Manchester Buddhist Centre

While many of us cel­eb­rated our movement’s name change here in Manchester, Dayamala was at the Tri­r­atna Inter­na­tional Retreat

Tues­day afternoon

People are leav­ing; the shrine rooms have been dis­mantled; din­ing chairs stacked; the final wash­ing up under­way, and so this second Inter­na­tional Sangha retreat comes to an end.

It has felt such a pos­it­ive retreat, and amaz­ing that we can live rel­at­ively har­mo­ni­ously in such num­bers and such simple and basic con­di­tions. When I lived here and sup­por­ted and led numer­ous retreats, I used to think all we needed to do is get people here and the Dharma and Tara work their own magic – we just need to cre­ate the conditions.

I have felt sim­il­arly this retreat. Cre­ate the con­di­tions, get people here and the Buddha, Dharma and Sangha work their magic. How won­der­ful! And I think many people have exper­i­enced that, par­ti­cip­ated in that these few days. Again, how wonderful!

Quantum and quadrants

Not sure what to say about yesterday’s dis­cus­sion group! Jnana­vaca told us how bothered Ein­stein was about quantum phys­ics, and also, as a paci­fist, how upset he was that the split­ting of the atom was used for such destruct­ive purposes.

Then on to Ken Wilbur’s the­ory of four quad­rants – sub­ject­ive and object­ive with an indi­vidual and col­lect­ive com­pon­ent to each, and that we and any­thing need to be evolving in all four quad­rants – rather than, say, just in one quad­rant which some­times holds the danger of think­ing it is the only one – phys­ics for example.

I don’t know if it’s Wilbur’s asser­tion, but we also con­sidered that any phe­nom­ena we look at has these four quad­rants to it! We then looked at Bhante’s think­ing on the five niya­mas, or nat­ural laws, as stages of evol­u­tion. Very inter­est­ing stuff which I believe Sub­huti is going to write a paper about. I haven’t time to do it justice here.

The story progresses

Last night’s story was the begin­nings of the Sangha after the Buddha became Enlightened, well told with a degree of poetic licence, and once again the chil­dren were fab! I have thor­oughly enjoyed see­ing them all — the age range, the activ­it­ies some have been involved in (Vajramudita’s hus­band came yes­ter­day and did some kayak­ing with them), and then their enact­ment of these stor­ies each evening.

This was fol­lowed by an intro­duc­tion to the name change, a Sev­en­fold puja ded­ic­ated to Avalokites­vara, which Bhante has adop­ted as a sym­bol for the Order, and we now are the Tri­r­atna Buddhist Community.

I’m attend­ing the national Order week­end here, Thursday to Sunday, so I’m stay­ing on and help­ing out with the rest of the decon­struc­tion. Now there’s a word! I did of course mean the site but what with all the shrine room activ­it­ies and quantum phys­ics, who knows how I’ve been deconstructed?

Time for me to go and do my next job! So, this is me, over and out from this retreat. See some of you at the centre on my return.

Metta to all,

Dayamala