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Reflections on Love (The Dharma Toolkit Daily, Episode 23)

By Centre Team on Sat, 2 May, 2020 - 06:00

As we come towards the end of our Being Divine Online Home Retreat it is our great pleasure today to share with you some beautiful closing reflections from Ratnavandana on the theme of the retreat: love itself.

She beautifully evokes where and how she is currently spending this time of lockdown in rural Wales, UK, and shares how the Brahma Vihara meditations on love have been helping her at this strange and difficult time. What she gives us is her deep...

Community Highlights
The Community Toolkit for Uncertain Times

Being Divine Online: Q & A with Ratnavandana on the Brahma Viharas (The Dharma Toolkit Daily, Episode 20)

By Centre Team on Tue, 28 Apr, 2020 - 01:58

Loving Kindness (Metta)
Compassion (Karuna)
Joyful Resonance (Mudita)
Equanimity (Upekkha)

This week on the podcast we’re in full-on love mode with our Home Retreat: Being Divine Online

Our guide to the series of meditations in focus - the Brahma Viharas - is Ratnavandana, and in this special episode recorded live online she’s in discussion about a practice that has been one of the touchstones of her life. 

The sense of someone choosing to dwell inside a mythic vision of...

Community Highlights
Community Highlights

Complete Archive Of Teaching On The Brahma Viharas

By Candradasa on Fri, 17 Apr, 2015 - 18:57

Ratnavandana has given much of her later life to the cultivation and teaching of Brahma Viharas meditation - helping inspire many people to move towards spending more of their time in the ‘divine abodes’ of love, compassion, sympathetic joy and equanimity.

Here is the complete archive of teaching from her Spring 2015 Rainy Season retreat in Bristol, UK. The theme was ‘Living In The Mandala’, looking at the Brahma Viharas in the context of the five Buddha mandala. Talks, readings, guided...

Free Buddhist Audio
Free Buddhist Audio

Dharmabyte: Setting Intention for Equanimity

By Rijupatha on Thu, 16 Apr, 2015 - 11:00

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In today’s FBA Dharmabyte, “Setting Intention for Equanimity”, Ratnavandana shares an intensely honest, psychologically intimate, beautifully forensic history of her personal relationship to the practice of upekkha (equanimity) throughout her spiritual life. We hear about ways to assess what is going on in the subtler realms of our experience – and how to look to move beyond them...

Free Buddhist Audio
Free Buddhist Audio

Dharmabyte: The Boundlessness of Metta

By Rijupatha on Mon, 13 Apr, 2015 - 15:08

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In today’s FBA Dharmabyte, “The Boundlessness of Metta”, Jvalamalini gives a very personal and helpful take on the metta bhavana (loving kindness) practice, recounting her history with it and the kinds of areas she has worked with over the years in order to learn to love herself and others as deeply as she can. Here she speaks on...

Bristol Buddhist Centre
Bristol Buddhist Centre

Day 7: Guided Brahma Viharas Meditation (With Notes on Bhavana)

By Centre Team on Sat, 11 Apr, 2015 - 20:27

Ratnavandana introduces and guides us through a composite practice of all four Brahma Viharas at once - loving kindness, compassion, sympathetic joy, equanimity.

She sets the scene perfectly with an introduction to the notion of cultivation/development within the context of a Buddhist spiritual life, showing how each of these qualities may be called forth whenever needed in the face of our experience, just as the flower is called forth from the seed in springtime.

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Bristol Buddhist Centre
Bristol Buddhist Centre

Day 7: Introductions, Inspirations and Mantra

By Centre Team on Sat, 11 Apr, 2015 - 20:12

A selection of beautiful lead-ins to meditation from Day 7 of the Rainy Season Retreat from Spring 2015 which took place in Bristol and around the world online!

View all posts from ‘Living In The Mandala’

Bristol Buddhist Centre
Bristol Buddhist Centre

Day 6: A Puja To Ratnasambhava

By Centre Team on Tue, 24 Mar, 2015 - 22:46

Rounding off day 6 of Living In The Mandala we have another puja that steers to the deep when it comes to evoking the guardian Buddha of the moment, in this case Ratnasambhava - the Jewel-Born, archetypal Buddha of abundance, spiritual riches and the South… 

Complete with flute-accompanied mantra!

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Bristol Buddhist Centre
Bristol Buddhist Centre

Day 6: Guided Upekkha Bhavana Meditation (Cultivation of Equanimity)

By Centre Team on Sun, 22 Mar, 2015 - 18:59
Ratnavandana introduces and guides us through the practice of cultivating equanimity. Not a cool, detached state but a deep warm engagement with the practice of love, compassion and joy held in the perspective of the Buddha’s insights into the nature of reality itself…

View all posts from ‘Living In The Mandala’

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