Sangha News

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Wesak Celebrations in Leeds

The festival of Wesak in May is an occasion when Buddhists all over the world commemorate the birth, enlightenment and the passing away of Gautama Buddha. As Buddhism spread from India it was assimilated into many foreign cultures, and consequently Wesak is celebrated in many different ways all over the world. Here in Leeds there are two events in particular to look forward to...

Joint-Wesak Festival

Hosted by Leeds Kagyu Buddhist Meditation Group

Saturday 3rd May, 1pm 

The Friends Meeting House, 188 Woodhouse Lane, Leeds 

Leeds Kagyu Meditation Group would like to invite the Buddhist community of Leeds to come together with friends, family and everyone with an interest in Buddhism to celebrate Wesak, the festival of the Birth, Enlightenment and Parinirvana of Lord Buddha and to enjoy some traditional Yorkshire hospitality 

together. 

Sangha Wesak Celebrations

Sunday 18th May

On Sunday 18th May the Buddhist Centre will have an all day event to celebrate Wesak. The day will begin at 10.00 with the usual Sunday morning meditation session (three sits of 30mins with 15min intervals in between for people to arrive and depart, please remember that the session is in silence from 10.00-12.00). 

After a shared lunch there will be a programme of events, likely to include decorating, chanting and storytelling. After more food in the evening there will be a special puja commemorating the Buddha's enlightenment. The exact details of the day have yet to be finalised but keep an eye out for another email shortly. 

All are welcome, including family and friends. Please come and go as much as you please thoughout the day, it'd be great to see as many people as possible dropping in and sharing the celebrations!

Young People's Evening

Friday 16th May, 6.30pm

Calling all under-40s! There will be evening of meditation and exploring Buddhist practice together for all younger people on Friday 16th May.

For more information or to learn more about young people's activities email Matt or David. 

Family Day: Full of Fun! 

Tim writes: Thank you to all who came to the family day at the Buddhist Centre last Sunday. We did colouring, cutting, sticking, running, jumping, shouting, and dancing - all rounded off by a Buddha at Bedtime story from Phillippa. Fabulous!

We were all marvelled, awed, astounded and a little bit tired at the end. We marvelled at Kathryn's vegan chocolate cake. We were amazed by Mya's ability to balance on 6 stacked meditation blocks. We were astounded by the speed that Sophie, Neeve and Lily hurtled around the shrine room playing games of tag and hide and seek. We were awed by the wooden dinosaur that Joni won in pass-the-parcel. We were humbled by the sheer cuteness of Rowen in his knitted hat. Finally, all the adults were belittled by the chaos left behind and the tidying up to do.

Meeting the Buddha

Dedicated to Rosemary on her Going Forth

Firstly, what do we mean by 'the mythic' or 'myth'? In a Buddhist context we don't use the term 'myth' in the sense of something not being true. Instead, the mythic is something like a deeply held belief, story, or organising principle that creates a sense of meaning and purpose in our lives. These myths are not ones in which we are observers but are something that we participate in and actively live out. For example, I'm a great uncle and when visiting my family recently I could see that living out the myth of the family is very important to them. It carries a strong sense of purpose and even of meaning for the people involved and is something that is obviously lived out. This, of course, is fully supported by society and is a very strong myth indeed.  

For some people, however, to only live out these common myths - such as those of the career or the family - seems lacking and unsatisfying in some way. And this propels some people to begin a search, a quest for something else, something that may include the myths of the career and family but is ultimately a vastly bigger myth. It is this quest for greater meaning that explains why many people arrive on the shores of Leeds Buddhist Centre. 

"In a way the Buddhist path is dangerous! It will turn us upside down and inside out in our quest for meaning"

Having arrived, some people have a positive response to what they find, at least enough to keep them coming back, and eventually they begin to explore what it might mean to be and to live as a Buddhist, and what it might mean to have a 'spiritual' dimension to their lives. For this to happen in a meaningful way, our hearts and imaginations have to be activated. Until that happens, we'll find that what we are doing is rather theoretical. Buddhism and the Dharma is something to be lived and our quest is to live and explore that more and more fully on a day-to-day and moment-to-moment basis. 

However, this process comes with a health warning. In a way the Buddhist path is dangerous! It will turn us upside down and inside out in our quest for meaning. We begin to ask ourselves whether we should hold back or whether we should surrender to what we might poetically describe as the endlessly fascinating cry of the wild geese, or the heart's howl!? This dilemma is beautifully described in the following poem by Rainer Maria Rilke.

Who if I I cried out would hear me among the hierarchies of angels?

And even if one pressed me suddenly against his heart:

I would be consumed in that overwhelming existence.

For beauty is nothing but the beginning of terror,

which we still are just able to endure,

and we are so awed because it serenely disdains to destroy us.

For every angel is terrifying.

And so I hold myself back and swallow the call note

Of my dark sobbing.

Ah, whom can we turn to

in our need? Not angels, not humans,

And already the knowing animals are aware

That we are not really at home in

Our interpreted world

Last week we had Louise and David's mitra ceremony. In this ritual they publicly expressed and celebrated something internal and personal to them - their heart'ss response to the Dharma. In expressing that, and having it publicly witnessed they became part of the mitra sangha (which has a positive effect not only on them but also on those who have already joined that sangha). They made a commitment to exploring what friendship might be and exploring what the Buddha was pointing to, and to do so within the context of the Triratna Community. They will now go more deeply into both of these areas and they might begin to touch unknown and possibly uncomfortable territory.

"We are walking into the scrublands that lead to a great forest, the great Unknown that the Buddha, Shakyamuni, plunged into..."

For some of us, we wish to quest more deeply still into this territory. Our hearts are moved to such a degree that we ask to join the Triratna Buddhist Order. We wish to make the three jewels - the Buddha, Dharma and Sangha - central to our lives. We may have a job and a family but we want to find out how this can all be held within a context of living out and embodying more and more fully what the Buddha himself exemplified in terms of wisdom and compassion.

So as an individual we ask to enter the ordination process. We join a band of men and women, a group of friends who are also traversing this path. This is important because it means we're engaging with others who are similarly exploring this, treading this path to the same extent as we are. We are walking in the scrublands that lead to a great forest, the great Unknown that the Buddha, Shakyamuni, plunged into at the moment of his great going forth, and where if we go too, we will encounter the Buddha.

Rosemary has been in this process for some time and a new and important part of the journey began on the night of her leaving ceremony. Rosemary has gone. She has left us and set off on her own to join up with a group of women who, like her, are now mythically and ritually going to plunge into the forest, the Unknown, and hopefully encounter the Buddha.

"What you held in your hand, what you counted and carefully saved, all this must go"

So how does one meet the Buddha? What is it about the ordination process that supports a meeting with the Buddha, a meeting with the Buddha's mind of wisdom and compassion? Well, one meets the Buddha by letting go of things.

We let go of what we identify with, what closes us off and shuts us off from others. Our identity that is rooted in place, work, role, and our limiting views about ourselves and others. And it is for this reason that sangha is so important. Part of its functioning is to help us to see clearly, to identify and release ourselves from these limiting views of ourselves and others.

The notion of letting of things in order to develop the enlightened mind is captured in the poem 'Kindness' by Naomi Shihab Nye...

Before you know what kindness really is

you must lose things,feel the future dissolve in a moment

like salt in a weakened broth.

What you held in your hand,

what you counted and carefully saved,

all this must go so you know

how desolate the landscape can be between the regions of kindness.

How you ride and ride

thinking the bus will never stop,

the passengers eating maize and chicken

will stare out the window forever.

Before you learn the tender gravity of kindness,

you must travel where the Indian in a white poncho

lies dead by the side of the road.

You must see how this could be you,

how he too was someone

who journeyed through the night with plans

and the simple breath that kept him alive.

Before you know kindness as the deepest thing inside,

you must know sorrow as the other deepest thing. 

You must wake up with sorrow.

You must speak to it till your voice

catches the thread of all sorrows

and you see the size of the cloth.

Then it is only kindness that makes sense anymore,

only kindness that ties your shoes

and sends you out into the day to mail letters and     

purchase bread,

only kindness that raises its head

from the crowd of the world to say

it is I you have been looking for,

and then goes with you every where

like a shadow or a friend.          

- Naomi Shihab Nye

"We don't know what her name will be, or even who she'll be"

So Rosemary has now reached the part of her journey where she has left us.

She has let go of being Rosemary in the Leeds sangha. She has travelled to Akasavana in Spain, which is a bit like the tigers cave. Many footprints lead up to the cave but none return. Rosemary has entered the valley, but this is a one way trip - she will not return! With her band of sisters there will be more letting go.  An identifying and letting go of all those places where she hid and and tried to not take responsibility for herself. She will move into a period of silence and more giving up, of travelling deeply into herself and and letting go of views, ideas and opinions that cause separation and pain for herself and others. And then at some point in the retreat she will leave this band of fellow questers. She will walk on her own to the ordination kuti. And there she will give up her name and in doing so, mythically and ritually, she will meet the Buddha.

Lastly, even though all this can only be done by Rosemary as an individual it is not done in isolation. We've played an important part in the process and we in turn are being affected by the steps Rosemary has taken. 

When we witnessed Rosemary leaving and going forth from Leeds, when we rejoiced in her merits and wished her well we all helped to create a sphere of positivity around her - a protector of the mind to support her on her journey to meet the Buddha. We all helped to establish the best conditions for Rosemary to see that ...

"The Indian in the white poncho

lying dead at the side of the road could be her,

that he too was someone who journeyed through the night with plans

And the simple breath that kept him alive."

...and for that seeing to deeply change her. To get a glimpse of what the Buddha's compassion really is and then to return anew. We don't know what her name will be, or even who she'll be, all we can know is that she will return with the aspiration to engage with Bliss-bestowing hands burnt into her soul.

Integration & Becoming a Mitra

by Phillippa Plock

As part of David and Louise's mitra ceremony this month, I was asked by Uddyotani to give a talk about being a mitra "from a young person's perspective". I'm 38 in April - so I just qualify, but my time is running out, so I better make the most of being young while I can! I decided to set myself a question to answer, which was - What did the choice of becoming a mitra add to my formative years? The answer for me lies around the question of integration of self, which Sangharakshita draws our attention to in his writings.

My 20s and early 30s were, for much of the time, a struggle - sometimes a battle - to find my place in the world, to find my voice, to find me even. I came across Buddhism when I was searching for something to help sustain me through this experience - a time when it felt I was quite literally being buffeted by worldy winds. Gain and loss, pleasure and pain, fame and infamy, praise and blame seemed to be over-riding themes as I sought to deal with the end of an 8-year relationship; finish my PhD; get things published; find a job that lasted for more than a few months; deepen my relationship with a new partner; set up house; start a family; and have two kids.

The choice to become a mitra in all this took 2 years to make - partly because as a teenager I was confirmed as a Christian because that's what my Mum wanted me to do and I didn't want to make the same mistake twice. Youth is a time to make mistakes, but it is also a fragile time when you can be easily influenced by other people. The choice to be a mitra was therefore something I wanted to make by myself, as much as that was possible. And I still feel now that I made the right choice - that it was rooted in what I now call an unshakeable confidence which has become a true ground in my practice to anchor me when those worldly winds come calling again.

I made my choice to become a mitra after a week spent at Taraloka on two powerful retreats: facing death, breaking with the past through a ritual of forgiveness, and realising my potential to occupy bigger shoes than I usually wear. In some respects this time that enabled me to choose was one of transition from a position where I felt a victim and hard-done-by to one where I could stand tall in my own skin. I'm sure you've had similar experiences in your own journey that are worth marking as important steps along the path - and I think the choice to become a mitra should be celebrated as such.

As for what being a mitra means to me now - I think it's a reminder to hold true to this precious jewel that I have found as much as I can. On the face of it, Buddhism or being a mitra has not transformed my life. I have not given up a job, family or home to practice. And I certainly relate to all those lay people in the Pali Canon who managed to combine a worldly life with devotion and meditation. But for me, I personally feel that faith and practice must be part of this world, or it is useless to the vast majority of humanity. So being a mitra is my own version of stepping into homelessness, a sign of going forth that I am prepared to make at this stage of my life.

In some ways this sounds, at least to my critical side, as cautious anxiety far removed from the passion of youth to run headlong into such ventures. But, on balance, I actually see it as part of this journey of integration: to bring the various parts of my life - of me - together. To be kneaded like a soap ball so that all is Buddhism and Buddhism is all. And the flexibility and creativity of youth certainly helps me with this - for example, I sing part of the 'Metta Sutta' to my son Joshua when he is upset, and I tell my daughter Joni a bedtime story about the breeze travelling through her body to help her relax. I try to recognise where my work and the Dharma overlap, and tell people in the Sangha about it (more on this in a later newsletter). Doing mitra study has really helped with this creativity and openness, but again, I waited until I felt ready before fully committing myself to it so it wasn't merely a continuance of my academic work. I actually spent a lot of time with body based practices after becoming a mitra as I felt I just didn't want to study for a few years. Perhaps the luxury of youth meant I could delay, but now I really value this opportunity to take my time, to bring all the energies as well as all the crises and complications of youth to the path, and explore the importance of each step on my own journey.

Reflections from a Shiny New Mitra! 

Louise writes: Learning to meditate and about Buddhism has been an intrinsic journey. I first came to the Buddhist Centre in Autumn 2006, the same time that I started studying Youth Work at university. Both the Buddhist and Youth Work courses felt very congruent. I explored the ego and self, ethics, equality, kindness and having a non-judgemental approach, it all made so much sense to me. Living ethically and knowing oneself was already a path that I had being walking, the time felt like a really pivotal point in life when things were shifting. Although I didn't have the confidence (or a Thursday night off work) to go to Friends Night at the time, I carried on meditating on and off, but focused on my studies and trying to live mindfully and ethically.

The next pivotal point in my Buddhist journey was at Taraloka in 2012. I was not feeling great; grumpy and didn't want to meditate that day. We sat for a Metta Bhavana, which I found very challenging at the time, so I decided to do my own thing and concentrated on the breath and slowing my heart rate down. Something started to happen to me, I could feel my whole body breathing, I knew not to grasp the experience and just go with it, so I focused myself. I could sense a white orb of light spinning and glowing in my chest and a thousand wordless realisations a second were running through my mind - a transcendental insight of pure joy and contentment!

That moment allowed me to become free of the baggage of negative emotions and people that I carried around with me, the big bag of guilt, the pain and regret. I put it all down and left it in the past where it belonged. However, most importantly, my trust in stillness and loving kindness was solidified and I became conscious that I could find this experience internally through meditation and stillness, without external influences. How fantastic!

I'm not sure I will ever be able to fully verbalise that particular meditation experience. I cried with relief for days after, not through sadness but relief. That's when I knew Buddhism was for me, now all I needed was the confidence to declare to the world and myself "I am a Buddhist".

Having found meditation enjoyable and relatively easy, the past year has being really challenging due to pain. I try really hard to work with the pain that I experience and have embraced the saying "just breathe". I am still learning to talk about my meditation experiences with others, I find this very difficult, even writing it down gives me butterflies.

So here I am years later, an actual Mitra at last. My ceremony was wonderful despite feeling quite poorly after a back operation, but I wouldn't have missed it for the world. Thank you all so much for my cards and gifts, but most importantly your kind words and for welcoming me officially into the Sangha.

I feel ready for the next phase of my life to begin, with no expectations. I just hope that the next part of my journey is equally illuminating.

Louise

Poet's Corner

As you may know, a haiku is an ancient Japanese form that traditionally mentions nature and has three lines of 5, 7, and 5 syllables respectively. Haiku writers nowadays often don't stick to these rules rigidly, though they make an attempt not to stray too far away from them by trying to fit all the necessary ingredients of the poem into as few words as possible.  

A nettle sting awakens me.

I didn't know

I'd been asleep.

A white feather

on the path. Above,

a bird knows nothing

of symbols.

The dog yawns.

I see teeth; am glad

we are friends.

In 'Simply Pleasure'

pink posters advertise 50% off.

A man comes out,

bag bulging.

Food Glorious Food

This month's recipe comes from Sarah Bedworth, and is a nice, classic vegetarian curry that can be put together quickly, as long as you have the spices in stock in your kitchen cupboard. 

Sarah says, "I keep the red chilli whole in order to provide a mild 'heat'. It's easy to remove once the sauce is hot enough."

Chickpea and potato curry

Ingredients

1 large onion, chopped

2 large cloves of garlic, chopped or crushed

2 heaped tablespoons of coarsely grated fresh ginger

1 baking potato, cubed

Oil (olive or sunflower), about 1 or 2 tablespoons

I tin of chickpeas, drained and rinsed

2 heaped teaspoons of ground cumin

2 heaped teaspoons of ground coriander

1 heaped teaspoon of mild curry powder

1 whole red chilli, kept whole and washed

Half a veggie stock cube

Ground black pepper

Fresh coriander, chopped

Method 

Saute the onion for a few minutes in the oil, then add the garlic, ginger and potato and continue to saute for a few more minutes.

Add the spices and cook another minute or two. 

Add enough water to help scrape off any stuck bits from the bottom of the pan and to provide enough sauce. 

Add the chickpeas and gently simmer for 10 mins or so and the potato is cooked.

Serve with rice.

Please note that the views expressed in this newsletter are the opinions of individual authors and do not necessarily reflect the views of the Leeds Buddhist Centre, theTriratna Buddhist Community (Leeds) or The Triratna Buddhist Order