’s a real framework for transformation in the direction that I was looking for.”

Jayadevi: The Buddha

Jayadevi: What I value about the Triratna Buddhist Community

Jayadevi: Death and Dying

Jayadevi: Practising as a mother

Jayadevi: Meditation practice over time and becoming a mother

Jayadevi: If I hadn’t come across the Dharma

Jayadevi: What’s changed my life and practising as a teacher

Jayadevi: “I’d be a bitter, burned-out trade unionist, I think, if I wasn’t a Buddhist…”

Atula: The nature of Insight

Atula: Danger In the ordination process

Atula: A system of practice

Atula: The ‘Soul’ approach and the True Individual

Atula: Turning towards

Atula: Call and response, ritual and the artist

Atula: What started it for you?

Atula: “I had to come into relationship with what was happening to me. I couldn’t run away any longer.”

Akasasuri: The centrality of Going For Refuge

Akasasuri: My Relationship To Bhante Sangharakshita

Akasasuri: Working for the movement and taking a year out

Akasasuri: Service

Akasasuri: Going Forth and friendship

Akasasuri: What started it for you?

Akasasuri: “The first mettā bhavana I was completely blown over, and that was it. I thought ‘If that is a way of living, I’d quite like to live that way.'”

Manidhamma: Dharma Practise Is Not Easy

Manidhamma: First Meeting with Bhante Sangharakshita

Manidhamma: Meeting a First Order Member

Manidhamma: Meditation

Manidhamma: What started it?

Manidhamma: “The impact of Bhante’s visit was so great that I decided to give up my pilot’s career and go for training towards becoming an Order member…”

Amritavani: Practising as a mother (part 2)

Amritavani: Practising as a mother (part 1)

Amritavani: Receiving her name

Amritavani: Going Forth and the ordination retreat

Amritavani: Meeting an Order Member for the first time

Amritavani: Call and response

Amritavani: “School runs every day, tantrums, tears (from me as well!)… Family life is a messy life.”

Shraddhavajri: Being far from other Order members – meditation as an agent of change – a girl called “petrol”

Shraddhavajri: Sangha as an opportunity – Doctor Ambedkar as hero and love – working with mind, working for society

Shraddhavajri: Meeting the Order as a child and practising karate

Shraddhavajri: “I say to ‘Padmasambhava, ‘You don’t have a body—I have a body… Use my body, and I’ll use your energy.”

Buddhadasa: The Bodhisattva Ideal And The Revolutionary Edge

Buddhadasa: Purpose, Old Age and Death

Buddhadasa: Going to New Zealand and Australia

Buddhadasa: Relationship with Sangharakshita

Buddhadasa: First Meeting with Sangharakshita

Buddhadasa: What Started It For You?

Buddhadasa: “I think it began for me when I was 8 years old…”

Malini: What does Going for Refuge to the Three Jewels mean to you?

Malini: How She Came to Marry Purna

Malini: Return After Withdrawal

Malini: What started it for you?

Malini: “I have a very definite sense of something which is above and beyond mundane living, and that’s what draws me. That’s what Going for Refuge is for me.”

Dharmashalin: Passing on a culture of love and kindness

Dharmashalin: Playing games – the ethics of the private moment and breathing out ease

Dharmashalin: Being given the name Dharmashalin

Dharmashalin: Sangharakshita’s character and its shaping effect on Triratna

Dharmashalin: First encounter with the magic of the Dharma

Dharmashalin: “This is living a Dharma life. This is actually applying it. This is mess in progress.”

Vijaya: Vijaya’s first meeting with Bhante Sangharakshita and her devotion to the sangha he founded

Vijaya: Vijaya’s first experience of ordaining someone else – being part of a chain back to the Buddha

Vijaya: Vijaya’s first experience of the Dharma, of compassion and the spirit of the Order

Vijaya: The meaning of Vijaya’s name – working with depression and a shared experience of grief

Vijaya: “Who I am? I am just a little part of this process which is coming from the Buddha.”

Prasadacarin: A thread of faith in the Dharma

Prasadacarin: On Padmapani, two-armed Avalokiteshvara, as a human form

Prasadacarin: Why Prasadacarin committed to Triratna as a sangha

Prasadacarin: Discovering Stockholm Buddhist Centre and other young Buddhist practitioners

Prasadacarin: How Prasadacarin first came across the Dharma

Prasadacarin: “It was quite mindblowing that people were actually trying to practice…”

Aryavacin y Manjugita: Reflecting on the next 50 years of Triratna

Aryavacin y Manjugita: Aryavacin’s encounter with Amoghasiddhi during his Ordination course

Aryavacin y Manjugita: Our Order names – the meaning given at ordination, how we responded at the time, how we connect with their meaning now

Aryavacin y Manjugita: Our ordinations – the impact on Sangha in Mexico and on Venezuelans

Aryavacin y Manjugita: Manjugita reading one of her poems ‘The Mirror’ (El Espejo) – the metaphors she delights in

Aryavacin y Manjugita: “…and I fell in love with the Order”

Aryadhi: Being diagnosed with Asperger Syndrome and finding support

Aryadhi: Working with alcoholism as a Dharma practitioner

Aryadhi: A first friend in the Order

Aryadhi: How Aryadhi got started as a Buddhist

Danayutta: Her Order name and connection to the Buddha

Danayutta: Marriage, living situations and security

Danayutta: Joining a community

Danayutta: Asking for ordination

Danayutta: Seeing the Buddha on her first retreat

Jnanadakini: Meeting with the Order as a practice in itself

Jnanadakini: Taking the Dharma through Latin America

Jnanadakini: A huge name for a huge continent

Karunadevi: Personal change and social change

Karunadevi: Cultural difference, families, hierarchy and growing as an individual

Karunadevi: What started you off as a Buddhist?

Karunadevi: Introducing Karunadevi and her spiritual background

Manjusvara: Proving yourself in life before you get ordained

Manjusvara: The danger of projection when you identify as an Order member

Manjusvara: The right amount of perfection

Manjusvara: Ethics and being guardians of awakeness

Manjusvara: Work as practice and not hiding from life

Megha: What makes your heart sing?

Megha: Taking on responsibility as a Preceptor

Megha: Community living in 1975

Megha: Come and see the Dharma for yourself

Ratnakumar: How he would like to live and be remembered

Ratnakumar: A gradual transformation

Ratnakumar: Caste and fighting

Ratnakumar: On first hearing about Doctor Ambedkar

Vessantara: On ‘energy’

Vessantara: Bhante’s strengths in the early days of the Order

Vessantara: Receiving his name

Vessantara: Meeting Subhuti for the first time

Vajratara: Looking back on Triratna’s past with gratitude

Vajratara: Myths that attract – Avalokiteshvara and Buffy the Vampire Slayer

Vajratara: What draws you on in practice?

Vajratara: Vajratara’s eureka moment

Vajratara: Early experiences around suffering and personal responsibility

Ananda: First meeting with Bhante

Ananda: Recording Bhante’s talks on tape

Ananda: Buddhism, poetry and feelings

Ananda: Ideas of male friendship at the time

Ananda: Ananda’s trajectory on the path

Amoghasiddhi: Being named Amoghasiddhi

Amoghasiddhi: Early days of the Order in Nagpur – a visit from Sangharakshita

Amoghasiddhi: Childhood tragedy and discovering Buddhism

Amoghasiddhi: Asking for ordination and reading Sangharakshita

Amoghasiddhi: A breakthrough with a poem – finding the Bodhisattva spirit

Amitamati and Ratnadeva: The scientific life and the Dharma life

Amitamati and Ratnadeva: Is the Buddha’s teaching scientific?

Amitamati: Social science research into sewage workers’ lives

Amitamati and Ratnadeva: Marxism, Ambedkar, and Buddhism

Amitamati: A silver god and conversion to Buddhism

Ratnadeva: Buddhafield, myth and connection to nature

Amitamati: Finding the Dharma with a dance

Amarapushpa: Life story and connection to the Order

Chandrasiddhi: Life story – meeting Buddhism in Mexico

Amarapushpa & Chandrasiddhi: Names – The Siddhi

Amarapushpa & Chandrasiddhi: Names – The Deathless

Amalavajra and Jayaraja: Generosity and imagination

Amalavajra and Jayaraja: Fundraising as a “tantric” Dharma practice

Amalavajra and Jayaraja: Saying the unsayable and successful fundraising

Amalavajra and Jayaraja: Manjusvara, poetry and manifesting the feminine

Amalavajra and Jayaraja: On competitiveness and growing up

Amalavajra and Jayaraja: Being met and learning how to love

Amalavajra and Jayaraja: How we met

Purna: An encounter with Padmasambhava

Purna: Purna’s dream of gratitude and connection to his teacher

Purna: Working for the Dharma in India

Purna: Reading and listening to Sangharakshita

Vessantara: “…there was something which came through Bhante which really was full of Dharma qualities”

Vajratara: “I just would be an unintegrated mess if it wasn’t for the Sangha…”

Ratnakumar: “I asked him, if I would go there, will I get food?”

Megha: “I knew I needed to have people who could reflect back…”

Manjusvara: “Who needs perfection? Perfection is useless in the human life…”

Karunadevi: “…these issues that were very controversial, they didn’t make me want to run away. But they did make me wonder whether I could be a part of the Order”

Jnanadakini: “I didn’t know what kind of adventure it was going to be…”

Danayutta: “The moment she opened the door and I saw the Buddha… I felt fine”

Aryadhi: “I think it was the missing piece of the jigsaw, as it were.”

Ananda: “So my impression of Bhante was that he was a magician who had some secrets that I wanted to get…”

Amoghasiddhi: “I don’t want to do any job anywhere. I just want to devote myself…”

Amitamati and Ratnadeva: “It’s like the laboratory of our minds”

Amarapushpa & Chandrasiddhi: “It’s not something that has to do with ideas and concepts…”

Amalavajra and Jayaraja: “It’s kind of like I’m definitely feeling like I’m Santa Claus…”

Purna: “I couldn’t have done it any other way, as hard as it was…”

Celebrating 50 years of the Triratna Buddhist Order (1968-2018)

Fifty Years, Fifty Voices starting to capture the vibrant, messy reality of what it’s like to be part of co-creating the new lineage which is the Triratna Buddhist Order.

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