Urthona - A Journal of Buddhism and the Arts
Urthona - A Journal of Buddhism and the Arts
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Ratnagarbha
Ratnagarbha
Urthona 37 out soon!

The Dharma of Fantasy

Our issue on fantasy literature, issue 37, is almost ready to be printed!

There will be amazing articles on :

* Addiction and renunciation in The Lord of the Rings by Dayajava

* The Oxford Inklings and the quest for mythic renewal by Ratnagarbha

* Finding love, patience & forgiveness through fantasy, by Maitriyogini

* Wonderful mythic artwork from Vishuddimati and Moksananda

With fantastic artwork , including this rendition of 'the eye of Sauron' by Stirzocular –www.deviantart.com/stirzocular/gallery

Subscribe at www.urthona.com

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Ratnagarbha
Ratnagarbha
The Dharma of Fantasy
New URTHONA magazine on fantasy writing due out late summer

The Dharma of Fantasy

With great power comes great responsibility

Some of the greatest modern fantasy novel series are unfinished. The Game of Thrones series by George Martin has five novels published, the final two have been awaited eagerly since 2011. Similarly for Patrick Rothfuss' unfinished Kingkiller trilogy.

Here at Urthona we cannot speed up these authors but we can ask why they have been so successful, making fantasy novels by far the best selling literary genre. And more importantly, we can ask what such writing has to offer the world. Is it just escapism? Or does it offer a doorway into wider vistas of myth, meaning and engagement with the human condition not easily available elsewhere?

Urthona Issue 37, due out later this summer, is about fantasy writing that engages the fundamental issues – of birth, death, power, pleasure, friendship, love and the need for wisdom in a fractured world, that all human beings must face one way or another.

Mythopoetic novels might be a better name for the genre at its best. It is writing that engages with who we really are, rather than offering comforting regression to a past that never existed.

Realism (whatever that is) can show us these issues embodied in the lives we think we actually live in the modern world. Fantasy writing can highlight the perennial themes of human life stripped of incidentals, in all of their raw, luminous power...

In Urthona Issue 37 well as articles covering the Inklings – C. S Lewis, J.R.R. Tolkien and Charles Williams – Buddhist writer Caroline Ivimey-Parr will be taking a broader look at modern fantasy and how it has helped her on her spiritual path (she has just been ordained into the Triratna Buddhist order):

"Fantasy novels were the outlet for an imagination and ambition that had little interest in worldly prosperity or status. I couldn’t articulate even to myself what I wanted, but I knew it was something of a different order to mundane life (‘This can’t be it. This can’t be all there is to life’). I wanted a purpose worth giving my whole being to; a family, mortgage, and 9-5 wouldn’t cut it. I was following an inkling of a meaning for life, a meaning that was cloaked in mystery and soaked in magic.."

Caroline doesn't mind that the Kingkiller Trilogy is unfinished:

"It seems fitting that my favourite fantasy series is exquisite, yet incomplete – like the Dharma life, beautiful and poignant, constantly moving towards an incomprehensible end.

Kvothe, the flawed hero of the Kingkiller Chronicles – who is suspended in a literary bardo – learns how to control the wind by the power of naming. With great power, naturally comes great responsibility. Something that Kvothe does not always live up to. Just so Ged, in Ursual Le Guin's Earth-Sea novels, misuses the power of naming to call up a shadow from the world of the dead that haunts him for the rest of the series. As Caroline says:

"In The Kingkiller Chronicles real magic is incomprehensible to the ordinary mind. Even when Kvothe stumbles across the true name of the wind, it is not a word he can simply recall. The knowledge is hidden within his mind; he does not control this power... Really seeing the world (either through the lens of magic, or removing the lenses/veils through Dharma practice) is such a different perspective to the everyday mind; it is essential to act with responsibility and with great care."

Find out more in Urthona 37, subscribe here:

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Ratnagarbha
Ratnagarbha
Editor's landscape photography gallery

 A new online gallery of my photography is now live, atmospheric English landscapes and also geopoetic photo essays

http://geopoeticblog.wordpress.com/

It's under my civil name Ambrose Gilson – enjoy viewing Ratnagarbha :) 

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Ratnagarbha
Ratnagarbha
Buddhist Choral Music – a new web resource

Buddhist Choral Music site

Sarvadarsin introduces a new web resource of Buddhist choral music: In recent years, Buddhism has spread to the West, becoming the fastest growing religion in some countries, its teachings and practices striking a chord with individuals seeking spiritual growth and inner peace. Previously, as it reached new parts of the world, Buddhism had a transformative effect on the cultures it encountered, as new Buddhists share and communicate the Buddha Dharma in ways informed by their own traditions.

One of the biggest new Buddhist Movements, the Triratna Buddhist Community, emphasises engagement with the arts as one of the most valuable aspects of spiritual practice.  Members of the Triratna Buddhist Order have been creating explicitly Buddhist visual art in a modern style for some time, and increasingly they are creating in other areas too, including choral music.  

Buddhist Choral Music is a new website which brings together recorded performances of pieces composed by members of the Triratna Buddhist Order, Bodhivajra, Vipulakirti, Manidhara and Sarvadarśin. Visitors to the site can hear audio and video recordings of several of the pieces and choirmasters are encouraged to browse through over twenty pieces available to download as sheet music, which their choirs can perform or record.

Texts featured in the compositions include some of the most important Buddhist texts including The Heart Sutra and excerpts from The Diamond Sutra and The Dhammapada.

site and to fund future compositions and recordings.

Website: www.buddhistchoralmusic.com

Contact sarvadarsin@gmail.com 

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Ratnagarbha
Ratnagarbha
New Issue of Urthona OUT NOW

URTHONA 36 unknown landscapes

Urthona Issue 36 ‘Unknown Landscapes’ is out now! A sumptuous issue devoted to landscape art and writing...

Landscapes move and uplift us in ways that are hard to pin down. Artists explore such emotional responses and bring clarity, awareness and transformational depth to the process. They help us to make the appreciation of landscape more conscious and meaningful. 

As Christopher Neve in his wonderful book ‘Unquiet Landscape’ says of the work of Paul Nash: ‘pictures, like the landscape itself, enunciate with the greatest clarity a language that is beyond words.’ 

Highlights include interview with Maitreyabandhu about his love of Cezanne. Review of the Hockney Arrival of Spring exhibition. Sacred springs in Nepal and Cambridgeshire. Dynamic Cornish landscapes by celebrated St Ives artist David Mankin. Profiles of Triratna artists Saddhahadaya and Khemin

NEW FORMAT Now in A4 size art book format and high quality thick paper, a delight to hold in your hand. Also available as Emag for iPad etc.

Cover image: Liverpool Bay by Ratnagarbha

Featured Image: Storm Over Zennor by the dynamic St Ives artist David Mankin who is profiled in this issue. 

BUY PRINTED ISSUE 36

BUY EMAG ISSUE 36

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Ratnagarbha

Urthona Issue 36 ‘Unknown Landscapes’ will be out just after Xmas. 

Landscapes move and uplift us in ways that are hard to pin down. Artists explore such emotional responses and bring clarity, awareness and transformational depth to the process. They help us to make the appreciation of landscape more conscious and meaningful. 

As Christopher Neve in his wonderful book ‘Unquiet Landscape’ says of the work of Paul Nash: ‘pictures, like the landscape itself, enunciate with the greatest clarity a language that is beyond words.’ 

Join us soon to discover this language of the heart. To secure your copy Subscribe via 

www.urthona.com

Click on Shop in top menu 

HIGHLIGHTS OF NEW ISSUE

* Lois Christie discovers a deep feeling for the rocks under our feet in the writing of Fiona Sampson (photo: Phil Gregory)

* Maitreyanbandhu talks about his deep love for the work of Cezanne who found ‘the core’ at Mont Sainte-Victoire.

* Norfolk Buddhist painter Khemin talks to Abhaya about his work.

* Book reviews on two major mid century English landscape artists: John Nash (brother of Paul) & Ivon Hitchens

* A conversation review: Hockney Arrival of Spring exhibition, with Anantamati and Oscar Gillespie 

* Buddhist painter Saddhahadaya writes about her process and inspirations.

* Dynamic Cornish artist David Mankin has a showcase of his work

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Ratnagarbha
Ratnagarbha
Buddhism and Platonism

Just posted a major essay comparing these two ancient systems of philosophy and spiritual practice.

https://urthona.com/2022/11/06/the-buddha-meets-plato/

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Ratnagarbha
Ratnagarbha

Cowboy Meditation Primer – poetry sequence by Mary McCray

(Taster  from Urthona issue 35 ‘American Zen’)

A unique sequence of poems in which the hard lives and gritty adventures of cowboys on the trails of 19th Century New Mexico are combined with Buddhist Wisdom.

It’s 1870s New Mexico. A heartbroken city journalist has joined a cattle drive in order to learn how to be a real cowboy. He meets a cattle company traveling up the Goodnight Loving Trail in New Mexico Territory. Not only do the cowboys give Silas a very real western adventure, they offer him a spiritual journey in which each of his companions has something to teach him, but perhaps most importantly so does the landscape itself:

There are no mountains here, just low murmuring hills
to climb, go around
or sink into like rain.

There are no rivers here, just dry ditch and crevice to come upon slow
and quiet like wind.

The way is all sky,
big blue and skew-whiff white, empty of everything
you have ever tried to give it.

The protagonist is, Silas Cole III, a burnt-out writer in search of new dreams. He finds camaraderie in the company of the mysterious Coyote, the quiet cook, and the gambling cowboys who teach him to reel in his soul as well as the herd they drive. As they drive the cattle Silas is immersed in the powerful, sun etched landscape of New Mexico with its vast plains of dry grass, dry water courses and amazing rock formations. It is an endless journey, where as much is lost as found. As Silas warns us at at the beginning of his story:

...before you learn how to rope a cow, cook beans and the cake of a cornbread over fire, before you learn how to ford a river,

how to cross over, be warned. This story is mine and only mine and never really was mine.
This is the way.

I am only one man of the found and lost unraveling and unraveling
his baskets of truth.

Read much more of this remarkable sequence in Urthona issue 35:

https://urthona-magazine.square.site/

More about issue 35 ‘American Zen’ at www.urthona.com

You can buy ‘Cowboy Meditation Primer’ from Mary McCray’s website:

https://www.marymccray.com/travel-the-trail.html

Also on Mary’s site you can download a fascinating travel guide the the areas of New Mexico and Texas where the sequence is set and discover more about the gritty history of the cattle trails and the people who worked them.

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Ratnagarbha
Ratnagarbha
Allen Ginsberg – letting Imagination go...

Highlight from new edition of Urthona magazine 'American Zen'

see www.urthona.com to order issue 35 and read full article by Acarasiddhi

Acarasiddhi (Tony Press) of the Triratna Buddhist Order grew up in 1950s California. He was too young to be at the famous reading in City Lights bookshop when Ginsgerg’s Howl was unveiled, but he remembers very well the heady atmosphere of 1950s California when the world was opening up in all directions (land, space, imagination…)

Acarasiddhi goes on to give us a vivid account of Ginsberg’s arrival in California in the lively North Beach area of SF, and how he opened up a completely different way of ‘doing poetry’. Also covered are his subsequent explorations of Buddhism. Acarasiddhi concludes:

Celebrities come and go. Some dabble in Buddhism. Ginsberg did more than dabble. And as he was such a public man, his practice was both private and public. I suggest that his public practice, combined with his astounding communication skills, presence, and insistence upon honesty, went a long way toward helping re-ignite Buddhism in my troubled country. Disneyland in California still claims to be “the happiest place on earth,” but would that happiness didn’t have an entrance fee.

Find the full article in Urthona issue 35: American Zen – www.urthona.com

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Ratnagarbha
Ratnagarbha
Where are all the dark paths now?

‘Where are all the dark paths now? The Pure Land itself is near’

Hakuin’s Song of Zazen

Painting shown above: Amitabha, the Buddha of the Western Pure Land (Sukhavati). C. 1700  Central Tibet;  Distemper with gold on cloth,. Dimensions: 56 1/4 × 39 1/2 in. (142.9 × 100.3 cm). Public domain – Metropolitan Museum of Art, New York. Purchased: Barbara and William Karatz Gift and funds from various donors, 2004

High Resolution image and further details at MMA site: 

I would like to include more traditional Buddhist artwork on this site as this is an area we have not covered properly up to now.

Where better to start than a marvellous painting of Amitabha’s Western Paradise from old Tibet?

Amitabha, one of the five Cosmic Buddhas of Esoteric Buddhism, is shown in his paradise, Sukhavati, the Western Pure Land, enthroned beneath a flowering tree festooned with strands of jewels and auspicious symbols.

The sky is filled with throngs of ecstatic demigods who bear offerings and scatter flowers. Seated below are the eight great bodhisattvas, and between them are two large, low tables covered with offerings. To either side are the vast assembled audiences who receive Amitayus’s message. At the bottom, set within a vast panoramic landscape, are courtyards, giant lotus flowers, and pools from which the purified are being reborn.

As we contemplate this painting it is worth thinking a bit more deeply about the whole notion of a pure lands, one that has been highly influential over the millennia all over the Buddhist East.

To begin with it should be said that notions of a heavenly place of rest and reward, post mortem, were not highlighted in early Buddhism. At this stage Heavenly ‘deva realms’ were merely a reward for mundane virtues, a temporary resting place, with no particular religious significance attached. The notion of heaven as a properly religious goal emerged later, in the first few centuries CE, quite early in that wonderful, complex cultural and religious flowering in India we know as ‘the arising of the Mahayana’. From the very earliest Mahayana texts devotees were urged to renounce the more limited goal of Arahantship, mere personal liberation, in favour of an aspiration to become oneself a perfect Buddha. This meant the aspiration to eventually bring the Dharma, the means to end suffering, to each and everyone; and furthermore while on the path to immediately transfer any personal merit (the power and goodness accumulated by virtuous acts) over to the rest of the universe. The Pure Land tradition took this idea of transferring merits away from being a personal action accomplished by the practitioner, and transformed it into a cosmic act by another, on which the practitioner could rely. This is a complete reversal of the original emphasis. All one needed to do was utter in faith the name of Amitabha Buddha, the sage of infinite light, and one would after death be reborn in the paradise that he himself had created by his unlimited virtuous power. In this luminous paradise the conditions for further dharma practice would be ideal, and swift progress to Buddhahood assured. All this is promised in the longer and shorter Sukhavati-Vyuha Sutras, which apparently date back to the 1st century CE and may well have been compiled in Gandhara, just below the western end of the Himalayas, at the northern tip of what is now Pakistan. Some Persian influence on Pure Land Buddhism is therefore possible, as the Persian heartlands are just over the mountains from Gandhara, and certainly colourful, flower strewn, paradiscal realms, richly described, are very much part of Persian culture. 

It is in the longer Sukhavati-Vyuha that we find listed Amitabha’s many great vows. For the Pure Land sects, by far the most significant vow is the eighteenth, in which Amtabha vows to establish his Pure Land Sukhavati for the benefit of all, and to give sanctuary there should one but utter his name sincerely ten times. 

In both the longer and shorter sutras the Pure Land of Amitabha is described in prolix detail. There are interlacing nets of scintillating jewels, rivers ten miles wide with banks of jewels and other precious substances, and trees all made out of gold, jewels, pearls and so forth.  And the land we are told is completely flat, like a polished dance floor, or chequer board. Now, this may not seem so attractive to modern sensibilities, lovers of rugged wilderness as we are. However, in common with most ancient peoples I would presume, the ancient Indians were much more excited by the beauty of verdantly productive agricultural land. Naturally, if hunger and famine remain as a stalking danger in the background, it is land that can produce food to which your heart goes out, not the rocky slopes of high mountains where dangerous bandits or wild beasts may live. So Amitabha’s Pure Land has flowers and fruits and fruit bearing trees in great abundance, but they are all made of jewels. They feed the heart, rather than the body. And of course, as the sutra says in passing, Sukhavati is the joyful land of the fulfillment of every wholesome wish, and if you want there to be hills and mountains there will be. But naturally the most important aspect of Sukhavati is the fact that it provides ideal conditions for making progress towards Awakening. Indeed, not only is Amitabha present at its centre, teaching and radiating light, but the jewel trees, the clear waters, the marvellous birds are all constantly giving forth melodious dharma teachings which, as a Romantic poet might say, ‘steal away the heart’ and turn the mind towards unconditioned truth. 

It should be understood however, that this bright vision was seen all the more brightly because of the shadow beneath it. To faithful Buddhists of all schools in the East the possibility of making mistakes in this life and going to Hell for a very long time was ever present. Hakuin, for example, as a child was terrified of the sight of the candles put under his mother’s bath to warm it, because they reminded him of the visions of hell promised to wicked minds that a local Buddhist preacher had expounded to the local villagers. I’m not trying to argue here that modern Buddhists need to make much of the terrible (if ultimately temporary) hell realms of traditional Buddhism. What I am saying is that one won’t fully appreciate the luminous glory of a Pure Land if one does not appreciate imaginatively the dark background on which it was revealed.  

In any case after these sutras had been written down, the Pure Land tradition went through many centuries of evolution and adaptation, and became in China and beyond a stand-alone school of Buddhism with its own temples, and various schools and lineages, not to mention large numbers of followers among both the educated elites and the common people. In China and nearby countries such as Japan and Korea, the Pure Land tradition became for many the embodiment of authentic Buddhism. 

Among the most significant developments over these centuries was the Pure Land Buddhism of Shinran (1173 - 1263) founder of the Japanese Jodo Shin Shu sect. Shinran inherited the popular devotional Pure Land practice of his master Honen, centred around recitation of the nembutsu, the name of Amitabha. He revered and worked with this inheritance, but also transformed it into something quite different. Hence the Shu (more traditional Pure Land) and Shinran’s Shin Shu remain to this day separate schools in Japan. For Shinran the goal was not only rebirth in Amitabha’s Pure Land after death, but to experience a profound spiritual rebirth here and now. At the moment within this life that you fully entrust yourself to Amitabha you enter the ‘stage of the fully settled’ and Nirvana is clear before you. The emptiness of all things, the world, the vow, even of Nirvana, in true Mahayana fashion, is also clear before you. You now have the shinjin, the steadfast faith which comes about through the renunciation of effort in attaining enlightenment through tariki (self power). Shinjin arises from jinen (naturalness, spontaneous working of the Vow) and has nothing to do with conscious self willed effort on the practitioners’ part. Furthermore, Nirvana and the Pure Land are in fact the same thing. For Shinran the Pure Land is simply an image for Nirvana. To rest in, or aspire to an apparently objective paradise that you leave this world to arrive at, while admirable in its way, is to fall short of the true purpose of Buddhist practice.

Radical though Shinran was in his view of the Pure Land it is not without precedence in Indian Buddhism. Three strands can be mentioned briefly. Firstly the Buddha Nature sutras had always maintained that the seed of Buddhahood is to be found here and now in every individual, simply needing to be uncovered and revealed. Shinran picked up on this ancient tradition and declared that through shinjin unconditional faith in Amitabha and his Vow, the practitioner’s mind is united with Amitabha and the uncovering of one’s innate Buddha nature is Amitabha’s gift to the devotee. Secondly in the Avatamsaka Sutra which was widely influential in the Far East although not so much in Pure Land circles this very world of Jambudvipa (Middle Earth in the the European sense) is revealed as a pure visionary realm of interlacing beams of light and nets of jewels. This world is under the all encompassing spiritual influence and protection of the cosmic Buddha Maha-Vairocana – the great illuminator, who is simply the true or visionary form of the historical Buddha. Thirdly, in the Vimalakirti Nirdesa, a Mahayana Sutra that was much studied in the far East, it is revealed that this apparently impure world, is in fact a Pure Land as glorious as any other, it only appears impure to the beings within it in order to educate and mature them. We would only get complacent if we saw Shakyamuni’s Pure Land as it really is and thought that we had already arrived at the goal…! 

Speaking personally I particularly respond to the subtle dialectic of purity and impurity found in the Vimalakirti. I appreciate the idea that we are already in the Pure Land, but not quite ready to see it yet. Presumably, to take on board Shinran’s central insight, recitation of the Nembutsu, in ardent faith, is a means whereby one could become ‘tuned in’ to the transcendental beauty that is already there, right in front of one’s eyes. I don’t know if Shinran had read and studied the Vimalakirti, but it is likely that he did – given the general popularity of this text in the far East. Certainly the Kyōgyōshinshō Shinran’s magnum opus contains discussion of the relationship between Pure Land practice and the Avatamsaka. 

To conclude I would like to warmly recommend the aspiration to birth in the Pure Land Paradise here and now, as a powerful image that might inspire contemporary practice. The Zen schools, of course, already have this sense of Pure Land orientation, as the opening quotation from Hakuin amply demonstrates. But I feel that this is something relevant to all Buddhists in the modern world. The modern world is one in which war, hunger and famine as not so omnipresent as they were in the ancient world (not yet anyway) but confusion, mental suffering, distraction and general emotional pain seem to be on the rise if anything, as witnessed in the sobering statistics on the increase in mental illness all over the world. So we need now as never before faith in something like a Pure Land to give us cheerful serenity and a vision of wonder and Beauty to console and inspire. Such consolation is not escapism but a transformative act of the imagination. It concerns realities which are neither literally true, nor literally false. They have their own imaginative reality. In the same way that we suspend disbelief, and while we are reading believe imaginatively in the Orcs and Elves in Tolkien’s Lord of the Rings, while we are chanting Amitabha’s name, or reading his sutras, we can suspend disbelief, and read or chant, as if it were all true. And then, who knows, in the profound sense elucidated by Hakuin, Shinran and many others, perhaps the Pure Land really will be clear before us! 

Note: for a much deeper and more extended exploration of the way of Pure Land, the place of imagination in the Buddhist life, and the Sukhavati Vyuha Sutras, including new translations, see the wonderful book from Wisdom Publications, Great Faith, Great Wisdom, by Ratnaguna and Shradhapa. 





 




 

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Ratnagarbha
Ratnagarbha
Abhayavajra - Flight of the Gull...

Flight of the gull... for Buddhist painter ABHAYAVAJRA physical activity, image and meaning arise intertwined. Full article in Urthona Issue 35 American Zen - from Square storefront:

https://urthona-magazine.square.site/s/shop

For Abhayavajra, who is based in rural Suffolk, painting is an art of revealing and covering, an exploration of formal relationships :

"Contradistinction (contre-jour) is a familiar and traditional element of painting, whether used consciously or unconsciously. So is the interaction of colours and tones – the way they transform each other when brought into relationship. That is what my painting is about: the basic elements, techniques and their relationships. The possibilities of a brush loaded with paint, covering and revealing simultaneously. What difference does the size of the brush make? What happens when two colours are alongside each other, or overlap, or one covers the other? How do the parts relate to the whole? And how do all those relationships change depending on the viewer’s distance from the painting? Pursuing these and similar questions leads to a space where physical activity, image and meaning arise intertwined..."

Image: ‘Tomo series 2’ – 170 x 200cm’ by Abhayavajra - more on his work at

https://abhayavajranewman.com

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Ratnagarbha
Ratnagarbha
Urthona 'American Zen' issue published.

The truth of Zen, just a little bit of it, is what turns one's humdrum life, a life of monotonous, uninspiring commonplaceness, into one of art, full of genuine inner creativity.

D. T. Suzuki

Gallery: Click top of border for captions...

Urthona issue 35 is out now. Order at www.urthona.com

FREE seven page sample of new issue

  The theme is American Zen. Appropriately perhaps this issue is in virtual e-mag format only due to Buddhist centres (our main outlet for printed mags) still being closed.  

It was a transformative dialogue... Zen Buddhism encountered American culture in full flood in the dynamic fifties and sixties. Neither were ever the same again. Especially in the hands of maverick scholar D. T. Suzuki Zen entered the modern world and was re-expressed in western-friendly terms. This ancient path was shorn of ritual and ethical rules and expressed in terms of the Romantic path of the rebel artist seeking authentic inner experience free from the straight-jackets of tradition, social rules, conventional religion and mundane philosophies. Many artists took up the baton and as a result American and world culture were subtly but deeply transformed in a dynamic encounter between American letters, visual arts and what was taken as the essence of Buddhism. From John Cage, to Beat poets Ginsberg & Snyder plus Abstract Expressionist painters such as Mark Tobey... many of the most iconic figures of American arts are on these pages. Contents includes:

* The Crack of Vision: Buddhist influenced poetry in North America – Pound to Snyder.

* Fine new poetry from Dhivan, Rachel Jagger, Penny Hope, Paramananda, and others.

* Rothko: Horizons, Emptiness and Perfect Vision by Donal Mac Erlaine

* Fascinating abstract art from Abhayavajra at his Suffolk studio.

* Interview with Peter Cavaciuti, a modern master of zen brush painting based in Cambridge.

* Zen and Abstract Expressionism.

* Ginsberg and the Beats – a personal memoire of 50s California from Acarasiddhi.

* Gary Gach on Bresson’s Diary of a Country Priest.

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Ratnagarbha
Ratnagarbha
Masterpiece – Homer's Iliad

Just published at Urthona.com an introduction to the epic world of Homer's Iliad by Dharmachari Dharmavadana

THE ILIAD an introduction

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Ratnagarbha
Three Cosmogenic Myths

Just Published: an in depth essay of comparative mythology in the spirit of Joseph Campbell, comparing the foundational cosmic mythos of Buddhism, Platonism and Gnosticism. A fascinating look at how ancient stories about the origin of the cosmos have influenced different civilisations.

https://urthona.com/culture-science-society/three-cosmogenic-myths/

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Ratnagarbha
Four Buddhist Composers

Blog post on four very talented contemporary composers, two of them members of the Triratna Buddhist Order:

https://urthona.com/2020/02/18/four-buddhist-composers/

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Ratnagarbha
Issue 35 American Zen update
Issue 35 has reached the layout stage. We have much exciting material in the pipeline. An interview with with the remarkable Peter Cavaciuti a Western master of Japanese brush painting with wonderful photographs by Jeremy Peters. A feature about the American abstract expressionist who were influenced by zen Buddhism including the inimitable John Cage. A fantastic selection of poetry made by Dharmavadana has just come in and I have begun laying out. A personal appreciation of the aesthetics of emptiness as found in the work of Rothko by Donal MacErlaine. Latest blog post on Auden at Poetry East here: https://wordpress.com/post/urthona.com/2594
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Ratnagarbha
Ratnagarbha
Urthona Sci-Fi and Fantasy issue JUST PUBLISHED

URTHONA ISSUE 34, the Science Fiction issue, OUT NOW:

LAUNCH EVENING: 16th February 7.30 prompt in Festival Theatre, Cambridge Buddhist Centre. 

Don’t miss this unique arts evening of cosmic music, poetry, science fiction, & the dharma! (Don’t worry if you are not an SF fan especially this evening has something for all arts lovers with fine music, poetry and conversation.)

Programme:
Launch of Urthona Buddhist arts magazine issue 34 on Buddhism and science fiction
Readings by Buddhist poets featured in the magazine
World Premier of a composition for keyboard and 'cello on the theme of the mandala of the Five Buddhas with Yashodaka and his brother on ‘cello.
Reading and conversation with the celebrated Buddhist poet Ananda.

Further information: contact urthonamag@gmail.com

Highlights of the issue:

* Interview with Doyen of British SF, Christopher Priest

* Obituary and interview with Ursula LeGuin

* Philip K. Dick by Dharmavadana

* Arthur C. Clarke and 2001 by Dh. Vijaya

* Olaf Stapledon and Transcendental SF by Dh. Vimokshadaka

Science Fiction at its best can explore regions of human experience that no other kind of literature (apart from perhaps the heroic epic) is capable of doing justice to. The best writers open up these vistas with due regard for the subtleties of human psychology and human frailties. Such writers are moving into the same territory that Buddhists have been exploring for thousands of years. Find out how they did it in this fascinating issue.

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Ratnagarbha
Ratnagarbha
Urthona Issue 33 launch event at WLBC 1st July

Similar to last year’s excellent event at the West London Buddhist Centre (address below), on 1st July we have another issue launch of Urthona, the Buddhist Arts magazine. Introduced by its poetry editor, Dharmavadana. There will be readings from four poets featured in issue 33 - Caroline Maldonado, Cath Drake, Ian Marriott and Subhadassi – Satyadaka reading his brilliant new Rilke translations, editor Ratnagarbha with translations from Dante, plus music from the Bright Moments Duo: Jonathan Cohen (Piano), Francois Moreau (Double Bass) play jazz and Latin standards and originals, Music for Head, Heart and Feet. And some surprises! You’ll be able to purchase copies of the new Urthona on the night.

There will also be meditation in the main shrine room from 6 pm, introduced and guided for those who are new to it and would like a taster. 

Booking is not necessary and the event is free but the West London Centre does appreciate donations.

Urthona # 33 launch

7 – 9 pm Saturday 1st July

West London Buddhist Centre,

Royal Oak House,

45a Porchester Rd,

London W2 5DP.

 020 7727 9382

http://westlondonbuddhistcentre.com/

More details here:

http://westlondonbuddhistcentre.com/urthona-launch-2/

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Ratnagarbha
Ratnagarbha
New Issue about to be published

NEW ISSUE

Urthona issue 33 – THE FRIENDSHIP ISSUE – will be in bookshops next month. Subscribe now to be sure of your copy.

Highlights include:

The Grey is Silver untransformed…. Haunting art photograph by new rising star, Brighton based Buddhist photographer Sahajatara.

Why is it not wonderful? Maitreyabandhu on his poetic mentorship with poet Mimi Khalvati.

New poetry from Subhadassi, Manjusura, Ian Marriott, Pam Cooper, John Danvers, Cath Drake, Lynn Hoffman and many others

Ed Piercy on friendships between children on screen. He also touches on the touchy area of male friendship in the Wild West!

Being and Form: in depth interview with talented Buddhist artist, Amitajyoti, who is half way through a major commission of a diptych for the Birmingham Buddhist Centre.

A friendship forged in Hell: Ratnagarbha on the friendship between Dante and the poet Virgil.

Zen and the poet’s Mind: Writer Fleda Brown and Zen priest Sokuzan in conversation about creativity. 

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Ratnagarbha
Ratnagarbha
Urthona Magazine Free Sample

Here is a link to a free sample of Urthona, the latest issue on Goddesses East and West

http://issuu.com/urthonamagazine/docs/sample_issue_32/1

Buy full issue at www.urthona.com

Electronic version for tablet / phone / desktop now available, see home page. 

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