In Krakow - dust, noise, sweat and joy...

Over in Krakow, Poland, the FWBO’s newest Buddhist centre is taking shape – with a good deal of sweat and hard work. Nityabandhu, who is leading the project, sends FWBO News a brief dispatch from the front line:

“Hi, sorry this is very laconic but not much time at the moment. We were promised dust, noise, sweat and tears and that's what we are getting apart from the latter. It is a joy however to work on this project knowing that the end result will be a Buddhist centre. At the moment we are doing the hardest work with Karunabandhu ie demolition, this creates a lot of noise and enormous amount of dust, I feel like we are in the war. But the spirits are high and next week our first helper/visitor is coming for a week”. Nityabandhu is from Poland and is returning home after several years in the UK preparing for just this move. He is being helped in the building work by his good friend Karunabandhu, originally from Germany but most recently also from Birmingham, UK. Both are shown in the photograph - enjoying a well-deserved lunch!

Photos of their work can be seen on their Flickr site and – this being the age of YouTube – we are promised a series of action movies, the first being viewable here…

Nityabandhu’s careful preparation means that they already have a substantial web presence and several books already translated into Polish. Their main website is buddyzm.info.pl , where you can read about the ‘Przyjaciele Zachodniej Wspólnoty Buddyjskiej’ – as the Friends of the Western Buddhist Order is known in Polish! Or try polski.wildmind.org to learn meditation online in Polish, courtesy of Wildmind…

Fundraising for the work is going on, and they would welcome offers of help, especially financial – please contact them at kontakt@buddyzm.info.pl if you are interested.

FWBO Home page now available in Russian

A new translation of the FWBO's main website, www.fwbo.org, has been launched, this time in Russian. The address is -

http://russian.fwbo.org/

As with the other versions of FWBO.org, the site carries information on basic Buddhism, meditation practices, and the FWBO's distinctive approach, as well as a short biography of Sangharakshita, founder of the FWBO.

Russian is of course not the only languaged into which the FWBO's website has been translated; below is a list of some others -

Chinese
Dutch
Finnish
French
German
Polish
Russian
Spanish

The FWBO's Wildmind meditation website is available in many of the above languages plus Portuguese.

See our contacts section for a fuller list and for details of the local centres in each country...

FWBO Poland holds first retreat

Nityabandhu, a Polish Order Member currently living in Birmingham UK, has send this update on FWBO Poland -

"In September we held a retreat in southern Poland amidst captivating scenery. Small scale but longer (6 days) and slightly bigger than before. Poles being very reliable for not turning up we got fewer people than expected. This was just as well as we held the retreat in a befriended Dzogchen Buddhist retreat centre (read: a small country house) which would have burst at the seams otherwise. Ratnamegha’s spontaneous first comment was that this was like going back 20 years in terms of retreat experience; however, those who came were very engaged and we generated a strong retreat environment.

"Apart from sharing the Dharma with people from Poland, those of us who are already practicing with the FWBO were able to get to know each other better. I was joined by Mahananda and Joanna (both LBC), Katarzyna (Paris), Ratnamegha (Birmingham) and Martin and Ania (both Norwich). Having a strong core of practicing Buddhists made for stronger pujas and mantra chanting, and generally the best retreat so far.

"To move on from the retreat: all being well, there may be three Order members living in Krakow next year. Santaka, a Polish dharmacari, is already there; I will be moving in March; and Sassirika in September 2008.

"Karunabandhu (currently based in Birmingham) will join me in April for a few months and we will begin remodelling the empty shop space we already own into a shrine room and a café. The proposed centre has already galvanised interest from several people who are either friends, have Polish links or just like the idea of building something together for the FWBO. Click here for some photos.

"Hopefully we will be able to make this oasis of the Dharma available to the public by late summer 2008.

Other developments in Poland are proceeding in parallel with the actual building project - we have two FWBO Polish-language websites here and Wildmind in Polish, and you can contact Nityabandhu here.