The Triratna Story by Vajragupta

You’ve Had the Theory, Now Try the Practice Those few words speak volumes about the state of British Buddhism at the time. The ‘establishment’ had a predominantly scholarly and intellectual approach to the Dharma and was generally not peopled by those practising Buddhism. However, there were other more practice-orientated Buddhist groups emerging, of which the FWBO was by far the largest. Believing that they were the ones who were really doing Buddhism and showing the way, their youthful enthusiasm sometimes bubbled over into cockiness.

Someone in the UK Buddhist scene even dubbed them ‘the storm troops of British Buddhism’. It probably wasn’t intended to be a compliment, but the revolutionary young Buddhists of the FWBO were rather pleased with the label.

Sangharakshita’s encounters with other Buddhist groups had never been entirely happy. He’d met many good and impressive individual Buddhists in India, but he was mainly disappointed by organized Buddhism which seemed stuck in a lazy formalism.

He’d experienced the same on his return to England. There had been difficulty within the FWBO too. In its early days it had invited in a number of teachers from different traditions. During one retreat, a Japanese Zen teacher had suddenly announced that he was the Buddha Maitreya with new truths to impart, and this caused considerable confusion.

So Sangharakshita was not only critical of much of the rest of the Buddhist scene, but also protective of his fledgling movement.

As one of his disciples was later to write: Sangharakshita’s characteristic tone [was] more embattled – at the time of his seminal writing and the foundation of the FWBO he was isolated and much criticized. He was an intense visionary figure who felt that, virtually alone, he must transmute Asian Buddhism into the language and archetypes of the West …24 23