Tag: faith

PoetryEast with Tracy K. Smith

By Zac on Fri, 25 Feb, 2022 - 13:40

PoetryEast with Tracy K. Smith

By Zac on Fri, 25 Feb, 2022 - 13:40

Saturday 5th March, 7pm (YouTube Premier)

The American poet and educator Tracy K. Smith has published four collections of poetry. Her 2011 collection Life on Mars won the Pulitzer Prize. Tracy served as the Poet Laureate of the United States from 2017 to 2019. Her memoir, Ordinary Light, was published in 2015. She was elected a Chancellor of the Academy of American Poets in 2021, the same year that Such Color: New and Selected Poems was published.

She’ll be in conversation...

Bristol Buddhist Centre

Great Faith, Great Wisdom Retreat, 2017 - day 6

By jvalamalini on Fri, 15 Sep, 2017 - 17:14

Great Faith, Great Wisdom Retreat, 2017 - day 6

By jvalamalini on Fri, 15 Sep, 2017 - 17:14

The last morning of the retreat found me with a mind full of reflections in the early morning double meditation, and a fair bit of energy released – I was dancing in my living room when I popped home for a few things after breakfast.

This was the day we’d been building up to – the day we met the Buddha! Ratnaguna introduced the Buddha Amitayus of the Guan Jing, the ‘Buddha beyond the Buddha’, the principle of Buddhahood which the Mahayana...

Bristol Buddhist Centre

Great Faith, Great Wisdom Retreat, 2017 - day 5

By jvalamalini on Thu, 14 Sep, 2017 - 14:07

Great Faith, Great Wisdom Retreat, 2017 - day 5

By jvalamalini on Thu, 14 Sep, 2017 - 14:07

As Ratnaguna pointed out, dwelling in such an uncompromisingly bright land tends to invite one’s shadow. Every retreat brings a process for each of us, and today I knew the retreat was reaching something more in me when I found myself weeping in morning meditation. After last night’s talk, I was touching a deep grief for all the imperfection in me-and-my-sangha: the views I bring that make things hard for me; the ways interpersonal dynamics sometimes obscure our shared faith; the ways...

Bristol Buddhist Centre

Great Faith, Great Wisdom Retreat, 2017 - day 4

By jvalamalini on Wed, 13 Sep, 2017 - 13:22

Great Faith, Great Wisdom Retreat, 2017 - day 4

By jvalamalini on Wed, 13 Sep, 2017 - 13:22

Today we focused on the very beautiful descriptions of the beings in the happy land of Sukhavati. In many ways these are my favourite sections of the sutra; I’ve spent happy meditations in the past basking in the golden light as I imagined being amidst great beings with “minds of equality, minds of loving-kindness, gentle minds, affectionate minds, diligent minds, clear minds, stable minds, unhindered minds, unshaken minds, unagitated minds, minds which practise the perfection of wisdom” who stroll around...

Bristol Buddhist Centre

Great Faith, Great Wisdom Retreat, 2017 - day 3

By jvalamalini on Tue, 12 Sep, 2017 - 09:04

Great Faith, Great Wisdom Retreat, 2017 - day 3

By jvalamalini on Tue, 12 Sep, 2017 - 09:04

Another beautiful day in the pure land! On my way home, I sighed - “oh it’s all so lovely!”.

Today our sutra reading was sections of the text describing the land of Sukhavati, which is the Dharma aspect of the text. (Yesterday focused more on the Buddha - including beautiful descriptions of bodhisattva activity)

I found the description of the river particularly beguiling - the sound of the river is both soothing, and conveys the Dharma. It conveys the Dharma by murmuring the only,...

Community Highlights

Great Faith, Great Wisdom Retreat Online!

By Centre Team on Mon, 11 Sep, 2017 - 16:37

Great Faith, Great Wisdom Retreat Online!

By Centre Team on Mon, 11 Sep, 2017 - 16:37

All this week we’ll be bringing you online resources and blogs from the Bristol Buddhist Centre’s Rainy Season Retreat on ‘Great Faith, Great Wisdom’ with Ratnaguna.

Follow the retreat online

On this retreat Ratnaguna will guide us on a journey into Amitābha’s Pure Land, Sukhāvati – a mythical realm where the ground is golden, trees are made of jewels, heavenly musical instruments play ravishing music, and magical birds sing the Dharma. It is...

Adhisthana

The Essence of Wisdom and Compassion: Blazing in the Fires of Sunyata

By akasajoti on Tue, 13 Jun, 2017 - 23:16

The Essence of Wisdom and Compassion: Blazing in the Fires of Sunyata

By akasajoti on Tue, 13 Jun, 2017 - 23:16

The theme of today has been the connection between metta and wisdom - the realisation of metta. Saddhaloka gave a presentation this morning where he spoke of the dual aspects of the path – samata and vipassana, wisdom and compassion, merit and insight – and described how they are really a part of a single process. There is an aspect of seeing into the truth of things, where ultimately there is no knower, or known, or act of knowing, just...

Free Buddhist Audio

FBA Podcast: The Voice of the Buddha

By Rijupatha on Thu, 7 May, 2015 - 18:02

FBA Podcast: The Voice of the Buddha

By Rijupatha on Thu, 7 May, 2015 - 18:02

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We’ve all read the words of the Buddha – but what did he SOUND like? What might it have been like to actually hear him…? In our FBA Podcast this week, Ratnaguna gives us a beautifully imaginative and well-researched evovation of the Buddha entitled “The Voice of the Buddha”.

Talk given on the 2012 Triratna International Retreat, under the overall theme ‘Imagining the Buddha.’

Free Buddhist Audio

FBA Podcast: Great Faith, Great Wisdom

By Rijupatha on Mon, 20 Oct, 2014 - 18:30

FBA Podcast: Great Faith, Great Wisdom

By Rijupatha on Mon, 20 Oct, 2014 - 18:30Subscribe to the FBA Podcast

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This week’s FBA Podcast, “Great Faith, Great Wisdom,” by Ratnaguna, is from the 2014 Men’s Order Convention.