The full description of more recent speakers as given on the web page at the time is shown below.
Friday 30 November 2007, at 7-30pm at the Friends Meeting House, 12 Jesus Lane
Alison Murdoch
The 16 Guidelines for a Happy Life
Alison Murdoch is the International Director of the Foundation for Developing Compassion and Wisdom
From 1994 to 2004 she was the Director of Jamyang Buddhist Centre, overseeing the purchase and renovation of a historic Courthouse in South London as an educational, spiritual and community resource. Alison has a lifelong interest in the study and practice of different spiritual traditions. A regular contributor to BBC Radio she is a founder-member of the Women's Interfaith Network, UK, and assisted in the organisation of the Way of Peace, a three-year programme of interfaith collaboration between HH The Dalai Lama and the World Community for Christian Meditation.
Friday 16 November 2007, at 7-30pm at the Friends Meeting House, 12 Jesus Lane
Lance Cousins
Should Meditation Enthral the Mind ?
Lance Cousins was Senior Lecturer in Comparative Religion at Manchester University for 25 years where he taught mainly Buddhism but also comparative mysticism and various other aspects of Indian religions. A Pali and Abhidhamma scholar he has published mainly on Buddhist meditation and theory and on early Buddhist history. A former President of the Pali Text Society, he has been a teacher of Buddhist meditation since 1970 and was the first Chairman of the Samatha Trust..
He was also Chairman of the CU Buddhist Society in the early 1960s.
Tuesday 6 November 2007,
Venerable Lama Karma Samten
Venerable Lama Karma Samten is a monk in the Karma Kagyu tradition of Tibetan Buddhism. He was born in Tibet and escaped to India when he was ten, loosing all his family on the journey. After studying in India, at the age of twenty-one he took full ordination from Khyabje Kalu Rinpoche, and completed ten years of solitary retreat. In 1981 he went to New Zealand to establish Karma Choeling Buddhist Monastery in Auckland. He has taught extensively in New Zealand, Australia, the United States, Great Britain and Asia, and is known for his earthy, pragmatic manner and sense of humour, making the teachings accessible to all. He is the author of several books, including ‘Living with Death and Dying’. Lama Samten
Friday 26 October 2007, at 7-30pm at the Friends Meeting House, 12 Jesus Lane
Gustaaf Houtman
On Samatha and Vipassana:Some case studies from Burma and the socio-political implications of its practice.
Gustaaf Houtman is the editor of Anthropology Today and formally the Deputy Director of the Royal Anthropological Institute. He has been a student of Burmese culture for over 30 years and his PhD at the School of Oriental and African Studies in London was on Burmese Traditions of Buddhist Practice. He has taught at SOAS, Goldsmiths, Manchester, Durham, Tokyo and the London Contemporary Dance School. It is unusual for us to have a talk from someone knowledgeable about both Buddhist practice and the social and political context in which it takes place.
His book, Mental Culture in Burmese Crisis Politics, can be downloaded from:- Mental Culture in Burmese Crisis Politics
Friday 29 June 2007, at 7-30pm at the Friends Meeting House, 12 Jesus Lane
Rosamund Oliver
The Practice of Deep Listening
Rosamund Oliver is a Senior Spiritual Care Educator, involved in developing the Spiritual Care Programme in the UK since its inception, offering training for people working in the caring professions. The aim of the Spiritual Care Programmme is to demonstrate practical ways in which the compassion and wisdom of the Buddhist teachings can be of benefit to those facing illness or death and also to their families and medical caregivers. Based on the teachings of Sogyal Rinpoche and his classic bestseller, The Tibetan Book of Living and Dying, together with insights drawn from hospice experience, they offer an integrated approach for people from diverse cultural and religious backgrounds. See:- Spiritual Care Programme
Friday 15 June 2007, at 7-30pm at the Friends Meeting House, 12 Jesus Lane
Rob Burbea
The Nature of Awareness
Rob Burbea has been practising and studying Buddhist Meditation and Dharma since 1985 with a variety of teachers in England and in the USA. He has been teaching since 2004 and is currently Resident Teacher of Gaia House, in Devon, where he is also a member of the Teacher Council. He is a co-founder of Sanghaseva, an organization dedicated to exploring the Dharma through service work around the world. See:- Gaia House
Friday 27th April 2007, at 7-30pm at the Friends Meeting House, 12 Jesus Lane, Cambridge
Bhikkhu Bodhidhamma
Bhikkhu Bodhidhamma is English and has been an ordained Theravada monk for 20 years. In 1976 Bhante began meditation in the Soto Zen Tradition, After three years, he began to practice in the Theravada tradition. His main teachers have been Sayadaws U Janaka and U Pandita. In 1986, he ordained and subsequently spent eight years as a solitary at Kanduboda, the main Mahasi Centre in Sri Lanka. In the spring of 1998 he returned to Britain and has since been teaching in England and Ireland. Between 2000 and 2005 he was a teacher-in-residence at Gaia House.
Satipanya Buddhist Trust
Friday 16th March 2007, at 7-30pm at the Friends Meeting House, 12 Jesus Lane
Rev. Dr. Sumana Siri
Buddhism and Humanism
Rev. Dr. Sumana Siri has recently been appointed the Chief Sangha Nayaka Thera of the U.K. and Europe by the Sri Lankan Sangha. He is the founder and spiritual director of the Buddhist Realist Viharas in London (1991) and Milan (1997).
Friday 24th November 2006, at 7-30pm at the Friends Meeting House, 12 Jesus Lane, Cambridge
Ato Rinpoche
Trying to live a good human life, according to the teachings of the Buddha
Ato Rinpoche was born in 1933 and recognised at a young age as the Eighth Tenzin Tulku of Nezang, a Kagyudpa Monastery in Eastern Tibet. He later studied with teachers of the other three Buddhist traditions of Tibet. From 1959 he lived and worked in India, first with the Government-in-Exile and later as head of a school for young lamas. In 1967 he married and settled in England, where for twelve years he worked at Fulbourn psychiatric hospital. He divides his time between teaching Buddhism and meditation in the West, and re-establishing Nezang Monastery, which was utterly destroyed in the Cultural Revolution. After fifteen years of fund-raising and seasonal building-work, the restoration is almost complete.
Friday 27th October 2006, at 7-30pm at the Friends Meeting House, 12 Jesus Lane, Cambridge
Sarah Shaw
Reading the Jatakas: can they help Buddhist practice?
Dr Sarah Shaw has written two books on Buddhism: Buddhist Meditation; an anthology of texts from the Pali Canon (RoutledgeCurzon) and The Jatakas; the Birth Stories of the Bodhisatta (Penguin India). She is a teacher, a writer, and has been a meditation teacher for a number of years. She lives in Oxford and is a commmittee member of the Oxford Centre for Buddhist Studies.
Friday 30th June 2006, at 7-30pm at the Friends Meeting House, 12 Jesus Lane, Cambridge
Ven. Samitha of the Letchworth Dhamma Nikethanaya See:- Letchworth Dhamma Nikethanaya
Friday 26th May 2006, at 7-30pm at the Friends Meeting House, 12 Jesus Lane, Cambridge
Rev. Professor Kemmyo Taira Sato
Asahara Saichi, a Shin Buddhist poet, and His Experience of Emptiness
Rev. K. T. Sato is the head priest of Three Wheels Shin Buddhist House and Director of the London Shogyoji Trust. He is also a Professor of Western and Buddhist Philosophy, Visiting Professor at the School of Oriental and African Studies and gives regular monthly lectures on Pure Land Buddhism at the Buddhist Society, London. Three Wheels Shin Buddhist House
Friday 28th April 2006, at 7-30pm at the Friends Meeting House, 12 Jesus Lane, Cambridge
Dr Alex Studholme
Tibetan Buddhism in the West: the life of Chogyal Namkhai Norbu and the Dzogchen Community
Dr Alex Studholme is a member of the UK Dzogchen Community. He lectures and teaches on Indian religion in the Divinity Faculty at Cambridge University. He is the author of "The Origins of Om Manipadme Hum: A Study of the Karandavyuha Sutra" (SUNY Press 2002)."
UK Dzogchen Community
Friday 24th February 2006, at 7-30pm at the Friends Meeting House, 12 Jesus Lane, Cambridge
Dr Julius Lipner
Radical Emptiness: Madhyamaka and the prospects of Buddhist-Christian dialogue
Dr Julius Lipner is the Professor of Hinduism and the Comparative Study of Religion in the faculty of Divinity at Cambridge University and a Fellow of Clare Hall, Cambridge. Working in the field of the comparative study of religion, he has special interests in Buddhist, Hindu, and Christian traditions. He is the author of several books, including Hindus: Their Religious Beliefs and Practices, and The Face of Truth (on Ramanuja).
Friday 27th January 2006, at 7-30pm at the Friends Meeting House, 12 Jesus Lane. Cambridge
Ven N. RahulaLetchworth Buddhist Community Centre Letchworth Buddhist Community Centre
Saturday 17th December 2005, at 9-45am, Godwin Room, Old Court, Clare College
Lama Karma Samten
Coping with Emotions
Venerable Lama Karma Samten is a monk in the Karma Kagyu tradition of Tibetan Buddhism. He was born in Tibet and escaped to India when he was ten, loosing all his family on the journey. After studying in India, at the age of twenty-one he took full ordination from Khyabje Kalu Rinpoche, and completed ten years of solitary retreat. In 1981 he went to New Zealand to establish Karma Choeling Buddhist Monastery in Auckland. He has taught extensively in New Zealand, Australia, the United States, Great Britain and Asia, and is known for his earthy, pragmatic manner and sense of humour, making the teachings accessible to all. He is the author of several books, including ‘Living with Death and Dying’. Lama Samten
Friday 25th November 2005, at 7-30pm at the Friends Meeting House, 12 Jesus Lane, Cambridge
Don Cupitt
The Religion of Life
Don Cupitt is a Life Fellow and former Dean of Emmanuel College, Cambridge. He was ordained in the Church of England in 1959 and from 1968 to 1996 he lectured in the Cambridge Faculty of Divinity.
Don Cupitt is best known as a teacher and writer. A frequent broadcaster, mainly for the BBC, he has made three TV Series, one of which, "The Sea of Faith," (1984), also gave rise to a book and to an international network of radical Christians which is still growing. Sea of Faith network.
Outside the Western tradition, Cupitt has looked mainly to Buddhism. Of his recent books, Emptiness and Brightness (2001) is the most Buddhist. "We overcome evil when we do not let it drive us into bitterness or resentment; the true conquest of evil is simply magnanimity". Don Cupitt
Friday 18th November 2005, at 7-30pm at the Friends Meeting House, 12 Jesus Lane, Cambridge
John Teasdale
Mindfulness and the 'Third Wave' in Psychological Treatments
John Teasdale is a clinical psychologist who, for more than a decade, has been involved in the development, delivery and evaluation of mindfulness-based cognitive therapy (MBCT). This approach combines aspects of Jon Kabat-Zinn's mindfulness-based stress reduction programme with aspects of the psychological treatment, cognitive therapy
Friday 28th October 2005 at 7-30pm at the Friends Meeting House, 12 Jesus Lane, Cambridge
Dr Karma Phuntsho
Buddhism: Taming the Mind that Never Was
Dr Karma Phuntsho was born in Bhutan. Formerly a Buddhist monk, he completed his Khenpo training in the Ngagyur Nyingma Institute in Mysore and has an M.Sc. and D.Phil from Oxford. Karma Phuntsho taught as lecturer in Ngagyur Nyingma Institute and as acting abbot of Shugseb Nunnery. He is currently the Spalding fellow in Comparative Religion at Clare Hall, Cambridge University. Karma Phuntsho teaches Buddhism both in East and West and is author of two books on Emptiness and Buddhist epistemology.
Loden Foundation