Buddhist Centre Features
Buddhist Centre Features

Beauty and Environmental Action (The Dharma Toolkit Podcast, Episode 41)

By Centre Team on Sat, 17 Jul, 2021 - 17:05

Join us for a deep dive into the relationship between art, aesthetics, the environment, and the inner life of people, objects and houses! In this episode we discuss the current ecological and biodiversity crises with an artist and a poet, asking how an appreciation and fuller understanding of beauty itself can help us take action in our own lives.

Be prepared to have your notions of “the beautiful” challenged and, hopefully, also affirmed as we range with our guests Padmacandra and Vilokini...

Buddhist Centre Features
Buddhist Centre Features

The Alchemical Heart (The Dharma Toolkit Podcast, Episode 35)

By Centre Team on Sun, 3 Jan, 2021 - 19:42

In this first podcast of 2021 we turn to the magic of inner transformation, with a special episode to mark our forthcoming Home Retreat on meditation: ‘The Alchemical Heart’ with Paramananda.

Happy New Year! May 2021 prove a kinder, more hopeful year for all.

In this first podcast of the year we turn to the magic of inner transformation, with a special episode to mark our forthcoming Home Retreat: ‘The Alchemical Heart’ with Paramananda.

In our conversation around the work involved...

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The Community Toolkit for Uncertain Times

These Are The Moments (The Dharma Toolkit Podcast, Episode 32)

By Centre Team on Fri, 11 Sep, 2020 - 21:36

Hello again! We’re back for a new season of The Dharma Toolkit podcast. We’ve had a wee break, passed through fleeting summer, and are turning towards the first fall/autumn of these strange, pandemic times ready to renew our own sense of connection through community with you. Welcome aboard!

We begin again by following up and extending our previous mini-series ‘The Many Jewels: Buddhism, Writing and the Arts’ about the place of poetry and art in forming a response...

Buddhist Action
Buddhist Action

For the Earth, From the Sangha: Poetry Readings and Other Voices

By rodashruti on Thu, 2 Jul, 2020 - 00:08

This is a companion recording to the series of podcasts I produced for Earth Week 2020: Hair On Fire - Buddhist Responses Turning Toward Climate Change

  1. Eva Soncin introduced Vimalasara.
     
  2. Vimalasara read “I am Africa” from her recently published book of poems, I Am Still Your Negro: An Homage to James Baldwin, published by University of Alberta Press. It’s available at your favorite online book sellers, and on order from local independent bookstores.
     
  3. Paul Greenberg read excerpts
  4. ...
Buddhist Centre Features
The Community Toolkit for Uncertain Times

Into the Dark Wood (The Dharma Toolkit, Episode 30)

By Centre Team on Wed, 24 Jun, 2020 - 01:58

Join us for a walk into the forest of the unknown. Enchantments await. Groves of images. Bridges to the unseen. A path that wanders lost until some deeper magic happens…

We are back in the realm of art and the making of images, the making of things, the making of meaning. Nagasiddhi’s trainings in technical sculpture, prop design and building, the rituals of puppetry, and carpentry with wood left by his father long ago - all these have prepared him for a...

Bump elbows, say hello!
The Community Toolkit for Uncertain Times

For Nothing Is Fixed: Reflecting on Racism

By viveka on Sun, 7 Jun, 2020 - 15:39

Dear Sangha friends,

I wanted to offer you a podcast to listen to in these times. Paramananda and I met on May 25 to record a conversation for The Buddhist Centre Online. At the time George Floyd had not yet died an unjust death in an encounter with police. Another black man Ahmaud Arbery’s shooting while jogging in Georgia was in the news. Our conversation began with a poem from James Baldwin and opened to reflections about the relevance and purpose of...

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The Community Toolkit for Uncertain Times

For Nothing Is Fixed - Getting Real with Viveka and Paramananda, Episode 1

By Centre Team on Tue, 2 Jun, 2020 - 02:16

For Nothing Is Fixed

For nothing is fixed,
forever, forever, forever,
it is not fixed;
the earth is always shifting,
the light is always changing,
the sea does not cease to grind down rock.
Generations do not cease to be born,
and we are responsible to them
because we are the only witnesses they have.
The sea rises, the light fails,
lovers cling to each other,
and children cling to us.
...

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The Community Toolkit for Uncertain Times

The River Under the River (The Dharma Toolkit, Episode 27)

By Centre Team on Tue, 26 May, 2020 - 22:27

“Deserving a place in a realm where miracles happen”

Let’s start with this image: there’s a river under the river. Then follow it via the works of William Stafford and the creative lives of members of the Wolf at the Door group: poets and writers exploring the interplay of modes of attention in their chosen art forms, mediated by the practice of Buddhism.

The wolf is there too. Alive and real and, sometimes, scary. But this...

Bump elbows, say hello!
The Community Toolkit for Uncertain Times

Ironic Points of Light (The Dharma Toolkit Daily, Episode 25)

By Centre Team on Sat, 9 May, 2020 - 00:21

Shimmering images, and no less shimmering experiences. Today’s episode begins a series on beauty, poetry, myth, art and symbol as a response to crisis.

Taking our cue from W.H. Auden’s poem, September 1st, 1939, and his recognition of the need to “love one another or die”, we ask how, in the midst of fear – even of death – we can exercise our agency as human beings.

Poetry leads the way in and out of the questioning. Joining Auden in the...

Community Highlights
The Community Toolkit for Uncertain Times

The Blue Sky at the Heart of the Body (The Dharma Toolkit Daily, Episode 7)

By Centre Team on Tue, 31 Mar, 2020 - 11:04

A crucial and rather beautiful conversation about how we relate to our bodies in relative isolation. Some down-to-earth, open-hearted sharing of experience about things physical: the signs and symptoms and weathers of our bodies; the beneficial effect on our mental health of imaginative connection with other embodied beings; and the kindly wisdom in learning to see and name our actual physical experience instead of becoming lost in speculation.

We’re joined for an all Southern Hemisphere affair by Suvarnadhi from Auckland, NZ...

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