free buddhist audio

We’re absolutely delighted – and somewhat relieved – today to be able to announce the full launch of our new community site!

This represents a very big shift for our service: now any Fwbo centre or institution – anywhere in the world – can upload its own talks, and have its own pages on the site. We’ve already got quite a few signed up, and the first talks are appearing – in English, French and German! Come and take a look…

What’s very exciting for us is that the amount of material on the website will increase greatly over the next months, and is likely to be much more up-to-date and representative of what’s going on in our international community. It will also allow us at the archives to concentrate on getting a lot more of the older talks and special recordings online.

Watch this space for more news of new features as we roll them out in the coming months. And if your centre or Fwbo project would like to get involved, we’d be delighted if you get in touch!

One other piece of news: in April, Free Buddhist Audio had its first 20,000 visitor month! We’ve come a long way since the days of selling scratchy old cassette tapes to about 200 people a year… Thank you to everyone for their tremendous support!

If you’ve searched for our site in Google you may have seen a message saying ‘this site may harm your computer’… So what happened?

Well, a hacker managed to modify one of the posts on our blog in such a way as to force the installation of some malware onto your computer when you viewed the blog page containing that post. You’ll be glad to know we fixed the problem as soon as it was brought to our attention, but unfortunately it may take Google some weeks to remove the warning from their search results. Please be assured that only the blog was involved – the rest of the site was unaffected and remains secure.

UPDATE: Google has now officially removed us from their blacklist. Hurrah!

So the story behind this is that around the year 2000 (which somehow still sounds really sci-fi), a study course some people do in our community was being revamped to include some basic Pali suttas. At the time, we were finishing a project to digitally remaster all of Sangharakshita’s main lectures, poetry recordings and sutra readings for release on cd, and it occurred to us that it would be neat if we could get him to record readings of the Pali texts chosen for the new course, so we could use it as a launch disc for the new cd series. So we asked, he said yes, and we produced a commemorative cd pack with a beautifully designed slipcase and a little booklet of the texts themselves. The designer was Dhammarati, and it’s another example of working wonders with a very limited budget and little time… Many thanks are due to all the publishers who gave us permission to reprint these essential Dharma (or should that be Dhamma?) texts.

A prosaic enough subtitle for this week’s update – but one that belies the rather marvellous diversity of the new material we’re featuring today. The Western Buddhist Order is nothing if not diverse, and here we have two talks that, taken together, probably encapsulate that better than any plain old discourse ever could…

Kulananda (Michael Chaskalson) is first up with his beautifully elegant take on the last of the traditional four levels of mindfulness – Mindfulness of Reality itself. This is potentially confusing territory, but Kulananda proves an excellent and calm pilot around the main streams and backwaters of Buddhist thought regarding the nature of life, the universe and everything. A good reference if you’ve ever lost your way a bit and needed to steady the boat.

Then contrast this approach to what really matters, with the almost rambunctious – Padmasambhava – by Danavira. To call this a ‘talk’ doesn’t really cut it – more like a controlled explosion of sound, a ‘performance piece’ in the best sense of that phrase. And the Great Guru is, indeed, called forth onto the stage of things with much laughing and singing. “Uncle Padma” is doubtless smiling at this young “nephew” who is so clearly moved in praising him – listen and find out why.

So, there you have it: two of the fairest talks, most alike in dignity, and certainly worth an hour of your time…

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This week we have news of two recent talks by Urgyen Sangharakshita, which we’ve now posted to the site for your listening and downloading pleasure. The first is from the Buddhafield Festival 2007 – Entering the Sangha – and finds the man in splendid form in a summer field amongst the hot tubs and revellers.

The second – Recollections and Reflections on My Going Forth – is fresh from the Men’s Order Convention, and has many a tale to tell from Sangharakshita’s days as a wandering ‘Dharma Farer’ in India. It’s also kind of challenging!

We also want to tell you about a fuller version of our new podcast for September – the splendidly titled Building an Ethical Underworld – Lessons from the Mafia – from Khemasuri.

Now you know we were always going to publicise this one, because the title is just so good. And because we could put up a picture of Tony Soprano. Underneath Bhante. But this is the extended version – incorporating a question-and-answer session (a bit like the ‘Director’s Cut’…) – of another thought-provoking and insightful talk from the Buddhafield ‘Dharma Parlour’ series. Listen and be inspired – and, well, not very afraid.

To help us keep this free, please think about making a donation.