Sanghajivini, Newcastle, UK
Padmavajri, East Sussex
Viriyalila, FBA Team
Eric, FBA Team
Sheila Groonell, Aryaloka, USA
Sangharakshita, Birmingham, UK
Coleen, FBA Team
Suriyavamsa, Glasgow, UK
December 21st, 2010
In this talk “Loving What Is” Vajrapriya shares his own nitty gritty practice of dealing with hatred, clearing the way for a more mettaful response. “Metta is what arises when you realize that being human isn’t easy.” With an introduction by Jnanavaca. To read about some of our volunteers who helped make this talk available, please see our post on Triratna News.
Podcast: Play in new window | Download
December 20th, 2010
Spreading the Dharma
Sharing our Practice
Connecting our Community Worldwide
Free Buddhist Audio serves an international community. And today we’d like to give you a bit of background on how we’ve been setting up conditions to move towards being able to support the many languages of the Triratna world.
We received a UK government grant in 2008 to create our Community Places and community upload system. (see: Community Upload System Gains Momentum). With this we were able to set up individual archives for Buddhist centres and projects around the world, allowing for centres to upload talks directly to the site in their local languages. Places quite active with this are: Essen and Berlin, Germany; Valencia, Spain; Pune, India; Ghent, Belgium; Krakow, Poland; Paris, France; Oslo, Norway; Dharmakranti, India. You can also hear many of Subhuti’s talks with simultaneous translation into Hindi on our specialist Indian Pages.
Next, we took a fresh look at the structure of our site itself. If you look down in the lower right corner of the site, you will see five little flags. Seasoned users will remember that these little flags used to take you to versions of FBA in Chinese, German, Spanish, French, and Dutch. In fact, we had full translations of the site in each language but we discovered that people from those language groups didn’t much visit as there simply wasn’t enough local content available and easy to find amongst all the English language material. So we successfully set about promoting use of our upload system in non-English speaking Centres and replaced the full translations with some focussed content pages instead. This means that all the talks in a particular language can now be sorted together for quick access. In 2010 we’ve done this for Hindi, German and Spanish, and we’re looking to extend the service to cover French talks (and possibly other languages) in 2011. Chinese, however, is a very special case! There are, as yet, no Triratna talks available in Chinese, but our site has modest use amongst English speakers in China and we’re proud to provide them with a clear, Buddhist source of Dharma. And so far, the site remains unblocked by the Chinese authorities, which is also perhaps a feat to be celebrated!
In general in our promotional work this year, we are aiming to communicate more directly with sanghas all over the world. This work has included creating email newsletters for local communities, and we have worked with several generous volunteers to create translations of these where needed. So far, we have publicized FBA in the Spanish, Dutch, and Swedish. In undertaking our international promotional and fundraising work, it has also become clear that we need to create donation pages in local languages in order to encourage local support! So we’re happy to report that we have now finished the Spanish versions, and will soon be hard at work on the German pages. We hope this will really help folk everywhere in the Triratna Community come to feel a genuine sense that Free Buddhist Audio is made for them too!
All this is, of course, only the start of what is possible. The new version of our website has been built to accommodate multiple language versions of all the text on the site, but it remains quite a complex task to make sure we have enough diverse content that will work in sync with different translations, and to consider how best to serve the needs of particular language communities. We are very much learning as we go, and we are learning in partnership with our international users! To that end we have set up a great working translation team, with technical assistance from one of our Spanish speaking community members, and we will look again at getting the whole site translated into as many languages as seems practically useful in the coming year. Getting all our FBA pages, features sections – and our search engine! – to work well across multiple languages is quite a technological challenge. But we are determined to serve our whole community and we’re excited to be at the forefront of promoting a vibrant and coherent presentation of the Dharma for all in years ahead!
December 19th, 2010
Spreading the Dharma
Sharing our Practice
Connecting our Community Worldwide
Engagement with the Arts has long been a distinctive feature of the Triratna approach to the Dharma and Sangharakshita’s view of spiritual practice in general. Free Buddhist Audio is very pleased to announce our growing collection of talks in the realm of Art & Literature. As well as a keystone recording featuring Sangharakshita in discussion with the celebrated poet Kathleen Raine, our Triratna Arts section now features a fantastic series from the Poetry East project organised at the London Buddhist Centre.
Showcasing the work of well-known contemporary poets, exploring the relationship between poetry and spiritual life, Maitreyabandhu, Director of the London Buddhist Centre, hosts bi-monthly conversations between award-winning contemporary poets and himself, also a recently decorated poet. So far Fiona Sampson, Hugo Williams, Mimi Khalvati, and David Constantine interviews have been uploaded and shared through Free Buddhist Audio’s Community Places.
As the live evening is preceded by a short led meditation in order to provide the best listening conditions externally and internally, the team at Free Buddhist Audio would like to offer the same for our listening audience. Browse our guided introductions, led practices and other meditation resources from practitioners all over the world.
December 18th, 2010
Spreading the Dharma
Sharing our Practice
Connecting our Community Worldwide
Free Buddhist Audio has been working hard all year to provide opportunities for people all over the world to receive the gift of the Dharma and connect with the Triratna Buddhist Community. We are pleased to share with you Seven Days of FBA – featuring some personal stories from members of our online community, as well as updates on new features and a celebration of our 2010 milestones. Stay tuned for articles on Young People, Our Host of Volunteers, New Spanish Translations and more!
Seven Days of FBA – New Features
Responding to suggestions received from our online community, our team has been rolling out several new features for our services – a new and improved search engine, for both audio and text, as well as new navigation features that allow talks to be viewed as images or text. The result is A-Zed Dharma at your fingertips!
New & Improved Search Engine
Q. How do you make 17 million words and 1000+ talks easily searchable? A. With a lot of constant effort!
We’re happy to introduce here the latest and greatest version of our search engine. It’s been re-written to allow more flexible keywords and search items to improve the results given. We hope you’ll find it useful!
Located in the upper right corner of the site, a panel appears when you begin typing in your search item. The default search is for audio, but you can also specify ‘text’ and adjust a few other key things, and then you’re off and running. And we’ll remember the way you set things for your next search – though it’s always easy to change with a simple click!
If you prefer, of course, you can easily do more advanced searches in the text archive (we provide clear, plain English instructions!), which contains all of Sangharakshita’s seminars, and is growing with every transcription we receive from our volunteer community. And with this, let’s take the opportunity to thank our host of volunteers – your work helps make FBA a more comprehensive service that benefits many beings!
A-Zed Dharma at your Fingertips
We are also very pleased to announce new navigation features we’ve added to many of the pages within the site. Collections of talks can now be viewed as images or text lists, depending on what you prefer. You can also view the talks alphabetically, chronologically, or even (in relevant places) by date they were uploaded.
Themes sorted alphabetically by images…
Titles sorted alphabetically by text, newest first…
Our team is constantly working to think ahead about the needs of the community – five, ten, fifty years! As our archive grows with each new talk given around the world, we are developing systems to maintain our oral history and keep it flourishing and readily available to all. Modern innovations on the web helps us provide you with better access today and preserve our teachings for many generations to come. Please support us in our efforts!
September 4th, 2008
Here’s a forthright and passionate talk, taking as its starting point the great contemporary Tibetan teacher (sometimes also written ‘Chatral Sangye Dorje’) and his relationship to practice in the FWBO via his giving of the Green Tara practice to Sangharakshita. The main focus, however, is the need to practice the Dharma for others as part of a meaningful community, and Vajratara argues her case with a balance of down-to-earth humour and uncompromising vision.
Tracked version includes the following detail:
1. Introduction to Chetul Sangye Dorje; Sangharakshita’s first meeting with him
2. Early years and practice; a meeting with the Regent of Tibet
3. The meaning of Chetul Sangye Dorje’s name; a meeting with Thomas Merton
4. A teaching to Paramartha; two mind-training slogans (lohjong); practising for yourself versus practising for others; a quote from Sangharakshita
5. Real practice as love and kindness to others; commentary on mind-training by Jamgon Kontrul; the mantra of the universe; resorting to ‘the magical practice’ of spiritual individualism; going beyond yourself
6. How to practice for others; Green and White Tara; significance of Tara’s leg position; balance between self-focus and other-focus; the conflict of choice
7. Be friendly even when you can’t be happy; green, nature, and remaining open
8. Practising together, in numbers; all beings as White Tara; drawing strength from communal practice
9. Don’t settle for a comfortable life; White Tara as a young girl; settling down; Chetul Sangye Dorje and the meat-eating teacher’s disciple
10. Conclusion – Tara as embodiment of practice for others; not allowing our Buddhism to become self-indulgence
Podcast: Play in new window | Download
