Lolatastic!: I am a Buddhist

July 2021 (picture credit: the Buddhist formerly known as Sas)

The ceremony marking my status as a 'Mitra' has taken place. A Mitra (literally a 'friend') is a designation specific to the brand of Buddhism that I have adopted (Triratna), and signifies three things - that I consider myself to be a Buddhist, that I will do my best to live according to five 'Precepts' or ethical guidelines, and that I intend to do all of this within the Triratna community.

I am surprisingly passionate about all of this. Since starting this blog (14 years ago!!) I have certainly put more of my life in the public domain than at any time before that, but generally I don't write about personal stuff, and becoming a Buddhist definitely falls into that category.

The conversation about becoming a Mitra actually took place a year ago, but the ceremony has been delayed by the pandemic and lockdown, and then was nearly scuppered by the lack of a suitable venue. Previously all our ceremonies have taken place at the Birmingham Buddhist Centre, to which we are affiliated as a small outreach group. Although most of the activity in this area is coordinated by the Birmingham Centre, I wanted to make a statement about the existence and strength of the local group by holding the ceremony here, rather than expecting everyone who wants to attend to travel there.

It would have been so easy to go to Birmingham - a ready made centre with all the facilities we needed including a beautiful shrine room, WiFi, microphones and speakers, a kitchen for tea-making and the garden for cake. I was expecting to hire the village hall where we used to meet pre-pandemic, but unfortunately during the day they are now occupied by a kindergarten. When we went there to experiment with the technology to see if we could run with Zoom in a village hall with no WiFi, we found every surface completely occupied by toys, books, games, paints and clutter. It was no longer a serene, peaceful location, and we agreed that we would need to find somewhere else for our ceremony.

We had postponed several times and set the final date months beforehand so we weren't going to postpone again. It wasn't all that easy, but in the end we hired a different village hall. Since it was only a day after the lifting of lockdown restrictions they hadn't updated their processes and were only prepared to allow 14 people to attend in person to allow for social distancing. Each of us two Mitras-to-be had 3 guests, there were 4 Order Members who were attending in their official capacities, and 2 people running Zoom and the rest of the tech, and that was it. So my plan backfired a little - I wanted a local ceremony so that members of the Warwick group could attend, but as it turned out, none of them was actually allowed in. Even Mr M and Sister D didn't make the cut, and due to technology problems Mr M didn't even get in via Zoom, and I don't think that a recording was made.

But never mind all those issues, it went ahead and was lovely, and I've been smiling ever since.