The Triratna Story by Vajragupta

Counterculture were few Buddhist teachers, especially teachers who understood Western culture and spoke good English. There were hardly any books published on Buddhism, and few Buddhist groups, let alone established centres. Sangharakshita, however, was a Westerner who had been ordained for 14 years. He was ideally qualified to help.

On 12 August 1964 he landed at London Airport (now Heathrow). He had left England during the austerity of the wartime years, and the London he returned to was very different from the city he had known. The skyline was crowded with tower blocks, the streets more congested with cars, the shop windows crammed with consumer goods – TVs, vacuum cleaners, and other domestic electrical appliances.

He soon realized there was growing potential for Buddhism in the UK. What was meant to have been a four-month visit to the Hampstead Buddhist Vihara turned into a year’s stay, and then another. Eventually, Sangharakshita decided to remain in the UK and work to establish Buddhism there.

He went back to India for a ‘farewell tour’, travelling with a close friend named Terry Delamere. But while in India he received a letter from the English Sangha Trust, the organization that owned and ran the Hampstead Vihara and that had originally invited Sangharakshita to the UK. The letter made it clear that they didn’t want him back and suggested he stayed in India to avoid any fuss and embarrassment. It seemed there had been gossip about his friendship with Terry, and rumours had spread – never substantiated, and denied by Sangharakshita – that it was a homosexual relationship. There were also tensions around the way Sangharakshita taught Buddhism. Some of the trustees of the English Sangha Trust wanted to establish a strictly ‘orthodox’ Theravadin monasticism, while Sangharakshita drew on all schools of Buddhism and was much more willing to experiment and to adapt to the different conditions of the West. He’d also made