Community Highlights
London Buddhist Centre

Poetry East with Paul Kingnorth

By Maitreyabandhu on Wed, 29 Sep, 2021 - 16:37

Poetry East with Paul Kingnorth

By Maitreyabandhu on Wed, 29 Sep, 2021 - 16:37

Saturday 9th October

11.00 US PST |  13.00 Mexico  | 14.00 US EST  |  19.00 IE & UK  |  20.00 CET Europe  |  07.00 (Sunday 10th) New Zealand

Paul Kingsnorth is a writer and thinker who takes on big themes connected to the root spiritual crisis of modernity. His journalism, novels and essays offer passionate and provocative perspectives on nature, technology and the story of our civilisation. He is author of ten books including Confessions of a Recovering...

London Buddhist Centre
London Buddhist Centre

Some Divinity Shaping our Ends

By Maitreyabandhu on Mon, 1 Aug, 2016 - 12:33

Some Divinity Shaping our Ends

By Maitreyabandhu on Mon, 1 Aug, 2016 - 12:33

The poet Robert Frost had a sense that meaning was to be found neither in the supernatural (God) nor in the intimately psychological (the self), but transcended these distinctions. Maitreyabandhu investigates.

‘The interest, the pastime, was to learn if there had been any divinity shaping my ends and I had been building better than I knew.’

   –  Robert Frost in the preface to a selection of his poems, 1942

Other people’s confidence can astound me. They often seem to know who they are and what...

Free Buddhist Audio
Free Buddhist Audio

Dharmabyte - The Buddha’s Visions

By Rijupatha on Fri, 21 Feb, 2014 - 13:38
Today’s FBA Dharmabyte is a lovely reading, and reflection on, “The Buddha’s Visions.” Here we have Candradasa reading to us, quite poetically, as the Buddha recalls his previous lives and the vision of the lotuses. He then reflects on faith and experience in practice. From the talk “Religion Without God, Part 3 – Death and the Biggest Questions of All”, the third talk in a four-part series looking at how you can have a...
Portsmouth Buddhist Center
Portsmouth Buddhist Center

Religion Without God (full series now available)

By Candradasa on Thu, 15 Nov, 2012 - 20:38

Religion Without God (full series now available)

By Candradasa on Thu, 15 Nov, 2012 - 20:38
Download the complete series. If you’ve enjoyed the talks, please take a moment to support Free Buddhist Audio - an amazing resource that’s free to all users because of the generosity of listeners just like you! ...
Portsmouth Buddhist Center
Portsmouth Buddhist Center

Resources for Religion Without God, Week 4, Magic for the Modern World

By Candradasa on Mon, 12 Nov, 2012 - 14:06

Resources for Religion Without God, Week 4, Magic for the Modern World

By Candradasa on Mon, 12 Nov, 2012 - 14:06And here are the resources for the talk on Magic, concluding our series:

Mucalinda Sutta
Thanissaro Bhikkhu’s translation
John D. Ireland’s translation

Audio
Padmavajra’s ‘Alchemy of Love’ series (Mahayana section of talk)
Sangharakshita on magic rites in India and their evolution as Tantric rites - ‘The Symbolism of Colours and Mantric Sound’ (Vajrayana section of the talk)

Reading
Pico della Mirandola on ‘Natural Magic’ - ...
Portsmouth Buddhist Center
Portsmouth Buddhist Center

Religion Without God, Part 4 - Magic For the Modern World

By Candradasa on Sat, 10 Nov, 2012 - 14:50
In the final talk of our series on ‘Religion Without God’, Candradasa offers a personal look at aspects of magic in the East and West, considering its place in Buddhist history and practice and also its meeting with Christianity at the time of the Renaissance. What emerges is a picture of how magic defined in various ways can be a powerful metaphor for the everyday work of Buddhist meditation and ethical practice - with the enchantment of love and wisdom...
Portsmouth Buddhist Center
Portsmouth Buddhist Center

Religion Without God, Part 3 - Death and the Biggest Questions of All

By Candradasa on Sat, 20 Oct, 2012 - 20:57
In the third talk in our ‘Religion without God’ series, we have some big questions. When you don’t believe in an afterlife, what vision can there be around death and dying? What did the Buddha mean when he taught about karma, re-becoming and rebirth?

Here Candradasa uses Buddhist scripture, vision literature, and poetry to tease out a sense of the Buddha’s awesome vision of what life is, and how that might affect our ideas of what happens after death...
Portsmouth Buddhist Center
Portsmouth Buddhist Center

New resources posted...

By Candradasa on Mon, 15 Oct, 2012 - 18:48

New resources posted...

By Candradasa on Mon, 15 Oct, 2012 - 18:48Hi all, a brief note to say I’ve posted to our sangha space some new resources (on the nidanas and skandhas, the Buddha’s unanswered questions, and St. Augustine!) that should help tie up any loose ends from the first two talks in our ‘Religion Without God’ series… Remember, you’ll have to log in and + join this Group to access the extra materials from the series and contribute responses and posts of your own...
Portsmouth Buddhist Center
Portsmouth Buddhist Center

Religion Without God, Part 2: Sex and Morality - Going Beyond Puritanism

By Candradasa on Fri, 12 Oct, 2012 - 22:09
In the second talk in his ‘Religion Without God’ series, Candradasa considers the origins of negative views of the body and its desires in relation to spiritual life, as seen through the prism of Puritanism and its influences.

Tracking the Platonic ideal through St. Augustine we get a sense of the conditioning we seek to move away from as Buddhists while still wrestling with the key questions posed by our own experience of the connection between desire and suffering.
...
Portsmouth Buddhist Center
Portsmouth Buddhist Center

Religion Without God, Part 1 - A Radical Community of Values

By Candradasa on Thu, 4 Oct, 2012 - 20:31
The first talk in ‘Religion without God’, a four-part series looking at how you can have a full spiritual life as a 21st Century person without recourse to blind faith or setting yourself against the rational world we find ourselves in. The Buddha faced some of the same dilemmas as us in India in 500 BCE, and we face some new challenges with 2500 years of culture and experience in between his time and our own.

In this...

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