Todayand#8217;s FBA Dharmabyte, and#8220;Marking the New Name: Triratna Buddhist Communityand#8221;, is a short talk by Padmavajra before leading the seven-fold puja at the International Sangha Gathering, Taraloka, May 2010 marking our movementand#8217;s name from the Friends of the Western Buddhist Order to the Triratna Buddhist Community. The Community of the Three Jewels: The Buddha, The Dharma, and The Sangha.
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Marking the New Name: Triratna Buddhist Community (2010)
[Music] Dharma Vites is brought to you by Free Buddhist Audio, the Dharma for real life. Our work is funded entirely by donations from our generous listeners. If you would like to help us keep this free, come and join us at freebuddhistaudio.com/community. Thank you and happy listening. [Music] So I'm Padma Vajra and I have the honour of leading a special puja, which marks the change from the Friends of the Western Buddhist Order to the tree ratna Buddhist community. Is that right? The tree ratna Buddhist communities? [Laughter] It's just right, isn't it? [Laughter] So the Buddhist community of the three jewels, the Buddha, Dharma and Sangha. And I was thinking obviously about the name change, just to say there isn't going to be any sort of moment in the puja where suddenly someone like myself stands up or a recorded voice of Sangha and says, I now declare none of that. It's just going to be a puja with our full attention, full devotion, full spiritual practice. That will mark the change. That will mark the transition. And there are pujas going on all over the world in these days to mark this change. We're not alone throughout the whole of our tree ratna Buddhist community world. And I was thinking about this name business because some people have found it slightly controversial because our great teacher, I regard him as our great teacher. He's my teacher who I love very, very deeply and dearly. He told us in January that he decided to take the recommendation of Indian order members that we changed the name of our order to the tree ratna Buddhist order. And it was a little bit controversial in one or two circles, but that's not new in the FWBO tree ratna Buddhist community. I've been ordained a long time and I can assure you there's been endless debate and discussion and argument. It's not a new thing. It's always been there. But anyway, we're all, I think, reasonably happy. And the suggestion was that the wider community becomes the tree ratna Buddhist community. So that's what we're now becoming. Sangha actually is very fond of the term movement. Some people don't like the word movement, but the reason why he chose movement, because it moves, because it's got energy and drive to take the Dharma out to people. So let's, okay, we might be the tree ratna Buddhist community, but let's not forget that we're a moving community. And names are very interesting. When I got involved in the Dharma, I was a tender lad of 17 in Brighton, frequenting the local hippie shop, which everybody called Ananda, which I know now is to be pronounced as Ananda. But anyway, in those days, it was Ananda in North Road for aficionados. And there was a little, I was desperate, I was absolutely desperate for the Dharma. I'd read books on Tibetan Buddhism, Larmagavinda. Absolutely desperate to meet Buddhist, to meet a guru, to learn to meditate, to gain enlightenment, to receive esoteric, secret teachings that in the blink of an eye, you just become a master. And there was a little notice that said, "The Friends of the Western Buddhist Order are thinking of starting a center in Brighton." And I said, "What a boring name." But what a boring name. I mean, you know, why couldn't it be, you know, the sort of brotherhood of the tantric initiates of the esoteric secret path? But there it was, Friends of the Western Buddhist Order. So, all right, well, go along, see what they're like. I mean, they're probably not real Buddhist. They're friends, you know, of... I mean, Western Buddhism. It's going to be a Western Buddhist. Interestingly enough, my first experience of the Friends of the Western Buddhist Order was nothing to do with the name the Friends of the Western Buddhist Order. My first experience was a full dress, full length metabhavana, followed by a sevenfold puja with mantras. By the end of the puja, I knew definitively that I was a Buddhist and I was going to commit myself to this Western Buddhist Order. The name didn't relate to me to the experience, which you could say was a kind of direct experience of the three jewels. I didn't know anything about that then, but that's what it was. And I always felt slightly uncomfortable with the name Friends of the Western Buddhist Order. I became fond of it, and I know many people are fond of the name. They like the language of Western Buddhism. For me, I've never identified ever with being a Western Buddhist, only in the sort of Gnostic sense of being sort of Buddhism in the far west of matter. And we're attempting to liberate ourselves from the far west of materialism, in that sense. That's my own sort of private symbolic association. So actually for me, at last the name reflects the reality of my experience that I'm a Buddhist who goes for refuge to the Buddha, Dharma and Sangha, those three precious jewels. And I had another experience of names in India. I had the great good fortune of tagging along with Luka Mitra when he started things in India. It was tagging along, I can assure you, he went at a hell of a pace. And we knew we couldn't call ourselves in India the Friends of the Western Buddhist Order. Luka Mitra had been asked to start a centre in Poona by Indian Buddhist disciples of Sangha Rachita. So what were we going to be? Western Buddhist Order, I mean, that's weird, you can't do that. So we came up with the name, Luka Mitra came up with the name, well we'll call ourselves Balda Mitra, Buddhist Friends. We couldn't sort of think of anything else. So we were Buddhist Friends, very quickly we had a Sangha, very quickly Luka Mitra had everybody inspired and organised very quickly. We had a magazine in Marathi, we're doing loads of classes, loads of talks all over the place where Luka Mitra was. I was tagging along. And Sangha Rachita came out at last, it seemed to take forever, but he came. And it was amazing hearing him roll out the Dharma in India, being translated into Marathi, being translated into Gujarati, hearing him speak the Dharma to thousands of people. And we had our first ordination, so as a whole load of ordination, so we had our first sort of council meeting to decide what we were going to do. And Sangha Rachita says, well look, it's time for a new name. So I've decided to, he decided, there was no discussion, I've decided to call our movement in India. What does that mean? So it means something like the body of helpers, of the great Buddhist spiritual community, of the entire triple fold universe. Yes, yes. What a name, fantastic. Because our Dharma is for absolutely every single living being, it's not just West, East, South, North, it's actually for the cosmos, because it's the Buddha Dharma, that's what we're communicating. I wish we'd changed the name, not now, I'm happy with the name. Long ago, to the moon, anyway, much more accurate, I think. But actually, that name is a bit problematic in India, it's a very traditional Buddhist name, but Trilokya has problems in India. It has all sorts of associations for ex-Hindu people with Hinduism, which isn't really appropriate. So we are becoming now all over our world, the Tree Ratnabuddhist community. So we're not defining ourselves in terms of, if you like, the geographic or the space we're in, if you like. We're now defining ourselves more properly in relation to our great spiritual ideals, our great ideals of the Buddha, the Dharma and the Sangha. And we say, I'm using the word ideals, they're jewels, we cherish them, we revere them, they're supremely valuable to us. We adore them, we love them, we love the golden jewel of the Buddha, we love the golden radiance of his wisdom and compassion. We deeply love with the beauty of wisdom and compassion, the meaning of wisdom and compassion. The golden jewel of the Buddha. We're deeply in love, we deeply cherish the deep blue jewel of the Dharma, the blue of the ocean, the blue of the sky, the infinite riches of the Dharma, of the truth and all of the different teachings and practices that emerge from that great ocean, that great space. We've got to go down deeply into that ocean, if we're going to really adore the Dharma. And we deeply adore the red jewel of the Sangha, red, the color of blood, the color of our life blood as Buddhists. We are at the color of maitri, the color of meta, the color of loving kindness for one another. The Buddha so often said to his disciples, you must love one another, have loving kindness for one another in body, speech and mind, whether you're with each other or apart from one another. That's our life blood as a community. So we deeply love these things, we're deeply committed to these things. We love them so much, we want to become them, we want to become the wisdom and compassion of the Buddha. We want to become the path of the Dharma, we want to become the Sangha, the spiritual community. So yes, it is right and proper that we are now the tree ratsana, Buddhist community, the Buddhist community devoted to the three jewels. And we're going to have a puja marking that change. And others said there's not going to be anything in a fancy in the puja to mark this. The puja really is devoted, though, to Avalokiteshra, as if you like, the embodiment of these three jewels. Avalokiteshra holds the jewel at the center of his chest, it says to be the jewel of Bodhi Chitta, the jewel of wisdom and compassion. Well, perhaps we could see in that one jewel, the three jewels. Avalokiteshra is holding that, you know, before his heart. That's at the center of his being. And Avalokiteshra of course is the Bodhisattva who embodies particularly the quality of the compassion of the Buddha. And in mythology, Avalokiteshra was a great yogi, a great ascetic, a very serious spiritual practitioner, a great meditator who lived up on Mount Potala, a deep meditator. But also someone who was deeply inspired to take the Dharma into the world so that all would benefit from the Dharma. And he took a great vow. He took a vow that the vow that I'll alleviate, I'll work to alleviate the suffering of all. And even if for one moment, one millisecond, I think of my own welfare. May my head break into ten pieces, may my body just be ripped into a thousand treads. Tremendous vows so determined to practice the Dharma for the benefit of all so that all suffering would end in the world. Tremendous Adimoksha, tremendous determination with this vow. So he meditated on love and compassion. He went among the people and taught them the Dharma, the liberating Dharma, worked incredibly hard at this activity, working deeply on himself, working deeply to alleviate the suffering of others. And then he looked after all this activity and saw, yes, some were affected, but many, many, many, many, many had not been touched by his work, by his practice. Just for a second, just for a millisecond, he thought, what's the point? What's the point of it all? I'll just look after my own bliss. I'll just get off on my own meditation. And at that moment, the vow exploded. Avalo Catastra exploded, his head indeed broke into ten pieces, his body was ripped into a thousand shreds, and he cried out in terrible pain and terrible humiliation. He'd broken his great vow to save all living beings. He'd broken the truth words that he uttered, and in this terrible pain and humiliation, he called out to his teacher, his guru, Amitabha, from whom he took the vow in the first place. And Amitabha came with all his tender, wise, magical compassion and said, "Everything arises independent upon conditions. In a moment of time, the truth will be known because of the power of your truth statement, because of the sincerity of your vow, you have not failed." And magically, he healed Avalo Catastra. He reformed him, refashioned him into this extraordinary being, this wonderful figure, this standing figure, this tremendous radiance of wisdom and compassion. The eleven-headed Avalo Catastra who looks out on all beings, the thousand armed, thousand-eyed Avalo Catastra reaching out to touch every single living being. This is the being who we will be evoking in the puja, and this in a sense is us. Sankarachta has seen, this isn't an idea, this is more of the nature of his own vision. He's seen our own order many, many years ago when it was a much smaller order, a much smaller movement. He saw it even then as a sort of reflection of this eleven-headed and thousand-armed Avalo Catastra, seeing our own community aspiring to become this extraordinary being, this extraordinary quality of consciousness, where we're deeply in harmony with one another, deeply unified by our commitment to those three glorious duels. And yet utterly individual and particular reaching out to touch to meet people exactly where they are with the Dharma in our own particular way, without in any way breaking that unity, that harmony. That's what our tree Ratna Buddhist community is aspiring to do, is aspiring to become. We hold the three duels at the center of our consciousness so that we can harmonize, so that we can reach out so that all may have the liberating Dharma. We hope you enjoyed the talk. Please come and help us keep this free at freebuddhistaudio.com/community. And thank you. [music] [music] [music] You [BLANK_AUDIO]