This video, recently uploaded to the internet by the Dialogue Ireland website, is called ‘Going For Refuge’. It was made by BBC (East) and broadcast in the Eastern region of the UK on 12 November 1992, as part of BBC East’s ‘Matter of Fact’ series. It is about the organisaton formerly known as The Friends of the Western Buddhist Order (FWBO), which was rebranded in 2010 as the Triratna Buddhist Community (TBC). Its leader is Dennis Lingwood, known as Sangharakshita.
Dialogue Ireland goes on to add the following points of commentary:
In the introductory section of the video, the presenter says: ‘Critics from orthodox schools feel so strongly that Lingwood’s teachings break Buddhist rules on sexual conduct, and undermine family life that, for the first time, they have agreed to speak out.’ One of the teachings discussed (at 17:35) is:
‘ … if you set up communities … you abolish the family at a stroke … the single-sex community is probably our most powerful means of frontal assault on the existing social set-up.’ – Sangharakshita in seminar, http://www.ex-cult.org/fwbo/SsexAssault.htm
Another teaching discussed (at 20:25) is by Sangharakshita’s spokesman and second in command Alex Kennedy (“Subhuti”), originally published in the FWBO magazine Shabda in Sept 1986. See: http://www.ex-cult.org/fwbo/SubQuote.htm
‘Sexual interest on the part of a male Order member for a male mitra (novice) can create a connection which may allow kalyana mitrata (spiritual friendship) to develop. Some, of course, are predisposed to this attraction, others have deliberately chosen to change their sexual preferences in order to use sex as a medium of kalyana mitrata – and to stay clear of the dangers of male-female relationships without giving up sex’
Commenting on this teaching, Rev. Daishin Morgan, Abbot of Throssel Hole Priory in Northumberland, UK (http://www.throssel.org.uk/), said:
‘To me this is totally contrary to the Buddhist precepts, it’s totally contrary to the Buddhist scriptures, and it’s absolutely contrary to any sort of good practice. It to me is a form of manipulation.’
The BBC programme was the first time that criticism of the FWBO had been broadcast. Five years later, the Guardian newspaper also published a critical article called ‘The Dark Side of Enlightenment.’ on 27 October 1997 (http://www.ex-cult.org/fwbo/Guardian.htm).
One of the individuals interviewed in the documentary is the Buddhist scholar and former chairman of the English Sangha Trust Maurice O’Connell Walshe (1911-1998), one of the 20th Century’s most eminent British Buddhists. In 1968 (see my post on the development of monastic Buddhism in the UK), in relation to the scandal surrounding Sangharakshita’s fateful incumbency at the Hampstead Buddhist Vihara, Walshe was compelled to state “It is not only the right but the duty of true Buddhists to proclaim the genuine teaching and denounce imposters and spiritual demagogues.” Indeed, Walshe’s later influence on the publication of the critical FWBO FIles was presumably so significant as to warrant a posthumous dedication by the author on the document’s first page.
In the BBC documentary Walshe reads the infamous quote from Subhuti:
“Some are predisposed to this attraction. Others have deliberately chosen to change their sexual preferences in order to use sex as a medium of kalyana mitrata…”
He continues “… and then the best bit of all…”
“…to stay clear of the dangers of male-female relationships with out giving up sex.”
Walshe’s next comment encapsulates a view which is doubtlessly shared by a significant proportion of Britain’s Buddhist community who – despite the rebranding of its tarnished name to the Triratna Buddhist Order – still regard the FWBO with a combination of amusement and distaste: “Well.. I think if it wasn’t so serious this would all be pretty hilarious. But in fact it is, something I think, quite serious.”
Ex-Mitra
July 13, 2015
Kulananda’s assertion (see: letter to Guardian @ http://www.ex-cult.org/fwbo/Guardian.htm ) that unethical behaviour, specifically sexual, psychological and emotional abuse, only happened at one centre – ie, the Croydon centre – is blatantly untrue. I attracted the unwanted sexual attentions of same sex members of Sangharakshita’s order at another community/centre in 1978; and I and other mitras (meaning more committed fwbo/tbc followers and often workers) were sometimes brutally abused, psychologically and emotionally, at the same centre – far from Croydon – in the mid-1980’s.
In fact, the practice of bullying people, with aggressive, hostile, and often wildly inaccurate criticism, was adopted by many order members as a policy in the 1980’s: to prepare mitras for ordination into Sangharakshita’s order. It was given the euphemistic name of ‘feedback’ or ‘fierce friendship’. I, and other mitras who had asked for ordination, were viciously and relentlessly subjected to this kind of abuse – the purpose? To make us ‘more receptive to the order’ and thus ‘suitable candidates for ordination’! Unbelievably, this was the explanation given to me by at least one order member; I emphasise again: not at the Croydon centre.
Sangharakshita, and his chief disciple Subhuti, knew that this behaviour was going on – but did nothing to stop, or monitor, it. Indeed they quietly supported and approved of it.
I still suffer from ‘trust issues’, as a painful legacy of the ill-treatment I received at the hands of some members of Sangharakshita’s order. As ex-Yashomitra, in his now famous open letter pointed out: ‘Many people were damaged as a result of the way things were’; I know from past conversation that this was part of what he meant.
The fact that Sangharakshita’s order has never admitted that this sort of behaviour was commonplace, throughout UK fwbo/tbc centres, makes it much more likely that a new generation of order members, bearing an extreme agenda based on past procedures, will inaugurate a new wave of bullying and abuse, at some near future time. Those who do not learn from history …..
Please look elsewhere for classes and courses in Buddhism/meditation. Do not risk your mental and emotional wellbeing with Sangharakshita’s dangerous and irresponsible ‘order’.
A former veteran fwbo mitra
Adrian Chan-Wyles (PhD)
March 26, 2019
My teacher – Richard Hunn (1946-2006) assisted Mark Dunlop to escape from the FWBO house in Norfolk (I believe in the late 1980s) after suffering years of sexual abuse as a virtual prisoner. The FWBO then launched an intense terror campaign aimed at Richard and his family who lived in Norfolk at the time. Since that time, I have received a number of emails from both male and female former adherents of the FWBO – all claiming to be victims of sexual abuse. Furthermore, I was told the real reason Dennis Lingwood was deported from India in the 1960s – which I cannot write here.