I live in Spain so have no Buddhist Centres or Libraries close at hand and FBA is like having an excellent Dharmic library right here. Listening to the Dharma is a whole practice in itself!
Mary, FBA Team
I've gained so much from listening to the talks on FBA that it's truly a pleasure to offer what I can in return to support the work. I can find a talk on pretty much any subject that interests me!
Mary, FBA Team
I love it when a deeply moving excerpt from a Dharma talk is randomly followed on my MP3 player by a piece of music, and then more Dharma comes randomly through. That pretty much rocks my world.
Samudradaka, FBA Team
I enjoy being reminded that listening to the dharma is a Buddhist practice, and that giving, too, is also a vital Buddhist practice. So to donate while listening is a perfect combination of practices!
Sangharakshita, Birmingham, UK
As the founder of the Triratna Buddhist Community, I am very happy to have learned that by the end of this year more than a million talks will have been downloaded - that is a tremendous achievement.
Jinamitra, Welwyn, UK
These recordings have been a key part of my life, especially as I don't live near a Buddhist Centre. With its excellent organisation and fast delivery, FBA is a unique resource. A pleasure to donate.
Padmatara, San Francisco, USA
Being in San Francisco, I value the easy access to talks from so many different people in the Triratna Buddhist Order - not just the famous ones! It makes me feel connected. A bit like Pirate Radio!
Viriyalila, Portsmouth, USA
FBA lets me hear the whole of our community's 'voice', and sit in a room with Sangharakshita as he elucidates the Dharma as it was originally passed on to us by the Buddha, ie. as an oral tradition.
Over the past few months, Vishvapani has delivered a significant new series of talks, Gautama Buddha, to launch his book ‘Gautama Buddha – The Life And Teachings Of The Awakened One’ (Quercus, 2011). Now available exclusively on Free Buddhist Audio, this superb five-talk series highlights various key themes woven into the legendary accounts of the Buddha’s life and the historical records of his great vision of reality that have come down to us through the ages.
Listen to FBA Dharmabyte – “Engaging with the Historical Buddha”
Bringing a broad cultural awareness and a depth of personal practice to bear on his subject, Vishvapani’s biography of Gautama takes us into the world he inhabited, offering glimpses of the Buddha’s personality and exploring his relationship with nature and his own society as evidenced in the earliest Buddhist texts. The insights afforded into our own conditioning and cultural context are both profoundly revealing and challenging.
Gautama Buddha: The Life and Teachings of Awakened One
Vishvapani speaks eloquently throughout his series about the experience of writing his book and of his desire to portray the historical Buddha as closely as possible. For the more we see the Buddha in his own time and place – the more we can see him in his historical specificity –the more likely we are to understand his teachings. Vishvapani wished to bring to life: “The person who actually lived, walked, and breathed, who was involved in a society, the person who was trying to convince the people around him that he was telling the truth, that he had gained some kind of wisdom, that Buddha…”
He explains, “How can we write a life of someone who is beyond ordinary experience? The reason we can is that after his Enlightenment, the Buddha devoted himself to communicating what it was through his teachings, through his examples, through his actions, and through the character of community established. Writing about the Buddha, reading about the Buddha, is really a way of contemplating the Buddha.”
Vishvapani is a Buddhist writer and teacher based in Cardiff, Wales. He discovered meditation and Buddhism at the age of 14 and became a Buddhist soon after. He became a member of the Triratna Buddhist Order in 1992. See Vishvapani’s 2009 Triratna Buddhist Order Convention talk, ‘Recollections of the Buddha’.
Vishvapani is a regular contributor to BBC Radio 4’s Thought for the Day. He will be broadcasting on that slot Radio 4′s ‘Today’, the main UK radio breakfast news programme, on May 17 (for Wesak), May 25 and June 2 at around 7.48 am GMT. These will be available as a podcast and on the Thought for the Day Website. He will be a panelist on the BBC1 ethical debate programme ‘The Big Questions’ at 10.00 am on Sunday 15th May, available afterward on BBC iPlayer.
This fantastic talk by Akuppa, given at the 2006 Buddhafield Festival, focuses on how Buddhist practice weaves together with social awareness, and what an Earth Community built on sustainable values might look like.
(Please note: there are a few minutes missing at the start, and the original recording was very poor. But it’s worth it!)
Talk given at Buddhafield Festival, 2006
To help us keep this free, please think about making a donation.
Today’s FBA Podcast, is a brilliant retrospective on our Triratna Community developments titled: “Being Radical – 40 Years of the New Society” by Vajragupta.
