Update from college meeting

The college meeting already seems a long time ago but I did say I would write something so, here we are. Since it finished I have been on the team for the Padmasambhava’s Advice order retreat here at Adhisthana and that is quite intense. It is pretty all consuming so I need to make a bit of an effort to cast my mind back to the college meeting.

There were 43 of us at the meeting which was pretty well a full house with public preceptors from all 6 areas of the community: Oceania; India; mainland Europe; the UK and Ireland; USA and Canada and Latin America. Some of the Indian public preceptors couldn’t make this meeting and Dayachandra from Mexico’s health prevented her coming. The first part of the meeting is spent in our different kulas so I spent a fair bit of time in the Latin America women’s kula. As well as a quite extended personal reporting in (this is Triratna after all) we talked about future Ordination retreats in the Americas. We also talked about prospective new private and public preceptors. All of us in that kula are very aware of our age and the importance of us training our successors. We also went out for coffee and cake (not that I had cake but the coffee was good).

After that we had 2 days of study led by Vajratara, supported by me. We had chosen some extracts from an old work of Bhante’s called FWBO and Protestant Buddhism. It was a response from Bhante to an academic article claiming that the FWBO offered a form of Buddhism which was like protestantism. In the response Bhante, as well as criticising the piece which seemed to have been fairly ill informed, lays out why he founded the Order and Movement in the way that he did. I had reread it recently when I was preparing a talk on our 6 distinctive emphases and enjoyed it more than I remembered. I mentioned it to Vajratara and we decided that it would be good to study. An interesting aside is that Vajratara studied with the author of the academic piece and was in a seminar class with him where he looked at Bhante’s response.

Rather than go into groups after Vajratara’s input we decided that I would lead us in a series of ‘conversation cafes’ which meant that people had the chance to talk through some issues in small, changing groups. That seemed to go really well. After that we went through a large number of what are unfortunately called ‘business’ items. This was mainly proposing new preceptors, hearing about the ordination teams in various places, statistics about Ordination requests. We also had a bit of a review of the Sunday evening online event looking at the numbers of order members and GFR mitras under 30.

Anyway, I need to go now as I have to print some things for today on the retreat.  More next week - probably written in the airport at Valencia or on the Caledonian sleeper train on my way home. I have been away for a bit too long this last couple of months. I would like to say more about the college meeting - the evenings in particular.  Also a bit about this retreat. I am hosting quite a few of the online sessions and it is lovely to see a good number of Scots on the screen. More next time.

I am currently preparing a puja for tonight on Padmasambhava and Compassion so I have been reading Yeshe Tsogyal’s Mother of Knowledge and various other texts. Very inspiring.

Meanwhile

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 arisen

May it arise

Where it has arisen

May it flourish

Where it flourishes

May it never die