Wildmind's 'Open Circle' launched; practical mysticism explored

Two new offerings from the FWBO’s Wildmind online meditation teaching site have recently come to FWBO News’ attention.

Their new venture, the ‘Open Circle’ aims to offer participants – who may live anywhere in the world – the opportunity to participate in an ongoing online discussion forum exploring key Buddhist teachings and applying them to everyday life. Shrijnana, the Open Circle’s full-time facilitator, describes it as “part on-line book club, part Buddhism course”. What this means in practice is that each week discussions and activities are based on sections of Vajragupta’s book Buddhism: Tools for Living Your Life; besides simply reading the text there’s wide-ranging discussions, weekly exercises; opportunities to ask questions and share experience, and of course the guidance and feedback of a resident facilitator. The Open Circle doesn't assume that you are a Buddhist or that you want to be a Buddhist, but it does assume that you wish to learn something from the Buddhist tradition.

More details of the Open Circle are available on the Wildmind website and we should add that Wildmind have a policy that noone ever is ever turned away for purely financial reasons – so if their suggested contribution is not possible for you, contact them to see what they can do.

Alongside this, Wildmind’s latest newsletter is on the theme of ‘Practical Mysticism’ with, among other delights, their guest contributor, Zen teacher and author David Brazier asking the question “Are meditative experience and engagement with the world mutually contradictory?” and examining the false dichotomy of mysticism and engagement.

Wildmind, it’s worth pointing out, is far more than simply online meditation teaching: they offer courses on pain management, anger management, basic Buddhism, host extensive archives covering topics as diverse as book reviews, celebrity Buddhists, and meditation in prisons across the US. Explore the Wildmind website at your leisure...

Free Buddhist Audio – New Community Site

Welcome to the news from Free Buddhist Audio,
the free download, podcast and streaming service from the Dharmachakra audio and text archives. To receive more regular updates on the site, you can always subscribe to our own blog.

We're absolutely thrilled today to be able to announce the full launch of our new community site! This represents a very big shift for our service: now any Fwbo centre or institution – anywhere in the world – can upload its own talks, and have its own pages on the site. We've already got quite a few signed up, and the first talks are appearing – in English, French and German! Come and take a look...

What's very exciting for us is that the amount of material on the website will increase greatly over the next months, and is likely to be much more up-to-date and representative of what's going on in our international community. It will also allow us at the archives to concentrate on getting a lot more of the older talks and special recordings online.

Watch this space for more news of new features as we roll them out in the coming months. And if your centre or Fwbo project would like to get involved, we'd be delighted if you get in touch!

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One other piece of news: in April, Free Buddhist Audio had its first 20,000 visitor month! We've come a long way since the days of selling scratchy old cassette tapes to about 200 people a year... Thank you to everyone for their tremendous support!