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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!

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.

Sexual Evolution

Dhammadinna
First published in Dharma Life 8, Summer 1998

In 28 years as a Buddhist, Dhammadinna, has seen or done it all. She recalls experiments in the Friends of the Western Buddhist Order around sex, celibacy and lifestyle and discusses how its collective experience has matured.

In the late Sixties I lived in a large commune of ten adults and four children. Some friends lived in a much looser commune where people didn't even have a room of their own, but changed rooms and partners on a nightly basis. The Sixties was a time of both genuine idealism and great naivety. Some of us believed, at least for a while, that anything was possible and that we could change ourselves and the world through love.

This was the era of free love, jazz, poetry and drugs; the development of humanistic psychology and the cult of free expression; the re-emergence of the women's movement and the advent of gay pride; the greater availability of birth control, especially the pill; and, from a background culture of drugs, the explosion of LSD to a wider public. It was a time of exploration and experimentation in many areas of life - political, philosophical, mystical and religious, psychological, artistic, musical, social, chemical and not least sexual.

Sexual liberation meant hedonistic, guilt-free sex: heterosexual, homosexual and bisexual, with one or a number of partners. From both humanistic psychology and drug experimentation came attitudes such as 'letting it all hang out', 'going with the flow' and 'if you feel like doing it, do it'. The positive side of this was a willingness to explore and experiment, taking nothing for granted. There was also a darker side induced by confusion, bad trips and sometimes descent into addiction, alienation and despair.

When Sangharakshita returned to England in the early Sixties, after 20 years in India as a Buddhist monk, it was with people from this counter culture that he found himself working. As the incumbent at the Hampstead Buddhist Vihara, he encountered a much more respectable section of society. But increasingly, the people he taught came from the 'counter-culture', and their energy and radicalism seemed to offer a basis for engagement with the transformative teachings of Buddhism.

In 1967 Sangharakshita founded the Friends of the Western Buddhist Order (FWBO) with the aim of developing ways of practising Buddhism that were appropriate in the modern world. From these beginnings a Buddhist movement developed. During the 1960s and '70s, the numbers involved in the FWBO were small. We were a 'circle of friends' attempting to put our ideals into practice and develop a new society based on Buddhist principles. Many of us were young and were willing to question and challenge all areas of life.

But times have changed, and some of the things we did in the past have given rise to controversy. Perhaps it is time to take stock; to look back on those early experiments, and consider what was learnt and what has been left behind. This means understanding the attitudes and activities of previous decades in the context of their time. We should be aware of the tendency to see the past through the eyes of the present: a time affected by Aids and by discussion of sexual abuse, as well as by political correctness and gender politics.

When I first encountered the FWBO in 1970 I was 24 and a hippy. I was in an 'open marriage' and, although I had personal sexual difficulties, I subscribed to the ethos that sex was a form of communication and it was open to each person to decide what they wanted to do. In my commune people had changed or shared partners, and I was not prejudiced about homosexuality or lesbianism, having friends of both persuasions.

In the FWBO people were of differing ages but many were young like myself and shared my ideas. When I first met Sangharakshita, he cut an unusual figure. He was dressed in orange robes, but had long hair and wore a Tibetan mala. He was also friendly and informal, although with an obvious air of spiritual authority and wisdom. Early retreats could be quite wild with people dancing and drumming on the lawns, engaging in drama or dream groups, forming and leaving relationships, as well as engaging in serious spiritual practice

Sangharakshita initially gave us a great deal of leeway, affirming our enthusiastic search for Truth, but he also knew when to begin to demand more. On the summer retreat of 1972 he introduced triple periods of meditation, long periods of silence, and an emphasis on mindfulness and reflection. After this retreat many of us decided to take our spiritual lives more seriously and formed the first residential communities around Pundarika, our centre in north London. And in 1973 I was ordained into the Western Buddhist Order.

Early in my involvement I wanted to go away and meditate for a few days and I chose a Tibetan Buddhist centre. The people there were friendly but referred to rumours concerning Sangharakshita and sex. I was not at all bothered; it didn't occur to me to check with Sangharakshita whether they were true. It struck me as a fuss about nothing. I had made a spiritual connection with Sangharakshita, and through him with Buddhism. He had befriended and guided me. I knew he wore robes for ceremonial reasons but less and less so otherwise.

I did not think of Sangharakshita as a traditional bhikkhu, and at that time I wasn't particularly interested in traditional forms of Buddhism. I trusted him. I had always found him willing to talk to me about all aspects of my life. He was sympathetic and helpful to me when my marriage broke up, encouraging when I practised celibacy, and understanding when I gave it up.

As our practice deepened my contemporaries and I in the WBO began to see that sex could cause a lot of confusion and be a distraction from Buddhist practice. Moreover we were beginning to realise that the romantic ideal - so prevalent in our western conditioning - could lead to dependency, and work against the development of friendships and a harmonious sangha (spiritual community). Reflections such as these led to the establishment of single-sex activities. This began with retreats for men and for women, but developed into the establishment of single-sex communities and 'Right Livelihood' working projects. By the mid-Eighties we came to feel that single-sex activities in all areas of practice were most conducive to spiritual growth.

Our decisions to practise within these single-sex situations and to question our sexual involvements and attitudes arose out of a desire to break our dependency on the opposite sex. This kind of exploration, however, was specific to the West; it arose from the need we felt to discover which lifestyles were most helpful at a time when conventions were being challenged. It wouldn't be appropriate in a more traditional society, where it might be unacceptable and undermine social stability.

My open marriage had ended amicably in 1972. Through forming other friendships and meditating I had realised how dependent I was on my partner, and I wanted to be more independent. I embarked on further relationships but soon became aware that I still had a tendency to emotional dependence. I wanted to experience myself single and alone, responsible for myself, with the time and energy to devote to my friendships and my spiritual practice. I also suffered from sexual guilt and I wanted some time free from that sort of conflict.

For me, moving to a single-sex lifestyle went along with giving up sex. For others it meant engaging in same-sex sex. Some people did this for a while, perhaps realising they were more bisexual than they had thought, while others discovered their true orientation was towards their own gender. Other people remained heterosexual, and still others became celibate. We were trying to break taboos, perhaps derived from Christian and social attitudes to sex, which sometimes resulted in irrational guilt. Some people began to speculate that homosexuality might be in some way more 'spiritual' than heterosexuality, because it was less likely to lead to domesticity and settling down. We also discussed whether spiritual friendship and sexual involvement could go together.

To what extent did these ideas derive from Sangharakshita? In assessing this I have looked back at transcripts of the seminars he led between the mid-Seventies and mid-Eighties. These were intensive and intimate retreats when Sangharakshita led the participants through a Buddhist text, discussing its meaning and its relevance to our spiritual lives. Seminars also provided an opportunity to discuss anything of interest to us. Sexual relationships, sexual orientation, gender, friendship, community life, and lifestyle were all crucial issues as we set up our new Buddhist movement. They were discussed openly and frankly.

These transcripts show how careful was Sangharakshita's thinking. In one discussion he was asked if he thought homosexuality was more 'spiritual' than heterosexuality. He commented that we had to consult our own experience and be honest, and he was not sure that there was less psychological projection in homosexuality. However, he suggested, men often fear expressing their feelings for each other in case they are seen as sexual, and this fear can lead to a general emotional repression. He thought that a man having strong feelings towards another man, even if those feelings are tinged with sexual attraction, need not mean he is homosexual. Sangharakshita concluded that spiritually speaking there is probably not much difference between heterosexual and homosexual relationships, and that we must be equally mindful in either. What is important, he said, is that we cultivate friendship, which will help us to leave sex behind.

In 1981 experimentation took another direction at one FWBO centre where a number of people decided to engage in friendly heterosexual sex outside committed relationships - in other words, promiscuity. This experiment involved very few people, did not last long, and soon people returned to being single, or celibate, or in settled relationships. Perhaps in response, Sangharakshita gave a lecture in 1982 on the virtue of fidelity. The lecture covered fidelity to oneself, to ideals and to other people. Under fidelity to others came the question of sexual fidelity and Sangharakshita outlined three possible modes: monogamy, promiscuity and celibacy. Each, he suggested, has a healthy form and a neurotic form. By promiscuity he meant non-continuity of sexual partners, in other words serial monogamy. He warned that people should be alive to the difficulties of each approach, and seek to avoid the dangers of neurotic attachment, distraction and so on.

Sangharakshita has always encouraged celibacy. He has stressed that people with a natural desire to be chaste should not be encouraged into sexual relationships by others who might think this more normal. He has also urged his disciples, as they get older, to start thinking of moving towards chastity. In an interview in Golden Drum magazine on 'Sex and the Spiritual Life' (autumn 1987), Sangharakshita discussed the powerful, sometimes destructive nature of the sexual drive and the need for those on a spiritual path to invest less emotional energy in sexual relationships.

He also expressed pleasure that more people were taking the Anagarika precept, which enjoins chastity. He never urges anyone to take this precept and Order members need not be celibate. 'One is only asked to keep one's sex life at the periphery, or towards the periphery ... But if one can be celibate ... in a positive and healthy way, I'm sure that will enable one - other factors being equal - to develop spiritually more rapidly.'

During the late 1980s and early '90s more men and women Order members took the Anagarika precept. Becoming an Anagarika does not constitute a higher ordination but it involves the precept of abstention from sexual activity (abrahmacarya). Some Anagarikas have maintained this precept while others have ceased to be chaste and reverted to their previous status. It seems that being celibate is not easy in the West, as the culture that surrounds us is so concerned with sex.

Sangharakshita maintains, however, that the extent to which we are caught up in sexual activity and craving is a matter of degree. In this sense we are all celibate or non-celibate to some extent, and he said that he would like to see everyone in the FWBO progressively moving away from sexual craving, and becoming 'more and more celibate every day'.

These then were the attitudes and examples that informed my own approach to sex. When I decided to end my sexual relationship and give up sex, I initially saw this as a matter of taking 'time out', and the first couple of years were helpful. But as time passed I came to think sex was bad and unspiritual and that I should give it up for good. To do otherwise would have been to 'fall back'. But I had not taken a vow, so in reality I was free to choose whether or not to begin another sexual relationship. This became painful and confusing when I started to experience sexual desire again, but it was also illuminating as I began to understand the extent of my irrational sexual guilt.

Sangharakshita was understanding. He said it was important with any decision to keep the initiative and that perhaps I had lost touch with my reasons for choosing celibacy. Some time later I started a sexual relationship. Over the years I have had a number of sexual relationships, interspersed with sometimes quite long periods of being single. The periods when I was able to be alone and still feel contented and happy have been important to me and helped my relationships to become less neurotic. At the moment I am single and happy with this state.

These days the FWBO is much larger: at first the whole Order could sit in one room and discuss its future in terms of principle and practice. It is harder to see what sexual attitudes in the FWBO currently are, except that they're varied. The average age of Order members has risen steadily, many of us have been practising for many years. We also attract more people with families, which has raised further issues. The emphasis on single-sex activities, community living and team-based Right Livelihood work has sometimes led people with families to feel marginalised.

This is an area of continuing discussion but recent years have seen many more family groups around FWBO centres. There is a creative tension in this area. On one hand we emphasise renunciation and 'going forth' from worldly life (with the institutions of the FWBO offering a practical means of doing this). On the other hand we need to help people in families to find ways of deepening their Buddhist practice.

I find it is now much easier to work with this tension. When I was a young Order member trying to set up communities and projects with few resources, I was sometimes alarmed if a team-member expressed a desire to have a baby. I could see the whole project collapsing. Now I find my greater life experience and maturity enable me to discuss such issues much more openly than in the past, and I can understand the experience of people with families much better.

Although there is now an undoubted ability to address such matters in the Order, sex and sexuality will continue to be an issue for a community that is neither lay nor monastic. In the FWBO there has always been discussion of sexual ethics - both in general terms and on specific issues. One key area is sexual relationships between Order members and the people they teach. Are these relationships exploitative? Can sex and spiritual friendship ever go together, or are they mutually exclusive?

Some people wonder if such relationships need to be governed by rules. But this would fail to express the spirit in which we approach ethical practice: we seek to understand the underlying principle expressed in the Buddhist ethical precepts, rather than proscribing particular actions. Furthermore in a Buddhist movement of the size and diversity of the FWBO - which is active in cultures as different as the modern us, India and South America - any attempt to dictate norms of behaviour could become enormously complex.

It is a mistake to regard an Order member in the same way as a therapist or a priest. An Order member is simply an individual who has made a decisive commitment to Buddhism, and who may express this by leading classes and retreats. However, people coming to learn will have expectations; and if sex is in the mix, it can be confusing. So this area needs careful scrutiny and discussion.

Personally I am convinced that the FWBO's exploratory approach to issues of sex and sexual relationships has been hugely helpful to me and my contemporaries. I have been involved in the FWBO for 28 years and have grown up within it. I have been both instrumental in and affected by its developing ethos. The FWBO's emphasis on spiritual friendship, going beyond emotional dependency, trying to make sexual relationships less central to one's life, thinking about ethics, and working towards celibacy have all had their effect on me.

I have been married, single, celibate, engaged in 'serial monogamy' and in periods of non-monogamy. I have tried to behave ethically and when I have failed I've tried to make amends. I have felt able to be open with my friends about sex and they have been honest with me. By working through strong feelings of irrational guilt about sex and Buddhist practice, I have freed up a great deal of energy. I certainly do not think everyone in the FWBO needs to experiment sexually. But I hope people feel they can be honest about who they are without incurring condemnation.

Particularly in the West, where there are so many options, we need to examine our sex-lives and make choices in accordance with our overall spiritual direction. As a result of our early explorations, we now have thriving single-sex teams and communities, which provide good conditions for serious Dharma practice. We have slowly - sometimes painfully - developed the maturity that enables people to discover their own path, and the lifestyle that best helps them to practise the Buddha's teaching.