A Guide to Ritual in Buddhist Practice with Bodhidasa

Dhammamegha speaks to Bodhidasa in Sydney, Australia, about his upcoming book Approaching Enlightenment: A Guidebook for Buddhist Ritual. The conversation covers:

• Bodhidasa as a practitioner, teacher, and self-declared geek. We’ll hear about his interests in magic, games, popular culture, and literature, and how these are part of his practice and the book.
• How ritual, archetypes, and myth enable a connection with transpersonal and enlightened qualities and potentials.
• Different approaches to Buddhist practice - from ascetic and austere approaches on the one hand, to those drawn to objects, worldly activities, and emotions of devotion, joy, and integration.
• Cultural tensions between secular life and ritual practices, and the Buddhist tradition’s own relationships with ritual—as a fetter and as a path.
• How ritual opens us up to something inconvenient—the possibility that there is more in you and others than the limits we impose.
• Bodhidasa’s own integration of elements of ritual into his day—through offering, worship, going for refuge, confession, and rejoicing.

Useful Links:

PUJA: The Triratna Book of Buddhist Devotional Texts.

Creative Symbols of Tantric Buddhism is available in Volume 13 of the Complete Works of Sangharakshita

FutureDharma Fund.

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