In ‘Everything Matters – Turning Consumerism on its Head’, Vajradarshini points out that we live in a world of things and there’s a world of practice in things. As consumerism is defined as ‘to destroy’, we are challenged to find ways to turn consumerism on its head and find the Truth in our relationship to Things. Accompanied by Kavyasiddhi reading both poetry and prose, this beautiful Dharma gem is worth hearing again and again.

Talk given at the 2010 International Sangha Retreat.

Track listing

1. Wooly tank tops, potatoes and trees: We live in a world of things and there’s a world of practice in things.

2. Consumerism is to destroy; Restlessness, continually searching there something; Keeping up with the ‘Jones’; Celebrities and the media distorting our views of the world and how people live.

3. Our need to consume is affected by what we’ve become accustomed to; Living conditions like drugs; Trying to sustain pleasure through our relationship to things.

4. Observing our response to the laws of consumerism; Suddenly feeling like what we have is not enough; Having less than others contributes to their happiness.

5. Restlessness and inner poverty, something seems to be missing is intuition into the Truth; The Three Laksanas, the Three Characteristics of Conditioned Existence; Everything is Impermanent, Insubstantial and Unsatisfactory; Trying to buy pleasure, comfort and security.

6. The image of the renunciate, the flavor of the hermit; Living a beautiful, simple life; What does it mean to practice renunciation in the world? Turning more towards things and the world; Things show us Reality.

7. Purelands are where everything communicates the Dharma to us, we just need to pay attention; The world we live in shows us Reality through the Three Laksanas.

8. Impermanence is as if everything is on a journey; Objects revealing the beauty in the passing of time; speeded up photography and faded images.

9. Insubstantiality is as if everything is a pattern; rather than having an essence, we encounter the coming together of various conditions that make up what an object is.

10. Unsatisfactoriness; human life has both pain and joy woven into it. Much of our pain comes from resistance to impermanence and insubstantiality; The tears in things and the story of Winchester Cathedral stain glass window.

11. Wabi-Sabi places more value on things that have been mended; the scars and imperfections of being human.

12. Finding beauty in our life helps us turn towards Reality; Moving towards experiences of the Laksanas leads to treasures; The Three Doorways of Liberation.

13. Finding beauty and meaning in everyday objects; Riku and the Japanese tea ceremony; mindfulness is the catalyst of deeply experiencing objects; Andrew Juniper on the pith of Wabi-sabi: the love of life distilled into form

14. If consuming is to destroy, how can we turn that on its head? Three things to practice: experiencing things, creating things and cherishing things; Rumi on the treasure of poverty; Practicing in a world where we only see precious things; Barbara Kingsolver on potatoes.

 

 Everything Matters - Turning Consumerism on its Head [63:27m]: Play Now | Play in Popup | Download

The new Free Buddhist Audio website is here, and aside from a sleek new look, it’s packed to the gills with new features! We’ve worked very hard to make FBA 2.0 more interactive and user-friendly, and to provide even more to our community.

Here’s a run-down of some of the exciting additions to our service:

FBA Members Area

Our Community section connects FBA users with each other and provides access to unreleased content with:

* Exclusive sneak-peek previews of future audio releases.
* Members-only access to unreleased archive recordings.
* Create your own FBA profile – Change your personal settings and add a profile picture.
* Online chat and messaging – talk live with other members and the Free Buddhist Audio team online.

You can set up your own FBA profile, or log in to Free Buddhist Audio’s members section using your Facebook account. Join today at http://www.freebuddhistaudio.com/community/

Enhanced Search Options

Audio talks and text are now divided into intuitive sections for ease of browsing. In the main menu you’ll find links for “Audio,“(for general audio) “Series,” “Meditation” and “Text.” Under these main categories, talks are broken out by theme, speaker, year given, and so on.

Our new and enhanced search bar allows you to set your preferences for searches. Even better, it will remember your preferences the next time you search! And the search results page provides filters that will further refine your search and make it easier to discover what you’re looking for.

New Audio Interface

On most browsers, our new audio interface for talks allows you to play tracks before you download the full talk.

Similar to what you’d find in the iTunes store, you can now click a specific track to listen to it, or you can click on “Play all” to hear each track in sequence. If it’s what you’re looking for, you can then go and download the whole talk.

Social Connection

Connect to Free Buddhist Audio at your favorite social networking sites! FBA is on Facebook, Twitter, MySpace, Bebo, Google Buzz and even Second Life! We’re everywhere you are, so link to us for the latest updates and information.

To find us at our many homes online, or sign up for our newsletter, visit http://www.freebuddhistaudio.com/community/social.

Easier Donation

Free Buddhist Audio depends on the generous donations of our community to keep providing the Dharma for free. Now it’s even easier to help us do so.

1) When you download or stream a talk, you can make a donation right there – quick and easy!

2) Become one of the 500 – Our “500 Friends” campaign is going strong, but we could use your help! We’re looking for 500 people who are willing to become monthly donors at the £10 / $15 / €15 level. This will help to ensure the future security of our work, and it’s only about the cost of 1/4 cup of coffee per day! You’ll get the continual satisfaction of knowing that you’re part of something greater than all of us, free Dharma talks for everyone.

3) Become a regular donor – Regular monthly donations are the best way to give to FBA. They’re helpful to us in planning our budget and helpful to you in that you don’t even have to think about it. The donation is set up to be charged automatically every month through your credit card or bank. Voila! Did I just give to Free Buddhist Audio? Yes, you did, and thank you!

4) Make a one-time donation – No matter how large or small, every donation is very appreciated and put to good use.

5) Create a fundraising page – Through JustGiving or FirstGiving, you can now create your own page to raise funds for FBA. You can do it as an event and get friends to donate to your cause, or just send out your own appeal and testimonial to let others know about our service.

We hope you enjoy all of the new changes to Free Buddhist Audio, and thank you for your support over the years – without you, our community, this would not have been possible.

Viriyalila started working for this dynamic team-based right livelihood project last fall, and is enjoying the work of doing a face-to-face, grass-roots, ground-up fundraising tour. With two visits to the UK this spring, and presentations planned for the US this summer, she’s been keeping very busy!

She writes ~

When my good friend Candradasa asked if I would consider taking the lead on Free Buddhist Audio’s fundraising campaign, my immediate thought was that I just wasn’t qualified. I have loads of experience working in management and bookkeeping, but none in fundraising. But as we talked, I recollected how much of a fan I have been of Dharmachakra tapes since I first became a mitra. Had I not had access to listening to the lectures that Sangharakshita had given over the years, it is possible that I may not have become a member of the Triratna Buddhist Order. And as I am comfortable with technology, love the internet, and am keen to learn new things, why not give it a try? We strategized for nearly six months, and as I faced a steep learning curve, I found myself coming back time and time again to a strong sense of faith ~ both in the project itself, representing the transmission of the Dharma, and also in the sangha, because without people to learn and live the Dharma, there would be no point!

As I began my training period and made my way through Google Analytics for the freebuddhistaudio.com website, I slowly began to take in just how many people we were contacting, which I found deeply inspiring. 150,000 users visited in 2009, from 180 different countries spread throughout the world. Here, at freebuddhistaudio.com, so many people from so many different cultures are coming into to contact with our unique approach to the Dharma. Imagining the individual people in Belarus, Slovakia, China, Kentucky, Bolivia… tuning into our Dharma talks, to Bhante Sangharakshita, to my various mentors and teachers in the Order, my friends, oh, how my metta bhavana practice was transformed!

Once the training period was more or less complete, I made all the necessary detailed arrangements to embark on an ambitious UK Centre Fundraising Tour. From my “home” spot in West London, I got to know the UK public transport system very well as I made my way to 18 centers and events around the country in two 3-week tours spanning the months of March through June.

Places I’ve been during this tour…

West London Buddhist Centre (walking distance from where I was based!)

Ipswich Buddhist Centre (in a lovely new space!)

Cambridge Buddhist Centre (fabulous to see our dear friend Aryakanta!)

Bristol Buddhist Centre (made it a day early for a very lively ceilidh!)

Norwich Buddhist Centre (a beautiful city!)

London Buddhist Centre (quite the Triratna hub!)

North London Buddhist Centre (gorgeous Tara glass painting!)

Croydon Buddhist Centre (lovely back garden!)

Sheffield Buddhist Centre (where an abandoned church is now an amazing centre, complete with a gold-leafed standing Buddha in the bell tower!)

Manchester Buddhist Centre (the archetypal Triratna mandala of businesses, centre & community!)

Birmingham Buddhist Centre (celebrating Wesak with a talk from Parami!)

Newcastle Buddhist Centre (again, celebrating Wesak!)

International Sangha Retreat at Taraloka (speaking to 400 plus people!)

Brighton Buddhist Centre (what a lively, harmonious sangha!)

National Women’s Order Weekend, Taraloka (inspiring to encourage more support for Women teachers in our archive)

Glasgow Buddhist Centre (do they speak English here? Just kidding! A lively, playful sangha here…)

Each center was slightly different yet unified in our commitment to the Three Jewels and to Sangharakshita’s translation of the Dharma. We are quite a diverse group!

My Free Buddhist Audio

The presentation took on slightly different formats, but primarily was a one-hour talk expounding on the projects history, core values, current developments, and future envisionings. I particularly enjoyed selecting and sharing what we are now calling Dharmabytes ~ a few minutes of Dharma nuggets from the Free Buddhist Audio treasure chest. The three tracks I found myself coming back to throughout the tour were: Sangharakshita, The Buddha, God and Reality, Track 5: The Buddha and Reality (1966); Srivati, Becoming a Citizen of the Present, Track 7, Reality as Change, Poetry and Impermanence (2001); and Kulananda, Mindfulness of Reality, Section 3:41-8:17 (this talk is not yet tracked) (2000). Sign up for our podcast to receive your Dharmabytes!

05 The Buddha and Reality

07 Reality as change, poetry and impermanence

01 Mindfulness of Reality – Excerpt

As we listened to these Dharma Jewels, I brought out the core values underlying this project, namely: providing free, wide-spread access to the Dharma; providing an opportunity to hear various teachers with different lifestyles and ways of teaching; and encouraging the re-invigoration of listening to talks together in groups, to share the working out of Dharmic principles much like in the spirit of how the Buddha originally taught, as an Oral Tradition.

Sangharakshita and FBA

I am personally very inspired by upholding the Oral Tradition and this was one of the topics of discussion when I met with Sangharakshita in his library at Madhyamaloka in Birmingham. He said, “We know that speech is a very powerful medium of communication. We know that the Buddha’s words spoken from, as it were, from his enlightened consciousness changed the lives of so many people. So that tradition of oral presentation of the Dharma has continued right down to the present day. Even though we have printed books many people do find that they learn more quickly and easily from the spoken word.”

It makes Bhante particularly happy to think that talks that he himself gave years, even decades ago, to relatively small audiences, are now through freebuddhistaudio.com reaching perhaps tens even hundreds of thousands of people all over the world.

This is Part I of a two-part blog ~ more to come next week!

ps. The new site has been designed to enable a free service to be kept in place for all. We are now entirely dependent on our community of users for the funds required to maintain and develop FBA. To help us keep going, please think about making a regular or one-off donation.

Many thanks!

This podcast talk by Dharmavadana is a great exploration of how poetry can be an ally in the spiritual life, and analyzes the ways in which it occupies a similar atmosphere to meditation.

Talk given at West London Buddhist Center

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

 

 Poetry and the Spiritual Life [34:16m]: Play Now | Play in Popup | Download

Well, after many months off work, we are rather thrilled today to be able to offer you a first sneak peak at our completely re-imagined version of Free Buddhist Audio, which is due to launch at the end of June.

FBA is now three years old, and in that time it has become an amazing online resource for Buddhists all over the world. By the end of 2010, we will have distributed over one million Dharma talks! To put that in perspective, when we started out as a tape company we distributed a few thousand tapes a year at most…

But we didn’t want to rest on our laurels! The internet has changed a great deal in those three years since we first appeared online, so we have completely re-thought the site, and re-designed it from the ground up to make sure it’s fit for the web as it is likely to develop over the next three years. That means putting our user community right at the heart of what we do in our new Community section and through our developing social network presence. The Dharma is still the star of the show – but it’s the Dharma as practiced by all of you and meaningful in your lives.

You can start taking part now, if you like, by coming and playing and leaving feedback for us on this special blog page (all encouragement much appreciated!). We are really excited to hear what you think!

Watch this space for more news of new features as we roll them out in the next wee while…

***

ps. The new site has been designed to enable a free service to be kept in place for all. We are now entirely dependent on our community of users for the funds required to maintain and develop FBA. To help us keep going, please think about making a regular or one-off donation.

Many thanks!