Live in Harmony with the Bodhichitta

A long one today!

Today feels like spring but I don’t trust it. For the last week or so we have had four seasons each day. So much uncertainty - and the world is like the weather. So much chaos and uncertainty. There was a note of optimism yesterday with Orban being soundly defeated in Hungary. His successor is still quite to the right as far as I know but the poster boy for the far right and populism is defeated. Meanwhile, the president of the USA has taken on the Pope with increasingly frenzied social media posts. His followers are now denouncing Pope Leo as not the true Pontiff. The world feels crazy.

I am so glad to have found the Dharma and to be part of the Triratna community. Not to escape the world. I don’t know if I can even claim that it helps to make sense of the world.  It feels like there is no sense. Maybe it helps me to stay equanimous in the face of the craziness and to attempt to put my grain of sand on the side of good. I am constantly reminded of the lines from the Bodhicaryavatara:

Hence virtue is perpetually feeble,

The great strength of evil being extremely intense,

And except for a Fully Awakening Mind

By what other virtue will it be overcome

In his seminar on the text (the Endlessly fascinating Cry) Bhante tells us:

Buddhism has got a very full and clear recognition of what it is up against, of what samsara is really like, but at the same time it’s got a very firm conviction that the forces of good, and of Enlightenment even, in the long run are even more powerful. It certainly doesn’t minimise the suffering and wickedness and difficulties that there are in life, but it is certainly not going to minimise the potentialities for good that are there as well.

…

Bodhichitta is even stronger than ordinary goodness. It’s something transcendental: another dimension altogether. Just ordinary human psychological goodness and positiveness could never overcome suffering and evil. It’s only the much higher faculty or more than faculty - the dimension, level, spirit, power - of Bodhichitta which can really do the trick.

…

You’ve got to invoke some spiritual force which transforms and transmutes the whole psychic apparatus 

I like to think of this as Project Triratna. I wish this to be the driving force of everything we offer in the GBC. We can recognise what we are up against and do all we can to live in harmony with the Bodhichitta. 

I felt I saw this in the offerings on the online International Triratna Day festival on Saturday.  This year it was hosted from the east coast of the USA so, given the time difference, I only managed to tune in live to the first 3 sessions but I have watched the 4th since then. I enjoyed all of it and was especially inspired by the reports from Mexico of 2 new team based Right Livelihoods: a coffee cart in Toluca and a wee business in Mexico City producing tee-shirts, bags and mugs. Here’s the link to the recordings of the sessions to watch at your leisure. 

https://thebuddhistcentre.com/stories/toolkit/four-gifts/

There is more inspiring stuff about our Sangha in Mexico on the Lights in the Sky website

https://www.lightsinthesky.org/

Look for Cuna de Luz / Cradle of Light for the film on Mexico. There are some other great films there about the early days of the Order and Community. 

There are also lots of other things worth seeing in the celebration - I recommend the session on Dharmachakra, the charity that hosts thebuddhistcentre.com and freebuddhistaudio.com both of which make an extraordinary contribution to the life of Triratna. One of the things I appreciate is the internationality of our community and both the BCO and FBA keep that alive. They are currently engaging in a programme to to restore and renew all of Sangharakshita’s talks for greatly enhanced listening. It’s almost as good as being there live! Some examples are shared in the first session of the day.

Here’s a link to some remastered talks - in fact the Buddhism for Today and Tomorrow, the talks we are concentrating on through 2026.

That was Saturday. On Sunday, I went on a wee anti-racist march in Maryhill where I live. It was organised by North Glasgow Against Racism and, given that it was very local there was a good turnout - lots of kids and dogs as well as adults. I was with a few other Order Members and there was a great atmosphere. Lots of folk driving by waving and tooting their horns in solidarity. 

Racism is one of the things I have seen grow over the last few years, part of the rise of populism I mentioned at the start of this post. I remember being very touched at an Order day in 1988 when Bhante talked about things he would like to see us, as a community, tackle. I managed to find the transcript and I thought I would share it with you. It is quite a long quote but it seemed worth sharing the whole thing. 

And then there's another question that I've felt quite concerned about recently and even quite pained, and that is the question of racial prejudice and discrimination. I must say if you had asked me a few years ago whether racial prejudice and discrimination was on the decline in Britain I would have said, Well, yes of course, it certainly is and it won't be many years perhaps before it disappears altogether, but I don't think I could say that today. In the course of the last few months I've seen, I've read in the newspapers so many accounts, so many reports of instances, cases of racial discrimination, prejudice, harassment of one sort or another in Britain, so I've come to the conclusion that as a Movement, and especially as an Order, we need to take a much more active part in combating prejudice and discrimination of that sort. 

I'm quite sure that within the Order, and perhaps within the Movement as a whole, there is no racial prejudice, there is no racial discrimination of any kind, but there's certainly a lot of it in Britain and I think we have to try not just to ensure that racial prejudice and racial discrimination don't exist in our midst, but we have to do whatever we can in whatever way to remove them from the society in which we live, in which our Movement, in which our Order, functions. I don't think we can just look the other way and content ourselves with the fact that we ourselves do not personally practise that sort of discrimination, don't personally indulge in that sort of prejudice.

Now I'm not suggesting you take a very militant attitude - that often is counter- productive - but I think in a gentle and kindly and non-violent way we must do everything in our power in our own society in Britain and elsewhere if we happen to be so placed to counteract this particular menace, which is obviously quite opposed to the whole spirit of Buddhism, of the Dharma.

That was 1988. I don’t know if things are worse but it certainly feels like there is perhaps more permission to be overtly racist than there was in the 80s. As Bhante says - this is opposed to the whole spirit of the Dharma. Maybe some folk would see going on a wee march as a militant attitude but the atmosphere wasn’t in any way aggressive. It was quite joyful. The weather was, of course, crazy. We had clouds, sunshine and a downpour that soaked us all just near the end. There were more folk turned up than were allowed in the hall - they hadn’t expected the 700+ that turned up. 

That was my weekend. I am now trying to get ready to go off again later this week. Firstly to Adhisthana to lead a seminar studying Bhante’s talks on Transforming Self and World: the Sutra of Golden Light. Then from there to Taraloka for a retreat on Awakening Together: Bodhisattva and Community. I am really looking forward to that and especially pleased that there will be a good Glasgow contingent there: Carunalaka and Angela on the team and Keirstan, Joyce and Karen. There might not be a blog for a couple of weeks. Straight from Taraloka I go to Shrewsbury to conduct the public ordination of a good friend, Lake.

Back in Glasgow we will be celebrating Buddha Day at Berkeley street on May 3rd. We will have talks, meditations and Mitra ceremonies. Next week we will share the bios of those becoming mitras. An ever widening circle the sangha grows. And we need it in this world of uncertain weather and crazy politics.

For now, as always,

May all beings be well, may all beings find true happiness and its causes and may all beings be free from suffering.

Where the Bodhichitta has not yet arisen

May it arise

Where it has arisen

May it flourish

Where it flourishes

May it never die