Budcast

Lalitaraja, Led meditation - metta bhavana with Ratnaghosa's prayer to Ratnasambhava, Lammas 2021 North London Buddhist Centre Sangha Night, 2 August, online

Kusala describes how the Buddha, in a past life, is said to have responded to ethical dilemmas with compassion. North London Buddhist Centre Sangha Night 12 July 21

Anandavajra's Sangha Day talk, North London Buddhist Centre, November 2020. Giving in the spiritual community, and giving as a social practice to transform the world.

Nandaraja On Perfect Samadhi, the last stage of the Eightfold Path.

A wonderful talk on the precious guru by Dhammamegha, Padmasambhava Day, North London Buddhist Centre, September 2020

NLBC Budcast Talk 10 October 2020, on the third mind turning reflections, the reality that we make a difference, and what karma means.

Completing the NLBC series on the four Mind Turning Reflections, Prajnadevi presents an uplifting but realistic presentation of the defects of life without a spiritual quest, the reason for urgency in one's practice.

Ratnaprabha On The Triple Training In Buddhism

In a talk for the North London Buddhist Centre on 24 August 2020, Visuddhimati shares her thoughts on 'Cherish the Doctrine’ from Dhardo Rimpoche's slogan for his school for Tibetan Refugee Children. She reflects on our longings for someone or something to hold dear and how this can be developed into a path to insight. We hear the inspiring story of Padmasambhava and a Tibetan Queen who asked the guru for a teaching to cherish within her heart. The talk concludes with concrete suggestions for how we can take this on as personal practice.

Buddhism Course Mind Reactive Mind Creative - Week 3 - Creativity Exercise By Aryadhara by Podcast from the North London Buddhist Centre

Buddhism Course Mind Reactive Mind Creative - Week 3 - Mindfulness Of Breathing By Maitrisambhava by Podcast from the North London Buddhist Centre

Buddhism Course Mind Reactive, Mind Creative - Week 4 - Reactivity Exercise By Maitrisambhava by Podcast from the North London Buddhist Centre

Buddhism Course Mind Reactive Mind Creative - Week 4 - Body Scan & Metta Bhavana By Aryadhara by Podcast from the North London Buddhist Centre

Buddhism Course Mind Reactive, Mind Creative - Week 2 - Body Insight Exercise By Aryadhara by Podcast from the North London Buddhist Centre

Buddhism Course Mind Reactive, Mind Creative - Week 2 - Body Scan & Metta Bhavana By Maitrisambhava by Podcast from the North London Buddhist Centre

Khemananda unpicks the meaning of meditation from his own 40 year experience, in a talk given at the NLBC Sangha Night on 7 September 2020.

Talk from the 8-fold path series by Kusala, given Saturday 9 May 2020. “We spend a huge part of our lives working. The work we do expresses our personality, but also shapes it in many different ways. Over the course of a lifetime our livelihood brings us into connection with thousands of other people. "For the Buddha, work was such an important part of the spiritual life that he made Right Livelihood the fifth limb of his Noble Eightfold Path. In recent years Buddhists have tried to apply these teachings in a very different context to that in which the Buddha lived and taught. "In this talk Kusala looks at how our occupation affects both us and the other people in our lives, and offers a twenty-first century perspective on the traditional teaching of Right Livelihood.”

Perfect Effort is limb six of the Buddha's 'Eight Ways of the Noble Ones', or Eightfold Path. Ratnaprabha highlights how contradictions and paradoxes give a subtlety to the Buddhist approach to spiritual practice. So how does the great Buddhist poet Shantideva justify desire, arrogance, relish, rest and even obsession as supports for skilful effort and joyous energy (virya)? They are ways of harnessing the compulsive power of the eight worldly winds for creativity and real progress.

Buddhism Course: Mind Reactive, Mind Creative - Week 1 - Mindfulness of senses by Maitrisambhava by Podcast from the North London Buddhist Centre

Buddhism Course: Mind Reactive, Mind Creative - Week 1 - Mindfulness of breathing by Aryadhara by Podcast from the North London Buddhist Centre

Buddhism Course: Mind Reactive, Mind Creative - Week 1 - Body Scan by Aryadhara by Podcast from the North London Buddhist Centre

Live Budcast Talk with Vajramitra on perfect mindfulness, July 2020, suitable for all levels. From the Budcast series on the Eightfold Path. Mindfulness seems to be mentioned everywhere, both in the Buddha’s teaching and in the secular world we live in today. Although central to who we are, being aware and fully participating in our life often might seem like a distant ideal. How do we fully engage in each moment of our life? What is Buddhist Mindfulness and why is it central to the Buddhist way?

Budcast talk, 11:30, Saturday 8 August. Nandaraja explains how Perfect Samadhi (meditation, or better, unification of mind) completes the Buddha's 8-fold Path. "Samadhi is a higher state of consciousness that is not fettered by concepts, ideas or language. All the previous seven limbs of the Eightfold Path come together, and Perfect Samadhi is both supported by and supports them, integrating them into a holistic system of interconnectedness that dissolves clinging and yields a renunciation of the roots of suffering."

The first of a series on the 4 reminders, given live at the North London Buddhist Centre, 12 Sept 2020. 1. Our life as a human being is a precious opportunity. 2. Everything changes, and death is inevitable, so don’t lose your opportunities. 3. You do make a difference, the way you live and act now will change the future for yourself and for the world. 4. Ordinary habitual or self-centred life is a trial for everyone, so live a meaningful life, take your opportunities, make a difference! Everyone can liberate themselves. What is so special about human awareness, and what particular advantages make it 'precious'? Ratnaprabha shows how we can see the huge value of what life is offering right now, and take this opportunity to commit to practice.

A talk from the NLBC Women's class, 11 July 2020. The Buddha’s begging bowl. Dhammamegha on the theme of ‘holding to nothing whatever’.

Budcast talk with Singhashri on The Noble Eightfold Path, number 4, Perfect Action. Most people would agree that it’s wise to take a non-violent approach to life. How can we fully live from a place deeply rooted in this core Buddhist principle? We do so by gently turning towards, listening deeply and engaging whole-heartedly with our own diverse inner landscape, including ALL the parts of us wanted and unwanted that show up in the space of practice.

Karunagita with a lead through of the cultivation of friendliness meditation (metta bhavana) recorded live at the North London Buddhist Centre Saturday morning class, 14 March 2020.

Budcast talk from March 2020. Why is speech a key step on the Noble Eightfold Path? What you say is important if you are on a Buddhist spiritual path. But how can we be both truthful and kind in our communication? Karunagita explains four aspects of skilful talking, with lots of practical tips and examples.

Vajramitra points out that we are driven by emotions, but that these give rise to our views, the way we see the world. And our views and interpretations in turn affect our emotional life. Which views are 'right', which are 'wrong', and what is 'no-view'?

Akashamitra launches a series of North London Buddhist Centre 'Budcast' talks with the first limb of the path, Perfect Vision.

On a North London Buddhist Centre Weekend retreat, Karunagita introduces the theme 'Turning towards the Nature of Experience, by drawing out Padmasambhava's advice to Queen Ngang Chung. There is letting go as well as turning towards, with details from her own life

Was Buddhism designed for city dwellers, or for the secluded country retreat? How can you practise in the city? The Buddha was raised in a 500 BCE Indian city, his searching for enlightenment took place in the unspoiled forests, but much of his teaching was to townies like us. Ratnaprabha describes three metaphorical or mythic cities in ancient Buddhist texts, and shows how the city can be a positive context for practice.

In this talk for the Sangha Day festival at the North London Buddhist Centre, Ratnaprabha celebrates the joys of friendship in the Buddha's time and today, and explains how Sangha (spiritual community)can be continually created through the way we communicate and treat each other.

Dhammamegha describes her first-hand experience of the minority regime stoking fear in her native South Africa under apartheid, and Mandela's heroic humanising of contact between people of different ethnicities. Can you meet examples of people who change a situation by going out of their way to be kind? She goes into the Buddha's teaching on fear, hostility and mental disturbance in the Attadanda Sutta. Do you overcome duality be enlarging or by diminishing the Self? Are values more powerful than fear?

Karunagita offers a personal take on the traditional story of the Buddha’s ‘going forth’ from his home to seek enlightenment and explores what that might mean for us in 2019 London. Can you find moments when you go forth from habitual and seemingly easier ways of being to something that you can recognise as lighter, freer, perhaps even happier?

Our sense of separateness and fixedness keeps us small and limited; Jnanavaca explains how Buddhist practice aims for freedom from those constraints. Can you sense the great ocean of consciousness, or are you confined to one ripple on its surface?

North London Buddhist Centre Budcast talk, September 2019. Love, metta in Buddhism, reflects the universal human need for real connection. Kusala, mitra convenor at the NLBC, shows how the psychoanalyst Erich Fromm and the Buddha see eye-to-eye on what real love entails. Both offer very helpful tips on how to cultivate it.

"To live the Buddhist life, to become like the Buddha, we must imagine the Buddha" (Sangharakshita). How do we do this? And how can we cultivate our imaginative faculty in an urban world where empty images constantly vie for our attention? One of our monthly Saturday 'Budcast' talks, suitable for all.

This is the first 20 minutes of a talk on how Buddhism arrived in London, and how to practise in the city. (The rest of the talk failed to record).

Karunagita, author of 'A Path for Parents' on Buddhist parenting, introduces the fifth spiritual faculty, Wisdom. She shows how we don't need to be bamboozled by our thoughts if we can see their nature. She shows that emptiness or ungraspability reveals a taste of freedom, a freedom in life, not a detachment from it. She suggests some 'easy insights' into emptiness. Above all, wisdom is conjoined to compassion.

The latest Budcast features meditation teacher Vajramitra introducing the role and scope of meditation in Buddhism. Meditation as 'coming home' to ourselves, and dealing with the scattered mind. Meditation as deep absorption, described by the Buddha with the features of a mysterious pool. And meditation as Insight into things as they really are.

Akashamitra talks us through what Virya (energy) is, how we can cultivate it and what blocks it. He looks at how our self view, including 'despondency and self-contempt', can hold us back, and how we can move beyond negativity towards a strong engagement with something 'bigger than me'.

In the second North London Buddhist Centre Budcast on applying the mandala of five faculties, Amalayodhin describes how facing suffering can blossom unexpectedly into confidence, the second faculty, and into an openness to what is bigger than our protective ego.

Ratnaprabha introduces the three types of mindfulness in Buddhism, and how they fit into the balanced mandala of five faculties, which also include confidence, energy, unification of mind, and insight. Mindfulness represents the integration aspect of Dharma life.

In the third 'Budcast' in the series 'The World Is Burning', Ratnaprabha describes how craving and ill will are mistaken responses that cause our experience of lack and frustration: they arise from delusion. The opposite of delusion is wisdom or insight. What is wisdom is Buddhism, how does it relate to mindfulness and awareness, and how can it be cultivated?

Budcast number two. Ill will is painful to oneself, and can lead to active hostility, yet we nurse our grievances. Why is this, is anger wrong, and how do you cultivate kindness? The second podcast on 'The World is Burning', the Buddha's teaching to the fire worshippers on Compulsion, Hostility, and Confusion, including the Buddha's encounter with the fire dragon (naga). By the new chair of the North London Buddhist Centre, Ratnaprabha.

Budcast number one, a talk on craving. How to spot it, what it leads to, how to tackle it. First of a series of podcasts on 'The World is Burning', the Buddha's teaching to the fire worshippers on Compulsion, Hostility, and Confusion. By the new chair of the North London Buddhist Centre, Ratnaprabha.