Dharma Day 25th July

So with more grounded experience of the Dharma than before, it was the perfect opportunity to attend the Dharma Day celebrations with Rob at Cambridge Buddhist Centre. The day began with a mindfulness of the breath meditation in the shrine room, which was full beyond capacity, so much so there were people meditating in the courtyard beyond the French windows! It was a great start to the day which was followed by a wonderful talk by Saddharaja and being Dharma Day the theme was ‘the Enlightened One speaks’.

Not only a very experienced meditator and Triratna Order member; having been ordained some 20 years ago, Saddharaja was a very accomplished and humourous speaker. So it was that he brought to life the first sermon of the Buddha after his enlightenment called the Dharmachakra Sutta which means ‘the establishment of wisdom’ or ‘the wheel of truth’ which is the eight-spoke wheel symbolising the core teachings of Buddhism and the path to enlightenment.



For a factual account of this first sermon, without unfortunately the wit and personality provided by Saddharaja, copy and paste this link into your browser. Although we should bear in mind that it will not have been as easy as this bare-bones/no-messing/question-answer format belies.

www.vimokkha.com/firstsermon.html

The remainder of the day for us after an outstanding shared lunch was filled with very engaging and informative talks from outreach teams that go to Letchworth and Peterborough promoting the work of outreach to communities who have no near-by access to a Buddhist Centre.

This was of course a perfect introduction for Rob who then presented a wonderful insight to everyone there as to the existence and vision of the Hertford Sangha, and an appeal for help from Order members who would like to bring their skills and time to support us.

So happy days, we left Cambridge after a wonderful Dharma Day with three offers of support including the younger Sangha who organise successful street meditation in Cambridge proposing to come to us! So watch this space and Hertford town centre on a Saturday morning here we come!