Dalit art in Delhi

Maitriveer Nagarjun (shown left) is an Indian Order Member, studying at the prestigious JNU university in Delhi. Besides leading Dhamma classes at the university and travelling all over northern India to visit Buddhist local groups, he’s recently been helping organise ‘Eyes Re-Cast’ – possibly the first ever exhibition of contemporary art based on the philosophy of Dr. Ambedkar and the Buddha.

The painter, Savi Sawarkar, is India’s most eminent Dalit painter and print-maker. His art is angry, outspoken, and direct - causing Gary Tartakov, a professor at JNU, to comment "He doesn't sell real well [in India]. He sells internationally".

As if to bear this out, a simple Google search reveals an exhibition review from the Iowa State Daily in far-away America. They quote Eleanor Zelliott, a sympathetic academic who has for many years specialised in Dalit studies, and author of ‘Untouchable Saints: An Indian Phenomenon’. She comments "His art work targets Brahman orthodoxy. One painting which I find very touching is one of an untouchable carrying a dead cow across his shoulders, a comment on the traditional duty of the untouchable to carry carcasses from the village."

One painting that demonstrates Sawarkar's willingness to provoke is his interpretation of Manu, the great law-giver of India. Sawarkar portrays him as a monster because it was Manu who gave the laws that included the caste system that made Savarkar a Dalit. These laws made crimes against an untouchable insignificant, but crimes against Brahmans, the highest class, to be the worst thing a person could do. The Brahman view of Manu, by contrast, portrays him as prestigious and god-like.

You can see a small slideshow of Sawarkar’s paintings on FWBO Photos here – or see below. And if you happen to be in Delhi, go visit the Lalit Kala Academy Gallery, where the exhibition runs up to 30th April.

Sarvananda and Vishvapani on the radio - drama, and Tibet...

Sarvananda’s next radio play is on Radio 4 shortly, on Thursday 27th March at 2.15pm to be precise. It’s titled ‘The death of Magnus Sweet’ and is advertised there as being by Alastair Jessiman, Sarvananda’s non-Buddhist name.

He says, “If you've a chance to publicise it on the News site, that would be great...”

Check the details on the BBC website – it sounds intriguing: At a remote Scottish public school in the late 1960s, two boys invent a fictitious fellow classmate. But they face a dilemma when everyone, even the headmaster, starts to believe that Magnus Sweet exists…

Vishvapani continues to be a regular guest on Radio 4’s ‘Thought for the Day’, most recently speaking about the situation in Tibet. You can find audio and text versions of his pieces on the BBC website here.

Snow White meets Seven Buddhist Dwarves - whatever next…!

Last summer Locana, the hard-working director of Life At Work, a Buddhist Right Livelihood business based in Cambridge, UK, was feeling stressed – and found herself scribbling the opening lines of a “very silly little play”.

Over the following months that seed took root, sprouted, grew, and bore fruit recently as the Cambridge Sangha Pantomime, ‘Snow White and the Seven Dwarves’ – but with a difference… Without wishing to give away too much of the plot, FWBO News can report that Snow White, the beautiful heroine, finds herself knocking on the door of one of the FWBO’s men’s Buddhist communities – only to be turned away! Of course, that is but the beginning – once the residents of the community see how beautiful she is, she is welcomed in and made most welcome. And the plot unfolds…

The production brought together people from all sections of the extensive Cambridge Buddhist Centre’s sangha, and benefitted among many others from the talents of Yashodaka the jazz musician, Subhadra, consultant on the inner workings of men’s communities, and Visada, assistant director. Locana described it as “fabulous experience of sangha-building” and, reflecting on it afterwards, amazed herself to realised that throughout the many rehearsals she had not heard a cross word among the cast – who were worked hard! For Locana, it was, in her words, an opportunity “to poke fun at all things Buddhist”.

The FWBO’s Cambridge Buddhist Centre is blessed by having not only extensive centre premises close to the centre of town but, out back, an entire theatre! This, of course, was the venue for the two nights of performance, when the theatre was filled to capacity. The centre and theatre was purchased by Windhorse:Evolution, the FWBO’s largest and most successful Right Livelihood business, ten years ago, and it has been gradually renovated since. The theatre itself dates from 1814 and is one of only a handful of pre-Victorian theatres outside London, in its time playing host to W.B.Yeats and Charles Dickens among many others (and as it happens, home to the first ever panto performed). Most strikingly, it has a large curved screen or ‘cyclorama’ facing the steeply-banked galleries for the audience. Click here for something of its history.

So have Snow White and the Seven Dwarves disappeared so soon, after just two days of fame? Not quite – they live on on YouTube, where you can watch a trailer created by Rosie Spiegelhalter (aka Snow White!) for Cambridge’s upcoming film night, the movie of the pantomime. And, technology permitting, a version may appear on the Arts section of VideoSangha - watch this space!

Padmaloka's Twenty Four Hour Garland of Mantras

Padmaloka, the FWBO’s retreat centre and home of the men’s Ordination Team, has long been known as the home of a series of wonderful paintings by Aloka, the FWBO’s most prolific and much-loved artist. Over a lifetime of painting, he has pioneered a unique fusion of Buddhist iconography and Western artistic styles, yet his health is not good and he knows his time left for painting is limited.
Last year Padmaloka began commissioning Aloka to produce a series of large paintings to fill their shrine room with images of Buddhas and Bodhisattvas – adding to the three already there. In order to do this they are aiming to raise around £10,000 per year for the next few years.

All men involved with the FWBO are therefore invited to join the Padmaloka community for a unique weekend fundraising event - the Twenty Four Hour Garland of Mantras. This will take place over the UK’s August bank holiday weekend, ie 29 Aug - 31 Aug 2008.

The weekend will begin with a talk by Padmavajra, after which the core of the event will consist of an intensive 24-hour period of mantra chanting. During this those present will alternate between chanting, meditating, sleeping, eating etc. Samudradaka, Padmaloka’s Chairman, says “This will be a fantastic opportunity to deeply immerse yourself in the mysterious world of mantra and help call forth the paintings yet to come!”

He goes on to add, “When booking for this event you will receive a sponsorship form. The challenge then is to find people to sponsor you to take part in the 24-hour mantra chant. If you are able to raise at least £108 worth of sponsorship before coming you can attend the weekend for free. Otherwise Padmaloka will ask for their usual weekend rate”.

The weekend is open to all men – but numbers are limited to 108!

To book please contact Padmaloka in the usual way. If you'd like to donate directly, please go direct to the Padmaloka appeal.

Bristol Buddhist Centre's new arts season

Bristol Buddhist Centre is delighted to be hosting an arts season, under the title of ‘Awakening through Art’.

It will run from January to June 2008, and springs from the creative inspiration of Dharmachari Ananda. Ananda (Stephen Parr) is best known as a published poet, a leader of writing workshops (with ‘Wolf at the Door’), who also has the distinction of being the longest-standing member of the Western Buddhist Order. He is particularly keen to explore the relevance of Western myths for today’s Dharma practitioners, and there’ll be explorations of Mozart’s Magic Flute and the Western mystery tradition, Orpheus and the Underworld, and Tristan & Isolde.

Other scheduled activities include a play, written by Dharmachari Alobhin exploring the themes of climate change and peak oil, to be performed under the auspices of ‘Transition Bristol’, a shrine photography workshop, an evening of poetry reading, and a workshop on Seeing & Drawing.

In addition to all these, the season’s first week opens with three events:

19-20 Jan A Meeting of Minds - performance by Michael Lunts of his ‘play with music’ based on the life of Rachmaninov

21 Jan The Dharma Significance of an Empty Cosmos – a talk by Brian Johnson, with poetry and astronomical film footage

26 Jan Imagination & Spiritual Life – a talk by Ananda

For more details, see the Awakening through Art page on the Bristol Buddhist Centre website.

A Jewel appears in the Heart of Devon

For some years now a most beautiful and unexpected jewel has been emerging in the heart of Devon – a sanctuary to Prajnaparamita, the Buddhist ‘Goddess’ of Wisdom. Finding it isn’t easy – it isn’t marked on any map or signposted in any way – and Sagaravajra, its creator, doesn’t expect it to be finished anytime soon. Indeed, he describes it as his “lifetime’s work”. Should you stumble across it, however, in the woods overlooking the quaint village of Broadhembury, you would be entranced.

Outside the village, around on the other side of the valley and up the slope, the tarmac ends and the road becomes a track – which in turn becomes a bridleway pressed in on either side by trees. At the far end of this, where it finally peters out, you would find yourself ducking under a young and lovely beech and emerging in a secret glade, to look down at two ponds separated by a narrow pathway – which leads across and up to the shrine of the goddess herself. All around are strange and exotic plants, and looking beyond the shrine, deeper into the woods, you would begin to see the strange shapes of the guardians of the place – nagas, dragons, horned gods, even the beginnings of a labyrinth…

Sagaravajra has had the land for over seven years now, and Prajnaparamita has been there for nearly two. She – in her form at Broadhembury at least – is a larger-than-life sculpted figure, made by Sagaravajra many years ago in the basement of Rivendell Retreat Centre in Sussex. She then followed him to Guhyaloka, the FWBO’s mountain retreat centre in Spain, where Sagaravajra lived for several years in the Vihara, and then back to the UK and the Buddhafield Festival. From there they went together, at very short notice, to the ‘Living Arts Festival’ in Devon, whose centrepiece that year was a competition to design a shrine – with a prize of four acres of land donated by a local philanthropist. Buddhafield, who had been invited to provide plumbing for the festival, ended by winning the competition and the prize – but Sagaravajra and his sculpture so impressed the landowner that he was spontaneously given the two ponds and the surrounding land on which to create a sanctuary and home for the sculpture. The rest, as they say, is history - or at least, history in the making…

Sagaravajra has created a simple website explaining his vision and plans, and you can also go on a virtual ‘photo-journey’ on FWBO Photos - leading you from the road’s end up to the shrine itself– click here to begin. Buddhafield use their land, adjacent, for a number of retreats each year, and are slowly implementing on it a permaculture design they have created.

Charlie Chaplin impressions in India

Varaprabha is an Indian Order Member who has recently begun a new career as a mime artist. It looks like he specialises in Charlie Chaplin impressions – and it looks like he’s very good at it! He writes –

“I am glad to inform you that since last twenty-four years I am performing cultural activities as a cultural activist. Recently I completed Mime Arts course at Dr. Babasaheb Ambedkar University, Aurangabad. I am thinking to make short Mime films, through which such messages will be delivered as, “be educated, be kind, be harmonious, be generous…” and so on.

“Already I have been able to offer a Charlie Chaplin Mime on the theme of addiction for the children at the Mahavihara and also the Destitute Children’s Home in Pune, another, called ‘Charlie and the Thief’ at Latur, teaching the children the importance of earning their living by honest means, and finally an active part in the Film ‘Bodhisattva’, which among other things was advertising for TBMSG. Another Charlie Chaplin piece is in preparation, on the theme of ‘Charlie and the Dictator’.”

Watch this space!

Thanka painting workshops, and more, at Bodh Gaya

For some years now the FWBO/TBMSG has owned land at Bodh Gaya, site of the Buddha’s Enlightenment. Development on our land has been slow, partly due to its distance from all our other centres, including TBMSG’s Indian centres, plus the difficulty of operating in Bihar – one of India’s most backward and lawless states. Things are now starting to move – over the past two years two very spacious ‘huts’ have been constructed, offering accommodation for visitors and the small residential community, trees have been planted, and activities are beginning.

Thanks to the Nagarjuna Training Institute in Nagpur, there are now ten Bihari mitras in and around Bodh Gaya, plus several who contacted us through Nissoka or Lalitavajra’s Dharma classes there. One of these is Shashi Kumar, recently returned to Bodh Gaya after six years in Nepal, where he studied traditional Thanka painting at the Shechen Monastery, Kathmandu. His father is a well-known carver of Buddhist rupas, with a small shop in the centre of town.

Shashi is planning to set up a Thanka painting studio and tuition centre in Bodh Gaya, and recently conducted a painting workshop on our land. Any visitors are invited to contact him and he is able to accept commissions. Check his website or slideshow for a taste of his work, or email him here.

Also living in Bodh Gaya is Sachin Bhongade, a mitra from Nagpur in Central India – over 1,000 miles away, where the customs and even the language is different. He recently led the local mitras to the big TBMSG retreat centre at Bor Dharan, near Nagpur, for a retreat on the life of Dr. Ambedkar. On his return he sent FWBO News this report -

“I am in Buddhagaya and I was thinking to write you all about the retreat. I took seven youths from Buddhagaya to Bordharan for the retreat. They all are very good friends of mine, and four are from the Siddharth Nagar area – a very poor part of town where the local Buddhists live. I would like to appreciate Dhammachari Ratnaketu who sponsored for the retreat for them all.

"The subject of the retreat was Dr Babasaheb Ambedkar’s great qualities. It was a great time for my friend – the first time ever they experienced a different life to their usual life in Bihar. It was so inspiring for them and enjoyable for us all.

"In the beginning the retreat started in Marathi language (the local language of Maharastra) and that was a big problem for my friends from Bihar so the leader of the retreat decided to arrange a separate class for them. That class was led by Dhammachari Ansulkumar and me. After this was arranged, they mixed very inspiringly and enjoyably in the retreat.

"Then everybody came back to Buddhagaya. In the beginning it was really great for all they were all finding they were different in themselves. And now some of us are getting together everyday in the evening under the Bodhi Tree in Mahabodhi Temple - we do Pali puja and meditation, and every Sunday we have long time class and some interesting discussions about basic Buddhism.”

Editor’s note - It is sad to note that since this retreat, Ansulkumar died unexpectedly in a bad motorcycle accident, and Ratnaketu struck down by a stroke – he is now recovering in New Zealand.

Sabbe Sankhara Dukkha…

Buddhists on the Radio...

Sarvananda has for many years practiced as a playwright. On Wednesday 28 November between 2.15-3.00pm BBC Radio 4 will be broadcasting his latest play, " The Sensitive: the Hanged Man".

This is a sequel to his 'The Sensitive', also broadcast on Radio 4, where it was described as an 'offbeat thriller', in which police call in a psychic to help find a missing woman. Thomas Soutar is adept at solving crimes - but is his extraordinary gift a blessing or a curse?

Sarvananda has been developing his own website, still very much under construction but available to browse here.

On Saturday December 8th between 9-12am, Sunday 9th 1-4pm, and Tuesday 11th 1-4am (all UK time), Lokabandhu will be on the internet-only Glastonbury Radio discussing the progress of the Transition Town initiative in his home town of Glastonbury.

Transition Towns are a network of communities of all sizes, across the UK and beyond, that are looking the BIG questions of Peak Oil and Climate Change squarely in the eye with the intention of discovering and implementing ways to manage the coming changes including the necessary shift away from fossil fuels. He will be apprearing with Patrick Whitefield, Glastonbury resident and acclaimed permaculture teacher and author, and Linda Hull, a Glastonbury town Councillor.

Glastonbury Radio is an internet radio station but available to all with broadband.

Wabi Sabi

FWBO News is proud to present another article in our features section. Click here to read it.

The article is by Sally Radnor, a mitra from the Cambridge Buddhist Centre, is on the theme of Wabi Sabi, or ‘sad beauty’, the famous Japanese aesthetic of decay.. It was inspired by a recent retreat at Tiratanaloka led by Vajradarshini. Interested readers can read Vajradarshini’s blog describing her discovery of Wabi Sabi, her preparation for the retreat, and her reflections afterwards .

The Heart Sutra - sung by... Karuna Carpenter

On a lighter note to yesterday's post - FWBO News is proud to report that Kavyasiddhi's marvellous rendition of the Heart Sutra - sung to the tune of a golden oldie anyone over 40 will instantly recognise - has been posted to Videosangha. Listen to it here or download the file (for your further listening pleasure) direct from Google Video here. It probably shouldn't be us who says it, but this deserves to become a cult classic - watch it, and pass it on!

VideoSangha has been set up to enable people within the FWBO mandala to share what they are doing, what they are inspired by, and just to show what they look like - through the medium of video. It currently hosts some 34 videos with more being added most days.

If the video is slow to load, our advice is, let it play through once, as slowly as it needs to, then begin again and it should play smoothly.

Sangharakshita's poetry inspires tapestry

Betsy Sterling Benjamin, associated with Aryaloka Buddhist Center in Newmarket NH, is showing her silk wax-resist hanging titled: “Blue Lotus of Lumbini”, a piece inspired by Bhante Sangharakshita's “Lumbini” poem. The exhibit is at the Main Gallery of the Paul Creative Arts Center, University of New Hampshire from September 8 to October 17, 2007. For more information call the Gallery (603) 862-3712.

Blue Lotus was last shown in the “Song of the Buddha Heart” exhibition at the Manchester Buddhist Centre, England during February of this year. It was also featured on the cover of Fiberarts Magazine in April-May 2007. and was selected with 90 other objects to be included in the 25 Biennial League of New Hampshire Craftsmen’s Juried Members Exhibition.

More of Betsy's work can be viewed here or on the FWBO Flickr site here.

Lumbini

I remember a pool of blue lotuses
Blooming at Lumbini near the dusty highroad,
And the miracle of those blue flowers rising
So purely from the black waters, told me
Far more of the birth of the Enlightened One
Than the broken Ashoka column, or ruined shrine.

. Urgyen Sangharakshita, 1949

Manchester Cathedral Poet of the Year 2007

Maitreyabandhu, Director of ‘Breathing Space’ at the London Buddhist Centre, has won first prize in the Manchester Cathedral Poetry Competition, making him Manchester’s Poet of the Year 2007. He is the first Buddhist to win and came first in a field of over 300 entrants and over 700 poems.

The poem is called 'Visitation' and part of the judges’ comments read as follows –

“'Visitation' engages with that sense of the sacramental from its title through to its very last line. The 'you' the poem addresses is addressed with a contemporary negativity: it is 'without any form' and 'carrying no symbolic implement'. But for all that indeterminacy, it fills this poem with deft and concrete imagery, not only in the actualities of the scene - 'The ocean-wedge/with its new, precise horizon' - but also with an adroit use of simile, 'as if you had been there all the time,/like a pair of gloves left in a pocket'. In the second half of the poem, the writer manages with piercing imagination to use the idea of grey to suggest so very much, and yet leave the reader open to fill that grey - neither a bonding of all colours, nor an absence of any - with a profound sense of the infinite. This was a wonderful poem by any measure and I have given it the first prize.”

VISITATION

Strange that you should come
like that, without any form at all,
carrying no symbolic implements,
without smile or frown
or any commotion,
as if you had been there all the time,
like a pair of gloves left in a pocket.

As if I had been looking that way,
into the wide blue yonder, and you were
beside me, enduring my hard luck stories
with infinite patience. Not even waiting –
the tree outside my window
doesn’t wait, nor the ocean-wedge
with its new, precise horizon – just there
like the shadow of a church

or a quiet brother.
And how I saw you, in the mess of things,
was as a slant of grey,
the perfect grey of house dust,
an absolute neutral, with no weaving,
no shimmer of cobalt
and light-years away from Byzantium.

Grey. And I want to add, like light,
as if a skylight opened in my skull,
and into the darkness fall
a diagonal of pure Bodmin Moor.
But even that’s too bright,
too world-we’re-busy-in.
Call it ‘dust’ then, or the bloom
of leaf-smoke from an autumn fire.

Sadhu, Maitreyabandhu.

24-hour fundraising drawing at the LBC

Aaron Matheson, an artist from the London Buddhist Centre mandala, has recently completed a 24-hour-long fundraising marathon - drawing the view from the balcony of the centre looking out onto the road. He says -

"We raised over £700, which is incredible. Thanks to those who sponsored me. The drawing itself was a lot more fun than I expected it to be! It felt all absorbing, a huge task. And I loved the sense of completing one cycle of the earth- (that natural rhythm which defines our lives), which I didn't think about before. It felt exhilarating much of the time. Who says you've got to suffer to raise money?

Lots of people came to see me, and some posed. Drawing them under pressure of time lent an urgency to it. I got interested in the perceptual space - shown by the way the railings seem to bend away from you in peripheral vision. Our vision as a whole isn't a flat screen but more like a sphere. Also, the way that things that are distant seem compressed when you draw them.

I also like the way everybody is looking out of the Buddhist Centre towards the rest of the world. Seems to echo the other-regarding nature of the LBC and our 'Breathing Space' project. I admire the altruism of the people here, so it came into the drawing naturally. The Dharmachakra, central in the first page of the drawing, is also in their gaze - the turning wheel of the path of wisdom and compassion. Contemplating all life through this vision, the people on the balcony are trying to find kinder and more positive ways of living. That's how I see it, I think.

Click here for a glimpse of the completed drawing on the LBC's weblog.

A play, 'Excerpt from a dog's ear', by Kavyasiddhi from Manchester was on BBC Radio Four last Thursday. Its available for the next two days only via their 'Listen Again' service for the next two days here - click Thursday.

Uthona Buddhist Arts Magazine

The new issue of Urthona is about to appear in Buddhist Centres and selected bookshops, with a new look. The issue is centred around Indian Art. In this issue Anjolie Ela Menon looks at India’s vibrant religious traditions and how they fit in with the notion of progress. By contrast Chote Ustad who teaches the art of Dhrupad singing is more concerned with preserving ancient tradition. Dhivan interviews distinguished translator Andrew Schelling. The cover image is a Bodhisattva from the Ajanta Caves which are discussed by Richard Lannoy. FWBO & TBMSG News editor Jayarava delves into the timeless beauty of Messiaen's Quartet for the End of Time in a new column entitled Masterpiece.

Editor Ratnagarbha says "We hope that this issue will provide a glimpse of that still plenitude, and the vibrancy that is its foreground, within the strange richness of Indian art and literature".