Who are we?
Formed in 2008, the Port Fairy Buddhist Community is located at Port Fairy, on the coast approximately 300 kilometres from Melbourne.
Triratna has more than 80 centres throughout the world. It was founded in the UK in 1967 by Sangharakshita.
Sangharakshita lived in India for 20 years prior to 1967, during which time he studied and practised the three traditions of Buddhism.
The Triratna Buddhist Order draws on all these traditions to present the teachings of the Buddha, a way designed to be more accessible to the Western mind.
What is Buddhism?
Buddhism is a path of teaching and practice. Buddhist practices, such as meditation, are a means of changing oneself in order to develop the qualities of awareness, kindness and wisdom.
The experience developed within the Buddhist tradition over thousands of years has created an incomparable resource for all those who wish to follow the path of personel and spiritual devolopment.
The ultimate aim of a practicing Buddhist is the attainment of enlightenment.
The state of enlightenment has three main factors. It is a state of wisdom, and of insight into the true nature of things. It is also a state of boundless compassion, manifesting itself in activity for the benefit of all beings. And it is the total liberation of all the energies of the mind and body so they are at the service of the fully conscious.
Who was the Buddha?
The word Buddha is a title, not a name. It means "one who is awake" in the sense of having "woken up to the true state of reality".
The title was first given to a man called Siddharta Gautama who lived more than two thousand years ago in Northern India. At the age of thirty-five, after years of striving, he gained enlightenment whilst in profound meditation.
During the remaining forty-five years of his life he travelled through much of Northern India, spreading his teaching of the way to enlightenment. The teaching is known in the East as the Buddha-Dharma -"the teaching of the enlightened one".
The Buddha was not a God and he made no claim to divinity. There is no concept of a God in Buddhism. He was a human being who through tremendous efforts transformed himself.