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Padmaloka Outreach Work
Various members of the residential Padmaloka community are invloved in Buddhist outreach activities. See below for details.
Saddhaloka first visited Finland in Autumn 1994, shortly before moving to Padmaloka in Spring 1995. He has been a regular visitor there ever since, has many friend there, and is now President of the Helsinki Buddhist Centre, spending at least two months each year in these Northern regions. As well as giving Dharma talks and leading study at the Helsinki Buddhist Centre he regularly leads weekends for Order members and mitras at Abhayaloka, the retreat centre set in a forest beside a lake one hour north of Helsinki.
Together with Satyaraja, also on the Padmaloka ordination training team and who has strong connections with Sweden, Saddhaloka has plans for retreats in Finland for men preparing for ordination in the Nordic region. The first such retreat was run in May 2003, attended by order members and mitras from Finland and Sweden, and one mitra from Ireland.
From Helsinki it is a short boat trip across to Tallinn. Order members from Helsinki first visited Estonia at the invitation of Estonian Buddhists some time before the end of the Soviet era. There has been an FWBO group in Tallinn since then, and there is now a beautiful centre in the historic Old Town, and one Estonia Order member, Amaradakini.
Saddhaloka also visits Tallinn regularly from Helsinki. He helped arrange for a number of Order members from Britain, men and women, to stay and working the Tallinn Buddhist Centre over the last few years. Vaddhaka, who has just started a two year spell in the Tallinn centre is there directly through his connection with Saddhaloka and Padmaloka, where he lived and worked for several years.
From Helsinki or Tallinn it is just a few hours by train or coach to St Petersburg. Saddhaloka has been visiting St Petersburg since 1996, following up connections first made by Order members visiting in the late eighties, still in the days of the Soviet Union. There is not an FWBO group in St Petersburg, but a loose circle of friends who appreciate our teaching and visits. Saddhaloka works closely here with Nagadakini, a German Order member from Essen, who speaks fluent Russian.
Saddhaloka has been overseeing a publishing project in Russia, run now in conjunction with friends connected with Namkai Norbu’s Dzogchen Community. An earlier project brought out ‘The Guide to the Buddhist Path’ in Russian. Currently we have brought out Kamalashila’s ‘Meditation’ and Sangharakshita’s ‘Who is the Buddha?’. ‘Vision and Transformation‘ should be out later in 2005, and a translation of ’What is the Dharma?’ completed by the end of the year.
See also a full account of Saddhaloka's trip to Saint Petersburg in January 2005.
An unexpected fruit of the publishing project has been connections with the Ukraine. In 2001 two people connected with Buddhist groups in the Ukraine independently wrote to Bhante having read ‘The Guide to the Buddhist Path’ in its Russian edition, asking him to be their teacher. Saddhaloka followed up these connections, making a first visit to the Ukraine in November 2002. The connection with the group in East Ukraine has not really developed, but we have a warm and growing connection with our friends in Odessa, on the Black Sea. Saddhaloka has visited each summer, in 2003 with Nagadakini, and in 2004 they made independent visits. At the end of the visit in August 2005 Saddhaloka conducted 3 mitra ceremonies.
See also a full account of Saddhaloka's trip to Odessa in September 2006.
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