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Some past problems with the F/WBO, their legacy and the need for change

Satyaloka

First published in Articles Shabda, August 2003

Those who cannot remember their past are condemned to repeat it.
- George Santayana

History is the essence of innumerable biographies.
- Thomas Carlyle

In a recent Shabda report Advayacitta expressed consternation at the differences in the two accounts given, at different times, by Yashomitra. Do we really think that memory is a mere recalling of pristine facts, rather than an active process of imaginative construction and doesn't our current experience always colour our interpretation of our past? This process is one that I have been struggling with, in reflecting on my twenty-three year history within the FWBO- a process that predated recent events but has certainly been stimulated and intensified by them. What follows does not attempt to be balanced. It speaks more to faults than to that which can be celebrated. There is, of course, much that I value and admire in Sangharakshita and the Order but I wanted to make my points clearly and not risk loosing them by adding too many caveats. The picture is much more complex and nuanced than I have managed to capture. Nor is what follows a tightly argued piece, such as Vipassi's wonderful contribution. It's more a collection of separate threads or thoughts about certain areas, a number of which overlap. I look at:

* The difficulty of getting some objectivity on our situation
* Our relation to the wider culture and other Buddhists
* Power and influence within the FWBO
* The issue of conformity and its relationship to language
* Jungian psychological models
* Reflections arising from the contrast between the UK and US FWBO

It's a particular version of my involvement from 1981 onwards as seen from my current perspective. That involvement has always been a full one, involving Manchester, Padmaloka and Windhorse. From Padmaloka until I left for the US I lived fully within the structures of the FWBO: the so called 'three C's model'. I lived and worked with other Order members. I attended Order weekend and Conventions regularly, as well as study and meditation and Order retreats. I was an energetic and faithful Order member. Because of the way that the Order is structured this account draws on my experience within the men's wing of the Order. I have no real idea how different, if at all, it would look form the 'other side. I could give many different versions of my time in the Order, all of them 'true'; this is one such account. I ask you to be willing to see that I care enough to offer this up as part of the ongoing enquiry.

'Shoes outside the door'

A year or two ago I read the galley proofs of 'shoes outside the door' an account of the rise and fall of Richard Baker at the SF Zen Center and found it fascinating. 'Shoes outside the door' tells a very different story to our own. It ends differently to our own. The cultural context is different, the specifics of the organizational dynamic are different, and yet I think that through the lens it provides, we can see ourselves more clearly. I am not going to attempt to summarize the story. The points of difference and similarity are revealed as one reads and the perspective on our own movement emerges as a kind of gestalt in the midst of this. It's a fascinating read, well written, with elements of real tragedy. Best read in conjunction with 'Crooked Cucumber' the delightful account by David Chadwick of Suzuki Roshi and his founding of the San Francisco Zen center, a story that again parallels Bhante's and our own in many ways and also provides instructive contrasts.

One thing it did was enable me to stand outside the fwbo for a moment and see it more as an objective phenomenon, not an easy thing for someone whom has been so intimately involved with it for so many years. It helped me contextualize the Order as a religio-sociological phenomenon within a broader socio-historical context, having a particular history, 'culture' and trajectory. I think that the Guardian article, even unbalanced as it was, provided such a moment of self-consciousness for many of us all those years ago. Our collective karma ripened and we were granted the wish to see ourselves as others see us and it was a shock, it burst the bubble of our collective delusion. I think that is partly why it occasioned so much psychic pain and why we were so keen to 'put it behind us'. But it turns out we were only stuffing our questions and doubts back down because they made us uncomfortable, afraid. At the time I thought my discomfort was due to having what I loved and revered, Bhante and the FWBO, dragged unfairly through the mud and the extra dimension of embarrassment of my friends and family witness that, but wasn't it also having the unsay able out there and said?

I am saying that at this point it's vital that we find ways to see our situation objectively, to step out side the largely solipsistic world of the Order and the FWBO. I think that those working within the structures of the FWBO for a large a part of their adult lives will naturally have trouble doing so. Perhaps what I am saying is that the movement needs therapy! There needs to be what James Hillman, the archetypal Psychologist, calls a 'therapy of ideas' because some of the ideas that we have been running on are not healthy, they are themselves sick and thus have made us sick. I am not sure how we would go about this beyond saying that we need fresh perspectives, clear critiques. I think that the encouragement for all people within the order to tell their story is an important piece, especially those voices that are not coming from the mainstream, the marginalized voices that carry important information and perspectives that have not been given their place. I think that maybe we need help from outside our own 'club'. We have to drop our defensiveness about the Order, defensiveness against criticism from within and without. I feel that if we fail to do this we will not address deeply enough the situation we have got ourselves into. We will not deal with it adequately and so the healing that is so necessary will be incomplete and we will not learn lessons for the future. The Order and the FWBO will be so much less than it could be. The Gestalt dictum that 'the whole is greater than the sum of the parts' is not true in all situations, often it's less.

Cultural critiques and other Buddhists

The FWBO was always most off- track when 'we', largely echoing Bhante's opinions, pontificated about socio-cultural issues, the state of the wider culture. It's understandable, within the language of the 'New Society' and the 'old' that there would be such a critique. But the very isolation from the wider culture, of those most within the FWBO structures who were involved in the dissemination of ideas, the creation of its culture, contributed at best to a rather naive and over generalized critique, at worst to a laughable parody. Anyone who has lived in the UK during the 80's and 90's of the FWBO will know the sort of thing that I am referring to though they may disagree with my interpretation. Such critiques were part of the Order and FWBO culture of the time. They were the stock in trade of a few speakers who were very regular speaker at the 'Men's Events' at Padmaloka which were the main Order mitra events on the men's side. They were pedalled in talks to the Order at Order weekends etc.

Bhante did strike out from the middle class world of British Buddhism; he was a radical and needed the courage of his convictions to stand-alone. But that conviction could be rather overbearing to be around and tended to stifle debate. Our response to that level of conviction was perhaps the source of the triumphalism that we were so rightly accused of by other Buddhists. This isolation from other Buddhists was actively cultivated by Bhante and seen as necessary to the growth of this fledgling WBO plant and perhaps it was. But somewhere along the way, this hardened into a dogma, no 'shopping around' at the mitra level and certainly no other teachers at the Order level. The WBO/FWBO became effectively isolated from other Buddhist groups. We lost the sense that without cross-pollination plants can't reproduce, they loose their ability to adapt and effectively become sterile. Drawing a term from the realm of agriculture and ecological one could say that metaphorically we ended up with a monoculture and they are vulnerable to disease and infestation. The solution is to re introduce diversity.

Let's not close the canon of WBO practices and ideas. Bhante made an excellent synthesis but it shouldn't ossify into a one off thing. Its very common in the US for teachers to draw from the different traditions as Bhante did all those years ago. A teacher like Roshi Joan Halifax for instance will draw mainly on her Zen tradition but also, depending on the retreat, include Tibetan practices like tonglen, vipassana and mindfulness practices. This is the reality of Buddhism in the US and this is the trend in the larger Western Buddhist world. Yes we need depth of practice and integrity of a tradition but also openness to new possibilities. I know that various Order members have explored vipassana or Dzog Chen for themselves but there still seems so much caution around this issue. I have personally found tonglen practice a great adjunct to metta bhavana. Can we please stop repeating Bhante's caveats about vipassana based on his experience of teaching in the UK 40 years ago ! Things have moved on! I have attended vipassana retreats in the IMS tradition, which were excellent. The dharma teaching matched any I have experienced in the FWBO it was very recognizably broad 'basic Buddhism'. The program was intense but balanced and effective. In fact I felt that our retreats could benefit from the more rigorous meditation and silence practices and have introduced this in a sesshin style to the Sanghas approval and pleasure.

In the field of Dharma Bhante was on target. However, here too, challenges to his views were not that welcome. Those in the UK who ventured outside the fold of the FWBO into the fields of Buddhist academia, found themselves isolated and without a meaningful role in the WBO. Through exposure to original materials and differing strands of thought to Sangharakshita's they came to their own views about certain dharmic issues. They were thinking outside the FWBO box. The universities and academia in general, and perversely Buddhist academia in particular, were pariahs.

For many years we were isolated within the Buddhist world, criticizing other groups through the pages of our magazines. Remember we actually had a section in 'Golden Drum' where we pretty regularly took apart other Buddhist groups, criticizing them for this or that failing. I am not saying that there was no validity in any such criticisms but that they were contaminated by our triumphalism. It was interesting that this critical approach was never turned on ourselves. When the idea of a more balanced approach, one that included some acknowledgement of our own faults, was voiced, Bhante very stridently took a different stance. 'There is too much cynicism and negativity in the culture; the fwbo is such a bright star within an otherwise dark world that we need to praise it and rejoice in it'. One result of Bhante's involvement with editorial policy was that the writing in our magazines was programmed and bland, because so much messy real life experience was being edited out. The personal can approach the universal only when it honestly touches the pulse of a life. Golden Drum and its predecessor rarely reached beyond the parochial concerns of the institutions of the fwbo and the writing often had a smug, self-congratulatory flavour.

Like many others I questioned out loud the value and wisdom of such an approach. I remember the subject as dinner table conversation at Padmaloka with Bhante presiding. The rationale for this approach was that by acting in this way we would certainly put some people off but we would attract more people than we put off or at least would attract those who were robust, which was whom we wanted to attract. One should not waste time helping the weak. Nowadays it's the strong who need help (Peace is a Fire). If one was uncomfortable with this approach then it said something about one's discomfort with speaking out for what one believed in, one's unwillingness to stand up for the movement and its beliefs.

When Order members did start to venture out into the wider Buddhist world, those who had to do the connecting and befriending, some of whom had been exponents of this position, began to change their tune as they saw how unproductive it was to dialogue and exploration. Vocal and sustained criticism is not a good basis for beginning a friendship! Looking back there was a very powerful need for the FWBO and behind that really, for Bhante to be 'right'. We had the answers and it was only a matter of time before other Buddhists would see the light and learn the real approach to the Dharma from us. It's perhaps easy to recognize and understand this phenomenon from the realm of personal life-the overly shrill assertion that attempts to mask one's own uncertainty about oneself or ones capability in a given situation. We were the fledgling tradition trying to establish itself, the 'new Buddhists on the block'. We acted as if we hadn't been socialized very well and didn't know how to find our place in the wider community, how to both stand our own ground yet also recognize the autonomy of others and the possibility that we might have something to learn from them.

I am speaking historically, as with most of this article, and I recognize the good work that Vishvapani has done with making Dharma Life more accessible and relevant to a wider Buddhist audience. I also note that through the work of the communications office and the likes of Kulananda and now Dhammarati who are active on the wider Buddhist circuit that we are taking our place in the western Buddhist community.

Its not about sex, its about Power

I agree with others that the issue we face is not about the sexual exploits of our founder but about the issues of power, authority and authenticity within the WBO. I am not even referring to the power element inherent in Bhante's (teacher-pupil) and other Order member's (order member- mitra) sexual activity. The issue is more why was Bhante not challenged about his behaviour more? Why, when he was challenged and was unwilling to explain himself, was he able to get away with this? The answer is that he was a person with a lot of personal power. It's very hard to stand up against Bhante. But apart from that huge measure of certainty and self- confidence he also held a particular power by virtue of his position as founder, teacher, older male etc

The founder's personality and style inevitably effects what he creates and Bhante himself is cognizant of this in 'My relation to the Order'. We inherited Bhante's radical iconoclastic stance but also some elements of his personality that could be called controlling and autocratic. Both strands played themselves out within the order and movement. The paternalistic and prescriptive culture of the WBO and FWBO are the real problems, not that people messed up in the field of sexual ethics. The way influence worked within the WBO is a very complex and nuanced issue. We had the teaching of spiritual hierarchy and we had Bhante as the exponent. The teaching of spiritual hierarchy is a very tricky; one of those dharmic ideas that when grasped wrongly will turn and bite you. Hierarchy inevitably got mixed up with organizational position and indeed a case was made for their identification along the lines of organizational 'responsibility as a path of development'. Those in organizational positions of responsibility must be there because of their greater level of development. Really it was kind of difficult to see who was spiritually more mature than anyone else in the 80's within the WBO so this fluid concept got rather fixed. As an order member at least you knew you were effectively going for refuge and therefore more along the path than someone who wasn't ordained yet, right? I think that the order member to mitra/ friend relationship in this fixed form became rather unhealthy at times. I am sorry to admit that I have been a party to that style of relating and the consequent inappropriate and unhelpful behaviour on many occasions in my Order career. I have also witnessed both innocuous and downright unpleasant instances of such behaviour as I am sure have you. Order members wielding their little portion of power. Of course there were exceptions, people who naturally refused to operate in that way and good for them. I was not one of them.

For too many years the movement was virtually a closed system, impervious to criticism from within and without. Bizarre views could be maintained within the subculture of the WBO and FWBO because of the lack of genuine exchange of ideas with the wider culture, Buddhist and beyond. Indeed the very setting up of us versus or at least vis-à-vis others Buddhist, non-Buddhist, spiritual, non-spiritual, ' real Buddhists', 'confused Buddhists' played into this. This is the way cults function and I think that one could argue that within our 'movement' there existed some of the elements that constitute a cult. The normalization of bizarre views is one such component, and certain homogeneity or conformity of views is another.

As many have pointed out there was a particular dynamic inherent in Bhante founding the movement as a mature and very capable middle aged man surrounded by un- tried and un- tested young men and women. Don't those very early films of the Order show Bhante the Guru? And while he rejected the term, wasn't his influence profound and far reaching? This degree of influence was both for the good, but also it was very unhelpful. This played itself out in so many ways; the innocent and misplaced aping of Bhante's personal aesthetics- lists that emerged on the first Tuscany Ordination retreats about what works of literature were really worth reading through Bhante's idiosyncratic views on modern art and music. Remember those many books that came to prominence within the Order, and I do not mean the likes of Reginald Ray's 'Buddhist Saints' which I remember Bhante also commended to the Order. Bhante would come across something through his extensive reading and then put the word out about a certain book and we would find a book like 'Ball breaking' getting serious attention, finding its way into our bookshops. Center bookstore buyers were usually compliant to these suggestions. Books were taken up from the wider culture that echoed Bhante's positions and their very marginalisation within the wider culture was almost seen as a kind of proof of their radical vision and veracity. The crude, pugnacious 'Ball breaking' made strange bed- fellows with the leaden prose of 'the closing of the American mind'; what linked them was that they were offered as correctives to various aspects of the all powerful and insidious 'pseudo- liberalism'. I readily confess that I ran with the pack and stocked my bookshelves with these offerings.

I am not 'blaming' individuals for the above, but I am saying that all of us, as a collection of individuals, are responsible. We created the culture of the WBO or actively or tacitly supported it. I am also saying that we need to be on guard for the abuses of language and power, both within ourselves, and the organizations that we create. Individuality is one of the most powerful checks to this. People knowing who they are and standing their ground, speaking their truth. We need fundamental changes in the culture and perhaps the structures of the WBO. The sense I have of the Preceptors College, admittedly from a distance, is of a body of people only gradually coming to the realization that what they were doing wasn't working and wasn't going to work and needed to change. I have the sense that, while realizing there was a real issue as to how the Order would accept them in place of Bhante, they tried to fill a Bhante shaped hole and carry on in much the same way. I get the sense that it is Subhuti who has been the creative force recognizing that this would not work and that change was necessary. The College can't lead the movement. The regionalization idea is a move in the right direction but there probably needs to be a much more radical 'devolution' than that of the structures of the F/WBO. However it's notoriously difficult to bring about cultural change alongside structural change within institutions and organizations. People within them resist change. This is a truism of the business world where such change is at a premium and is actively promoted, implemented and chronicled. I think that we are no different, simply because we are Buddhist and therefore supposedly ok with the idea of impermanence and change. We need to examine our assumptions and patterns of behaviour and think about making some big changes in how we conceive of the Order and WBO. I think that this is the real challenge of the WBO and I don't think it's a forgone conclusion that we will do it. In fact I think it's more likely that we won't!

Language and conformity

I am not sure that I have the language tools to say what I want to say in this section, but I will give it a try.

The use of language within a group is an interesting phenomenon. If you visit any group you notice immediately the style of language, the topics, ways of talking and jargon that defines that group's outlook. The WBO and FWBO is no exception. Buddhism, of course, through its history has had a very subtle awareness of the limits of language, its uses and abuses and Bhante has that kind of awareness of language. It's interesting to me that we had the language of 'the individual and the group' so well articulated for us with its distinction of 'spiritual community' versus 'the group' and the categories of 'individualist' and 'conformist as enemies of 'true individuality' etc. The usefulness of such categories is that they enable you to make distinctions. This is surely one of Bhante's strengths in articulating the Dharma. Yet somehow we didn't apply the terms to discriminate accurately. They were often bandied about pejoratively and the emphasis was placed largely on the dangers of individualism and individualists. The term 'individualist' was used as a cudgel to dismiss an argument or a person. I don't remember much being said within the Order about the ever-present dangers of conformity, except when it was criticism directed at external institutions or an historical analysis of Asian Buddhist culture.

This is very understandable. In the desire to create institutions and engage in collective endeavour co -operation is highly valued. Many people, in their exploration of the early fwbo culture and gender split, have pointed to Bhante's ability to channel the energy of the movement's young men into building, both literally and metaphorically, the institutions of the movement. I located myself very much within this main strand of fwbo praxis. It's obvious to me now that I have conformist tendencies. I like and function well within an ordered and structured situation that has a clear hierarchy. I felt very at home within the FWBO with its systems and structures. I was dismissive of those who struggled with the forms, what's the problem, why the whining? I felt very certain about what I was doing, what 'we' were doing and those who were uncomfortable with that were in the wrong rather than perhaps having a different perspective to offer. I feel that there was a lot of marginalisation that went on within the fwbo culture and language played a powerful role in that. By the very creation and use of a well-defined set of terms, certain discourse was possible and certain other approaches could not be heard because they fell outside the style of discourse. Much of the FWBO discourse was polemical. Certain points of view were not valued and appreciated, certain views were. This is of course inevitable in a group, its how a group maintains itself, but weren't we the spiritual community? We acknowledged that we fell short of that ideal at times but I don't think that we paid enough attention to the power of conformity, the need to belong. Didn't we confuse the fact that we could talk about these issues with the application of them? If you have lived within the fwbo since your twenties its quite a difficult thing to contemplate stepping outside its comfortable structures and be out in the cold world on your own. I think the fear of not belonging has played and still plays a conscious or unconscious role at times in peoples unwillingness to seek change in the structures and culture of the FWBO and thus a willingness to go along with the status quo.

I am using the world 'culture' rather loosely. I acknowledge that the FWBO was a complex phenomenon but I reject as naive the notion that there was no specific culture with 'in' and 'out' 'main stream' and 'marginalized' within it. One could also usefully talk in terms of 'sub- cultures' within the broader fwbo culture. I heard second hand that Danavira had used the term 'canteen culture' to try and talk about the way that a sub culture was a reality within the wider fwbo culture. I think it's taken from the world of the police force where the institutional racism that exists within the force, while not being openly acknowledged in official communiqués, finds open expression within the informal world of the canteen. I think that a number of such sub cultures existed within the Order with regard to misogynist views about women and the spiritual efficacy of homosexuality for instance. These views had a whole language system that supported them and I think here Bhante's use of language was rather heavily polemical and value laden. Of course there were different tables within the canteen and no doubt different types of conversations were happening at different tables.

Of wounding and the shadow: maybe it is about sex after all!

One strand of the shadow idea is that the bigger (psychically) the person is, the bigger the shadow. A big personality, who stands in the light of the sun, can see with and display the clarity of that Apollonian light/quality. But since they stand in the light they inevitably cast a shadow and that falls on those close around. In Jungian terms the shadow is that element of themselves that they are unaware of, that they do not wish to acknowledge. One might usefully ask what is that for Bhante?

Well one element of that seems to lie in the area of sex. A man who has a natural appetite for sex with the same gender is commonly considered a gay man (the sophistication of Jnanavira's level of analysis of sexual orientation and identity aside). Bhante has never acknowledged that he is gay to my knowledge. Certainly never publicly nor in any order contexts of which I have heard. Rather, I have heard many weird rationales that are supposed to explain how he isn't really gay, quoting Plato etc. The simple fact is that Bhante was in the closet and he was and is a closet gay and that, as we surely know has particular consequences the secretiveness, denial and silence that go with the territory. Yes it was an 'open secret' but isn't that such a revealing term? Wasn't it strange to have everyone else on an ordination retreat practicing celibacy and one's teacher talking of the benefits of celibacy when one knew he shared his bed with his young companion, as on the Tuscany Ordination retreats. So if this is shadow for him and those around aren't really seeing it and acknowledging it doesn't it become a 'collective shadow' of the Order? I am perhaps going beyond the bounds of the way this term is usually employed in Jungian circles in invoking a collective shadow.

Of course having Bhante's shadow revealed is very challenging, not just to those who thought him to be without one. When extreme emotions like rage and blame come up, as they have in the pages of Shabda, we have to ask what is going on? Could it be that looking at someone else's shadow begins to turn us in the direction of our own? A move against doing so is to stay with the emotions of anger, betrayal and then find a scapegoat in the effort to keep that mucky stuff at a safe distance from association with us. Another defensive move is good old denial, to say, well there isn't really a shadow there at all and the more insidious version of that, well of course he isn't perfect, I never thought so and anybody who did was just being naive etc . I have noticed this move in some reports and I think its an attempt to block further examination and get back to 'business as usual' with no need for self-examination.

This denial of the fact that there is something wrong and that people are saying so rather loudly reminded me of our 'non-elected' President Bush's statements about the biggest co-coordinated anti-war demonstrations that world has ever seen. In one speech he argued that the fact that people are able to protest proves that the American system of democracy works. In the next sentence he said, of course I don't listen to those people . This was said without irony. I think that we have some work to do looking at our individual and collective shadow and I think that this is really serious work that we have to do or we will continue to display signs of disintegration as a collective, continue to be unconscious of important aspects of our collective life. The psychological language of 'wounding' is another way to get at some of the same territory though I know it will make some people cringe. This language of wounding that is present in some strands of modern Psychology has its roots in the archetypes of the old religions, such as Greek mythology. Chiron is the wounded healer in the Greek tradition and Asklepios his pupil is the source of the alternative healing tradition to Hippocratic medicine.

The basic idea is that we all have psychological wounds that we receive in our early life. This wounding mars us but it can also become a place from which our talent in the world emerges, our capacity for healing of others. If the nature of the wound goes unrecognized and steps aren't taken to heal its at this very same point that the parent will wound his children. This is one way of explaining patterns of alcoholism etc. that get passed down generations within families. If we say speculatively that an aspect of Bhante's wounding has been in his sexuality if it has not been healed we could look for a wounding in that same area in his offspring. Biologically we are not Bhante's children but psycho-spiritually speaking perhaps we are. In various talks on anniversaries marking the founding of the Order he spoke of the Order coming into its majority etc- metaphor of course but with a certain psychological truth to it. That wounding is surely clear in the history of sex and gender relations within the Order and its current legacy.

The way that relationships, sexual or otherwise, between genders were treated in the fwbo was pretty screwed up. There wasn't an acknowledgement of the real possibility of a sexual relationship as a healthy, positive thing. The notion that any meaningful friendship (read spiritual friendship) was possible between the sexes was held up to ridicule. Maybe, if you were a very senior and responsible Order member who had lived in single sex situations for many years, you might just be in a position to work along side like - minded member of the other gender, provided you didn't have too much contact or some scenario like that! Heterosexual relationships were continually critiqued yet most of us were in them! 'That's why they needed critiquing' the die-hards will no doubt say but it led to bizarre situations; meetings with ones lover often had to be conducted in rather sordid circumstances borrowing a place in order to be together, since both parties were living in closed single sex communities; Shabda reports that alluded tangentially to the presence of another person on a recent holiday. One had to know the code. In the arena of same sex relationships there was little acknowledgement that there was a comparable degree of emotional attachment involved. Since most of us were in sexual relationships of one sort or another why instead didn't we have teachings on how to be in them in a healthy way, if neurosis was the fear: Teachings like 'Your relationship should be at the edge of your Mandala' and 'Spend as little time as possible with your partner' etc. weren't all that helpful.

I think that we are going to have to make a radical shift in our attitude to gender in the FWBO and bring the genders more back into a dance together again. We have to clean out so many of the old entrenched ideas about the other gender within our order that I wonder if people are going to be up for a change to a more flexible, humane approach. Such a change has to come from both those at 'the top' but also from the main body of the Order. It involves risk but also opportunity. Perhaps from this wounding could emerge a powerful healing?

I am offering this psychological view as I have so far seen surprisingly little analysis of our situation in these terms. I acknowledge that I am not very learned in this area and I hope someone with professional experience in the Jungian psychological approach will write in this vein. We need different models and tools of analysis, different styles of discourse in order to try and objectify to ourselves what happened and what we need to do now to move forwards So in this vein of psychological musing I wonder likewise whether the championing of the Apollonian (and Bhante is surely Apollonian in his approach) and the distrust of the language of 'depth' 'shadow' 'wounding' and the depth psychological perspective in general was not an unconscious defense against our own shadow side, the repressed aspect of the fwbo. This is obviously speculative but is suggestive of our current situation. We are definitely experiencing the 'return of the repressed'.

I know the argument goes that this type of discourse is not the authentic language of the Dharma but this doesn't really hold water as neither is a lot of the language which is part of the fwbo accepted canon. The pronounced anti psychology stance of the FWBO will lead to our marginalisation in communicating the dharma. Psychology is one of the dominant strands of modern thought and shaking a stick at it isn't going to make it go away. I would like to encourage all those who have felt their voice to be marginalized within the discourse of the fwbo to speak their minds over the coming months. I would especially like to hear from Order members who have been involved for many years and have raised families as a couple.

A growing sense of freedom

The WBO &FWBO is obviously experienced as a strongly conditioning environment. At times this is experienced as oppressive especially it seems at certain periods of growth and transition hence the regular phenomenon of order members who were experiencing some crisis of involvement/ meaning/ leaving the situation they were in and heading off to other parts of the movement that were seen as more liberal or had pockets within them that were like that. At varying times Bristol, Brighton and the perennial hinterland of E London have served this function for people. I now understand the phenomenon as I have taken the same steps, at first only vaguely consciously. I know that I feel so much freer out here in the US to explore and experiment how we do this Buddhism stuff and certainly at the moment can't see myself being able to live in the UK and participate in the UK FWBO. I know that the constraints are within myself, but that's not the whole story is it? Considering as a Buddhist movement we are all about personal change it seems that at times we don't really understand the process of personal growth that well. Within the WBO and FWBO we need to cultivate a much more open attitude to what spiritual life is, what it looks like and how we communicate its vital essence. Great spiritual movements, innovations within an old tradition are said to take a generation or two before they decline into formalism and dogma. We have managed to do it even within the life of our founder! My own experience of moving and living in the US has been incredibly instructive for me and has to some extent provided a painful liberation from my enmeshment within the fwbo. I want to share a little of that personal experience in the hope that it touches on wider themes that those personal to me.

When I moved to San Francisco USA in 1998 I was shocked by what I perceived as the degree of alienation from the UK fwbo that I experienced in the Order members there both British and American. I found the expression of this in the critical stance that was expressed about many aspects of the Order and fwbo disturbing, painful and undermining. The alienation felt by US Order members in SF was no doubt a complex phenomenon but stemmed in some large part from their feelings about 'WM&A' and how their concerns about this were brushed aside. It does require quite an act of imagination to identify with the order as a whole and the US OM's knew relatively few of those reporting in shabda or the concrete specific world they described of communities and Right Livelihoods and Order weekends. Shabda is very UK-centric, not surprisingly, but rather unconsciously so. As to the UK OM's and their alienation from the fwbo as well, that was rather long-standing and no doubt exacerbated by the distance and the phenomena I am attempting to describe.

After living and breathing the diversity of SF I began to see the fwbo from a different perspective. Its self-inflation was cut down to size by being surrounded by other Buddhist groups that had a much higher profile within the culture. I found the natural iconoclasm of Paramananda both maddening and fascinating at the same time. The same was true of the fiery and funny Suvannaprabha (Lisa at the time) who had the sometimes-thankless task of 'de-conditioning' me as 'fwbo cult member'. The American Order members such as Viradhamma were eloquent in their disagreement with certain FWBO doctrines whilst being very inspired about teaching people the dharma. I found this very confusing.

I remember championing the showing of the newsreels. They used to come to the center and languish upstairs in the guys flat. I felt that we needed to start introducing these at Sangha nights to let people know that they were part of something bigger, to counter the isolationism and parochialism of the SF Sangha. However after a while watching newsreel upon newsreel filled with images of buildings being converted to house new centers and interviews with earnest OM's who had founded this new center etc. I began to find them vaguely disturbing. The fwbo in the UK began to resemble the white picket fence world of David Lynch's 'Blue Velvet'. You were left with the sense that this was such a bland, happy presentation that something else was lurking in the background, a vague smell that wouldn't go away, a muffled cry in the distance, but no, surely not? There was the white picket fence after all-This is an American cultural reference- goes with 'home made apple pie' etc

My time in SF was very painful psychologically. I experienced intense isolation, and a disorienting loss of faith and direction. The fwbo to which I had committed myself so whole-heartedly now didn't fit and even felt limiting and constricting. Who was I, if wasn't a 'full on' Order member? What was my vision for my life? The issue of autonomy and authenticity became paramount. Vipassi mentions the psychological phenomenon of 'engulfment', which sounds a little like what I am trying to get at. In the end I didn't feel that I had the resources in SF to deal with this breakdown of meaning. I didn't have the level of friendship to sustain me despite the presence of a very loving Lisa in my life at that time. Although it was painful I knew that I didn't want to return to the UK. At a gut level I knew that this process required the protection of psychological distance that was provided by the physical distance involved. I knew that I was only part way cooked and I had better not get out of the oven prematurely.

So I went to check out Missoula. When I got there I knew that Missoula was the right move pretty much straight away. I loved the natural environment and the scale and friendliness of the Missoula community. I felt very vulnerable and battered when I arrived and was warmly welcomed which meant a lot to me. I moved into the men's community and started to work at Tipu's. This felt very comfortable at on one level. I was back in recognizable fwbo territory but I also felt a level of disquiet. Hadn't I moved to the US in part for a different experience of myself within the FWBO and wasn't I now re creating the same conditions that I had left behind at WT. Still it was great to belong again and feel useful and for a little while I did and was.

The UK problem

I have come to think that the fwbo in the US has a problem and that is the UK fwbo! Well to be more fair it's the lack of reflective self-consciousness of the UK fwbo. This is not new. I remember hearing in the 80's that some people at Aryaloka felt that the institutional expression of the single sex principle might not work in the US. This was scoffed at and seen as a product of the immaturity of the Sangha here. Those from the UK knew best. Well the news is they (and I include myself) don't! They haven't a clue as to how the culture here works and how the fwbo, if it is to survive here, will re- create itself. I have found that in moving here I have had to engage in a double process of acculturation, one to the broader US culture and the other to the US fwbo culture. The latter has presented the biggest challenges and so the greatest benefits. The spiritual experience that those from the UK have by virtue of practicing longer only translates in any useful way to the degree that it can be separated from the specific conditions in which it arose. The ability to drop ones agenda and assumptions and look at the situation that faces you afresh is a real test of what is real spiritual discernment and what is habit, dogma and assumption.

I find that those coming from the UK with the 'spiritual experience' seem to live in such a solipsistic fwbo world that they sometimes can't make the leap into the actual experience of the new situation with which they are faced. The reference point of such visitors is always the FWBO institutions in the UK and to what degree the US situation is successful in re- creating them or not. One example that I am familiar with first hand is the extremely unhelpful expectations that rode on Tipu's as the great hope of Right Livelihood in the US. The situation was not seen clearly in its own US context. It was constantly being 'propped up' by visiting OM's as it lurched from crisis to crisis. The expectations on this business helped in part, because of the added pressures that accompanied them, to bring about its very failure as a Buddhist business. It was set up to fail.

This all leaves me in a bizarre position with regard to the ordination process here. I am happily teaching at the center and encouraging people to get involved with the FWBO but I feel ambivalent about the Ordination level of things. I was heartened at the last US Order convention last year by the new tone that was communicated by Sona and others from Madhyamaloka about deepening and broadening the order. It made me feel that I could find my place within the order once again rather than consider resigning I think this and the discussions of regionalism is a move in the right direction. The US Order needs to step up to the plate and the Public preceptors need to let them get on with it. The development of the WBO in the US cannot be led from the Preceptors College in the UK. At present we have the untenable system of UK order members coming out and trying to get to know postulants here well enough to become their personal preceptors: Untenable because it's way too clumsy and slow. The US needs US private and public preceptors and I think that there are American Order members who are up to being private preceptors and no doubt one or two ready to be public preceptors. Lets not wait too long again; you know how that went last time! As I write this fireworks celebrating the 4th of July are going off in the night sky.

I have a lot of hope for the situation here in N America. Last year's Order Convention confirmed for me that the Order in N. America has its own distinctive 'personality' and a maturity. It knows, or will discover for itself, how best to spread the dharma in the US. Of course it would be wise to seek support in that process from whatever quarter, be that the UK Order or elsewhere but not from sources that are ideologically rigid. We need openness as to how the Order and FWBO will evolve here, not prescription or comparison. There are many challenges within the culture to spreading the dharma, but it's in the interaction with that culture, on the deep level that those who live within it have access to that the opportunities will arise.

Well that's more than a few cents worth! I don't take what I say as 'The Truth'. It's a perspective and even as I send it off I am aware how partial and one sided it is. Even so, as something to stimulate discussion, it seemed worthwhile to send it. I am very aware that I make many more criticisms than I do suggestions for how to improve things. This is partly because I needed a focus and this article is more that long enough already and also cos its kind of as far as I have got in my thinking. Perhaps it's worth stating that I have not lived within the FWBO UK since 1998 and have visited less and less frequently over the years mainly for visa reasons and also as a natural process of settling here in the US. I read shabda, speak to friends and meet visiting order members when they are over, but it amounts to increasingly less contact with the lived experience of the WBO in the UK. So this account may strike those living there as being too extreme. I acknowledge that from the UK perspective it is probably a view from the edge, but as I have argued above, perhaps there is value in listening to voices from the edge. In another sense I don't feel at the edge, I am living my life, which for now, is also part of the unfolding of the WBO in America so I am at 'the center' not the edge. My life is rich with the ups and downs of a life fully lived. The process that we, as an Order, are going through makes me feel more connected to, rather than alienated from, the Order, however weird that may seem to some of you after reading this. People speaking their truth is what we have been asked for and debate and re assessment are is what is needed.

Some Reflections on Change

Dhammaketu, Ghent, Belgium

First published in ‘Articles Shabda’, February 2004

On reading Shabda in an isolated spot like mine, one could get easily the impression the Order and the movement are almost collapsing. But on the European Chairmen's Meeting I am just back from I heard reports of growth and strength, corresponding to my experience: not just here in Ghent, but in all the centres I visit at times, I see the Dharma at work, and thriving sanghas.

In trying to make sense of these two - mutually exclusive - experiences of the movement, I had the idea they both go back to what essentially distinguishes the (F)WBO from other Buddhist movements, one following from living up to it, the other from departing from it.

What makes us different is Bhante's insistence on living the spiritual life, not as an compartment of life, but enclosing the full life in this civilisation, irrespective of life style.

And to me his most outstanding contribution to Buddhist thinking is that he saw the consequences of this in the relationships between those who lead such a life: he formulated the difference between a group and a spiritual community, and in doing so he added a sociological dimension to Buddhist thinking.

This dimension was absent in the civilisations in which Buddhism developed and prospered - as it was in ours up to a couple of centuries ago. Buddhist tradition has an immensely rich view on the spiritual development of an individual, but very little on his relationships with others who do the same. It offers an immense treasure of meditations and teachings for personal development, but spiritual relationship stays limited to the teacher-pupil relationship, or to essentially functioning in a group, mostly of monks.

Bhante spelled out the difference between a mere group member, who does what the group expects, and the individual, who engages in spiritual life out of his commitment. He pointed out the consequences of this for another dimension of life which is absent in the traditional analysis: communication. Truthful communication is dealing with one another as individuals, not as group members. And he spelled out the difference between a spiritual community of individuals and a group, however positive it may be.

Individual and Sangha arise wherever the dharma is practised seriously, it is not limited to the (F)WBO, but mostly this happens at a pre-conscious level, as a by-product of the spiritual life so to speak. The secret of the (F)WBO is that we foster this process consciously. This is what attracted me to the Order and the movement, from my very first contacts onward, this is what I see at work wherever I go in the movement, and this is what accounts for our extraordinary success.

Inversely, I am sorry to say, much of the moaning, doubts, hurt feelings, messages of doom and impending collapse one comes across seems to be largely the expression of the disappointment of group members, feeling wronged in what others did to them, and feeling the wrongdoers are not properly punished. In as far as this is the case, it has been fed by tendencies to establish groups - and not always very positive ones - instead of spiritual communities. The most devastating expression of this was found in Croydon in the 80ies, but Croydon was not an isolated case.

Falling back on the group and its norms is a tendency we all have - it is an expression of the third fetter, faith in doing the right things, turning means into goals - and we all have to keep working to avoid it taking over. This tendency is conspicuously present in our structures, and I am afraid this is partly a negative inheritance we have from Bhante.

From the beginnings of the movement on he set out to coach people to live up as individuals, and encouraged them to set up structures that would underpin this life: the 3 C's (Centres, Communities, and ‘Coops’ ie Team-Based Right Livelihood businesses), the single-sex principle, no other teachers.... In the early years of the movement these were highly helpful - if not even downright essential - to the great majority, as he was starting from zero (or even from minus one thousand!). But their very success meant that they tended later on to harden into absolutes, i.e. into group norms, and gradually new ones were added, e.g. exacting criteria to become a mitra and a rigid ordination process, and the spiritual development of people tended to be measured by their compliance with them. And I am afraid Bhante may not always have seen to what extent it was a group process, and may have encouraged it unduly.

(Just a footnote: what I describe was a tendency, to which there were luckily numerous exceptions, and me being an order member is a testimony to this. I was ordained in almost no time, although I was an irregular in absolutely all aspects of the group norm).

The present reform (2004) I see as growing out of these group aspects, which are in contradiction with Bhante's fundamental vision, and have lost all their supporting value. Replacing the ossified mitra system by a mitra community has been the first go at it, and by and large it had an enormously positive impact. And I see a few more changes of that kind to come or already on their way. Some of these are:

- stopping seeing the 3 C's and the single-sex principle as normative. (Read carefully, I have already been misunderstood on this point, I am not advocating getting rid of them because I do not like them!). The present growing disaffection with them is in all probability just a reaction against their normative imposition. They are valuable instruments, and I am sure they soon will be on the up again, but they will be taken up only where people experience them as helpful, not because they need to do so to get ordained fast, or something.

- seeing the preparation for ordination as a function of the needs and strengths of the aspirants, not as part of what a standardized ordination "process" has to offer.

- the establishment of genuine leadership within the Order and the movement. To develop ourselves and bring the Dharma to beings we need structures, and these need leadership.

Leadership is freely accepted by the true individual, because he operates out of trust instead of suspicion and fear of power. And it is freely given by the true individual who is entrusted with it, because he does not look for power or domination to prop up a self. To establish such leadership we all will need to get rid of negative group attitudes towards the "top"- both rejecting leadership, and slavishly accepting it - and those entrusted with it will need the courage to exercise it, especially when the going is a bit rough, as it is at the present.

These are a few reflections on what is going on at the present, and I hope they may be helpful for the future. May all beings be happy!

What is An Order Member?

Reprinted from Articles Shabda May 2004

Dhammaketu, Gent, Belgium

(Open to all)

Up to Bhante's full retirement the FWBO was a nicely structured, well oiled and well running machine, in which everybody had a well defined place. From a structural point of view, it was a pyramid, with controls very much at the top. The undisputed summit was Bhante, who acted as supreme watchman. Next came the Order, running things and keeping all strings securely in hand. Then came the mitras, non-officially but very really divided over three levels: first those who had asked for ordination, who had a clear program of things to be done to get ordained; then the old mitras who did not make it to ordination, were parked on a side track and eventually dropped out; and third the newer ones, who got attention as long as there were signs they might make it to ask for ordination. And at the bottom were the two classes of regulars: those who might become mitras and got attention, and those who would not, were sidetracked and eventually dropped out also.

All this gave a strong sense of security, and it was working quite well, as the astonishing growth figures testify: from very unpromising beginnings in 37 years to more than 1200 order members today, plus of course a few thousand mitras, a hundred Dharma centres reaching tens of thousands of people - and in India even far more ... . But since Bhante's retirement and especially since Yashomitra's article, this sense of security has gone. At the West-European Order Forum recently, I heard a very senior, highly regarded and deeply committed order member ask – “what it is to be an order member?” He was about the last one I would have expected this question from, but to him it clearly was not a rhetorical one at all. His question shows how deep and far-reaching the questioning goes, so I volunteer some reflections, not just about what it is to be an order member, but also about the order as a whole and its functioning within the movement. To understand both the past successes and the present state of questioning, we have to go back to one of the most weighty of Bhante's numerous fundamental contributions to present day Buddhism, both in the East and in the West: his emphasis on the Going for Refuge of the 'individual' - which happens to be also the foundation of our vision on the spiritual life in general, and on the Order specifically. I think that both what went well and what went wrong is connected to this, and so is the way out to the future.

Maybe we have repeated it so often, and often so unthinkingly, perfunctorily or at times maybe even dishonestly, that it may sound as a platitude, but the very foundation of what we are doing is just this: working at effectively Going for Refuge - and doing so as an individual.

Going for Refuge means somehow integrating the vision of the Buddha our lives. This is possible at various intensities and levels of stability, and as we all know, Bhante distinguished five levels we all know by heart, with only the first four being relevant at present.

At the bottom there is ethnic Going for Refuge: at its best this is living according to whatever of the vision of the Buddha has been integrated into the values and norms of the group one belongs to, and doing this in order to be accepted as a member of that group. Within the FWBO we tend to look down a bit patronizingly on this - unwarrantedly, because it is a very valuable thing. In as far as a group is inspired by the dharma, it will be a very positive one, and living according to its norms and values is highly beneficial. It is problematical only to the extent to which non-dharmic norms and values, or even counter-dharmic ones are mixed up with its dharmic ones.

But to live the spiritual life fully, we have to act as an individual: no longer to comply with group norms, but taking on shikshapadas, training rules, and acting according to them out of our personal growing emotional positivity and mental clarity. We start by trying out, with maybe still a lot of question marks and doubts, but definitely adjusting our lives out of our inner motivation. This phase Bhante has dubbed as 'provisional Going for Refuge'. And when we keep this going seriously and long enough, there comes a point at which the dharma is more and more becoming the centre of our lives and motivation, and we are able to decide this is how we will live on henceforth. And this is of course 'effective Going for Refuge'.

Now, according to traditional FWBO lore, ethnic Going for Refuge is typically found at the regulars level, provisional Going for Refuge with the mitras, and order members are distinguished by their effective Going for Refuge. But I think things are not that simple.

First, these are not three different and clearly demarcated levels, but rather three different mental attitudes, all three are still present in my mind, and I cannot help seeing them operating in others also. Our motives are mixed, we often act just as group members - luckily ours is an exceptionally positive group - , at times we have question marks and doubts, and only at our best moments we act out of inner clarity and positivity. These days [ie, in 2003] in Shabda we find ample evidence of rampant doubts and question marks within the order, and I think it even possible to meditate regularly, to be ethically decent and generally to be a 'good' order member when doing all this mainly in compliance to group norms. The only thing we can do about all this is working at keeping effective Going for Refuge the dominating attitude.

Second, this view about which level represents which attitude in Going for Refuge was formulated by Bhante very early on in the history of the movement, when the level of spiritual maturity was far lower than it is nowadays. When I hear some old stories, I have a feeling that some who become mitras nowadays are going for refuge far more effectively than was required to become an order member thirty years ago. And when I look at the practice of the majority of the mitras in Gent - including also the friends who will become mitras at next Wesak - I can testify the dharma is at the centre of their lives, they have no substantial doubts, and they have clearly decided this is how they will live henceforth - so they go for refuge effectively. Provisional Going for Refuge seems to be the province of some regulars and the people who came along very recently, and so is ethnic Going for Refuge..

I honestly think that effective going for refuge is no longer mainly limited to the order members and mitras approaching ordination. The old clear-cut demarcation lines do no longer obtain, and this has far-reaching consequences for the working of the movement. Bhante has always insisted, and very rightly so, that Buddhist movements should be run by committed people. In the early years the required level of commitment, stability and dharma knowledge was found only in order members, so we became a movement in which controls were kept tightly in the order. For a long time this has been a source of stable growth, but now it is becoming counter-productive. The great mass of effective Going for Refuge outside the order needs outlets to express itself, and it is noticeable that the most vigorous situations in the movement are mostly those in which mitras and committed friends are taking serious responsibilities. And instead of seeing this as threat or an exception to be avoided as much as possible, we should encourage it and create opportunities for it.

As the demarcation lines have gone, I think we need to get rid of the aura of exclusivity around being an order member and around the order. We order members are definitely not a special breed of Buddhists, we do not come back from our ordination retreats as new beings - in those of us who did not return as stream entrants the old person has not died at all! Maybe in the isolation of an ordination retreat we can whip ourselves up to believe this, but as soon as we are back in normal circumstances the old person just takes over - with post-ordination blues as a result. I sincerely hope the new ordination (non)-process will start dealing with this, and take down that wall, a bit in analogy with the dismantling of the old mitra system - which had a strongly invigorating effect on most of our centres.

Where does this leave us order members? When we no longer have the monopoly on effective Going for Refuge, are no longer running the show, and are no longer a special breed, where do we stand? Well, I see the order as the growth point of a movement which has set out to live an bring the dharma in forms which fit in with our culture, and we welcome into it those whose effective Going for Refuge is sufficiently intense, stable and mature to allow them to function at that growth point in our collective process of spiritual development. As for those of us who are already in the order, this means we have to keep growing, otherwise we will be overtaken and left behind. A tree has to grow to full maturity, and if we content ourselves with stagnating at the point we have reached, we are turning ourselves into a kind of bonsai order member - very decorative maybe, but rather useless this world needs more from its trees and order members.

In keeping growing we will be able to do what is most needed : instead of concentrating on running things ourselves, it will often be far more effective to concentrate more on being a kalyana mitra to all those who are ready to do their bit of work, and to operate as much as possible as givers of inspiration rather than as managers. To some characters such as mine letting-go of control does not come naturally, but it is a fine exercise in letting go of self-view - and maybe also a bit of a test of how seriously we are working at that. This does not mean we should stop doing things ourselves, there is quite a lot we still may have to take on, the need is to change our attitudes in this respect.

And of course, it is very unlikely we will in this life run out of personal growth opportunities. In our line of business, full maturity is Awakening for the sake of all beings, so we may kept busy for a few more lives or kalpas. But according to our teacher the first decisive step in that process is not that far off: real Going for Refuge, Stream Entry or the Awakening of the Bodhicitta. I still think, as I wrote a year ago, in the long run effective Going for Refuge is sustainable only when our perspectives are not limited to good meditations, good actions and being a good order member generally, but go for the next step in realising the full vision of the Buddha: Awakening, for the sake of all beings. In other words, in order to stay effectively Going for Refuge, we have to set out for that real Going for Refuge, not just by ritually repeating the words, but by acting on it, however inadequate our stumbling steps may seem. And only that, I think, makes us into real order members.

A Note on Revision of Bhante's Teachings

A couple of Shabdas ago Saccanama started a thread on the need of having a fresh look at Bhante's teachings. I intended to send some reflections on this topic also, but this article illustrates how I look at this question, so a short notice at the end of it will do.

Over the 16 years I have been involved in the FWBO, 9 of them as an order member, I have read extensively in Bhante's enormous output of books, talks, etc. In them I have found a lot of very inspiring insights for my life as a committed Buddhist in post-industrial Western Europe at the turn of the 21st century, and very little I did fundamentally disagree with - his interpretation of the Buddhist tradition about women and the spiritual life being the only instance coming to mind now. But especially recently I have noticed there are quite a few bits and pieces which do not fit any more. And when looking closely at them, it turns out they are sometimes just expressions of Bhante's personality or even idiosyncrasies or, more often, they were said in situations which are quite different from the present one.

So I have started to read Bhante with the eye of higher criticism. When I come across something which does not seem to fit, I ask a few questions, such as:

- in how far may this be an expression of the author's personality?
- who were the people to whom he said this?
- what were their needs at that time?
- in how far are these needs still present in our situation now?
- in how far are the means he recommended then still available or appropriate?
(This is just a sample; other similar or more detailed questions may be asked)

This is a powerful instrument for sifting, not the chaff from the corn - I have come across very little chaff in my reading of Bhante - but the universally valid general principles from what is circumstantial and no longer applicable in the present situation. It is not likely we will always all give the same answers to this kind of questions, but I think we have to ask them again and again, if we want to avoid ending up just parroting Bhante, with ironclad rules and immovable institutions cast in reinforced concrete - exactly the opposite of what he wanted us to be.

I have applied this approach in writing the above article, and I hope at least the questions will be useful for the further growth of our movement, even if we do not all agree on my answers.

Of the Shadows of the Past, and the Road That Goes On

Dhammaketu, Gent

Reprinted with permission from Articles Shabda May 2003

Yashomitra's article in February Shabda is the latest of a series of events - mainly the Guardian article and its aftermath, and a series of resignations or considerations to resign of senior OMs feeling out of tune with the movement - which indicate we have not yet fully left behind the growth pains and even traumas of the early years of the Movement.

Now there are basically two unhelpful ways of dealing with traumas, and one helpful one. It is unhelpful to repress, to refuse to see, to cover up what has gone wrong, but it is equally unhelpful to keep them alive by constantly analysing them, finding more and more details, and more and more grounds for feeling unhappy about them. Helpful is to acknowledge them (which may need a fair amount of analysis), accepting they are a shadow on our otherwise impressive Dharma heritage, and then finding ways to let go.

I have not gone personally through all that, I am second generation, ordained in 1995, so for me it is relatively easy to write this. It will evidently be much harder for those of us who have gone through it, especially if there are still old wounds not properly healed. But we all have to deal with the shadow of the past, if not because of personal traumas and pain, at least because Bhante's attitudes to sex permitted some wrong views to develop within the Movement, which influenced our ways of operating in an unhelpful way.

In this article I will first try to clarify my thoughts about these Shadows of the Past, and then reflect a bit on the Road that Goes On - hoping we will walk it all together.

1. THE SHADOWS OF THE PAST

The present discussion is limited very much to questions as whether Bhante acted unethically, and whether things where covered up, and who were the culprits in what went wrong. I will not go into the covering-up question, I take the publication of Yashomitra's article and the present possibility of discussing the whole area fully and openly as the uncovering of whatever might have been covered up. And as for seeking culprits - and having them pay for it - I think this is not a helpful attitude; maybe it is just an attitude we carried over from our Christian past, and which I think we’d better leave behind. I prefer a more constructive approach: frankly acknowledging what went wrong, redressing whatever can be redressed, healing whatever can be healed, and getting on with what has to be done, hopefully a bit wiser for the experience.

But the question of what went wrong is much farther-reaching than just the question of unskilful behaviour. There was evidently quite some unskilful behaviour going on in those early days, but to me it is far more important to dig up a few doubtful or downright wrong views, which were connected with the sexual mores of the day, and which influenced and hampered - and partly still do so - the way the movement operated.

1.1 unskilfullness on Bhante's part

Yashomitra's article put into the foreground the question whether or how far Bhante acted skilfully or unskilfully. This question is not unimportant, but I think it is essentially unanswerable, because skilfulness and unskilfullness are based on mental states, and the only judge in this is the person acting. Bhante says he acted out of friendliness, and whether this is true, or a rationalisation, or a mix of both, or whatever, he is the only one to know, and the only one to bear the karmic results, both good and bad. The question whether there was appetite present, whether a little or a lot, is really irrelevant: contrarily to our Christian conditioning, there is nothing wrong with appetite, it becomes unskilful only when indulged at the expense of others.

Vishvapani's moving article in the Threads section of April 2546 (see A Letter to Norman Fischer), which gives us a bit of a clue. It reads like the kind of story Bhante might have written himself, if he had been able to do so. I gather from it his sexual activities were largely the result of his needs for friendship and intimacy in a situation which must have been lonely to the extreme, and it makes understandable the idea that he really had the feeling of acting out of friendliness.

But there is more to it than the question of (un)skilful behaviour. It is quite evident in this situation he developed a blind spot - in stark contrast with his usual clarity - to things that were essentially in contradiction with his vision of the Dharma. In the first place, a blind spot for the projections of probably quite a few of the youngsters involved, and of their inevitable suffering when left behind. It must have been very deep indeed, looking at Yashomitra's article, written more than twenty years after the facts. I felt deeply sorry when I read it, in the first place for his suffering and the suffering of probably many others, but also for Bhante, for the OM who insulted Yashomitra when he left Aryatara, for Padmaraja, for all those wounded in Croydon and elsewhere. We cannot take away the suffering, but we can acknowledge it and respond to it with metta, which takes the aspect of karuna in this context.

And in this way I am sure we can help those who suffer(ed) to leave it behind.

1.2 Wrong Views

However detrimental to the Order in itself, these possibly unethical actions and the suffering they caused are not the last thing, but only the consequence of something even more disruptive: a set of doubtful and sometimes downright wrong views about sex and the spiritual life which developed implicitly - and sometimes explicitly - in the wake of the sexual practices, views to which Bhante developed a blind spot also, or maybe encouraged, tacitly or even explicitly.

As late as 1992 or 1993, on one of my first GFR retreats in Padmaloka, I heard someone affirming gay sex is better for the spiritual life than straight sex. By then I was well aware of Bhante's sexual preferences and former activities, and of the general (F)WBO attitudes to homosexuality, which I shared and still share - although I myself am as straight as they come.

But to me this statement sounded simply absurd, and I thought it was just one man's illusion, until later on I learned it was much more widespread, and at one time and in some places even was the dominant mood. Underneath and behind this opinion I discovered some other views, such as "homosexual sex is liberating" or "homosexual relationships are supportive of spiritual guidance".

Stated that bluntly, it is not hard to see they are simply wrong. Sex, whether hetero or homo or solo, is a hindrance to spiritual development, and a very strong one at that. In my experience, the best thing one can do with it is to keep it within ethical channels, and so avoid gross unskilful mental states - but even then there remain plenty of still quite gross but less evident mental attitudes present, such as mutual exploitation, violence, dependence, possessiveness....

It is only because the sexual experience is so violent that they seem relatively minor, but they are not. And they are in no way any good for furthering spiritual growth.

1.3 doubtful, or wrongly applied views

The above-mentioned views were rationalised by calling in other ones, some of them rather doubtful, and some applied wrongly. For instance, the view that homosexual sex is liberating was linked with the promotion of a doubtful entity called "manhood", and the view that homosexual relationships are supportive of spiritual growth/guidance was linked with a wrong application of an in-itself correct analysis of heterosexual relationships.

When doing the GFR retreat on Spiritual Friendship, I was thrilled with the subject (and still am), but I had no use whatsoever for some of the ideas proposed, such as "leaving the woman's world" and "developing manhood" - and not just because by then I was already 53. I felt then that it did not fit my life experience, but later on I began to see more clearly it is a very un-dharmic way of looking at things. It is making fixed things out of what are very complex mental and physical processes, which are widely different for different human beings. "Manhood" and "the woman's world" are, from a dharmic viewpoint, just as unreal as "soul" or "self", such 'dharmas' are nowhere to be found, and making them up and acting on them can be very misleading - and cannot but lead to suffering.

Such ideas may be or may have been helpful on the level of psychological development, but the development and liberation we strive for is of an altogether different quality. Using them beyond the sphere where they can be useful reduces the dharma to mere therapy, and using them to underpin the idea that homosexual activities are useful or even almost required to develop this "manhood" and thus further "spiritual" growth, is just asking for trouble.

Leading to trouble also were the wrong conclusions taken from Bhante's critique of the illusions our society has about romantic love and the family. I am a family man, and from a 35-year experience I can fully underwrite his misgivings about these two sources of all blessings and full happiness. This is probably the most widespread wrong view of our times, and as such a source of massive suffering. Single sex activities were the standard answer the movement developed to avoid or counter these illusions, and although they had their limitations they were by and large quite successful and spiritually helpful. But the same cannot be said about the illusion that homosexual relationships are, at least to a large extent, free from the faults of heterosexual ones, or even that they can support spiritual development: holding those views is also asking for big trouble.

1.4 A new light on the Croydon crisis

Rereading Yashomitra's article, the thought struck me that the FWBO’s Croydon crisis may have been the ultimate consequence of the wrong views we are reviewing here. This crisis, in all likelihood, was not just Padmaraja turning a guru and manipulating the Croydon sangha to this end, as it is usually presented, and as I saw it up to now. Yashomitra's description of the way he was treated (corroborated with what I heard before over the years from first-hand witnesses, mainly my good friend and kalyana mitra Bodhimitra, and my ordination brother Dhammasena and his wife Vijayasri) made me see the basic creed of Padmaraja's Croydon must have been this set of wrong views: homosexual Buddhism as the pinnacle of spiritual development, and developing "manhood" as paramount to developing transcendental Insight. They were present and must have done some harm elsewhere in the Movement also, but in Croydon they were applied undiluted and rigorously.

No wonder they left such deep wounds, even after all those years.

1.5 Men, women and the spiritual life.

It looks very probable that Bhante's sexual preferences have had a bearing on one of the most controversial issues in the Order: the question of the ability of women for the spiritual life. He has regularly pointed out that, according to the unanimous Buddhist tradition, women are at a handicap in leading the spiritual life. The fact is there, of course, but what does it mean?

According to the same unanimous tradition, the Earth is constituted of four continents around Mount Sumeru, which is 80, 000 yojanas high, roughly 400,000 km., and therefore well beyond the orbit of the moon. This example highlights the fact that not all tradition, even if held unanimously, is dharma: it has been clothed in the representations of the world current in the cultures and the times in which it spread, and sifting out dharma from culture has been the main task Bhante took on when he founded the Order and the Movement.

In fulfilling this task he has been hugely efficient, but on this point I am afraid he failed to do so. For in all the said cultures women were held to be second class beings - as, by the way, they were also in our culture up to a century ago. Among the Indian Aryans, they could not be warriors and they were too impure to be priests, in China they could not be Confucian scholars, so they had no part in the groups which made the spiritual discoveries of the Axial Age, and thus appeared as incompetent in such higher matters. All of this is culture, not dharma.

Dharma is the frank statement of the Buddha, made without any reservations or additions whatever, that women can, when they lead the spiritual life fully, reach as well as men the four aryan levels, from Stream-entry all the way up to Arahantship. And we have the Therigatha as a witness to their success. But this went so strongly against the grain of cultural preconceptions that very soon they were put back in their place, and pushed to the fringe of spiritual life, or even pushed out entirely, and so the truth of the cultural preconceptions was established again: everybody could see that women were no good for the spiritual life, that this was a men's business really. (Much of this is just jumping at the eye, as soon as one starts reading the relevant texts through the eye of higher criticism. I intended to do this for this article, but it takes some research I had no time for, because of the threatening deadline. So expect a sequel on this subject soon.)

And it is fairly easy to see why in this question the Buddha was right and the later tradition wrong. Just as there is not such a dharma as (superior) "manhood" there is not such a dharma as (inferior) "womanhood". Both men and women are just very complex bundles of processes, of skandhas, and for both of them the core processes are mental, at the level of the samskaras.

Both men and women have the same work to do: getting out of greed, hatred and delusion, and developing their positive counterparts. And I honestly fail to see any difference between men and women at this level.

There is a difference, though, but only at the material, rupa, level. Rupa is inextricably linked with the mental processes, but does not dominate them at all, at least not when one learns to handle the mental processes, which is what the spiritual life is about. The remaining, and real, difference is that rupa can influence mental processes in different ways, because of differences in hormones and brain functioning, but this is really a difference at the surface, not at the core of the matter, and it becomes more and more negligible the more one is effective in the spiritual life, i.e. the more one learns to handle the mental processes towards giving, love and clarity.

Happily, Bhante must somehow have seen there is no difference at the core, when founding a unified Order. But it looks later on the surface differences were overstressed, and when the single-sex principle was carried through so rigorously it almost developed into "apartheid" between men and women. This may have been a needed skilful means in the formative years of the movement, when the pioneers were learning to handle mental processes, but I hope most of us by now have developed this skill so far we can have a fresh look at it, as I intend to do further on.

2. THE ROAD THAT GOES ON

So having - hopefully - disposed of the shadows of the past, or at least indicated how we could handle them, I turn to the real subject of this article: what to do next? And there is an enormous amount to be done, not least because -

2.1 Our world desperately needs the dharma.

Greed, hatred and delusion are as rampant as they ever have been, but our world has lost its instruments to do something about them. Traditional religion, including traditional Buddhism, have been out-competed by science, technology and consumption, and so have lost their impact on society. The materialist "religions" such as Marxism and consumerism cannot fill the hole, nor does the fundamentalist revivalism in Christianity and Islam, who merely go back to the externals, not to the positive inspiration behind them, and preach hatred instead. And the whole of humanity is heading, in a mad race of greed, into ecological disaster and maybe into its own self-destruction.

To this madness I see only one possible remedy: the realistic and clear vision of the Buddha, with its penetrating insight in the functioning of the mind and its effective instruments to do something about it. This I see as an inestimable surplus value over any other teaching, analysis or way of life I have tried out before in my life (mainly: Christian monasticism, rational philosophy, Marxism, ecological life, and political action), and, having it tried out myself, I am confident it will work with other human beings also. But our world needs the Dharma not dressed up in the garb of pre-industrial oriental cultures - this can appeal only to a fringe minority - it needs to be translated into our (post-) industrial ways of thinking and living. And this exactly is what Bhante has set out to develop.

2.2 Bhante's position as our teacher.

So to me there is no shred of doubt possible about this: in Bhante's teaching there is such a wealth of clear thinking about the essence of the Dharma, such a wealth of insight into the practical applications, and such a supporting setup of institutions, all of it geared to the situation and the mentality of the industrial world. The consequences which were the result of his blind spots and human shortcomings are just a shadow on all this, but in no way diminish its value. They can easily be removed, and in doing so his teaching is not weakened, but strengthened. No other teacher I know of combines the same breadth with the same depth, and I would not be surprised if future generations recognise him as the most important Buddhist teacher of the twentieth century.

With many others, I deplore he has not spoken out explicitly about the shadows of the past, but I take his returning to brahmacarya himself and his renewed urge to us to move in that direction as an implicit distancing of them. And somehow I feel the Croydon debacle may have been a decisive element in this change of attitude, which to me is his real message in this matter.

2.3 A fresh look at our institutions.

Our Movement has largely been shaped by Bhante, so it is not surprising his personal preferences at times may have had a disproportional - but not necessarily negative - influence.

Perhaps it is for this reason that the standard Order Member seems to read literature, to go to art galleries, to have Blake on his bookshelf, to read the more imaginative Mahayana Sutras - and if one reads Greek philosophy instead, has no eye for visual arts, has the Bible and the Quran on one's bookshelf, and prefers the Pali and Prajnaparamita texts one can sometimes get the feeling of being a bit of an oddity as an Order Member. But Bhante himself has urged time and time again we should be individuals, not clones of a teacher, so we may need to have a look at our institutions and habits to see what is just Bhante, and to develop more oddness where it is called for.

The above examples are perfectly innocuous, but this mechanism has played also with respect to Bhante's sexual preferences and the views associated by them. Here I will limit myself to just one area which many of us feel the need of looking into, the "single sex principle".

Building further on my analysis of the fundamental identity of men and women with respect to the core business of the spiritual life but different angles at the surface, I think it remains sensible to provide some single sex activities. But contrarily to the accepted wisdom of our movement, the more we grow spiritually the less - underline, please! - this may be necessary! And the strict and almost mechanically applied apartheid from the mitra level onward needs to be broken down. I have no simple answer to what should be single sex and what not, we probably will need to work it out experimentally. Some activities are more likely to stay single sex, communities for one; but it may surprise you to hear intensive meditation retreats need not be at all - as I experienced to my own surprise on Varamitra's brilliant Dutch winter retreats. Doubtless this is because on them we worked so intensively at the core level at developing positive samskaras, that the surface effects lost most of their hold for the duration of the retreat.

Especially at the Order level something needs to be done. I hear that in bigger Centres Order Members who are not involved in Centre work may live almost their whole Order life without any contact with Order Members of the opposite sex, except for the meagre 4 days every two years at the mixed Convention. The newish Order Forums I experience as helpful in this respect, we could try having a longer mixed Convention (seven days each women - mixed - men?), and we could do with some mixed Order weekends also.

2.4 Taking our institutions further.

As Bhante pointed out frequently enough: because of the samsaric pull, standing still is sliding back. As long as we are not an Order of predominantly Stream-entrants, our task is to move on.

In March Shabda I pointed out this implies we need to go for a higher spiritual goal than just being good Buddhists and healthy human beings (another dharma nowhere to be found), we need to develop Transcendental Insight itself. And this has implications for our institutions.

The first 35 years of the Movement - I will call it the Bhante period - was essentially geared to developing an Order of committed individuals, taking the Dharma as their life guide. And it has been a spectacularly successful period: we have a large Order, an even larger Movement, and most of us are very different from what we would have been without this all, and the difference is unambiguously to the credit side. But our efforts and our successes have largely been limited to the psychological level, to building only the foundation for what the spiritual life really is for: Transcendental Insight, and our institutions are essentially serving this need.

Do not expect me to say now they have become obsolete; they will be needed probably for most of us for a long time to come. But when we mark up our goal, they will not be sufficient any longer as the growth point of the movement.

For this we need a new instrument: vihara-style communities, where people commit themselves to live, not just for an experimental period, but indefinitely - with the resolve of the Buddha who decided he would not leave the foot of the Bodhi Tree until death or until Awakening, whichever came first. (Luckily for us, Awakening came first). What is needed is full commitment, not for a limited period with the perspective of time-off for a sabbatical afterwards - and of course no time-off for boyfriends or girlfriends. As far as I can see, none of the present initiatives really fulfill the bill, not even the very laudable experiments at vihara-style life in Guhyaloka and elsewhere.

Even a few pioneers starting this could have an immense uplifting influence on the Order and the Movement - not just by living the life itself, but also by offering the occasion to share their life, for a weekend, a week, a month... to those of us who - like me - are not yet up to, or not in the possibility of leading this kind of life ourselves. This means the viharas have to be established not too far away from the inhabited world, hereby following the example of our Christian (and the early Buddhist) monastic tradition. The project Varamitra has set out for is of this kind, and I hope many of us will follow his example.

Unfortunately, to the great majority of us this is almost certainly not what we are ready for yet, but there are other ways of working toward Insight. Insight is Wisdom-Compassion fully interlinked, and one can work towards it from both sides. Vihara life is more to the Wisdom side, working among and for beings may be an alternative more from the Compassion side. And here I see two wide-open possibilities.

One is developing TBRL in the direction of vocational activities: old age care, hospice work....

This will have no easy start, as it needs highly trained people, and a commitment over a far longer period of time than what is usual at the moment, comparable to the commitment in the future viharas. I am glad some initiatives are already taken in that direction, and I hope they are the first steps to what in the long run should become the dominating form of TBRL in the Movement.

A second alternative is a consequence of what I wrote earlier about the world desperately needing the Dharma. During the Bhante period of the Movement, our Centres were - and still are - largely inward turned. All energies went into deepening the commitment of those coming to them. One could say, almost without exaggeration, the Centres were essentially the breeding ground for new Order Members. Consequently, almost all who came along and were not ready for that intensity dropped out sooner or later - both Friends, and Mitras who did not go on to ordination. Up to now, this was almost inevitable, because the danger of watering-down was lurking around the corner.

But I think we have come to a stage of development where we safely can start catering for the needs of those we had to leave behind before, and have a kind of "Buddhism-lite" activities suited to what they can handle. This our Beginners Nights and even our Regulars Nights cannot provide: they are far too much embedded in our habitual vision and so are just temporary stepping stones to higher activities. From what I hear, Buddhafield is working along those lines already, but we need much more: not just reaching fringe groups in our society, but offering something which can attract people from far more standard settings. One big warning here: this will work only if we set it up as a gift to the participants, not as a recruiting ground for the Order.

And an even bigger warning: it will work only if we keep our intensity intact - which means going on upgrading our spiritual life.

I hope these reflections will be of some use to you, reader. It was hard work getting them a bit coherently into my word processor, and some of them arose while writing, so they are not all as mature as I would like them to be. I will be glad to hear of any thought or reflection which might improve on them.

My e-mail is: dhammaketu [at] gmail.com

May all beings be happy.

Bad Press & its Net Effect

‘Bad karma’ read the headline on the front of The Guardian’s tabloid supplement in late October 1997. It was emblazoned across a picture of Sangharakshita, founder of the Friends of the Western Buddhist Order, who the paper described as: ‘the man at the centre of the sex and suicide scandal that is haunting Britain’s Buddhists’. Inside was a substantial article by the paper’s religious correspondent, Madelaine Bunting, based on a few case studies presenting bad experiences within the fwbo which, it suggested, were cause for concern about this Buddhist movement.

Bunting first contacted the fwbo about six weeks before the article appeared, with an apparently innocent request to interview Sangharakshita which he declined, because he is now in semi-retirement. In 1996 Bunting had written an article on the New Kadampa Tradition of Tibetan Buddhism, which many observers considered partisan and sensationalised. It soon became clear that Bunting’s interest in the fwbo came from her contacts with its critics in the British Buddhist community, and that the article she had in mind would itself be critical of Sangharakshita, his teachings and the fwbo. Nevertheless the fwbo communications office worked closely with Bunting as she researched her piece and maintained friendly relations with her.

Bunting’s first case study was a former member of the wbo who described a sexual involvement with Sangharakshita in the 1970s and alleged that it had included an element of coercion. The second case was ‘Tim’, a pseudonym for a man who had been practising within the fwbo for 10 years. He was first involved at the Croydon Buddhist Centre (for a full account of these difficulties see page 56) and he described having been induced into homosexual activity with the Centre’s chairman. Finally there was Matthew, who had also worked at the cbc in the 1980s and who killed himself three years after leaving. There were extensive quotations from Matthew’s diaries, which complained of the oppressive atmosphere at the Centre, the implication being that this had contributed to his suicide.

Individuals from the fwbo were quoted as arguing that the cbc’s difficulties had arisen for specific reasons and that safeguards had been instituted against a recurrence. Bunting suggested, however, that certain teachings by Sangharakshita could be used to legitimise abuse and coercion. She gave a brief account of his teachings on the family (which she thinks the fwbo considers ‘addictive and neurotic’); the respective spiritual aptitude of men and women (characterised, according to her, by ‘a misogynistic biological determinism’); and sex, implying that homosexuality was considered somehow superior to heterosexuality.

Finally three individuals, whom Bunting described as ‘senior British Buddhists’ were quoted criticising the fwbo. Buddhist commentator Stephen Batchelor suggested that the fwbo is a ‘potentially closed system’; Ken Jones, a long-term activist in the engaged Buddhist movement, went further, and called it ‘deviant’. While the third figure, who wished to remain anonymous, described it as a ‘westernised semi-intellectual pot-pourri of Buddhism’.

Bunting comments that these stories are hard to match up with virtues she also sees in the fwbo: the ‘sincere idealism’ of its members; its charitable work; its innovative approach to business; its influence as a voice for Buddhism in British society at large, and its ‘respectability’. Publication of the article has caused much interest and some consternation, both inside and outside the fwbo. The Guardian received many letters both defending and criticising the fwbo – though only one was printed on either side of the debate. The bbc World Service Religious Department, which has worked closely with the fwbo in the past, broadcast a debate around the article between Madelaine Bunting, Subhuti (a senior Order member) and academic commentator, Elizabeth Harris.

Shortly after publication, the fwbo communications office submitted a complaint to The Guardian’s editor arguing that the article contained many inaccuracies. It suggested that Bunting had presented a distorted view of the fwbo’s teachings, ignoring the alternative interpretations of those teachings that had been given to her by people from the fwbo in interviews and in writing, which contradicted hers. It also said that the article contained a highly selective presentation of the views of other Buddhists – many of whom it suggested have sympathy with the fwbo’s work. It argued that Bunting had used the figures she had quoted to question the legitimacy of the fwbo as a Buddhist tradition, but that she had not substantiated these points, nor given the fwbo an opportunity to respond. In addition, the editorial presentation tended to sensationalise the material. For instance a headline referred to the fwbo as a ‘cult’ while Bunting herself had told the communications office that she did not regard it as such.

Bunting acknowledged there was a case for putting another side of the story, and agreed to let someone from the fwbo write a response. This was a virtually unprecedented concession – so much so that when The Guardian’s Readers’ Editor heard of it, he was at pains to emphasise that the paper was not formally admitting fault and that this should not establish a precedent for future complaints. The paper’s syndication service continued to carry the story, and this led to its appearance in several other countries.

Taking up the paper’s offer, Vishvapani wrote a column attempting to place the fwbo in a historical context. It was an evolving tradition, he suggested, that was learning through experience how to practice Buddhism in the West. While admitting that the fwbo had experienced difficulties, he suggested it was a sincere, careful and largely successful attempt to create a western Buddhist tradition. The following week Elizabeth Harris wrote another column. She expressed appreciation of the fwbo’s work and agreed that difficulties were inevitable in any religious community. The fwbo functions independently of Asian traditions, and Harris expressed concern that it should not ‘stand alone’ in isolation from other Buddhists.

Meanwhile a debate about issues raised by the article sprang up on Internet discussion groups devoted to Buddhist subjects. A wide-ranging and sometimes acrimonious debate ensued that included people from the fwbo as well as critics. Vishvapani, one of the protagonists in this debate from the fwbo commented: ‘These days if a controversy blows up it always gets taken up on the Internet and that is true of Buddhist controversies. On the positive side it means that there is a public forum where issues can be aired – you can put your side of the story. But, being entirely unedited and uncensored, such debates can also contain things that are untrue or unethical and, in any case, they are inevitably
inconclusive.’

Finally INFORM, a government-funded academic department within the London School of Economics organised a forum including Madelaine Bunting and Guhyapati of the fwbo communications office as part of a seminar on relations between New Religious Movements and the media. Bunting described the difficulties in her position as a religious correspondent – the intense pressure to meet deadlines and write a good story; and the problem of evaluating conflicting information about very different religious traditions. She reiterated her concerns about certain aspects of the fwbo, and said she stood by what she had written, but also expressed her respect for those Order members she had met.

Guhyapati outlined the fwbo’s experience of working with Bunting on the story, emphasisng that it had tried to avoid being defensive in the face of hostile media attention, and to maintain good relations with Bunting herself. He described the range of responses within the Order ­– from offence, to indifference, to acknowledgment that the article contained some valid criticisms. Academics from inform commented that they were impressed by the reasonable tone of the debate and expressed a hope that other religious movements could learn from the fwbo’s avoidance of a ‘siege mentality’.

Within the fwbo itself the article sparked considerable reflection and debate particularly within Shabda, the Order’s confidential journal, and a wide-ranging consideration of what could be learnt from this media criticism. One lesson is that the legacy of difficulties between British Buddhist groups cannot be ignored, and that it has generated an atmosphere of some misunderstanding and mistrust. Similarly there has also been discussion between the fwbo and other British Buddhists about the accusations. Stephen Batchelor stressed that while he stood by his comments, he had also said much that was favourable but that was not quoted. Likewise he said his criticism of the fwbo as a ‘potentially totalitarian system’ could apply to Buddhist organisations in general.

What effect will this episode have on the fwbo’s long-term development? Subhuti, a leading member of the Order, was quoted in the article as saying he had been waiting for a journalist to stumble on the story of the cbc. He has since commented: ‘Naturally it is unpleasant to experience such publicity, which was unjust in so many ways. However, we must make something of it. It is an opportunity to examine our movement and to clarify misunderstandings and disagreements with those other Buddhists who are critical of us. Above all, it is a spiritual test. Are we able to respond positively, with clarity and friendliness? If we are, what has happened can only strengthen us individually and as a movement.’

Vishvapani

First Published in Dharma Life 12