The Triratna Story by Vajragupta

The Triratna Story Order members were growing in experience and spiritual maturity. Many had been practising for more than 15 years, and had been faithfully following the path of the FWBO. Increasingly they were having their own insights into the spiritual life, and wanted to teach more from their own experience, or explore other ways of practising, especially in the area of meditation. Again, there was much that was positive in this, but it started to raise the question of how the FWBO maintained and presented a coherent body of teaching.

In 2001 Subhuti formed a core working group around him, known as ‘the Madhyamaloka meeting’. They decided to embrace all the changes going on, to work with them to try to free up new currents of energy in the movement. Their slogan, which encapsulated the spiritual and ‘cultural’ changes they felt were necessary, was: ‘Deepen the Order, open up the Movement’.

To ‘deepen the Order’, there were talks and workshops designed to revitalize the Order chapter meetings, and a great number of chapters were invited to Madhyamaloka for a few days each, to work with Subhuti and others on making their chapters more spiritually dynamic. There were also plans for a ‘Sangharakshita Library ’, to preserve Sangharakshita’s books, papers and effects, and, after his death, to act as a memorial. It would have around it a community of senior and experienced Order members who would run retreats and study seminars, and help to keep the spiritual vision shining bright and clear.

To ‘open up the movement’, there were changes to the Mitra system, which many people felt had become too complex and centralized. In August 2001 Subhuti gave a talk explaining how the Madhyamaloka meeting wanted to begin a process of decentralization of the College and structures of the movement, and there was an attempt to set up regional councils.

While some of these initiatives (such as the changes to the Mitra system) were welcomed in the Order, others (such as the 130