Dharmabytes from free buddhist audio
Oct 6, 2026 · 5 min · 4 segments
Parami gives the introductory talk for the 2015 Triratna International Urban Retreat live in Adelaide, Australia. Her theme - and the theme of the…
Years ago, in the 80s sometime, I was in a seminar with Sangha.
Actually, it wasn't in this text.
It was in a completely different text.
But he started to talk about looking at our lives as a personal mandala and saying, what do we have in the center of our lives? How are we balancing the aspects of our life? And I actually found it a really, really helpful way of thinking about my own practice.
He actually said it to me, and I was talking to him.
Actually, I was asking him why I wasn't ordained yet.
I thought I'd been around for about 10 months or something.
You know, I was young and enthusiastic.
And he was explaining to me that he perceived in me a lack of integration.
And he used this term of
a mandala and said, sometimes when people have a very complex mandala, it needs something very deep.
in the centre to hold it.
And he obviously felt I had a complex mandala.
Which is true, I'm one of those people that can go off in a hundred directions and I'm interested in everything.
And he felt I really needed something very strong at the centre that could hold that.
So I was very grateful for that.
And I actually found it a helpful way of thinking about life.
And also about all those other things being harmonious.
Because they're held with something in the centre that gives it meaning.
Years ago, in the 80s sometime, I was in a seminar with Sangha.
Actually, it wasn't in this text.
It was in a completely different text.
But he started to talk about looking at our lives as a personal mandala and saying, what do we have in the center of our lives? How are we balancing the aspects of our life? And I actually found it a really, really helpful way of thinking about my own practice.
He actually said it to me, and I was talking to him.
Actually, I was asking him why I wasn't ordained yet.
I thought I'd been around for about 10 months or something.
You know, I was young and enthusiastic.
And he was explaining to me that he perceived in me a lack of integration.
And he used this term of
a mandala and said, sometimes when people have a very complex mandala, it needs something very deep.
in the centre to hold it.
And he obviously felt I had a complex mandala.
Which is true, I'm one of those people that can go off in a hundred directions and I'm interested in everything.
And he felt I really needed something very strong at the centre that could hold that.
So I was very grateful for that.
And I actually found it a helpful way of thinking about life.
And also about all those other things being harmonious.
Because they're held with something in the centre that gives it meaning.
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