Triratna News

New 'Adhisthana Writings' by Sangharakshita

On Mon, 24 July, 2017 - 12:08
Centre Team's picture
Centre Team

Today we are reporting on the publication of a new set of writings by Sangharakshita, the founder of the Triratna Buddhist Community. 

Just before Sangharakshita’s 90th birthday in August 2016, his friend Paramartha, was called away to the other side of the world where his mother was seriously ill. As it turned out he stayed away for nearly six months.

It was this rather unfavourable set of circumstances that was, apparently, the galvanising force that led to a resurgence in Sangharakshita’s creative or literary output. It began with a Letter to Paramartha which took the form of a Reverie or Reminiscence and was followed by eleven further pieces, all dictated over the course of many evenings and taken down by Suvajra, one of Sangharakshita’s team at the Urgyen Annexe at Adhisthana. When the twelve pieces were complete they were gathered together under the name, Adhisthana Writings and are published on Sangharakshita’s web-site.

Kalyanaprabha, one of Sangharakshita’s literary editors, writes:

“Vidyadevi and I did not imagine there would be further works to add to the list of Bhante Sangharakshita’s Complete Works which we compiled a couple of years ago - but we were mistaken! In the Adhisthana Writings we have a fascinating collection of pieces from his pen. They begin with Bhante’s account of his 90th birthday celebrations, and go on to include what is really a miscellany of writings whose subject matter is both broad and deep and which move easily between many worlds, between the spiritual and the mundane, the visible and the invisible.

There are, for instance, recollections of his father and mother, and other family members, and of a diverse selection of friends from Bombay in the 1950s to hippy friends of the 1960s to Dharmachari Alaya in the earlier days of the FWBO. Intriguing indeed are the stories of his ‘Encounters on the Underground’ and ‘On the Edge of the Etheric’ which include a very mysterious encounter with an asura.

Elsewhere Sangharakshita reflects on his own life: his life with Terry Delamare, the close friend whose tragic death is recounted in Moving Against the Stream. He wonders ‘What Might Have Been’ had he not been drafted into the army and not ended up in India. (Included here are reflections on the effect of growing up knowing oneself to be gay in a society where homosexuality is a criminal offence.) Colin Wilson’s The Outsider stimulates a string of musings on that theme in relation to his own life; and the study of the Mahayana Sutras give rise to some very different reflections.”

As well as finding the Adhisthana Writings on Sanghararkshita’s website, you can find them in several different file formats below.

In June we also announced the release of a set of Poetry Interviews between Sangharakshita and Saddhanandi. 

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Responses

Maitrisingha's picture

Great that there’s a kindle version! Thanks.

Aryanisha's picture

Hi Martin - let me know if you have any problems with downloading / using it.

Maitrisingha's picture

Hi Charlotte,
No problems downloading or using it. Really enjoyed reading it all. Very interesting. Though there is a slight formatting issue: All the text is indented to the right (by about a tab) for the whole book, so there is a constant gap down the left side of each page. Only the headings of each piece are aligned fully to the left. Didn’t bother me. -Martin