Heart and Soul: Religion in the 21st century - Buddhism (episode 3)
The Documentary Podcast
BBC
4.3 • 2.7K Ratings
🗓️ 9 February 2024
⏱️ 27 minutes
🧾️ Download transcript
Summary
What does it mean to be a Buddhist today?
For this last programme in a special series on religion in the 21st century, Heart and Soul on the BBC World Service brings together three global Buddhists from Singapore, the USA and the UK.
Venerable Canda Theri Bhikkhuni is the only fully ordained bhikkhuni, or female Buddhist monastic, in the UK. She founded the Anukampa Bhikkhuni Project, which aims to provide the country’s first monastery where women can train towards full ordination.
Heng Xuan Tio is based in Singapore and is the co-founder of Handful of Leaves, an online community which aims to show young people how Buddhism is relevant to their modern lives.
And Lama Rod Owens is a Black gay Buddhist teacher and author based in the USA. His teaching focuses on social change, identity, and spiritual practice.
For this special discussion programme, the BBC’s Alice Bhandhukravi brings them together to discuss Buddhism’s difference branches, how it’s been interpreted in western countries, the differences between monastic and lay Buddhism, and the unique challenges of following a 2,500-year-old faith tradition in the present day.
Presented by Alice Bhandhukravi.
Transcript
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| 0:00.0 | In 1969, a plan to show support for an anti-racism protest turned the lives of 14 promising |
| 0:07.0 | black student athletes upside down. |
| 0:09.8 | Amazing sport stories from the BBC World Service tells their story. |
| 0:14.0 | Search for Amazing Sports Stories, wherever you get your BBC podcasts. |
| 0:18.0 | Welcome to the documentary from the BBC World Service with me Alice Banducravey. |
| 0:24.0 | You're listening to Heart and Soul, which explores personal approaches to spirituality from around |
| 0:29.5 | the world. |
| 0:30.5 | This is the third program in a special series examining faith in the 21st century and this program is exploring Buddhism. |
| 0:39.0 | There are more than 500 million Buddhists in the world. The Dalai Lama is perhaps the most famous living Buddhist, |
| 0:45.3 | but many traditional Buddhist countries like Japan are seeing a huge decline in the faith as young people regard it as irrelevant and old-fashioned. |
| 0:55.0 | Meanwhile in the West, Buddhism is growing. |
| 0:58.0 | But with elements of the philosophy absorbed into societies through the wellness industry is it being diluted. |
| 1:05.4 | I was born in a Buddhist country Thailand to a Thai Buddhist father and I brought together |
| 1:11.0 | three global Buddhists to hear their views. |
| 1:14.1 | So let's meet them. |
| 1:15.6 | Venerable Chandar, welcome, tell us a little bit about yourself and where you are. |
| 1:19.6 | I'm Britain's only fully ordain on in the Terravada tradition and I'm at the moment in Oxford, England where I'm establishing the first monastery where women can train towards full ordination. |
| 1:32.4 | So hopefully I can reproduce myself so |
| 1:35.1 | there will be many more fully ordained women available to teach the dama here. |
| 1:38.7 | Heng Schwen Teo tell us about yourself where you are and your organization |
| 1:44.1 | Handful of Leaves. So I'm based out of Singapore born in Singapore. I'm running this |
| 1:50.0 | platform for Buddhists. We aim to provide practical Buddhist wisdom. All different |
... |
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