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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
 

 

 Chetul Sangye Dorje [46:11m]: Play Now | Play in Popup | Download

The teachings that Ratnaguna explores in this talk are all from the Sutta Nipata – one of the earliest of Buddhist texts. His sub-title is the rather intriguing: ‘The Dharma before Buddhism’. You might say that when it comes to the Sutta Nipata, the Buddha is very clearly telling it like it is. Well, so does Ratnaguna!

In the opening remarks (which, unfortunately, were not recorded) he likens these suttas in their profound scope and effect to the simpicity and purity of Bach’s violin sonatas and cello suites.

Given on the FWBO International Retreat at Taraloka, May 2008

 

 The Early Teachings of the Buddha [44:21m]: Play Now | Play in Popup | Download

Another excellent talk, from the Buddhafield project. Amaragita takes a look at Buddhist practice in the light of parenting, and has a lot of good things to say about the everyday business of staying with our experience, embracing the hard bits and releasing the joy.

As an added bonus, listen for some lovely singing throughout!

Talk given at the Buddhafield Festival in 2006.

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 Staying at Home, Dancing with the Universe [35:05m]: Play Now | Play in Popup | Download

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!