As part of our community’s international Triratna Day celebrations, we hear from Nagaketu, one of a new generation of Indian Public Preceptors, as he speaks on the first of the Bodhisattva’s Six Perfections (paramitas).

There’s no idea that ‘I am giving’….no idea of a recipient… no idea of the act of giving… If you have absolute awareness, the giving is natural, the giving is spontaneous, the giving is inexhaustible. It’s a giving, one may say, out of the depths of one’s own inner experience of Reality, one’s own oneness with the spirit of Compassion in accordance with the needs of sentient beings.

Urgyen Sangharakshita

Vajratara is one of our youngest Public Preceptors, and has lived and worked at Tiratanaloka, the ordination training retreat centre in the UK, for over a decade. She also has a strong connection with our Indian Sangha, as chair of the India Dhamma Trust, a charity which works with FutureDharma Fund to support the ordination team in India. She is our second speaker, on the theme of Sila Paramita.

But we mustn’t forget that it is sila paramita with which we are concerned, sila as a Perfection, sila as a Transcendental Virtue, or sila as conjoined with Wisdom. Uprightness, even the greatest uprightness, is not an end in itself in Buddhism – it’s a means to Enlightenment. If uprightness is regarded as an end in itself, then it becomes, according to Buddhism, a hindrance.

Urgyen Sangharakshita

3. Ksanti Paramita – a talk from Jnanavaca (with Q & A)

Jnanavaca, one of the current deputy chair’s of the Preceptors’ College, who lives at the London Buddhist Centre is our third speaker on the theme of Ksanti Paramita. Ordained in India in 1999, he had decided he was a Buddhist in his early teens, beginning an existential search that led him to the LBC in 1994, aged 28. Soon after he moved into one of the communities, where he has lived ever since, working and teaching, and serving for 10 years as the Chair. He is currently writing a book with Maitreyabandhu on the theme of insight in the Triratna System of Practice.

Now ksanti is undoubtedly one of the most beautiful words in the whole vocabulary of Buddhism…, it means forbearance, but included is also the idea of gentleness, of humility… and ksanti also contains very definite overtones, or undertones if you like, of love, even compassion, of tolerance, and of acceptance, and receptivity.

Urgyen Sangharakshita

4. Virya Paramita – a talk from Parami (with Q & A)

Parami will be speaking on the fourth perfection of Virya, or ‘energy in pursuit of the good’. For ten years she served as International Order convenor where she made connections across our community around the world. Having spent a number of years living in Spain, and visiting Mexico and Venezuela, she has a special connection with Spain and Latin America and now particularly supports the Ordination process in these areas. She has ordained over 200 women into our Order.

At the same time the Bodhisattva doesn’t really think that they are doing anything… their manifestation of energy is selfless. It’s a spontaneous activity, it just comes bubbling up, just like a fountain, just like a flower unfolding. And sometimes the Bodhisattva’s activity is spoken of as a “lila”, which means it’s a game, it’s a sport, it’s a play… just like a child plays, spontaneously manifesting energy.

Urgyen Sangharakshita

5. Samadhi Paramita – a talk from Amala (with Q & A)

Amala lives in New Hampshire, on the East Coast of the USA and has served the Order and Community in North America in various ways for a few decades. She has been involved with Aryaloka Retreat Centre since the early 90s, for a time as the Chair. She has been involved in Ordination Training Retreats since her ordination, becoming a Public Preceptor in 2022. For many years, Amala regularly visited and taught at EcoDharma in Spain, including a number of month-long meditation retreats. She speaks here on the fifth Paramita, of Meditative Absorption.

So contact with Ultimate Reality from the heights of the mundane, from the heights of the superconscious now has to be made. And it’s made when the concentrated mind, the mind in the dhyana state, whether higher or lower, turns, with awareness, from the mundane to the Transcendental, when it begins to contemplate Reality. It’s then that dhyana, it’s then that the dhyana state becomes, from being mundane, Transcendental.

Urgyen Sangharakshita

6. Prajna Paramita – a talk from Mahamati (with Q & A)

Mahamati was ordained aged 22 by Sangharakshita, and has had a life of service to the Order and movement across the world. This has included seven years living in India; time spent working closely with Sangharakshita; and a period of service as International Order Convenor. At ordination he was given the Sadhana and Mantra recitation of the bodhisattva Manjughosha who holds the Perfection of Wisdom texts to his heart, which he has practiced faithfully ever since, and makes him an appropriate speaker on our final theme of the Prajna Paramita. In November Mahamati will become the next Chair of the College of Public Preceptors.

Prajna is knowledge of Reality… We have to see, and not just intellectually theorise, not just speculate, not just think, we have to see, we have to experience, that rupa and sunyata, the form and voidness, the conditioned and the Unconditioned, samsara itself, the wheel, the spiral, the goal, ordinary beings, and Buddhas, are ultimately of one and the same essence, one and the same reality.

Urgyen Sangharakshita