The Triratna Buddhist Community, formerly the Friends of the Western Buddhist Order (FWBO), is an international fellowship of Buddhists. It was founded in the UK in 1967 by Sangharakshita (born Dennis Philip Edward Lingwood) In keeping with Buddhist traditions, it also pays attention to contemporary ideas, particularly drawn from Western philosophy, psychotherapy, and art.
Worldwide, more than 100 groups are affiliated with the community, including in North America, Australasia and Europe. In the UK, it is one of the largest Buddhist movements, with some 30 urban centres and retreat centres. The UK-based international headquarters is at Adhisthana retreat centre in Coddington, Herefordshire. Its largest following, however, is in India, where it is known as Triratna Bauddha Mahāsaṅgha (TBM), formerly the Trailokya Bauddha Mahasangha Sahayaka Gana (TBMSG).
The community has been described as "perhaps the most successful attempt to create an ecumenical international Buddhist organization". It has also been criticised for lacking "spiritual lineage",
Practices and activities
Meditation is the common thread through activities. Order members teach two practices: the "mindfulness of breathing" (anapanasati), in which practitioners focus on the rise and fall of the breath, and metta Bhavana, which approximately translates from the original Pali as "the cultivation of lovingkindness". These practices are felt to be complementary in promoting equanimity and friendliness towards others. Some friends of the Order may have little, if any, other involvement in its activities, but friendship, Sangha, and community are encouraged at all levels as essential contexts for meditation.
The founder, Sangharakshita, taught a system of practice emphasising five types of meditation. The first two, according to his system ('integration' and 'positive emotion'), can be correlated to the traditional category of "calmingsamatha" practices and the last two (spiritual death and spiritual rebirth) can be correlated to "insight" or vipassana practices. For those not ordained into the Triratna Buddhist Order, the practices associated with the first two are emphasised, though the spirit of the last two is also taught. The five types of meditation correspond to five 'stages' of the spiritual life.
These five stages are:
- Integration: The main practice at this stage is the mindfulness of breathing, which is intended to have the effect of "integrating the psyche"—improving mindfulness and concentration and reducing psychological conflict.
- Positive emotion: The second aspect of samatha is developing positivity—an other-regarding, life-affirming attitude. The Brahmavihara meditations, especially the metta bhavana or cultivation of loving kindness meditations, are the key practices intended to foster the development of positive emotion.
- Spiritual death: The next stage is to develop insight into what is seen to be the emptiness of the self and reality. Meditations at this stage include considering the elements of which self and world are thought to be composed, contemplating impermanence (particularly of the body), contemplating suffering, and contemplating sunyata.
- Spiritual rebirth: Triratna teaches that a person is spiritually reborn with the development of insight and the death of the limited ego-self. Among the main practices in this phase are visualisations of Buddhas and bodhisattvas. Each dharmachari ('farer in the dharma') is given an advanced visualisation meditation on a particular figure at ordination.
- Receptivity and spontaneous compassionate activity: The practice associated with this phase is known as "just sitting" or "formless" meditation. Outside of meditation, this is the phase of "Dharmic responsiveness"—doing whatever needs to be done in any situation.
Centres also teach scripture, yoga and other methods of self-improvement, some of which are felt by some commentators to come from outside the Buddhist tradition. Recently, community activities have begun to include outdoor festivals, online meditation courses, arts festivals, poetry and writing workshops, tai chi, karate, and pilgrimages to Buddhist holy sites in India. For many years, the community charity Karuna Trust (UK) has raised money for aid projects in India.
As among Buddhists generally, Puja is a ritual practice at some events intended to awaken the desire to liberate all beings from suffering. The most common ritual consists of a puja, derived and adapted from the Bodhicaryavatara of Shantideva.
Retreats allow one to focus on meditational practice more intensely in a residential context outside a retreatant's everyday life. Community retreats can be broadly categorised into meditation retreats, study retreats, and solitary retreats. Retreat lengths vary from short weekends to one or two weeks.
Businesses that operate on the principle of "right livelihood" generate funds for the movement and seek to provide environments for spiritual growth through employment. Emphasis is placed on teamwork, and on contributing to the welfare of others: for example by funding social projects and by considering ethical matters such as fair trade. The largest community business was Windhorse: Evolution, a gift wholesaling business and a chain of gift shops.
Many cities with a Triratna centre also have a residential community. The first of these was formed after a retreat where some participants wanted to continue retreat-style living. Since it was felt that the most stable communities tended to be single-sex, this has become the paradigm for communities. Support from fellow practitioners in a community is seen to be effective in helping members make spiritual progress.
The largest Triratna centre in the UK is the London Buddhist Centre in Bethnal Green, East London, which offers drop-in lunchtime and evening meditation sessions each weekday, open to beginners, as well as courses and classes through the week. The centre's courses for depression, based on the mindfulness-based cognitive behavioural therapy methodology of Jon Kabat-Zinn at the University of Massachusetts Amherst, featured in the Financial Times in 2008. This initiative is supported by the local authority, the London borough of Tower Hamlets. The Times has also reported on the centre's work with those affected by alcohol dependency.
Triratna Refuge Tree
Sangharakshita developed a refuge tree for Triratna, so that members of the community could better develop a relationship with his spiritual inspirations, which come from a wide variety of Buddhist traditions.
The central figure is Shakyamuni, the historical Buddha. He is flanked by Dipankara, the Buddha of the past and Maitreya, the Buddha of the future. To the left of them is a company of five Bodhisattvas: Avalokiteśvara, Manjushri, Green Tara, Vajrapani, and Kṣitigarbha. To the right of the Buddhas sit five of his main historical disciples: Ānanda, Śāriputra, Maudgalyayana, Mahākāśyapa and Dhammadinna.
- An emphasis on spiritual friendship. There is a strong emphasis on the sangha, and spiritual friendship based on shared values. The community teaches that spending time with friends who share ideals, and engaging in ritual practice with them, supports ethical living and the arising of the bodhicitta.
"The FWBO's attitude to spreading the Dharma is one of heartfelt urgency," wrote Stephen Batchelor, a prominent British Buddhist author, in a book published in 1994. "For the FWBO, Western Society as such needs to be subject to the unflinching scrutiny of Buddhist values."
Triratna Buddhist Order
The Triratna Buddhist Order is the focal-point of the community, and is a network of friendships between individuals who have made personal commitments to the Buddha, the dharma and the sangha, in communion with others.
While there is an informal hierarchy within the order, there are no higher ordinations. A small number of members also take vows of celibacy and adopt a simpler lifestyle. Contrary to the traditional Buddhist structure of separating lay and monastic members, the order combines monastic and lay lifestyles under one ordination, similar to the practices which evolved in some Japanese schools of Buddhism. When members are ordained, they are given a white kesa to signify their ordination; golden kesas may be taken later by those choosing to make a public commitment to greater simplicity of lifestyle, including celibacy.
As with followers of the Shingon school of Buddhism, order members observe ten precepts (ethical training rules).
Beyond this, a commitment to personal dharma practice and to remain in communication with other members are the only expectations. Some Friends, Mitras and Order members decide, at least for a while, to study teachings from outside the community, including non-Buddhist traditions such as Sufism.
History
As the Friends of the Western Buddhist Order, the community was founded in London in April 1967 by Sangharakshita. He had then recently returned to England after spending two decades as a Buddhist and monk in India, following demobilisation from the British army. He had been born in south London as Dennis Lingwood, in August 1925. He would lead the organisation until his formal retirement in 1995, and would continue to exert a decisive influence on its thinking and practices thereafter.
In the 1990s, the order grew in India, and, according to the Encyclopedia of Buddhism, Indian members now make up about half the movement's formal membership. In a book published in 2005, the FWBO's members and supporters were estimated to number 100,000, the majority of whom were in India. ("Triratna" is a Sanskrit term meaning Three Jewels)
Reception
Leadership
The Triratna Buddhist Community is not led by a guru, as in some traditions, but instead operates through what has been called a "friendly hierarchy". David V. Barrett says problems had occurred at FWBO centres as a result of poor leadership in the organisation's early days. For example, he says that the Croydon centre had suffered from the combination of authoritarianism that had developed there and the centre leader's charisma, prior to that leader's removal.
Sangharakshita's spiritual lineage has also been questioned by author James William Coleman. including Jagdish Kashyap, Dhardo Rinpoche, HH Dudjom Rinpoche, HH Dilgo Khyentse, and Jamyang Khyentse Rinpoche, but Coleman says that "he never worked closely enough with any teacher to be recognized as a dharma-heir". In a 2009 interview with a member of the group, Sangharakshita said about sex between him and students: "Perhaps in a very few cases they were not as willing as I had supposed at the time – that is possible." He said he did not see himself as "a teacher with a capital T", and said he was sorry "if there were any [sexual] encounters that were not satisfactory for the other person, whether at the time or in retrospect". For example, The Guardian report's author interpreted statements by Sangharakshita as adverse to women and the family.
Scholars Sally Munt and Sharon Smith have suggested that Sangharakshita's belief in the practical and religious equality of women is tempered by his gender essentialism, and distrust of concepts such as the patriarchy, while placing him within the context of "liberal feminism" more broadly. They also said that many women found space for "mutual support" in the movement, which has resulted in more women than men being drawn to the order.
Munt and Smith have also described internal controversy when Sangharakshita's senior advisor, Dharmachari Subhuti, published his book Women, Men and Angels, in which he said that to be reborn as a woman was to be less spiritually able than to be reborn as a man.
Family
In 1994, Buddhist scholar Stephen Batchelor said the FWBO was well known for questioning assumptions about family life.
Munt and Smith said the order's preference for single-sex organising, known as the "single-sex principle", simultaneously helped draw many individuals to the community due to the countercultural ethos of the times, but also marginalised women and was considered contentious within the order. According to the Encyclopedia of Buddhism: