Milton Keynes Meditation Association Gets New Website

After some months of development the Milton Keynes Meditation Association (affiliated to the Cambridge Buddhist Centre) has launched it's new Website.

The development work was done by Dharmachari Jnanasalin, an Order Member based in Cambridge.

All the Cambridge outreach groups now share one address:

www.buddhismandmeditation.co.uk

The Milton Keynes Group can now be found at:

www.buddhismand meditation.co.uk/miltonkeynes

The new website is very pretty and includes a blog page allowing us to keep people up to date with what's happening at our classes and the wider Triratna Buddhist world. We even have a Milton Keynes Meditation Facebook page.

The MK Group goes from strength to strength. We now have weekly meetings and the numbers of attendees are going up. The group has 15 years of practise history behind it and there is a strong feeling of community and appreciation for Buddha Dharma in the group.

A Buddhist Letting Agency - New View Residential in Cambridge

Hi All,

Well, I have finally gone and done it. Those of you who know me well will probably recall me going on about starting a Buddhist ethical letting agency in my home town of Cambridge. It is talk no longer.

The agency is called New View Residential and is owned by the Windhorse Trust, the charity that owns windhorse:evolution. We started in October last year with encouragement and support from friends such as Vidyavajra (in the photo with the board he designed), Janansalin and Keturja to name just a few.

It completes a full circle for me as letting property in Cambridge is how I first became involved in Buddhism. I was working for an agency in Cambridge and had let a property to Windhorse for use as a community. I was fascinated by the sight of their shrine room and started going along to the Cambridge Buddhist Centre a few months later.

New View Residential is a Cambridge based residential letting agency and acts on behalf of local landlords who wish to rent out their property. We advertise their property to help them find tenants, we take references and collect the rent, deposits and so on. We can also direct them to Letsure, our insurance partner who can provide property insurance to both landlords and tenants.

The new Right Livelihood business is a not-for-profit social enterprise meaning that it distributes it’s profits to charity. Half of the profits will go to Triratna Buddhist projects and the other half to charities nominated by our Cambridge landlords. We ask our landlords to nominate one of 6 charities. Five of the charities are operating in the Cambridge area:

• Arthur Rank Hospice Charity
  
• Blue Cross
  
• Ormiston Children & Families Trust
• Red2Green
• The Cambridgeshire Wildlife Trust
  

The other charity is the Karuna Trust, which we have included as an option for Buddhist landlords.

Our name “New View” has 3 meanings:

• The Buddha’s Middle Way is a “New View”
• A letting agent dedicated to raising money for charity rather than profit is a “New View”
• When you move home you get a “New View”

I really hope this takes off and is successful in raising money for Triratna Buddhist projects and local charities. I also hope that New View Residential can help to raise the profile of Buddhism in the local community. You can never tell how people get involved with Buddhism - look what happened to me.

We have just launched our Cambridge Lettings website and are now looking for landlords and tenants. The site was developed by an ethical company Virya Technologies, operated by Triratna Buddhist Mitra Ruth Cheesely who goes to the Ipswich Buddhist Centre. Please have a look at our website and let me know what you think.

With Love,

Jayasiddhi