SOMETHING LOVELY

And people stayed home

and read books and listened

and rested and exercised

and made art and played

and learned new ways of being

and were still

and listened more deeply

someone meditated

someone prayed

someone danced

someone met their own shadow

and people started thinking differently----

And people healed...

And in the absence of people who lived in ignorant ways

dangerous, mindless, and heartless....

The earth began to heal---

And when the danger ended

and people found themselves...

They grieved for the dead

and they made new choices

and dreamed of new visions

and created new ways to live

and heal the earth fully

just as they had been healed.

Kathleen O ' Meara (1869) - after a plague devastated Ireland in the late 1860's

Nandavajra's message about Triratna Exeter Activities online

Dear friends

Living creatively in turbulent times – Corona virus and Triratna Exeter activities

I hope that you are keeping as well and in good heart as possible under the present turbulent and uncertain circumstance. As many of you will know we have cancelled all our face-to-face Exeter Sangha activities in light of the corona virus crisis and government guidance. I am writing with some information on how we plan to sustain our Sangha here in Exeter and South Devon and to invite you to keep in touch through a ‘virtual’ Sangha evening on Thursdays and our online presence. There is also some information on resources which are available more widely across Triratna.

Practising mindfulness and loving-kindness during times of crisis is ultimately what supports us all to stay emotionally positive and to grow. We therefore want to keep alive our connection as friends in the Sangha and our shared Dharma practice, supporting each other as much as possible.

Continuing our Sangha evenings online.

We are planning to keep our Sangha evenings going on Thursday evenings using zoom. You can sign up for an account here https://zoom.us/ or simply follow a link, which I can email, when the time approached. You will need to email me at nandavajra@hotmail.com in advance to let me know that you wish to participate.

The free zoom platform allow meeting of up to 40 minutes (for up to 100 participants!) so we will start at 7 pm with a welcome and at least a guided meditation along with, perhaps, some chanting a chance to hear a little from everyone. It could be that we then have a ‘tea break’ and then recommence the meeting for up to a further 40 minutes with a chance to explore some aspect of the Dharma (probably focussing on what is particularly helpful in these troubling times). This will of course be a bit of an experiment which we will adapt and refine as we go along but I do hope that as many of us as possible will be able to join in.

Other online gatherings

Our priority will be to sustain our Thursday Sangha evenings but if this proves successful and if there is an interest, we may organise other online gatherings such as a led morning meditation session.

Keeping in touch

We will be using our online platforms to keep in touch and to provide information and resources. These are:

• https://thebuddhistcentre.com/exeter?display=latest
• https://www.facebook.com/exetertriratna/

We may also send out further newsletters from time to time.

Other resources

Triratna has developed several resources to support people in their Dharma practice and keep alive an experience of Sangha and connection.

The buddhistcentre.com has developed a Dharma Toolkit for Uncertain Times which you can access here (again, you may need to create an account and ‘follow’).

The London Buddhist Centre is providing a range of online resources and teaching which you can follow by visiting https://londonbuddhistcentreonline.com/

Finally, if you have any questions or suggestions please do not hesitate to contact me. I wish you as much solace and ease as possible.

With love,

Nandavajra

Triratna Exeter Newsletter Early Spring 2020

Sangha Evenings Theme and  Weekend Retreat 

We hope that 2020 has started well and that you are in good heart. This edition of our newsletter brings you details of our Sangha evening on Thursdays (from 7 pm to 9 pm) and a weekend retreat we are running in May. 

Sangha evening theme

The Find Peace in a Turbulent world introduction to meditation and Buddhism course, which we have been running in the context of our Sangha evening, will reach its conclusion on 27th February. The course seems to have gone very well and no doubt those people who booked for the course have felt warmly welcomed by our Sangha. After the completion of the course we will devoting several Sangha evenings to exploring the three Jewels of Buddhism – the Buddha, the Dharma (the teachings leading to Buddhahood) and the Sangha (the spiritual community) and here are the details:

Thursday 5th Mar: The Buddha’s life story and its message for us
Thursday 12th Mar: Faith in the Buddha
Thursday 19th Mar: The Dharma
Thursday 26th Mar: The Dharma
Thursday 2nd April: The Sangha – friendship and the spiritual life
Thursday 9th April: The Triratna Buddhist Community as a Sangha

After this theme we will move on to an exploration of the Five Spiritual faculties which provide a pattern for the spiritual life. The Five Spiritual faculties are: Faith, Energy, Mindfulness, Meditation and Wisdom.

Weekend Retreat Friday 1st to Sunday 3rd May

We have booked the High Heathercombe Centre (https://www.highheathercombecentre.org.uk/), on the edge of Dartmoor, for a weekend retreat, from the evening of Friday 1st to the afternoon of Sunday 3rd May. A weekend retreat is a wonderful opportunity to step back from the demands and distractions of our daily lives and to give more time to meditation and reflection and to enjoy the company of others who share our interest in Buddhism and our ideals. More details about the retreat will be provided later but mark it in your diary and plan to come. We anticipate that the cost of the weekend will be in the region of £60 - £80i

Starting on Wednesday 13 September, at the usual time of 7pm, at the Exeter Natural Health Centre. 

The course will cover the essentials of meditation, including posture, mindfulness and loving-kindness meditation, and how to work in meditation; and will also include an introduction to Buddhism, the historical Buddha and his teachings, and what value they might have for us in the 21st century. 

There will be more information posted here over the course of August so if you wish to be kept updated please + FOLLOW in the box above.  

We are continuing our exploration of the body of practices collectively known as the brahma viharas or the Four Immeasurables, and this last Wednesday we spent some time practicing and talking about the upekka bhavana   - the development of equanimity, " when a mind imbued with metta applies itself to looking at the nature of existence"   - " a loving and insightful responses based on applying pratitya samutpada [ the law of conditionality] so as to illuminate how others joy and sorry arise from conditioning factors that govern all beings". [text taken from Kamalasila's book on Meditation]. 

Here is a link to a guided meditation and short talks on the practices given by Ratnavandana  during a Rainy Season Retreat at the Bristol Buddhist Centre in 2015: 

Day 6: The cultivation of equanimity" 

Last night at Exeter Sangha Night we continued our theme of the 'Divine Abodes' - AKA the brahmaviharas, or the Four Immeasurables. We are exploring this theme as part of Triratna's Buddhist Action Month 2017! 

Our topic this week was to practice the skill of being joyful at other's good fortune and rejoicing in their merits. We talked about taking every opportunity to express our appreciation for others (or in fact to ourselves too!) and noticing the effect that has. This meditation is known as 'the development of sympathetic joy', or to use its Sanskrit name, mudita bhavana. 

If you want to read a passage in the Pali canon where the Buddha teaches the Brahmaviharas have a look here on www.accesstoinsight.com - it is quite detailed and gives you the locus classicus so to speak. 

Or there is this article in the Buddhist magazine Tricycle which includes the poignant line - 

"By practicing the four boundless states, we avoid the fate of T. S. Eliot’s poor Alfred Prufrock, who lamented, “I have measured out my life with coffee spoons.” The ease of equanimity, the full-heartedness of love, the tenderness of compassion, the radiance of joy—these are things we don’t want in meager doses."

Let's not have to say at the end of our lives that we have measured our our lives with coffee spoons! 

The Four Immeasurables 

May all beings have happiness and the cause of happiness.

May they be free of suffering and the cause of suffering.

May they never be disassociated from the supreme happiness which is without suffering.

May they remain in the boundless equanimity, free from both attachment to close ones and rejection of others.

Over the next few weeks we'll be exploring and practicing the 'Four Sublime Abodes' in Exeter Sangha Night. The Sanskrit name for this body of practices is brahmavihāras (sublime attitudes, lit. "abodes of brahma") are a series of four Buddhist core qualities and the meditation practices made to cultivate them. They are also known as 'the four immeasurables'. 

They are: loving-kindness or universal goodwill (metta), compassion (karuna), sympathetic joy (mudita), and equanimity (upeksha). 

Here is a link to a guided meditation on the karuna bhavana, development of compassion, by Bodhipaksha from Wildmind. We practiced this last Wednesday to mark the start of Buddhist Action Month! 

Come and join us this Wednesday 14 June 17 at the Exeter Natural Health Centre at 7pm for the mudita bhavana (development of sympathetic joy) - look forward to seeing you there! 

Come and celebrate Dharma Day Sunday 9 July 2017! 

Glenn, Sue and Colin from the Exeter Triratna Group are hosting a half morning at the East Devon Forest Garden (also known as Hridayabija, 'seed of the heart') - a beautiful spot about 15 miles from Exeter, full of magic and unexpected finds.

Please arrive by 10am for a half day of meditation and dharma readings followed by a shared lunch and a swim. For any that wish to stay on there is the offer of unstructured afternoon time too. 
If you have a favourite dharma reading you would like to offer to read out, or have any other questions please get in touch with Glenn via mokshini@triratnadevelopment.org 

Here is a link to a video Sagaravajra, the creator of the Forest garden, took recently at a Cardiff Sangha and is on his facebook page  https://www.facebook.com/sagara.swier/videos/1937473296497469/

Come and give your mind a rest!  Join us in sitting in stillness and spaciousness this coming Wednesday at the Exeter Natural Health Centre.  The evening is dedicated to the ‘Just Sitting’ practice: We’ll be asking ourselves “What is happening, right now, in my experience?”  We’ll see why this enquiry needs the qualities of curiosity, receptivity and openness. All levels of experience welcome. 

Thank you to all who came to Buddha day on May 10th. We had a beautiful shrine, created by William, and I thoroughly enjoyed practicing with a group of fellow truth seekers. Prajnananda led us in a puja dedicated to the Buddha Shakyamuni - thank you! 

Over the remaining weeks in May we will return to our theme of exploring our meditation practice. 

Wednesday 17 May: 'Opening the Heart' - another look at the metta bhavana

Wednesday 24 May: 'What is 'Just Sitting'?' -  ways of waking up to our experience

Wednesday 31 May: 'Turning towards our experience"  - what happens when we see more clearly? 

Wednesday 7 June: June is Buddhist Action Month! - this evening will be dedicated to reflecting on how we may benefit our community and world around us, and we will have a 'meditation for the world'.  

The full moon day in May is the time the Buddhist world celebrates the Buddha's Enlightenment!

Please join us at Sangha Night this week for meditation and puja to mark this auspicious occasion 2500 years ago. We will have a guided visualization of the Buddha Shakyamuni followed by a puja, which will be led by Prajnananda. 
A 'puja' is a ritual, in which we will be reciting verses - in this case taken from an 8th century text by the Buddhist scholar monk Santideva; we will be bringing the historical Buddha to mind, developing appreciation, gratitude, and well as a wish & commitment to emulate his example.

If you'd like to bring a flower or other offering, you are more than welcome - but most importantly - just bring yourself! 

Here is Vidyamala, an order member who lives in Manchester, with her typically succinct and warm style, summing up why she likes being a member of the Triratna Buddhist Order. 

You may know Vidyamala as the founder of Breathworks and she has also written a couple of very well-received books on Mindfulness including 'Living Well with Pain and Illness' 

Last week Vidyadasi led the class and explored what we mean by 'Mindfulness' - what qualities are we looking for? In addition to a guided practice and discussion there was time to reflect on some notes & points on the theme of mindfulness: 

Mindfulness is not the same as thinking about something.   It is more like ‘awareness’.

In mindfulness, we are just ‘being’, not ‘doing’.

These things are ‘doing’: planning, worrying, remembering, replaying, ruminating, comparing, going over, wondering, imagining.

Turn off the autopilot.

‘Mindfulness is the awareness that emerges through paying attention on purpose, in the present moment, and non-judgementally, to things as they are.’

(The Mindful Way Through Depression – Williams, Kabat-Zinn, Teasdale, Segal)

It’s being ‘curious about things rather than trying to change how things are.’

(Karunajala)

‘Peace can only exist in the present moment’
(Thich Nhat Hanh)

Nandavajra will continue on the theme of mindfulness on Wednesday 19 April with further opportunities to practice and clarify its purpose

Subhuti is one of Sangharakshita's closest disciples and a long- standing order member. Here is a link to a talk he gave at the London Buddhist Centre as part of their celebrations of the 50th anniversary of the Triratna Buddhist Community 

A group of us from Exeter and Devon travelled up to the Bristol Buddhist Centre on Saturday 8th April to join in with their celebrations. It was a lovely day and I personally really enjoyed being warmly welcomed by a larger sangha

As part of the day we listened to four short talks on one of Sangharakshita's poems, Four Gifts: 

I come to you with four gifts. 

The first gift is a lotus flower. 

Do you understand?

My second gift is a golden net. 

Can you recognise it? 

My third gift is a shepherd's round dance. 

Do your feet know how to dance? 

My fourth gift is a garden planted in the wilderness. 

Could you work there? 

I come to you with four gifts. 

Dare you accept them? 

Our weekly meeting yesterday took place just the day before a rather special event in the Triratna Buddhist Community's existence: exactly 50 years ago, on the 6 April 1967 Urgyen Sangharakshita dedicated the Triratna Meditation and Shrine room (yes it was called Triratna!) in a basement below a shop in Covent Garden.  The few few decades of its existence though we were known as 'The Friends of the Western Buddhist Order'. 

So many lives have been transformed by the Buddhist movement that grew from that simple ceremony! 

Here is a short (2 mins) clip for you enjoy on the buddhistcentre online's triratna50 page 

In honour of the event that took place 50 years ago I introduced the evening by talking about Triratna's Six Distinctive Emphases and have attached a few pages of information to this post. 

Most of the evening tho was spent reflecting on how and why practice of 'The Arts' might support our spiritual life.

As well as practice meditation we spent some time drawing some simple items from the natural world.  As Karunadarshin pointed out, we so readily and automatically assume we 'know' what things and people are that we meet in our life - but as we start to draw, we quickly realise that we really have no idea about them at all, and instead realize that we have made all kinds of assumptions. But as we start looking closely, we suddenly see more and more detail, and deeper levels of our experience open up .... so, when we engage in observation and paying attention, this opens up another, quite new level of understanding; we see more, we see things differently. 

There are so many different kinds of meditation practices - how do they relate to each other, which ones should we do?

When we embark on practising meditation, it can seem confusing to come across the fact that there are many different techniques - last Wednesday (29 March), we explored this with the help of ta little list entitled 'The Four Kinds of Meditation'. I first learned this many years ago from Ruciraketu at the Cambridge Buddhist Centre. 

I found it a useful way then to understand the many meditation practices we may come across in our exploration of the dharma, and I'm sharing it here as a possibly useful way for us to choose the kind of practice for us at any given time.

Having said that, we also want to aim to grow in awareness and kindness in a balanced and rounded way, and while we may choose to focus on one or the other of these, I'd suggest we need all of them to be present as part of effective spiritual practice! 

Here is a summary: There are four main kinds of meditation, and all meditation techniques can be understood under one of these headings: 

1. Concentrative: There is a body of practices whose aim is to still the mind, to gather us together when we are dispersed,  to help us focus and be present when we are distracted and 'allover the place'. Mindfulness practices like the Mindfulness of Breathing are a classic practice for this aim. 

2. Generative: this is the body of practices that help us grow and develop more of a quality that we wish to have more present in our life - kindness, generosity, rejoicing in others for example. The basis for these practices is that we can train ourselves to have more of these qualities - like building up a muscle through exercise. The Development of Loving Kindness (metta bhavana) is a key practice here. 

3. Receptive: This is a key skill to learn - to be completely open and able to turn towards our actual experience, beyond and below our layers of cultural conditioning that make us blindly accept assumptions of 'how things are'.  The practice here is what we call in Triratna Just Sitting

4. Reflective: learning to think - in a relaxed, focused, directed way, allowing us to go deeper and find our authentic and truly creative way of relating to the world - the ability to do this very much depends on some grounding in the above three skills. 

I am just adding the poem by Roger Keyes 'Hokusei says' as we read it at the end of the class and it is one of my favourites! 

Some of us might we interested in this - LivingWellDyingWell Southwest UK are hosting events in Exeter on 7,8 and 11 May to mark Dying Matters Awareness Week - see the flyer attached for more info. 

7 May: DYING AT HOME - 
"70% of us want to die at home yet 50% die in hospital...... ""
8 May: PLANNING FOR YOUR END OF LIFE - 
We can put into place, now, what we want and don’t want at the end of life so we can get on with the business of living" ; 
11 May Death Cafe 7 pm to 9 pm at KuPP, 21a Guildhall Shopping Centre Exeter EX4 3HG a DEATH CAFÉ

Contact Alizoun@alid.co.uk or telephone 07887840663. Costs of workshop £35.50; the Death Café is free of charge.
https://www.facebook.com/lwdw.uk/

This week we continued our theme of going deeper in meditation and to truly 'meditate with and in the body'; learning to find out 'what is actually happening' as opposed to what we may just think is happening due to habit or custom.  

Nandavajra introduced us to the term 'vedana' - an interesting and useful concept in Buddhism. Sometimes translated as 'feeling'; a more accurate term is 'sensation', or as it sometimes referred to as the 'initial hedonic feeling tone' - that is, the simple sensations which we experience as pleasant, unpleasant (or too subtle to be either and more 'neutral'). What then happens is that we typically have an immediate but purely habitual reaction or aversion (anger, worry, fear)  or craving (wanting more, fear of losing it, ...). 

But learning to be aware of just the simple plain experience as it is, without adding our habitual reactions or 'stories', allows us to make more creative choices. As a result we experience a  degree of freedom: we stop being tossed around by the circumstance of our life and start feeling more that we are free to make a creative response, which is a such relief... 

So if we can learn to get to know our actual experience as it arises and let go of our habitual, often unconscious responses .... then we can have a choice how we respond and rest in a more open and fluid awareness that is free of aversion, craving and confusion; and that is beginning of freedom - a very helpful skill to learn. This is also the key skill to learn in what is called 'mindfulness'. 

Here is a 20 minute guided vedana meditation led by Vidyamala  - she is the founder of the pioneering Breathworks mindfulness community helping people around the world with chronic pain and stress and offering training in this field.

www.breathworks-mindfulness.org.uk