‘What is joy in the garden of the Dharma?  It is the joy of guarding the bodhicitta, of ripening living beings’.
How can you, as Order Members, best support mitras train for ordination in your local situation?  What might their next steps be?  What role do local Dharmacharinis play, and what is the role of Tiratanaloka?  We will be helping you, whatever your local Sangha situation is, to work out how to best to engage with mitras, encouraging them to flourish and enter into the mystery of the Order.

In the second of our one-day online seminars for dharmacharinis supporting those in the ordination process,   we'll be looking at how we can form effective ordination kulas.   Looking at the practical issues of when and how kulas are formed, we'll also consider what we can do to make the experience of meetings positive and helpful for ourselves and those we're supporting.  We'll have presentations, discussions and even a chance for role-play!

The first online Order seminar offered by the Tiratanaloka team will explore the area of how to assess effective Going for Refuge to the three Jewels. As someone gets close to being ready to join the Order, all the Order members around them will be engaged in the work of reaching consensus as to when that happens. We will look at what this means for us both individually and collectively.
There will be a short presentation, time to share our experiences, and smaller groups to discuss the issues and try out a role play of giving feedback.

'The response of many people during the Coronavirus pandemic has been to want to help very practically by supporting the NHS, our friends and neighbours, and to want to deepen our Dharma practice, enabling us to better emotionally respond to the difficulties that arise. Some of us are thinking about the future, to how the pandemic will effect long term societal change. What part does the Tiratana Buddhist Order play in this? Why have an Order at all? How can committing to the Order help us to deepen our Dharma practice and help the world?

The History of my Going for Refuge - online study week

Buddha Mind online study week

We are offering study based on Sangharakshita's lectures from a booklet titled Buddha Mind.

Throughout our spiritual life there are turning points which lead us to an ever deeper experience of reality, until the final conversion - to Enlightenment itself - is attained. Join us for an online week of study, looking at different ways of considering this crucial turning point of the Buddhist spiritual life. This study is based on Sangharakshita's series of lectures, The Meaning of Conversion in Buddhism given in 1965-66 and the text can be found on his website.

We invite you to a week of online study based on the first 3 chapters of Living Ethically by Sangharakshita.  This material comes from seminars led on Nagarjuna's Precious Garland of Advice for a King and these particular chapters look at aspects of the first three ethical precepts we take as Buddhists.  They also draw out the relationship between an ethical lifestyle and the development of wisdom with an emphasis on friendship, love and generosity - just what we need for our troubled times!

'Just as the mighty ocean has one taste, the taste of salt, so the Dharma-Vinaya has one taste, the taste of freedom.' 

Over the course of this week we will be studying the three lectures from Sangharakshita's 'The Taste of Freedom'.

You will need to commmit to the daily study session on-line.

The program is as follows;