Warm conversations on lived Buddhist practice.
The Buddhist Centre is a warm, interview-led series about Buddhist practice as it appears in ordinary and creative lives. Recent conversations move from meditation portraits and abstract painting to retreat-centre dreams, sober hospitality, embodied healing, and international collaboration.
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The Buddhist Centre is an interview-centred podcast about Buddhist practice inside contemporary life, especially within the Triratna Buddhist community. Its conversations have an unhurried, hospitable rhythm. Chandradasa often begins with place, season, friendship, or a small human aside, then allows the subject to open gradually. Recent episodes show the range clearly. One conversation looks at portraits of people in samadhi and asks what a meditating face can reveal, and what it cannot reveal without the shrine, room, and practice around it. Another brings artists into dialogue with Dharma, colour, abstraction, ageing, intention, and the strange moment when a painting seems to become more than its parts. The show also follows collective projects. A conversation turns toward Shubha Vihara, a mythic retreat-centre vision for Ireland, where love of place, Irish language, Sangha, meetings, and practical work all belong to the same dream. In Manchester, Hinterland Bar becomes a setting for talking about sobriety, hospitality, Buddhist values, and the strain of building a values-led business. Other episodes focus on healing and belonging in the body, meditation teaching, and international collaboration across the Triratna movement. The series is comfortable with Buddhist vocabulary, but it usually grounds abstract teaching in lived texture. A doctrine may become a question about numbness in the belly, a face in meditation, a home altar, a spreadsheet, or the feel of a room full of practitioners. That gives the show its particular warmth. It is devotional without becoming stiff, thoughtful without becoming distant, and communal without sounding promotional. The strongest episodes make spiritual practice feel less like a topic and more like a shared attempt to live differently. The result is a patient archive of voices, places, and experiments on the Dharma path.
Made for: For listeners drawn to Buddhism as a lived path rather than a set of quick lessons. It especially suits people interested in Triratna practice, meditation, retreat life, art, embodiment, sobriety, and spiritual community.
What sets it apart: The show stands apart through its sense of place and relational patience: conversations unfold in retreat libraries, bars, studios, and mythic landscapes, not just across abstract ideas. It lets practice appear through the details of how people make art, build community, meditate, work, and care for one another.
Based on 6 episodes we listened to · September 2026
Buddhist teaching becomes tangible here through attentive conversations about embodiment, creativity, ethical work, and the demanding practicalities of building community.
Chandradasa draws Buddhist practice into the texture of contemporary life through generous, searching conversations. Artists consider intention and conditioning through color, practitioners describe returning attention to bodily sensation, and community members connect the…
A retreat centre needs spreadsheets too; Chandradasa lets you hear the dream behind them.
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Short reviews from the PlayNext desk, based on the episodes we processed.
A spare portrait project finds depth in meditating faces, shrines, and lived practice.
Portraits of Samadhi frames Hartley's photographic project as a quiet study of what a meditating face can show. He keeps lighting, backdrop, and context steady, leaving expression to carry the weight.
A warm conversation about painting, Buddhist ideas of habit, and intention emerging through colour.
Chandradasa returns to The Buddhist Centre Podcast with art at the centre, drawing artists into a conversation where painting opens onto intention, habit, perception, and the possibility that a work can become more than the parts first placed into it.
A patient, grounded look at an Irish Buddhist dream where mythology meets the work of building a retreat centre.
Shubha Bihara comes through as both a building project and a test of what Irish Buddhist community wants to become. Chandradasa sets the retreat centre plan beside the Buddha's enlightenment story, then opens space for guests to connect it with Irish mythology, Irishness, and…
A late-night Manchester conversation about sobriety, Buddhist values, and the work of building a community-minded bar.
Hinterland Bar in Manchester gives this Buddhist Center podcast episode a lived-in setting: a back room late on a Friday evening before Christmas, after Chandradasa has moved through crowds, drumming, and the last traces of the night outside.
A patient Buddhist conversation on belonging in the body and the trust that can grow through attention.
The Buddhist Centre podcast treats belonging as something felt before it is explained. Chandra Dasa and Kusla Devi sit with Balajit, Singha Sri and Viveka in a conversation that separates thoughts and stories from the immediacy of sound, smell, taste and bodily sensation.
A warm, grounded conversation about turning an Irish Buddhist retreat centre from shared vision into communal work.
Recorded live on Triratna land at Bodh Gaya in Bihar, Chandradasa's conversation places the first dedicated Triratna Buddhist retreat centre in Ireland alongside the place traditionally associated with the Buddha's enlightenment. That contrast gives the episode its pull.
Tejananda brings emptiness back to the body, present experience, and the ordinary places where meditation takes shape.
This episode works best when a big Buddhist idea is kept close to ordinary experience: walking, sitting at a desk, or noticing a single thought.
Generous Buddhist conversations without the rush.
Chandradasa hosts from Bodh Gaya, India, discussing the establishment of Shubhavihara, the first Triratna Buddhist retreat centre in Ireland.
Chandradasa hosts Tejananda, a longtime meditation teacher, to discuss his upcoming online retreat on emptiness and compassion.
Host Chandra Dasa introduces a new season of the Buddhist Centre Podcast and welcomes guest Camelashilla for a conversation about practice and life changes.
The Buddhist Centre podcast with Chandradasa centers on Hartley Wolfe’s photography project Portraits of Samadhi, made across Alfoxton Park and the Bristol Sangha.
The Buddhist Centre Podcast's 'The Intimacy of Art and the Dharma' brings Chandradasa, Abhaya Bhadra, Amit Jyoti, and Parmabodhi together ahead of an October 2 opening at Eco Park Art Pavilion in London.
The Buddhist Centre podcast records live from Bodh Gaya, Bihar, where Chandradasa introduces Shubha Vihara, the first dedicated Triratna Buddhist retreat centre in Ireland.
["Manchester's Hinterland Sober Bar is presented as the city's first permanent sober bar, built in the Buddhist Centre basement and framed as a way to \"brew a new society.\" Chandradasa speaks with Sangudara and Stephen, who connect the project to Triratna, recovery, and a wider audience that still wants a night out.
Viveka says the Buddha woke up with the same six senses she has now, and the episode uses that claim to frame The Three Bodies of Belonging.
Host Chandradasa interviews meditation teacher Tejananda about his move and ongoing involvement in Buddhist retreats and teaching.
An introduction to the Triratna International Council meeting, discussing its purpose and future direction for the Buddhist community.
Host Chandra Dasa welcomes back a guest named Camelashilla for a new season of the Buddhist Centre Podcast, discussing practice and life changes.