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 June 2010
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| Useful Links | |
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| Sangha Snippets |
Lots of good things were happening at the Leeds Sangha last month. Here is a selection:
Sangha Walk in Calderdale
Tony writes: 'Walking in May I was hoping to see bluebells and sure enough we did.
Ten walkers, one baby and a dog set off from Hebden Bridge for a 5 mile circular hike. After walking the first mile along the canal towpath the parents + baby wisely left us when we turned uphill on the Pennine Way trail. The views got better each time we stopped for a breather, and the sunshine and cool breeze regulated the temperature.
We topped up with juice and chocolate whilst sitting by the old stone slab footbridge at the top of Colden Clough, before returning to Hebden Bridge via the quirky village of Heptonstall.
A lovely day was had, sharing an interesting walk with some interesting people.
Wesak 2010
Wesak (Buddha Day) is the most important festival in our calendar and is celebrated on the full moon in May, which this year - for us - was Friday 28th May. This weekend was an opportunity for Buddhists all over the world to remember the story of the Buddha's Enlightenment and for each of us to reflect on our own individual practice.
This year our Sangha celebrated with two very different ceremonies...
Different Traditions coming together
Sunday 23rd May saw a very special (and somewhat unusual) puja ceremony at Bridge House. Organised jointly with the Leeds Buddhist Council, the ceremony involved several different Buddhist traditions, who all contributed something from their own particular Dharma-practice.
People from different traditions at the Joint Wesak Celebration |
Uddyotani hosted and led the occasion welcoming members of Jamyang Buddhist Centre (FPMT), Soko Gakkai International, Dhammapala Buddhist group, as well as unaffiliated practitioners, to our shrine room. Altogether an inspiring and very sociable occasion proving that - though we may follow the Dharma in different ways - we still have very much in common.
Full Moon Puja for Wesak
Our own Sevenfold Puja ceremony on Friday 28th May was a very joyful ocassion with chanting, candles, incense and (at the very end) delicious chocolate buttons courtesy of Zara. The ceremony also included letting go of the old FWBO name and embracing the new one. More Details below...
 New Rupa Those of you who have been to Bridge House over the last three weeks will no doubt have noticed our rather magnificent new rupa which has come all the way from Bali where it was hand-carved from sustainable wood (suar wood, since you ask) by the world famous Balinese wood carvers. It was then sanded waxed and polished to perfection before being shipped to the UK and (eventually) installed on our shrine at Leeds. Naturally, the rupa has also been made on a fair-trade basis.
The Buddha has his left hand raised with palm facing outwards and index finger forming a circle with the thumb. This is the mudra (hand gesture) that represents the Teacher.
It should be noted that the shrine belongs to all of us. It is good to spend a little time, now and then, dusting and re-decorating it with fresh flowers, new cloths, candle holders, vajras and other ritual objects (all available in the cupboards!). Please feel free to include the occasional upkeep of the shrine as a part of your own practice. (Please let Uddyotani know a few days beforehand to ensure that there are no clashes!). Of course, you can bring your own flowers anytime - it's a lovely thing to do.
New Cupboards and Windows that Open!
Many thanks to Jeff Clay and Samanartha for their stirling work in freeing most of the windows and installing cupboards in the kitchen - now at last everything has a home. The windows have new cords installed as well - so they are both openable and safe to use.
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| New Charitable Status of FWBO Leeds |
By now many of you have received a letter telling you all about the new charitable company that has been formed to run the Leeds Centre. The Friends of the Western Buddhist Order (Leeds) is becoming a charitable company limited by guarantee, which basically reduces the personal liability of the trustees and means that in future legal transactions like leases will be easier to sort out. The name of the company will of course eventually change to the Triratna Buddhist Community (Leeds) but this won't affect your standing order or the new bank details.
If you already donate via Standing Order it is very important that you amend the bank details to the new ones so that the dana goes to the right account. Please also complete a new Gift Aid Form right away (see below for download).
If you don't already donate by Standing Order, then please consider doing so if you can manage it - this gives the centre a regular income and helps keep the books balanced more easily! (And, if you pay tax, please also complete a Gift Aid form as this increases your donation by 28%)
If you haven't received a letter it is likely we don't have your correct details on our database. If you would like to be on our mailing list please get in touch with the Centre with your current postal address, email and phone number so we can keep you informed in the future.
You can download a standing order form here
You can download a Gift Aid Form here
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| A few words on the new name of the Triratna Buddhist Community | |
 Some days ago, during our Wesak puja, we joined in with the rest of the movement in letting go of our old name the Friends of the Western Buddhist Order, and taking on our new name the Leeds Triratna Buddhist Community.
So how has this come about? I thought it worth saying a little about the name we have carried for so many years, and why many people have felt it time to change this. It has been interesting for me - just in checking some facts - to realise some things I for one, didn't know about our movement.
Firstly - I didn't know that when Sangharakshita originally set up this new movement, back in 1967, it was called the Friends of the Western Sangha. A year later when the first men and women were ordained, the Western Buddhist Order and the Friends of the Western Buddhist Order came into being - changing the name as people weren't happy with the strange 'foreign' word, Sangha.
It is hard for us now to imagine what it was like when the FWBO was new. We take for granted the availability of dharma books, local centres, classes and retreats because they have all become normal to us. But in the late 60's and 70's there was very little opportunity to practice Buddhism in the west. As it grew the FWBO was an expression of passionate idealism - centres, communities, team-based right livelihoods, a 'new society' based on Buddhist values.
Now in 2010 we are a worldwide movement with activities in at least 20 countries, and people exploring the Dharma through the internet and Free Buddhist Audio in many more. The biggest growth has been in the land of the Buddha's birth - in India, where the movement was established in 1978 through the people Sangharakshita had been in contact with in his many years there as a Theravadin monk, and in particular through the many thousands of people from the Dalit Buddhist community in Maharashtra for whom he has been an important teacher. The movement in India took on the name Trailokya Bauddha Mahasangha Sahayak Gana - literally the Association of helpers of the spiritual community of the three worlds.
I think I'm right in saying that India is the country with the greatest number of Order members. We are now an international Buddhist Order, which is why the name of the Western Buddhist Order has become increasingly inappropriate for the movement we have become. Prompted by the need for a single name for the Order, Sangharakshita asked if we would adopt the new name of the Triratna Buddhist Order. The FWBO chairs suggested a parallel name change for the movement - so we become the Triratna Buddhist Community.
In our ritual during the Wesak puja, we let go of our old name, acknowledging all that it has been for us. Some of us were attracted to the word western because it suggested a non-traditional or non-sectarian approach. Some of us liked being friends! So there might be a loss in letting go of the old name, and this is worth understanding and honouring.
Also in our ritual, we each took three jewels from the shrine, one by one, taking on our new name. Triratna means Three Jewels, a beautiful metaphor for the three refuges shared by the whole Buddhist tradition. The Three Jewels are:
- the Buddha,
- the Dharma - his teaching and the truth it directs us towards
- the Sangha - the community of enlightened beings and all those who follow the Buddhist path.
The jewel is a symbol of all that is precious, and our new name is an invitation to find this in ourselves and each other, to value our Buddhist community and all that we have learned from it.
Uddyotani
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 Quote of the Month | |
"Sustained contemplation of impermanence leads to a shift in one's normal way of experiencing reality, which hitherto tacitly assumed the temporal stability of the perceiver and the perceived objects.
Once both are experienced as changing processes, all notions of stable existence and substantiality vanish, thereby radically reshaping one's paradigm of experience."
Taken from 'satipatthana - the direct path to realization' by Analayo (Windhorse Publications)
If you have a favourite quotation that you'd like to pass on please email it here
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| Poetry Corner | |
Jeff wrote this poem a couple of years back after a long nightime meditation which he used to do when he couldn't sleep...
From our birth we are on a path of discovery.
Some do not know what it is they seek
Some know what they seek and so in searching lose themselves.
Some who are not searching find the path and do not know they are on it.
Some arrive and are still lost in the search.
Some search and never find their way.
Some can see the path but despair at ever reaching the end.
Some are oblivious.
A few, seek, find, know, and are blessed.
...meanwhile, Mandy is having trouble with the house....
Prayer
O Buddha, may the work on the bedroom go on forever. I like
looking at bare plaster walls, covered in worrying black stuff
and breathing in old soot from the roof space. I don't know how
I'd cope if I couldn't sleep on the plastic airbed in the spare room
that tips us onto the floor every time we blink. I rejoice that we took
the old wardrobe to the tip and haven't yet bought another. And o,
how beautiful it is to store our clothes in cardboard boxes and wear
the same trousers day in, day out. Particularly O Shakyamuni Buddha
may my partner never get round to installing the Velux blind.
I like seeing black bin bags taped across a window that cost
five hundred pounds to put in. And as regards the ensuite bathroom
may the plumber continue to always get called away to other
more urgent jobs, leaving the airlock in the heated towel rail
that has never heated any towels. As for clean white grouting,
I prefer it stained and mouldy. I delight in going at it with bleach
and an old toothbrush. Who wants to enjoy themselves at weekends?
Not me. And please may the shower always leak into the room below.
I entreat you that one day it will fetch down the whole ceiling. Through
many lifetimes may we have to take a plunger to the sink to make the
water drain. May it always go cold or off altogether when someone flushes
a toilet three doors down. 'That's it, done and dusted.' May I never hear
those words! O Bodhisattva, may the work on the bedroom go on
forever and ever. Svaha.
Mandy Sutter | |
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| The Body on the Slab - The Post-Mortem as a Spiritual Experience |
"I think that years of reading detective novels and watching TV drama had prepared me for a stark sterile morgue with bodies in metal drawers. In the event I walked into a warm, pleasant room to find my dead sister lying peacefully, her eyes closed as if asleep. She was dressed in a pretty cream gown, beneath a crisp white sheet and flanked by two large candles which cast a shimmering light across her face..."
Thirteen years ago, when I began writing those words in my first novel, I had never seen a dead body. I was in Amsterdam at the time, researching locations and information for the book and, when I made an appointment to see the mortuary assistant at the Amsterdam University Hospital, I expected to merely ask a few questions about post mortems and then be on my way.
In the event, I timed it better than I could ever have expected. The pathologist himself came out to meet me and invited me to watch the post-mortem that he was about to start. Naturally I accepted his invitation - for a crime novelist such an experience was too important to miss - but I was quite worried about how I would react when he began cutting into the body of the fifty something alcoholic woman who was lying on his slab. What would the smell be like? Would I feel repulsed? Might I even throw up? So it was with some trepidation that I took my place in the examination room alongside detectives from the Amsterdam Police.
I won't go into detail. I know that some people will be sensitive to the procedures that took place. Suffice to say that the pathologist gave a running commentary in dutch as he progressed, frequently breaking into english for my benefit. More than once he called me over to point out some interesting feature or show me the result of over-indulgence in alcohol.
How did I feel about this? It might sound like a pretty unwholesome experience to most people, but to me, standing no more than five or six feet away, it seemed like a rare privilege. I was an atheistic non-believer-in-anything at the time, yet I came out of the examination room feeling that I had had a deep spiritual experience. The woman who had once inhabited that body was a fifty-something alcoholic. Someone who once, perhaps, had relatives who loved her; friends who helped her through each day, children perhaps. She would have had likes and dislikes, pain and hopefully some pleasures too. She would have been a thinking, feeling human being with weaknesses and strengths, just like the rest of us.
But the thing is, I understood quite clearly as I stood in that room, that the body on the slab was not her. She had gone many hours before. What was left was an empty shell, a vehicle that had once carried her through life but which now was as redundant as an empty box. And that is why I didn't feel anything but deep interest and fascination. As I saw it, the pathologist was not cutting anyone up. He was simply dissecting a vehicle that now bore no relation to the woman who once steered her life from within it.
Half an hour later I was taken into the small chapel next door and greeted with another revelation. The woman's body had been carefully reassembled so that it was impossible to see any of the cuts that had been made. She was dressed in a cream shift and lay beneath a crisp white sheet. Candles flickered on either side of her. Her hair had been combed and a small amount of make-up had been applied to her face. Once again, she looked like she might have looked in life. I was moved by the respect and simple humanity that the mortuary team had shown in preparing her for the identification and the funeral that would follow.
"It was then that the chilling truth began to dawn on me: the body lying before me was Carrie's body, but it was not Carrie. Her spirit, the vibrancy that had once spilled headlong out of every pore, was gone. all that remained was a shell - nice enough to look at but devoid of the person I had loved and cherished."
I may no longer write crime novels, but I will never forget that truly life-changing experience.
I'm doing quite a lot of meditation on impermanence and 'no-self' at the moment, and I often reflect on that body lying on the slab in the Amsterdam University Hospital. Even before I knew anything about the Dharma, it taught me that our bodies are not us. And it showed me that there is something very wonderful and very mysterious about whatever it is that makes us what we are.Thirteen years later, that experience is still reaching out to me.
Jenny
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| Regular Weekly Events at Leeds Buddhist Centre | |
Every Tuesday: Practice Evening - Unled 'sesshin' meditation from 6.30pm (prompt) until 7.15pm and again from 7.30pm to 8.10pm (with 15 mins silent break in between). One or both sessions may be attended but please do not ring the bell during meditation. Suggested Donation £4/£2 (unwaged)
Wednesdays (Monthly): Young(er) People's Evening - Held once each month, 6.30pm to 9.00pm. Suggested Donation £6/£3 (unwaged)
Every Thursday: Friends Night Regular Practice Evening. Friends nights are our main Sangha night and in many ways the heart of practice at Leeds Buddhist Centre. It is a drop-in session exploring different themes around meditation and Buddhism. The evenings are based in part on the Free Buddhist Audio Foundation Course (Details Here) From 7.00pm until 9.30pm. (Meditation begins at 7.10pm prompt) Suggested Donation £6/£3 (unwaged)
Fridays (Monthly): Full Moon Puja - Held on the Friday nearest to the full moon each month. The next is on June 25th - details in forthcoming events. All are welcome. Arrive at 7.00pm for 7.10pm. start. There will be a short period of meditation followed by a silent tea break then a Seven fold Puja. Bring offerings for the shrine if you wish. Suggested donation £6/£3
Every Sunday Morning: Sesshin (meditation practice) for people with some experience of meditation who are happy to meditate without guidance or instruction. Three 30 minute unled sits, with breaks between sits. First sit: 10:00am to 10:30am, Second sit: 10:45am to 11:15am, Third sit: 11:30am to 12:00 noon. You may attend one or more but please do not ring the bell during meditation. Suggested Donation £4/£2 (unwaged)
Sunday Afternoons (Monthly): Men's Study Afternoon. Held on one Sunday each month from 1.00pm to 3.00pm. An afternoon of Buddhist study Each month a text or subject is selected for discussion. To receive notification of future monthly study afternoons for men at Leeds Buddhist Centre, please email gfrstudy@hotmail.co.uk Suggested donation £6/£3
***Please remember to leave your dana in the bowl***
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| Forthcoming Events |
Leeds Events
Saturday 19th June - Day Retreat for the Opening to Kindly Awareness meditation course (all welcome), 10.00am - 4.00pm More...
Monday 21st June - Introduction to Buddhism Course, 7.00pm to 9.15pm. for 4 weeks. This course isn't just for absolute beginners, it is also a good grounding in Buddhism for newer members of our community too. Includes the origins and the subsequent development of Buddhism into many different traditions, the Precepts, and an explanation of many of the concepts that make up the Path. More...
Friday 25th June - Full Moon Puja - A new venture. An opportunity for communal practice. All are welcome. Arrive 7pm for 7.10 start. There will be a short period of meditation followed by a silent tea break then a seven fold puja led by Kathy. Please bring offerings for the shrine if you wish.
Saturday 26th June - Saturday Morning Yoga Class with Clare McAlpine More...
 Saturday 10th July Images of the Buddha.
A day of creative expression and artwork, exploring what lays at the core of our practice. Led by Kathy and Samanartha. 10.00am until 4.30pm. Places are limited to 14. Please sign up before 26th June. Bring vegetarian lunch to share. Art materials supplied. Cost £15/£30
A note for your diary
Friday 26th to Sun 28th November - Sangha Retreat at Lineham Farm. A lovely, sociable and friendly weekend of Sangha and Dharma in beautiful surroundings near Eccup, Leeds (details to follow later in the year)
Events Elsewhere
Buddhafield North - Buddhafield North is enjoying its eighth year of running camping retreats on a beautiful farm at Addingham Moorside, near Ilkey. Providing a structured retreat environment for you to deepen your practice of meditation and ritual. Vegetarian food is provided but bring own camping and shrine room equipment. Advanced booking essential. Closing date for booking seven days before the start. For further info go to www.buddhafieldnorth.org.uk or contact Tejapushpa on 07952207997, Dayavajra on 07900590340 or Dayaka on 01924 270365
Friday 11th June to Sunday 13th June - Buddhafield North Women's Weekend, Radical Sincerity and the Path to Freedom More...
Wednesday July 14th to Sunday July 18th - Buddhafield Festival 2010, A Force for Good in the World More...
Sunday 22nd August to Friday 27th August - Buddhafield North, THE BIG SUMMER OPEN CAMPING RETREAT(family friendly), The Turning of the Mind More...
Friday 27th August to Sunday 29th August - Buddhafield North Working Retreat, Cost:Free. Ten people needed to join the team in take down after the Big Summer Open Camping Retreat. More...
Friday 27th August to Sunday 29th August - Maitreya Project - Relic Tour  at Leeds City Museum, Millennium Square, Leeds LS2 8BH. Jamyang Buddhist Centre Leeds invites you to this exhibition of Buddhist relics, some donated by HH the Dalai Lama. This rare collection includes relics of the Buddha and of masters from different Buddhist traditions. The aim of the Relic Tour is to bring people together to create the causes for world peace. Throughout the event there will be blessing ceremonies with the relics. To find out more please visit: www.maitreyaproject.org Friday 14:00 - 17:00
Saturday 11:00 - 16:00 with Opening Ceremony open to all at 11:45 Sunday 11:00 - 16:00
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