Ratnadhya has narrated 5 audiobooks on Listento.it by 10 authors, with an average listener rating of 4.9★ across 28 ratings. The most-rated is Great Disciples of the Buddha.
Great Disciples of the Buddha
Summary
Twenty-four of the Buddha's most distinguished disciples are brought to life in ten chapters of rich narration. They include monks who were very close to him throughout his life, including Sariputta and Mahamoggallana; his cousin and companion Ananda; his principal women disciples, including the nun Isidasi and his lay disciple, the courtesan Ambapali; and the serial killer Angulimala, whose character was transformed after meeting the Buddha. Drawn from a wide range of authentic Pali sources, the material in these stories has never before been assembled in a single volume. Through these engaging tales - incorporating both historical material and myth - we meet all manner of human beings - rich, poor, male, female, young, old - whose unique stories are told with an eye to the details of ordinary human concerns. When heard with careful attention, these stories can sharpen our understanding of the Buddhist path by allowing us to contemplate the living portraits of the people who fulfilled the early Buddhist ideals of human perfection. Other characters include the nuns Nanda and Visakha and the monks Anuruddha and Mahakaccana. Great Disciples of the Buddha allows the listener to easily place each student in the larger picture of Buddha's life and provides a glimpse into the lives and personalities of those who lived, knew and followed the Buddha as he walked the paths of India 2,500 years ago, teaching wherever he went.
©2003 Bhikkhu Bodhi (P)2016 Ukemi Productions Ltd
Ambedkar and Buddhism, Annihilation of Caste
Summary
Dr Bhimrao Ramji Ambedkar was one of the most remarkable figures in the 20th century. Born an Untouchable - the lowest element of Indian society deemed to be outside the caste system, and literally 'untouchable' - he rose from abject village poverty to become the architect of the new Constitution of India following its independence from Britain in 1947. A combination of exceptional talent, hard work and determination, vision and luck took him to Harvard and the LSE, and then back to his home country. Always, his progress was impelled by the concern for his 'Untouchable' community and it was this that underpinned work in law, politics and economics as he rapidly became a national figure who could not be ignored. He opposed Gandhi's patronising attitude towards the Untouchable community, and the violent crimes and prejudice inflicted upon it by the caste Hindu society. In the 1930s, Ambedkar proclaimed that though he was born a Hindu, he would not die a Hindu; and on 14th October 1956, with 400,000 followers, he converted to Buddhism in a mass meeting in Nagpur. This biography is by the British-born Buddhist monk Urgyen Sangharakshita who knew Ambedkar and spent decades working with the Dalit community as the Untouchables became known. It is a clear but affectionate look at a singular life which changed one of the largest nations on earth, and charts Ambedkar's gradual move towards Buddhism which he saw as the best path for his people. Bonus material: in addition to the biography is Annihilation of Caste, Ambedkar's key speech - never delivered but published in 1936 - in which he set out the reality of 'Untouchable' life and the need for change, but it is at the same time an international clarion call for human rights. It is all the more poignant as, while Untouchability is outlawed in India now thanks to Dr Ambedkar's legislation, there are 200 million Dalits in India, and violence and prejudice is still commonplace.
©1986 Sangharakshita (P)2016 Ukemi Productions Ltd
The Rainbow Road
Summary
Having realized, as a 16 year old in pre-WWII London, that he was a Buddhist, the early life of Dennis Lingwood and his path to becoming a bhikkhu named Sangharakshita is a most extraordinary personal story. He was serving as a signals officer in India when, at the conclusion of the war, he threw away his official identity cards, took off his uniform, donned yellow robes and set off, barefooted, along the dusty paths of India as a spiritual seeker, begging for his food, as the Buddha did 2,500 years ago. The determination and vision behind those early steps, combined with single-mindedness and intellectual rigour, transformed the path of Western Buddhism, for after 20 years in India Sangharakshita returned to England to found a Western Buddhist movement, now called the Triratna Buddhist Order. The Rainbow Road tells of that early time in India, meeting spiritual teachers from Hindu and other religious traditions, encountering the disturbing caste system and overcoming obstacles, disappointments and numerous challenges. A totally absorbing autobiography.
©1997 Sangharakshita (P)2016 Ukemi Productions Ltd
The Diamond Sutra, The Heart Sutra, The Sutra of Hui Neng
Summary
These three sutras are the most important texts for the Chan (Chinese) and Zen (Japanese) Buddhist traditions, though they are very different in character and provenance. The Diamond Sutra (Vajracheddika Prajña Paramita Sutra in Sanskrit) has the distinction of being 'the earliest complete survival of a dated (11 May 868) printed book’. It was found in the Dunhuang Caves in China in 1900. The title, Diamond Cutter, outlines its purpose, which is to cut through ignorance to attain to perfect wisdom or ultimate reality. It is a relatively concise Mahayana text, using the Six Perfections (generosity, virtue, patience, spiritual vigour or energy, meditation and wisdom) to realise no-self and the emptiness of all phenomena. Its origin is uncertain - even its date falls into a wide spectrum of somewhere between second and fifth centuries. The sutra is set in the context of a teaching given by the Buddha to the bhikkhu Subhuti who has asked for advice how to attain ‘supreme perfect enlightenment’. The translation used for this recording is by Wai-Tao. The Heart Sutra, another Mahayana text, is very different. It is short - barely 500 words - and is chanted, recited or read daily by many Buddhist communities across a wide range of traditions throughout the world. It is placed in a teaching given by the Bodhisattva of Compassion, Avalokitesvara to the bhikkhu Šariputra. Despite its brevity, it is rich in meaning and reference, covering a number of Buddhist formulations, including the five skandhas (form, feeling, perception, formation and consciousness) and the Four Noble Truths. The core message of the Sutra is ‘form is emptiness, emptiness is form’ - again the declaration that all phenomena are empty. Its origin (likely before sixth century) and even original language is unknown, scholars differing on whether it was first written in Sanskrit or Chinese. The Nalanda translation is used here. The Sutra of Hui Neng is the longest of these three works, and is different again. It is a remarkable document, telling the history of the Sixth Chan Patriarch, Hui Neng (638-713), a semi-legendary teacher who, though uneducated and illiterate, gained enlightenment when accidentally hearing The Diamond Sutra being recited. Also called The Platform Sutra (Buddhist teachers in China traditionally preached from a podium) Hui Neng relates his history and his exegesis of The Diamond Sutra. In contrast to the two preceding works, The Sutra of Hui Neng is an unusually informal text, with the personality of the Sixth Patriarch coming across the intervening centuries with affecting immediacy. The translation is by Wong Mou-Lam. The three sutras are read with clarity and understanding by Ratnadhya.
Public Domain (P)2019 Ukemi Productions Ltd
The Dhammapada, The Udana, The Itivuttaka
Summary
The Dhammapada, a collection of 423 verses in 26 chapters, is perhaps the most famous of all Buddhist texts. It presents the Buddha’s teachings in a clear and highly accessible form and has been used for personal instruction and teaching for centuries throughout the Buddhist world. It comes from the Khuddaka Nikaya section of the Pali Canon and is here collected with two other key texts from the same source. The Udana (‘inspired utterance’) contains stories from the Buddha’s life, each of which conclude with a verse. Among these are Bahiya of the bark-cloth and Meghiya, who wanted to meditate but had, perhaps, chosen an inappropriate time. The Itivuttaka (‘it was said’) was reputedly recited to a queen at court by a lay female disciple of the Buddha who had listened to him teach. It is a collection of 112 short discourses and is, again, very clear in form.
©1997 Buddhist Publication Society (P)2015 Ukemi Productions Ltd