Tonight, in our Buddhist centre in Ghent, we did Maitreyabandhu’s puja for Bhante in Flemish and sang mantras for him. Next to that we sat in silence and remembered our beloved teacher, did metta for him and some memories and rejoicings were shared. Also we listened to Bhante himself singing the Tiratana Vandana. May our Teacher live on through our friendships in the sangha.
This was how we started our puja on tuesday evening, with a walking meditation chanting Padmasambhava mantra for Bhante. Then Upekshamati recited the sevenfold puja for Bhante that Maitreyabandhu wrote. Then we chanted other mantras that Bhante requested.
Here’s a request from the team co-ordinating Bhante’s funeral arrangements at Adhisthana: If anyone has (or would be able to bring) a mini bus on the day of the funeral (Saturday 10th November) to help with bringing people from the nearby train stations to Adhisthana, please get in touch by email admin [at] adhisthana.org. All offers of help appreciated!
Knowing that I’d be at Adhisthana this month, I was hoping to meet Bhante. I haven’t been with him one to one since I used to read to him in his warm annexe at Madhyamaloka over fifteen years ago; those readings being one of the great pleasures and privileges of my life back then.
I wrote to him early last year to reconnect after a period of struggle in my life during which I tasted many sour fruits, the most plump among them being pride. Having tasted it, and its core of fear and...
If you would like to express your gratitude for Bhante Urgyen Sangharakshita’s life you could give to a project which we know was very dear to Bhante’s heart and currently faces a funding crisis: the editing and publication of his Complete Works.
Bhante Sangharakshita’s wish was to see “a complete, uniform edition” of all his writings, published and unpublished.
Many people’s generous gifts for Bhante’s 90th birthday began to fulfil this wish...
In one way or another, Sangharakshita’s spiritual genius has been the sheet anchor throughout the storm of my own deviating spiritual aspirations and divagations. More often than not, in the middle of any particular struggle for understanding, his was the aesthetic and moral compass which I depended on for a true reading of the way out of the labyrinth; his star the brilliant Sirius on a dark night; his, the lodestone that attracted the light of clarity. My gratitude to him is unrepayable. In...
