The Friends of the Western Buddhist Order was founded in London in April 1967 with the first Ordinations into the Western Buddhist Order taking place the following year. There are now over 1300 Order members and thousands more Mitras and Friends all over the world, especially in India (where the FWBO is known as the TBMSG).
The FWBO emphasises the practice of Buddhism for the sake of the evolution and transformation of society and respects the whole tradition. It does not stress the adoption of a specific teaching lineage or school, nor preference their cultural trappings — language, liturgy or costume. It does not emphasise the traditional division between monks and laity. Ordination into the Western Buddhist Order is conferred to all postulants on the same basis — lived commitment to putting the dharma into practice. There are no higher Ordinations or empowerments and ‘spiritual hierarchy’ is based on depth of practice not formalised authority.
In terms of its position in the modern Buddhist world, the FWBO can be seen as having six distinctive emphases and five pillars.
Its six distinctive emphases are what makes the FWBO stand out from other traditions: it is ecumenical; it places emphasis on the centrality of the act of going for Refuge to the Three Jewels; it is a unified Buddhist Order (men and women are regarded as equal practitioners and teachers); Right Livelihood; the spiritual value of the arts; friendship, especially spiritual friendship.
Its Five Pillars are what drives the FWBO forward as a tradition: its ideas; practices; institutions; experiments; and its imagination. Amongst it’s more imaginative achievements is a program of Buddhist meditation teaching online, by Wildmind.
The FWBO has a significant body of meditation teaching experience and has eight residential Buddhism and meditation retreat centres in the UK alone. You can find out about a number of FWBO people though their personal websites or meet with many more at one of our public teaching centres. Current events around the world can be seen on the FWBO and TBMSG News website.
The main FWBO site describes the ideals of the FWBO, but by contrast you can read a critical look at how the FWBO is perceived in the wider Buddhist world by Vishvapani. You can find Dharma and meditation books by FWBO authors from Windhorse Publications and talks and lectures by FWBO teachers from Dharmachakra.
Amongst the many articles by FWBO writers, we recoomend Nagabodhi's reflections on what — if anything — the FWBO has learned from its approach in a retrospective on the FWBO’s history.
Buddhism is a living faith for millions of people worldwide and continues to be the state religion in several countries. As a cultural and philosophical entity — it is over 2,500 years old — it has become a rich and varied system of spiritual and social practice, philosophy, literature, art and architecture. Although a recognisable core of teaching is present in all schools, Buddhism has been elaborated and expanded upon by practitioners in countries like China, Japan, Korea, Tibet and Thailand.
Westerners only became aware of Buddhism during the European colonial expansion of the seventeenth and eighteenth centuries, but it was not until the end of the nineteenth century that Buddhism made any impact on Western soil. Even then, it was simply an exotic interest for specialists. In the nineteen-fifties and -sixties, however, Buddhism emerged from obscurity and began to be practiced publicly and seriously.
Westerners have found themselves in an unprecedented position, with increasing access to the whole Buddhist tradition and all of its schools. Never before in history have people had a choice between taking teaching from one of the Japanese Zen schools or one of the Tibetan schools — or both! — in the same town. Students face difficult questions about what theses schools have in common and upon what they disagree, what is essential to Buddhist practice and what is simply a cultural blossom.
Until the twentieth century, most Buddhists would really only know the literature and practices passed on amongst their own cultural group. Whilst it is true that Buddhist tolerance is a well-known and longstanding virtue, Westerners have inherited traditional philosophical disputes between ancient schools: the Hinayana and Mahayana movements (the term Hinayana — ‘Lesser Vehicle’ — is in itself derogatory) exist on the basis of a 2000 year-old dispute about lineage, methods of practice and spiritual authority. These issues continue to confuse practitioners — the literary methods used to accommodate theses disputes into the tradition only serve to muddy the water.
The Buddhist tradition is based on receiving personal, but formal, tuition and authority to practice from a realised master (a guru). This has been in short supply to Westerners and teacher-disciple relationships have frequently fallen foul of cultural confusion. To complicate matters, Westerners are often suspicious of traditional Eastern hierarchies.
Few people would choose to do what Sangharakshita did and attempt to live out their inspiration in the full traditional sense, becoming a wandering ascetic and taking monastic ordination on Indian soil, ending upon in the town of Kalimpong on the Indo-Tibetan border, a process he describes in his first book of memoirs, The Rainbow Road.
During his twenty years in Kalimpong Sangharakshita had taken instruction and initiation from some of the Tibetan masters escaping the Chinese occupation of Tibet and he talks at length about his experiences in his memoirs Facing Mount Kanchenjunga and In the Sign of the Golden Wheel. However, in 1965 Sangharakshita — at that time the senior-most English Bhikkhu — was invited to return to the UK for a year as incumbent at the Hampstead Vihara.
In London, he felt that the situation was bogged down in petty politics and personal hostilities. Actual practice was dry and meditation teaching was poor — so poor he had grave concerns about whether it was actually causing some people harm.
His attempts to alleviate tensions in the small Buddhist Sangha —mainly between members of the English Sangha Trust and the Buddhist Sangha Association (both based in London) — ultimately lead to yet more friction. Having decided to stay in Britain and whilst making a farewell tour of India he received a letter — making veiled allusions to an imagined impropriety —withdrawing his incumbency of the Hampstead Vihara and recommending that he stay in India.
After discussion with his main teachers, however, Sangharakshita concluded that much work needed to be done in Britain and that he should return to London and begin setting in motion a new Buddhist movement, what would become the Friends of the Western Buddhist Order. His book Moving Against the Stream goes into this matter in greater depth.