Sangharakshita received novice ordination as a Theravadin monk from U Chandramani at Kusinagara, India, in 1949. A year later, aged 25, he was fully ordained as a Theravadin bhikkhu in Sarnath – where the Buddha first taught the Dharma. He was given the name Sangharakshita, which means ‘Protector of (or protected by) the Spiritual Community’.

His first teacher was the Theravadin scholar/monk Bhikkhu Jagdish Kashyap, with whom he lived and studied Pali, logic and Buddhist philosophy at Benares. After higher ordination, on the advice of Jagdish Kashyap, Sangaharakshita moved to the Himalayan border town of Kalimpong, to work for the good of Buddhism. Sangharakshita set up a vihara, where he lived an active life while following the Vinaya (monastic code). He meditated at least morning and night, studied and reflected on the Dharma, and each year observed the traditional Rains Retreat, remaining at his vihara for three months. In Kalimpong he met numerous eminent Buddhists, seven of whom became his teachers.

Jamyang Khyentse Rimpoche was one of the foremost Tibetan Buddhist teachers of his time. Although a Nyingma

master, he was a chief exponent of the Rime movement, which brought together the different Tibetan schools to create a more unified tradition. Sangharakshita met him in 1957 and received several initiations from him. Due to Jamyang Khyentse’s spiritual eminence and the significance of these initiations, Sangharakshita regards him as his ‘root guru’.

One of Jamyang Khyentse’s chief disciples was Kachu Rimpoche, Abbot of the royal monastery of Sikkim. A man of great learning, renowned as a deep meditator and visionary, and a gifted sculptor. Rimpoche went out of his way to befriend Sangharakshita. In 1960, on Jampyang Khyentse’s recommendation, Kachu Rimpoche initiated Sangharakshita into the practice of Guru Padmasambhava. At the same time Kachu Rimpoche gave Sangharakshita a new name: Urgyen, the name of Padmasambhava’s mythical homeland.

Dhardo Rimpoche was the lama with whom Sangharakshita had the closest connection. A high-ranking tulku of the Gelug School, he was once a teacher to the Dalai Lama. From him Sangharakshita received the Bodhisattva

ordination in 1962. Dhardo Rimpoche was eager that Sangharakshita return to the West to spread the Dharma, describing him as ‘a very big spiritual person’. He subsequently always felt a strong link to the (then) Western Buddhist Order, even regarding Sangharakshita’s disciples (many of whom he met) as disciples of his own.

Read and listen to more about Dhardo in The Message of Dhardo Rimpoche.

Dilgo Khyentse Rimpoche was regarded as one of the greatest Dzogchen masters of the 20th century. As a youth he spent 13 years in caves on solitary retreat and later in exile (despite his wide following) Dilgo Khyentse lived in great poverty. He had an extremely kind, unassuming character, and Sangharakshita regards him as one of the most impressive people he’s met. Dilgo Khyentse was a man of great learning and author of many scriptural commentaries. Sangharakshita used to study with him, and from him received many initiations — principally those of the Buddha Amitabha (with the po wa or Consciousness Transference empowerment), Kurukulla and Jambhala.

Chetul Sangye Dorje, who died in 2015, was an eccentric, unpredictable character who has lived the life of a wanderer. He was highly regarded by the Tibetan monastic establishment for his deep understanding. Sangharakshita was certain Chetul Rimpoche was in contact with a higher dimension and was happy to receive from him his first Tantric initiation in 1956 — the sadhana of Green Tara; he did this practice faithfully each day for seven years. Chetul Rimpoche very much encouraged Sangharakshita and auspiciously named his vihara the ‘Place where the Three Yanas Flourish’.

Dudjom Rimpoche, the last of his Tibetan teachers was a married Nyingma tulku and a leading authority on the Nyingma tradition. A spiritually gifted child, he was discovering termas from the age of 5 and giving empowerments and teachings by 14. After leaving Tibet, he had a huge following of disciples, wrote prodigiously on the Dharma and established many temples and monasteries. Sangharakshita received a number of initiations from him, including the Vajrasattva practice (during which Rimpoche was wearing a cowboy hat).

Sangharakshita also studied with the Chinese scholar and yogi Mr CM Chen, a meditation master in the Cha’an tradition. Sangharakshita describes Yogi Chen as having an intense inner life, full of visions, psychic experiences, and a penetrating insight into the Dharma. Although living largely as a recluse, Yogi Chen allowed Sangharakshita to visit one evening each week to discuss meditation and the Dharma.

Listen to or read Sangharakshita’s personal recollections in the talk My Eight Main Teachers. There is also extensive reflection about his teachers in Sangharakshita’s memoirs.

Sangharakshita and his teaching
Sangharakshita was a unique figure in the Buddhist world. For 20 years he lived in India, where he was ordained and studied with a range of Buddhist teachers. Inspired by all major aspects of Buddhism, he wrote and lectured prolifically both in the West and the East. In the light of modern scholarship and his own spiritual experience, he brought out and emphasised the core teachings that underlie and unify the Buddhist tradition as a whole. In founding the Friends of the Western Buddhist Order (now known as the Triratna Buddhist Community) in 1967, he sought to clarify the essentials and outline ways of practice that are spiritually alive and relevant to the 21st century.

Read and listen to talks and seminars by Sangharakshita  |  Read free eBooks by Sangharakshita, and all of his published books

View the Clear Vision archives of films and images of Sangharakshita, and the early years of the FWBO from Lights In The Sky  |  Read interviews and articles by Sangharakshita

A brief biography of Sangharakshita: 1925-2018
Sangharakshita was one of the founding fathers of Western Buddhism. He was born Dennis Lingwood in South London, in 1925, and had a Church of England upbringing. But from an early age he developed an interest in the cultures and philosophies of the East. Aged 16, after reading the Diamond Sutra, he had a distinct realisation that he was a Buddhist. He became involved in London’s germinal Buddhist world in wartime Britain, and started to explore the Dharma through study and practice.

Then conscription in the Second World War took him to Sri Lanka as a signals operator, and after the war he stayed on in India. For two years he lived as a wandering mendicant, and later he was ordained as a Theravadin Buddhist monk and named Sangharakshita (‘protected by the spiritual community’). Sangharakshita lived for 14 years in the Himalayan town of Kalimpong, where he encountered venerable Tibetan Buddhist teachers – so he had the opportunity to study intensively under leading teachers from all major Buddhist traditions.

All the while he taught and wrote extensively. He iwas the author of over 50 books. Most of these are expositions of the Buddhist tradition, but he also published a large amount of poetry and four volumes of memoirs, as well as works on aspects of western culture and the arts from a Buddhist perspective. After 20 years in India, Sangharakshita returned to the UK to teach the Dharma. In 1967 he set up the Friends of the Western Buddhist Order – a new Buddhist movement for the modern West.

Sangharakshita saw himself as a translator between East and West, between the traditional world and the modern, between timeless principles and relevant practices. His clear thinking, depth of experience and ecumenical approach have been appreciated around the world. He always emphasised the decisive significance of commitment in the spiritual life, the value of spiritual friendship and community, the link between religion and the arts, and the need for a ‘new society’ that supports spiritual values.

View the Sangharakshita Memorial space and read an obituary  |  Visit Sangharakshita’s website

Sangharakshita played a key part in the revival of Buddhism in India, particularly through his work with the followers of Dr. Ambedkar (formerly known as Untouchables). Around one third of the Triratna Buddhist Order is in India. Throughout his life Sangharakshita wasconcerned with issues of social reform.

When he was in his 80s, Sangharakshita handed over his responsibilities for the Triratna Buddhist Community and for the remainder of his life focussed on personal contact with friends and disciples. He also continued to write both poetry and prose, which you can read on his personal website. You can follow memorial spaces for Sangharakshita on Facebook and Twitter.

Read Sangharakshita by Subhuti, and Vessantara on his First Meeting with Sangharakshita.

The Triratna Buddhist Community considers itself a genuine Buddhist movement, which accepts the Buddhist tradition as a whole as its primary source of guidance, inspiration and instruction. In harmony with other Buddhists, Triratna practitioners simply aim to practise and make available the Buddha’s teaching in ways that are relevant and accessible today. Triratna is an active member of Buddhist networks such as the European Buddhist Union, the Network of Buddhist Organisations UK, and Buddhist umbrella organisations in a number of other countries. All are welcome to practise in our community on an equal basis, regardless of gender, sexuality, or race. We actively seek to improve in this area, learning from our own experience and from that of other communities.

Consciously reconsidering how Buddhist practice is lived, fully, in the modern world is an inevitably contentious undertaking. The story of how our community has tried is one of sheer audacity – a Buddhist teacher starting from scratch, working with a group of young people who had only the vaguest ideas about the Dharma. He told them they were going to bring Buddhism to the West – in a way that had never been attempted before. They were finding out what it was they were trying to do as they went along. It’s the story of how a community evolves: a tale of idealism and naivety, growth and growing pains, hard work and burnout, friendship and fallout.

A huge amount was achieved in a very short time. Mistakes were made, especially in the early days, and lessons learned later. In this respect, our community has attracted its fair share of criticism, much of it valid and useful and, with hindsight, not surprising. The issues involved have been widely debated within the Order and beyond, with a range of responses. We do not consider ourselves above criticism.

The development of a new community is never without difficulties, and our members have sometimes behaved unskillfully. There has also been controversy surrounding the sexual activity of our founder, Urgyen Sangharakshita, and others.

 You can find out more about these areas by reading the Triratna Controversy FAQ.

To get an overview of historical controversies in context, it’s worth reading our free eBook The Triratna Story. (Lesen Sie dieses Buch auf Deutsch)

In late 2016, some of the historical controversy around Sangharakshita, sex, and the early days of the FWBO was the subject of renewed discussion after the broadcast of a BBC report looking again at this area. Sangharakshita himself later made a statement about his own past and the College of Public Preceptors then offered a response. 

We treat reports of abuse extremely seriously and will investigate in accordance with the law and our model policies for safeguarding children and vulnerable adults, which follow best practice in the UK. If you have any safeguarding questions or concerns please safeguarding [at] triratnadevelopment.org (get in touch).

+Follow the Adhisthana Kula blog for regularly updated news of responses to historical controversy in Triratna.

Read about the Restorative reconciliation process for Triratna, begun in April 2017. 

Here is an archive of many of FWBO/Triratna’s past formal public responses to criticisms.

As background reading, we would also recommend Growing Pains: An Inside View Of Change In The FWBO by Vishvapani. For an alternative perspective, see The FWBO – A Community In Transition by Nagabodhi.

For a look at how the FWBO saw itself in relation to the rest of the Buddhist world, see How the FWBO Presents Itself by Vishvapani. In another article, Vishvapani considers Perceptions of the FWBO in British Buddhism. Finally, his short, poignant exchange of letters with Zoketsu Norman Fischer around sex and the inherent pain of expectation between teachers and disciples is also very much worth reading.

The Triratna Buddhist Community was founded in 1967 as the Friends of the Western Buddhist Order (FWBO) by Sangharakshita, an Englishman who had spent 20 years in the India, 16 of them as a Buddhist monk. Having returned to Britain in the mid-1960s he saw the need for a new Buddhist movement – a vision of something faithful to traditional values while being relevant to the modern world.

He didn’t want simply to transplant one of the Asian schools. Sangharakshita believed it would be a mistake to set up a form of Buddhism already in existence in Asia in the very different conditions in which he now found himself: London in the late 1960s. He was also wary of adapting and losing the spirit of the Buddha’s teaching. He didn’t want to water Buddhism down to suit modern tastes. Instead he attempted to base the new movement on the core teachings that underlie all Buddhist schools, and to apply those principles in the contemporary West.

Sangharakshita started classes in a London shop basement, and in the early days, he taught all the classes, gave all the lectures, and led every course and retreat. However, he soon attracted many people who responded to his

approach, some of whom chose to be ordained. Before long FWBO centres opened, where members of the then Western Buddhist Order taught meditation and Buddhism. Following their experience of the more intensive and satisfying conditions on retreat, some people started living communally. The first residential FWBO communities grew out of these experiences. As they became more committed to Buddhist practice, some people found ways to work together co-operatively in ‘Right Livelihood’ teams and businesses – raising funds to teach the Dharma.

The FWBO grew rapidly through the 1970s and 1980s to become one of the leading Buddhist movements in the West. There are now more than 90 Triratna Buddhist Community urban centres and rural retreat centres, and activities in over 20 countries. The Triratna Buddhist Community is one of the principal Buddhist movements in UK, India, and Australasia, and is increasingly well-established in western Europe and the USA. At the heart of our spiritual community is the Order itself, today numbering more than 2,000 women and men around the world who have formally committed their lives to following the Buddhist path.

In 2000 Sangharakshita handed on all his responsibilities to a large group of senior Order members. They are continuing his work of developing a thriving Buddhist movement that aims to make effective practice available to as many people as possible throughout the modern world.

In 2010 the names of the WBO and FWBO changed to the Triratna Buddhist Order and Triratna Buddhist Community. This was the culmination of a ten-year process taking account of the development of our community’s approach to the Dharma in India. The word ‘Western’ had never applied there, where we were known by another name. Sangharakshita saw the adoption of a unifying name as a “refounding” of the community he envisioned.

For a more in-depth account of our history, you can read our free eBook, The Triratna Story by Vajragupta (also available in paperback). You can also see the series of video histories produced by Lights in the Sky. 

Visit the Nine Decades virtual exhibition of interviews with Sangharakshita marking his 90th birthday in 2015.