A Circle of Friends!!!!Page 1 of 36

1. TEN YEARS ON

NARRATOR 1 At the end of 1976, the founder of the Friends of the Western Buddhist Order, whose centres are known as FWBOs, gave a series of talks at the Brighton Pavilion. He presented a dynamic vision of spiritual growth: an individual who has an urge to grow is able to engage with other individuals in a way that would inspire the creation of a radical and new society.

SANGHARAKSHITA It is very nearly ten years since I decided to return to England and start a new Buddhist movement and, for me, these years have been, in a way, quite difficult ones. But also very, very interesting but also, I may say, very, very happy. I think I can say: the very happiest years of my life and the most most worthwhile. And I think I can say also that I have succeeded in doing what I set out to do. The Order is now established on a firm foundation. A number of FWBOs are functioning. At the same time, much remains to be done. We have made a good beginning but it’s only a beginning. And I can only hope that as the years go by, as the months go by, more and more people will come foreward and cooperate with me, with the Order, with the Friends in creating on an ever larger and larger scale, ever more effective scale, the nucleus of a new society.

A Circle of Friends [East-West Centre, London April 6, 1977]

SUBHUTI I am going to give a speech in praise. I am going to be quite unashamed about it, quite unabashed about it, in fact, even maybe a little bit unbalanced about it …

NARRATOR 2 A Circle of Friends!!!!Page 2 of 36

On the FWBO’s tenth birthday Subhuti delivered an eulogy. There was a lot to celebrate, as it was a time of energy and idealism. It was also a time of difficulty. The movement, particularly in London, was increasingly defined in single sex terms, and this had been painful. A group of men converting an old fire station into a Buddhist centre were struggling with poverty. Meanwhile, the women looking in vain for two years for a place to call their own, were more hopeful.

[The History of the FWBO Part Four: 1977-1979]

ALAYA A lot of the stuff we were buying was second-hand. We bought it from Bobby who'd come round every other day, I think. Bits of wood, windows all kinds of things like that, and he would always convince us that it wasn't stolen property. We seemed to be continually having crisis council meetings where we were just about to run out of money and Lokamitra, who was doing a really good job up in Pundarika fund-raising, he'd get a bit more to us and we just keep going every few weeks.

NARRATOR 3 Then the funds dried up: building work stopped and the community went out to work.

SUBHUTI For nearly a year, I think it might have been more than a year, we were just doing building work outside. We were getting hardly any work done on our own building. MUSIC: Cartoon

SUBHUTI We probably came out at the end of that year having just having supported everybody and bought a few tools. I felt that I had led all these people and the movement A Circle of Friends!!!!Page 3 of 36

to some extent, into a bit of a dead end. It just seemed impossible to do what we had set out to do and all we were doing was standing still.

2. AMARAVATI COMMUNITY

DHAMMADINNA We came back and found an eviction notice pinned to the door of the house saying, I think it might have been a week or something or it might have been less than that that we had to move.

NARRATOR 4 Just before bulldozers demolished their North London homes, the women were offered a seventeen room house. It was gutted, had been empty for three years and was a long way from the area they knew, but they took the plunge.

[Wanstead, East London Amaravati July 1977]

DHAMMADINNA There was a pipe coming through in the basement with a bit of water and that was the extent of the plumbing and an outside cold shower and an outside toilet that worked and the rest of the place was burnt out in the basement, burnt out on the first floor and less burnt out as it went upstairs, no windows, luckily it was June and it was hot so we camped out in the garden.

PADMAVASINI So we'd get up and mediate and have breakfast, and the just set to organise ourselves. It was just a matter of like breakfast, tea break, lunch tea break, yoga practice, supper and in between we worked away getting the place inhabitable.

DHAMMADINNA A Circle of Friends!!!!Page 4 of 36

I mean, that was the main thrust of the work was just to work and get it together.

NARRATOR 5 Now the challenge facing the eleven women was to build a spiritual community. Apart from experience drawn from retreats, there were no adequate models, either Eastern or Western, to go on. Besides, their teacher was a man. The community, consisting of three or four Order members, who had some commitment and clarity, and double that number of mitras, who were developing those qualities, needed an identity.

DHAMMADINNA We wanted to have a large community with a focus on the community life itself, and we decided it was going to be a closed community, no men on the premises, so we could explore what it meant to live together more in that sort of situation as we were...we were trying to find our identity as women Order members and Mitras as well as women perhaps.

[Seventies newsreel: feminist demonstrations]

COMMENTATOR Officially the had gained equal pay. Now they wanted to be accepted by men and society on their own terms.'

NARRATOR 6 In spiritual terms, there were equal opportunities in the FWBO, and this was in accord with the Buddha’s own teaching not because the movement had begun in the West. Even so, changes in society together with the message of feminist writers such as Kate Millet could not be ignored. However, it was women’s biographies, such as Anais Nin’s, which rang a chord with Buddhists.… Another book, by a Jungian A Circle of Friends!!!!Page 5 of 36

psychoanalyst, was helpful in exploring the subconscious drives.

PADMAVASINI Esther Harding was very accessible and there is so much more now that is written in a very clear way to relate to. But then things were quite deep. I mean Jungian and that sort of stuff was very deep. And she clearly spelt out the kind of roles that women were prone to fall into, which was quite refreshing to have them defined so we could relate to it and decide what we wanted to stay out of.

DHAMMADINNA She talks about two sorts of initiations moving beyond the kind of sexual, being a sexual being for men and all that and then also but the other level of initiation she talks about is… being conscious of the, you know, unconscious motherly tendencies…you know, women tend to mother each other in the wrong sort of way sometimes.

ANOMA It was the first real focus for women, I think, in the movement and even people who didn't live there, we had a lot of visitors from different countries coming and staying. We had the first women's Order/Mitra events there, working retreats.

NARRATOR 7 It could be hectic playing host to all the women visiting the community, which was called Amaravati.…At other times, they had the pleasure to entertain their one gentleman caller.

PADMAVASINI You always remember Bhante's presence and notice how much more the colours are brighter the next day when he is gone. The whole atmosphere is lifted and it is really lovely seeing him. A Circle of Friends!!!!Page 6 of 36

ANOMA Bhante said, with Amaravati, how many women had written to him and said how important it was just to go to a women's situation like that. So for all its shortcomings they still experienced it positively.

(MUSIC)

3. MANDARAVA RETREAT CENTRE

NARRATOR 8 Despite Mandarava's freezing shrine room, retreats at the women’s retreat centre were life savers for the London communities.

PADMAVASINI Mandarava was a very nice place and it was very nice to be out of Amaravati.

NARRATOR 8A A woman from Manjuvajra's class in Cornwall, keen to be a mitra, wanted to get first hand knowledge of the women’s wing and so booked herself on retreat.

PADMASURI My experience of it was one of claustrophobia. It was a lot of women getting together, sort of very intense communication, intense in the sense of a bit cloying, that was my experience of it. And there was this other woman, I think she was a Mitra, on the retreat and she and I used to go off for these long walks in the afternoons when we had free time, sort of go off and say, ‘Phew, thank goodness we're out of that.'

NARRATOR 9 The honeymoon period was over and she did not now want to be a mitra. The honeymoon was over, too, for the one Order member left running Mandarava after three founder members moved away. A Circle of Friends!!!!Page 7 of 36

MALINI We had one very difficult person who came and stayed…which I just felt totally inadequate to deal with. It was quite a frightening time: we were having to hide knives and things like that. It was bad!

NARRATOR 10 In need of rest and a solitary retreat, Malini stopped in London en route to the West country and, by coincidence, met the woman who was to become a close personal friend.

MALINI It was just amazing because the moment we met it was as though we'd known each other all our lives, and I don't think we stopped talking the whole journey. I ended up not doing a solitary at all. We spent all of our time, not all of our time, most of our time, together and that was just wonderful. I mean, it was extremely healing.

PADMASURI It was brilliant, I think probably for both of us, she was having particular difficulties with the movement, with the Order. But for me it was like at last I'd found a woman in the movement, a woman Order member, who I could connect with and, you know, a great friendship started.

4. NEW CENTRES [Manchester, Summer 1977]

NARRATOR 11 The difficulties Malini and other lone Order members had experienced starting centres suggested forming a team might be a better idea. , then living at Padmaloka, began encouraging men connected with Pundarika, which was about to be demolished, to spread out and start new centres, this time taking friends with them. A Circle of Friends!!!!Page 8 of 36

There was a centre in Glasgow and one in London: so there could be one in the middle. After a year’s planning, the team of Sagaramati, Ratnajyoti and later Ratnaguna, began classes at the University of Manchester. Fortunately, the sun did shine sometimes just as rain sometimes fell on cosy and suburban Surrey. The energy they had built up at the centre, was ready to storm a city.

VESSANTARA Croydon has a large centre of population, there is a big shopping centre, and we did start thinking we wanted to run a wholefood shop and that was very much in line with our ideals but also it would be another way in which people could work together.

NARRATOR 12 Then their ideas of what could be started in Croydon grew and grew.

NAGABODHI Padmaraja and I especially talked a lot about the future…and just spun this dream of a complex, we're not just going to have a wholefood shop, but one day we're going to have this place were you'd have a Centre, and you'd have a wholefood shop and maybe a restaurant, and a theatre.…The first job was to was to find ourselves just somewhere to have a wholefood shop.

NARRATOR 13 Fundraising had galvanised energies: Rainbow Transport had transported, Rainbow Decorating had decorated and Padmaraja had worked at the BBC. At the end of a year they had three thousand pounds, enough to put an offer on two (and later three) shops, derelict ones of course.

NAGABODHI It was two shops with two floors above. One shop had no floor. It A Circle of Friends!!!!Page 9 of 36

had been burnt, it was almost a right-off. I looked at it and I sort of started measuring it, I thought, yeh, you could have a community there, you could have the top floor, the whole of the top floor could be turned into a shrine room. This could be the beginning of a complex.

MUSIC February 1978

ASOKASRI I was just very excited at being involved in it all. In a way it was like being a kid being taken to a playground, and here were these three buildings which you had to make something out of.

LALITARATNA I think we hired two skips, which we expected to fill with rubble over the weekend…men and women, everybody, piling in, shovels, buckets, a human chain going through the shop, out into the street, filling these skips. …and the energy was so much that by noon on the first Saturday, we’d filled both skips.

ASOKASRI I didn't have any experience of any building work at all, but quite quickly I became the plumber, along with Padmottara…I did find being with the men and working with the men, great.… I loved it. I think for me it was at the point when I really wanted to put my energy into something and here was something I could really engage with.

VESSANTARA Compared to most of Croydon, it was a little oasis, so we called it 'Secret Garden'.

NARRATOR 14 In December, the last puja or ritual was performed at Pundarika, exactly six years after it became A Circle of Friends!!!!Page 10 of 36

the first proper home for the FWBO. The next day it was demolished so Camden Council could build the houses they had been planning for decades. At the beginning of 1978, Sangharakshita made a third visit to Finland, where there were six Order members, though they could hardly be called a team.

SARVAMITRA The connection that all of us had was to Bhante, primarily. We didn’t have so much in the connection with each other or to the movement as a whole. Everybody thought about Bhante all the time and spoke about, well, ‘Bhante said this, Bhante said that, shouldn’t we do this, shouldn’t we do that, this is what Bhante said’. We were very different people. It was very difficult for us or any one of us to gain that sort of perspective or depth and breadth which would be able to include so many different people. I don’t know how much part a lack of training played, how much part was played by the fact that Finnish people generally may find it difficult to work with each other.

5. YOGA IN INDIA

NARRATOR 15 A new team was forming in London, this time of yoga practitioners under their enthusiastic leader.

VARAPRABHA I think we used to have about three classes a week. …I don’t know whether it was the strength of Lokamitra’s character, but a lot of people tried yoga.

NARRATOR 16 As a yogi, Lokamitra had been keen on a style developed by BKS Iyengar. A Circle of Friends!!!!Page 11 of 36

(When the yoga group decided they would like to visit the great master in India, Lokamitra was unsparing.)

MUSIC

SURATA He knew that if we weren't up to scratch he'd get it in the neck. So he worked us very hard for at least a year I think. We were doing you know a couple of sessions a week you know with him just just us as a team.

NARRATOR 17 Once they were prepared, the group took off. Before getting down to serious business with Mr. Iyengar, they went on a pilgrimage, firstly visiting Buddhist ancient sites before going up to Bhante's vihara, or monastery, in the Himalayas.

VARAPRABHA I met various people who had known Bhante when he was in , including Dhardo Rimpoche, and everyone was so thrilled to hear of him and to hear that he was well and teaching in the west, and that he’d actually got a substantial body of followers.

NARRATOR 17A Lokamitra saw the trip as a chance to practise chastity and so he became an Anagarika, or homeless one. Wearing anagarika robes could also help the FWBO be taken more seriously in India.

SURATA He spent most of our week in Kalimpong trying to get in touch with the the Kasi of Sikkim by phone

NARRATOR 18 Lokamitra had now begun methodically tracking down Sangharakshita's old friends from A Circle of Friends!!!!Page 12 of 36

the past. He saw that the way south to Mr. Iyengar in Pune passed through Nagpur, where there were more old friends. Stopping there turned out to be very auspicious.

LOKAMITRA We arrived there and we went to see the person who used to translate for Bhante, and old Brahmin, advocate Kulkani, and going through the town there were flags everywhere, it was decorated in all parts of the town, and we just didn't know what this was about, so when we got to Kulkani's house we asked him, 'What's the town celebrating today?' So it happened to be the twenty-first anniversary of Doctor Ambedkar's conversion to Buddhism there in Nagpur.

NARRATOR 19 Over recent Indian history towers the figure of Doctor Bhimrao Ambedkar. He was the first Law minister after Independence and the draughtsman of the constitution. He was also the greatest Indian Buddhist for centuries. Dr. Ambedkar was born into an Untouchable caste and he saw this terrible curse would only be wiped out when, along with millions of followers, he left Hinduism and converted to Buddhism. Twenty-one years later, on a warm Nagpur evening, advocate Kulkani urged his guests to join the crowds celebrating the first mass conversion. [October 14, 1977]

SURATA So he hailed one of these rickshaws…So this little old man's sat on my lap. It had got dark by this time so we're going through all these streets, completely lost… more people than I thought I'd ever see in one place, just thousands and thousands of people. And complete mayhem… And we went right up to the front and there was this A Circle of Friends!!!!Page 13 of 36

stage you know so he said right well you know Lokamitra's a monk, he's got to go on the stage

LOKAMITRA I was taken right to the front, and placed on one of the two platforms there. One was for the politicians - the higher one I may add! - and the other was for people in robes

SURATA Loads and loads of speeches, most of them I couldn't understand because they weren't in English. They got Lokamitra up to make a very short speech

LOKAMITRA I spoke to the crowd for about ten minutes I suppose at about twelve o'clock after the politicians had gone, I didn't really know what to say. I had one bhikkshu in silk robes trying to tell me what to say.

SURATA I think people were sort of telling me at the time what this was all about but I'd never heard of Ambedkar, I mean I really didn't know who Dr. Ambedkar was, his significance really didn't strike me until many years later

LOKAMITRA And the next day I just came to this area, just wandered around, and saw all these very poor people from villages, with such great devotion, obviously, for Doctor Ambedkar, and almost in a flash sort of saw…this vision came to me of the possibilities of the situation, the potential of the situation, the immensity of the work that Doctor Ambedkar had done, and at the same time I saw how clearly that was being misused, exploited, by people, perhaps through their ignorance, perhaps through their greed, whatever. And I didn't decide to work there then, A Circle of Friends!!!!Page 14 of 36

but I was incredibly taken by the situation. Then we moved to Pune.

NARRATOR 20 Whilst Mr. Iyengar set about stretching their bodies, his students were discovering more about the Buddhist revival in India. Dr. Ambedkar died only weeks after his conversion and, during the fifties and sixties, Sangharakshita had done what he could to help the bereft followers. In the late seventies, their situation was, if anything, more desperate.

LOKAMITRA I found much more important in a way than the Yoga was giving talks, taking meditation courses for local Buddhists. There was a tremendous demand. And Bhante had said to me, I think in a letter, we'll see you know - whether you think we ought to start a centre there, whether the situation is ripe, and I knew the situation was ripe, I knew we had to start a centre there. It was so obvious that there was this tremendous enthusiasm for Buddhism and yet no one was doing any effective teaching there at all.

6. EXPANSION OVERSEAS

NARRATOR 21 Sangharakshita was on a long solitary winter retreat in Scotland when he invited four men over to the islands for ordination. They were an international crew with Scottish, New Zealand and Australian nationalities. [Arran,Western Isles 4 March, 1977]

DANAVIRA And Dipankara as he became and Udaya as he became, they came up from London. And so we turned up in Largs, this town called Largs and it was a Friday night and there was A Circle of Friends!!!!Page 15 of 36

a storm brewing. So we jumped on this boat. This guy decided he would throw the ferry across this half mile of molten water. So we jumped on, bump, bump, bump away over to the other side. And then I think we had to walk about a mile around this bleak, strangely historical island. What this place was was a naval station. And the storm got worse. Anyway the door bursts open and, out of the rain, comes this tall bloke in a balaclava, dripping wet. And he pulls this balaclava and it’s Bhante!

NARRATOR 22 Bhante was apparently most impressed with the spiritual potential of New Zealand and this perhaps explains why he gave the man from those islands a name which translates as ‘dawn’. Udaya, seen on the left, is no longer a member of the Order but in those days he was a key player in the story of the Auckland centre. Many other people were, as in any historical event, inevitably involved. However Udaya’s boundless energy was crucial. [Auckland, New Zealand May 1977]

RATNAKETU Udaya came back very fired up, very inspired and immediately wanted to move the situation on. At a council meeting he became the chairman of the Auckland Centre and really set about creating a I think, a spiritual community really.

GUNAPALA I had left my marriage at that point and was quite keen to live in a men's community and put into practice more fully Right Livelihood. I'd bought a business to… it did have quite a few machines and some of the others like Purna and Udaya and another young man, Trevor did some work in carpentry…but a lot of the time the A Circle of Friends!!!!Page 16 of 36

wood turning business just involved two people.

RATNAKETU Purna and Udaya came back from a convention in England, very fired up about what was called in those days a common purse community and Gunapala, myself, Purna and Udaya formed this community, very poor to begin with, we were eating wheat instead of rice.

GUNAPALA We used to eat out quite a lot whenever we had the opportunity to be invited out for a meal we would take it…

RATNAKETU We really believed we were forging something new and we were.

NARRATOR 23 Then, as more people got involved with the centre, new premises were needed and a warehouse on Hobson Street was found.

RATNAKETU There was a big vast space that hadn't been used for a long time. And we all chipped in and worked very hard and in the end created what was I think probably the biggest centre in the movement at the time.

NARRATOR 24 After six months the centre was finished and lots of free energy was available. They took on a contract to make soft toys which raised thousands of dollars.

RATNAKETU The whole of the movement in Auckland really was galvanised behind that project and we were able to raise a lot of money, partly to bring Bhante out to New Zealand, partly to help the initial set up costs for Lokamitra in India and to the initial renovation costs A Circle of Friends!!!!Page 17 of 36

to Vajraloka, and we did really well it really brought everybody together.

NARRATOR 25 By the time Sangharakshita made his second visit in 1979, there were so many people eager to join the Order that the phrase ‘ordination fever’ was coined. During his trip, he met everybody, toured around in a renovated Rover and then ordained just five people. Despite enthusiasm, the physical isolation from their teachers and the lack of spiritual maturity amongst them meant it was hard to leave behind old habits or samskaras.

RATNAKETU People left New Zealand in droves overseas. Purna went to India and a number of us came over to England and he had the vision and there wasn't a mature community building up. Years and years would go by without a visit from another centre and in situations like that it is very difficult and Udaya was struggling with his own samskaras, and it wasn't easy…It's very, very difficult to progress spiritually twelve thousand miles away from your teacher.

7. VAJRIC SCOTLAND

NARRATOR 26 The Glasgow centre was just four hundred miles from Sangharakshita. After being run by English Order members for four years it embraced a heady mix of working class and Tibetan iconography. The Heruka figure was adopted as the name of the men’s community and new centre.

DANAVIRA There was about forty people, I think, in this big sitting room, all sitting there drinking their tea in a very, well, in a way, it A Circle of Friends!!!!Page 18 of 36

seemed to me at that time, a really profound silence. I think to some extent we rejected the culture which we decided had failed us. I think people regarded the culture as in its head, out of touch and unnatural. And we wanted to get deeper down into things into the raw muck of the psyche and was a great a great image for doing that really, because you could trust, if you were a bit of trouble, Padmasambhava would come leaping out, maybe, and deal with what was actually bothering you.

NARRATOR 27 Retreats run by the centre over the following years were well known for engaging the emotions in ritual. They liked, just as much, to play Sangharakshita’s talks.

SUVAJRA The eight tapes by Sangharakshita on the symbolism of the Tantric path were played, and on the retreat the following year, and the year after, those same tapes were the central nucleus for study.

DANAVIRA I remember ‘Individuality True and False’ and following it like a kind of Agatha Christie if you like. ‘Where was the body going to be in the end? Is there an ego? Is there a no-ego? Du, du, du, du. Is there a God? Du, du,’ you know, and I am sort of thinking, ‘God, I want to know this, it’s going to help me to know this!’ And Bhante pulls it all like a rabbit out of the hat. ‘And we have this, and here’s the truth!’ And I think, ‘Wow! Fantastic!’ So, in a way, he acted as a fountain of wisdom for us. He acted as a lightning conductor for our bewilderment. And it was all good stuff. We were in quite an elemental place with mountains and water and things. And we were in a sort of half baked way thinking A Circle of Friends!!!!Page 19 of 36

about the gods and the energies and all this.

SUVAJRA Sometimes chanting would go on for maybe one hour, and just when you think it was dying down the second wind and the third wind and the fourth wind would rise and the chanting would continue. This had a very very strong effect upon people.

DANAVIRA O gemya jungna jamsa, pema gesar sarva bola. All that kind of thing. Great! We were young. Let me tell you something, right, this is one way of viewing all this. Our fathers and previous generations had the War. That was their rite of passage, that was the coming of age. You were before the War, then you had the War and then you came out of the War and you somehow grew up. That was, in a way, our rite of passage. We enjoyed it, we felt we were on a mission.

NARRATOR 28 Women coming to the centre then found themselves left behind by the masculine thrust of those days .

DANAVIRA I was a bit frightened of women and fearful and apprehensive of women. And I think also I was negative towards them. OK, I am twenty years or more ordained now but in them days say, couple of years ordained. I think that I didn’t really want to have much to do with women. I thought that women were a bit of a bad investment really. And one should not bother really, actually, they were not going to be really going to be serious or interested. I think that I felt that I was in tune with the basic FWBO stance in all of this. But, unfortunately, what happened was I had personal psycho-emotional needs that took advantage, shall we say, of the A Circle of Friends!!!!Page 20 of 36

little bit of background permission, you might say. And I became very antagonistic to women. I was a young man trying to leave Mother. And being afraid of women and not wanting to sucked into the samsaric life. Because that’s all women want. They want to take your energy and pull it inside them and stuff like this. So, what I think I’ve realised now is that life’s a bit more complex than that. But in them days I think I hated women and I was not averse to sinking the boot in and I apologise for that now to anybody that I did do it to but it was twenty years ago. What can I say?

NARRATOR 29 Though there were now only a few women involved, after one of Danavira’s talks they left, mainly for London.

DANAVIRA We did not all survive completely well. You know, some of us got really hurt but that’s the way it is, and we changed the world.

8. LONDON CENTRE, 3RD YEAR

NARRATOR 30 The Sukhavati community had not worked on the building for over a year. Their fortunes changed when Subhuti met some local politicians who believed a Buddhist centre would benefit a culturally depressed area. The main help came from a Central Government agency who provided the manpower to finish the job. [London, Spring 1978]

SUBHUTI We were advised to do it. Given quite a big help in setting it all up. I don't think I'd have thought of it otherwise, well perhaps I would of done in the end, but it was definitely that was definitely A Circle of Friends!!!!Page 21 of 36

something that was suggested to us by the local council. they seemed quite keen to help us.

VESSANTARA I think we had about forty or fifty people on site on some days and towards the end I think about thirty odd of us living in the community in Sukhavati

SURATA Everything was was subservient to getting the project finished and so people were crammed in everywhere, all sorts of people. And people were just were just working very long hours.

VESSANTARA There were we all working for £2 a week and then there were these local guys working for the council on various schemes. A lot of them were a bit rough, they were bricklaying and things and quite often they'd learnt their bricklaying in Borstal and they were very much there for the money and they couldn't really understand why we were prepared to putting all this effort, all this work for £2 a week, so we had some quite interesting discussions with them.

SUBHUTI I did find it quite exciting, that volume of people filling the building and seeing it daily coming together.

NARRATOR 31 Men at Sukhavati were happy to establish new connections with the world.

9. SPIRITUAL FRIENDSHIP

NARRATOR 31A Meanwhile, life for women at Amaravati equally dedicated to hard work as it was, seemed secluded and monastic. A Circle of Friends!!!!Page 22 of 36

PARAMI The most essential work had been done by that time but there was still quite a lot of work going on. I was very impressed by the idea of twelve or thirteen women living together and really just getting it on…Being a subjective wee mitra I suppose I just...was quite happy initially to be there and...thriving in a way with the programme: meditating with other people, studying with other people.…

PADMAVASINI There was always a lot of money to be earned. That was my experience of that whole times. So eventually we continued with Kusa Cushions and a painting and decorating business. So it was pretty full time work.

PARAMI And quite a few of those people had very little contacts as far as I remember with anybody outside the community and certainly outside the movement. Whereas I still maintained quite strong friendships outside the movement. So I found it a very intense experience. It was a bit I suppose like a pressure cooker. So any tensions… any of those kind of communication things that are going to happen if you put a bunch of people under the same roof with intense meditation practice, study of the and all living together. They were very intensified. They where probably much larger in a way than they really where. They where probably experienced as very large. I was aware quite quickly when I moved into the community of two of the women who as far as I could see where in a sexual relationship…But none of it was really ever talked about. I think it was what I found more confusing than the fact that they where happening. I had no problem with the fact that they A Circle of Friends!!!!Page 23 of 36

were happening but I did find it odd that it wasn't talked about.

ANOMA Yeah, I think the intensity of the situation did bring people up against each other, so there were yes, the amorous feelings between certain people and jealousies, all the more primitive feelings I suppose, came up in that situation and we had to deal with them in some way without much external, well with very little external help in a sense, we just had to deal with it.

DHAMMADINNA Anoma was in love with me and I didn't reciprocate that although I liked her, so…you know, things were going on on the top floor between us, the dynamic and trying to sort it out and all sorts of things, and people downstairs quite know what (laughs) upstairs so you know…

DHAMMADINNA They picked it up and didn't get it explained. Looking back you think how crazy but that was kind of how it was. We had this very strong idea, I think of vertical kalyana mitrata in those days in the movement…but you don't really hang out with someone and have much ordinary human friendship. It's a bit of a distorted model really. And I think that's partly because we had a lot of stuff about the individual and the group, and the individual emancipates from the group so anything we thought was 'groupy', grouplike, ordinary affection, liking somebody, you know was a bit kind of 'but that's not spiritual'… so I think all that is part of how that community, the dynamics that were in it.

NARRATOR 32 How were Order members to relate to mitras? Westerners, including those at Amaravati, usually found the A Circle of Friends!!!!Page 24 of 36

business of developing kalyana mitrata, spiritual friendship, confusing. Bhante had talked about a mitra’s relationship with an Order member as being mainly a ‘vertical’ spiritual friendship. Unfortunately, they assumed this meant behaving at all times as a fully developed individual and never lowering themselves to being a member of a group.

BHANTE You cannot avoid group activities: you are a member of society. You engage in a group activity for instance, in a sense, when you cast your vote. But you cast it after due thought as an individual. So, the same principal applies in other situations. I don't think an Order member getting to know a mitra can at once expect the mitra to look up to him and her. I think there must be, as it were, open ended, free, mutually respectful communication and then if the Order member really is an Order member, really is more committed to the Three Jewels than is the mitra, that will emerge in the course of the communication, in the course of the exchange. And the mitra, if he or she has any feeling for the Dharma and the spiritual life will be able to recognise that and, in that way, a relationship of vertical kalyana mitrata will be established.

10. FREEDOM & BLASPHEMY The Devils

FATHER BARRE The devil is in your flesh. The evil spirit of Grandier‚ has taken possession of your souls. Now you resist him but soon he will have his way. You will scream.

NUNS (Chorus) Yes.

FATHER BARRE A Circle of Friends!!!!Page 25 of 36

You will blaspheme.

NUNS (Chorus) Yes.

NARRATOR 33 In his essay ‘Buddhism and Blasphemy’ Sangharakshita argued blasphemy was an unconscious, though natural, response to deep feelings of oppression. Intellectually many people appear to have rejected Christianity but, below the surface, still feared what could be called God's power. Religious freedom in the UK was precarious. In 1977 an archaic law was used to prosecute a gay newspaper for blasphemy. Sangharakshita wrote that people should not be prosecuted but even at times encouraged to try a little therapeutic blasphemy. With that in mind, some good catholic girls on retreat at Mandarava decided to give it a go.

SAMATA After the Puja each evening we went into one of the barns …and we made these two huge crucifixes out of two very very large planks of wood and nailed them and…for some reason beating this crucifix with a big heavy metal chain like symbolic loosening letting go of my own chains that were constricting me… and it was very strong to just shout positively, therapeutically blaspheme against this god figure that had just so dominated our lives without us even realising it.

NARRATOR 34 In all, Mandarava lasted two years as a retreat centre. Originally, Varaprabha had sold her London house to help set the place up but then, after India, she discovered a new direction for her life. Varaprabha After a while I decided I wanted to have a child, which partly I think was a biological thing, a sort of A Circle of Friends!!!!Page 26 of 36

physical thing… there was just a caretaker living here - the community had folded and people had scattered…so in the end I asked for the place back.

MALINI So I then moved to London, and moved into the same community as Padmasuri was in…Then things started to change quite dramatically for me after that.

NARRATOR 35 From the start, the FWBO was designed to encourage liberation of the individual clear of the influence of well meaning, but non Buddhist, committees and so on. Though the centres were autonomous and there was no equivalent of the pope, there were now structures and even institutions in place. Was there not a danger someone, a young man, say, seeking liberation from parents, and who wanted to change the world, would feel quite frustrated by the FWBO?

BHANTE Well we should have reason for that. Nowadays we tend to think that rebellion is a good thing per se but I think that’s a wrong view. Rebellion is only necessary when there is something which really ought to be rebelled against. And I certainly don’t think that the FWBO or the WBO has yet reached a point where anybody seriously interested in Buddhism can rebel against it just because its a 25 year old tradition. I think that would really be quite adolescent. Also I think people should reflect that it isn’t easy to start a new movement and I myself would rather not have started a new Buddhist movement. I would have been much happier if a movement like the FWBO had already existed and I could have simply joined it and contributed to it. That would have saved me a lot of trouble so to speak even though I A Circle of Friends!!!!Page 27 of 36

have in a sense enjoyed founding and helping along the FWBO But it had involved a lot of expenditure of energy that could have been, perhaps, more positively employed had there been an existing framework within which I could have functioned. So don’t think its an easy thing to start up a new Buddhist movement. Avoid it if you possibly can. And don’t think you are being a true individual just because you feel like rebelling against what you see as an old tradition.

11. DHARMA IN INDIA

NARRATOR 36 Lokamitra finished a quick fundraising trip to England and, taking his first team member with him, went back to India…on a mission. MUSIC: Blues Brothers [August 13, 1978]

LOKAMITRA I think we left England on Padmasambhava Day, a very auspicious day. We arrived here. We stayed in a lodge, Kularatna and myself, and Padmavajra joined us shortly afterwards. I just went into a very, very heavy programme of classes. I think, at times, fourteen classes a week between us, at least Padmavajra and I, or talks in different parts of Pune. Talks in halls, talks in poor locality viharas. We had a couple of retreats: a one week retreat, then day retreats, I think. But the response was just tremendous. Just the enthusiasm of people: the talks, the lunches in people's homes, the tea. I don't think I've ever been able to work so wholeheartedly for the Dharma in my life before. You know, you are feeling that you are doing everything you could. A Circle of Friends!!!!Page 28 of 36

DHARMADITYA I was glad when I saw Padmavajra and Lokamitra. Lokamitra was in Vikuti Lodge…

VIMALAKIRTI When he saw Padmavajra and Kularatna for the first time he was a bit curious about these young people, they were too young to be Buddhists. He was very curious, but after getting to know them better, and knowing what their understanding of the practices, he was very happy, and felt that Buddhism was really taking off in the West. And even young people were impressed by Buddhism, and that he could at once feel that Buddhism is really a power.

NARRATOR 37 The young movement was spreading quickly. Activities started in the neighbouring state of Gujerat and, in Maharastra itself, there were now thirteen mitras.

SUDARSHAN After completing my government research job, and when I got it, there was a vacuum in me and I was searching for something. A Christian lady used to take her car out of her garage for Sunday prayers and we used to have classes.

PADMAVAJRA How many did we used to get in a class?

VIMALAKIRTI About twenty or thirty.

SUDARSHAN I met very friendly people there. I wanted to be with them. I was waiting for another Sunday to come there and a meeting with positive people like, at that time, Vimalakirti, Munindra, Buddhapriya, Dharmaditya: all these positive people bubbling with energy. I felt A Circle of Friends!!!!Page 29 of 36

they have found something, and they want to give it to me.

12. BUDDHIST VILLAGE Amitabha chant

NARRATOR 38 The new London Buddhist Centre, in its third and last phase, was about to transcend the bricks and mortar of the old fire station to become what it had always been in the minds of its creators: a Pure Land.

CHINTAMANI Bhante said that he just wanted a figure of the Buddha.…and just facilities for the three traditional offerings…So with that brief, I was left with colours, textures and so on.…I don't want to reproduce oriental art. I'm quite happy to produce something very, very simple, very, very simple…

ALAYA V/O Right near the end it took on such a strong momentum that we were all just carried along by it. We had our opening date and we knew the end was in sight, you know, we knew we were going to make it.

VESSANTARA V/O We were still working on the building till two, three in the morning… [November, 1978]

VESSANTARA It was only a day or so after the first opening that we got the rupa out of the basement. So the first day or so, when the Order were there, we just had the sort of the plinth and the lotus, just with light shining on it, which was actually quite effective. It was almost like going back to the early days of the Buddha. You didn't have the Buddha represented, you just had this light on this space. But then umpteen of us man-handled this A Circle of Friends!!!!Page 30 of 36

rupa on ropes out of the basement into the reception room, put it on its place in the shrineroom.

CHINTAMANI The rupa in the main shrine room was for me, it was Amitabha but it was also the Buddha of the Golden Light. And the colour gold figures quite strongly in that shrineroom. Obviously it's a gilded rupa, but the walls are a golden colour as well. Music

SUBHUTI I think Atula is very much the hero of that project, quite unstinting, selfless devotion. …he was just working day and night. In fact in the end he was so overworked I think he got himself ill. But without him doing that there is no doubt we would have been able to finish in time.

NARRATOR 39 For a week at the end of 1978, the public came in and celebrated the opening of Europe’s largest Buddhist centre. The team who had built it had been joined, over the last year, by other work teams living locally. A Buddhist village atmosphere had become a tangible reality in Bethnal Green. As for Subhuti, besides leading the four year project, he has continued to guide the LBC to the present day.

SUBHUTI What we'd effectively done, you know, albeit in a blundering and, you know, inadequate and flawed way, we’d created a total Buddhist environment. That was the sort of discovery that we'd made: that you could live, work and practise together. And so out of that came this whole idea of the New Society.

NARRATOR 40 Full time engagement emerged as the pattern of the FWBO. Buddhist A Circle of Friends!!!!Page 31 of 36

practices learnt at a centre spread to home and work place. As businesses were generally begun as cooperatives, the three Cs of the FWBO came into existence: Centre, Community and Coop. The catering for Sukhavati builders, started in a couple of disused shops, became a successful cafe run by women. Wholefood market stalls became a shop. Window cleaning, candle making, publishing and printing businesses developed. Though the work was often low skill, it gave everyone the chance to work with friends. The three Cs had wider implications: taken as a whole, they could be an inspiration for a radically different society.

13. MEDITATION CENTRE

NARRATOR 40A As well as being more effective in the world, Sangharakshita believed it was important for people in the FWBO to deepen their practice of meditation. There was a Welsh farmhouse, empty for twenty years, that could be an ideal place for a community devoted to meditation.

KAMALASILA Once the new London Centre had been built,…the idea was to just go to Wales to take all the energy that had gone into that…and set up this retreat centre…the building team was Atula, Jyotipala and a couple of other people. Um, I joined that a few months after they started. I went up there in January… The place was covered with snow um, they had no electricity, and they didn't have any real transport.… Building materials had to be carried by wheelbarrow from the nearby cottage to the site. So it was very very primitive, very hard work and very cold.

NARRATOR 41 A Circle of Friends!!!!Page 32 of 36

It was clear visiting meditators needed a lot more than freedom from distraction and some simple accommodation. Kamalasila But at that time very very few people, even Order members, were ready for that sort of situation… what we actually needed was to set up a teaching centre, at least for a few years until we'd sort of go through this bottle-neck so to speak.

NARRATOR 42 Over the next decades, the meditation of thousands of men and women was transformed by the teaching team at Vajraloka, as the place became called.

14. COMPLETING THE CIRCLE

NARRATOR 42A Meanwhile at the men’s retreat centre, Padmaloka, there were seminars and ordinations. Similar events took place when Sangharakshita’s New Zealand trip was sandwiched between two visits to India. Bakul and Dharmarakshita were the first Indians to join the Order to be followed, on the second visit, by another eight, including Dharmalocana.

DHARMALOCANA Then there were ordinations at Sinhabad. Dharmarakshita became the first Dharmachari. I was ordained on a second retreat along with others and became Dharamcharini Dharmalocana.

DHARMADITYA I was really glad when Bhante ordained me. In the private ordination I had just one regret: that none of my family was there to share it. So, the tears just rolled down my face.

VIMALAKIRTI A Circle of Friends!!!!Page 33 of 36

It’s a unique experience, it was so expanding, as if you felt , well, you just don’t belong to this particular time and place: you belong to the whole universe. It is so expansive and it gives so much joy that you could possibly not express in words, because it is beyond words. And I was filled with so much gratitude towards Bhante that actually tears started rolling down, out of my eyes, after the ordination programme was finished

NARRATOR 43 Bhante’s visit was an education in itself for Europeans who still had little experience of teaching the Dharma in India.

LOKAMITRA He did various ceremonies, name giving ceremonies, I don't think he did any marriage ceremonies. But I think he set out to show me all the basic things that would be expected of me. But I saw the tremendous feeling people had for him. There were people in the holy places that I'd met who thought so highly of him and hadn't seen him for fifteen years or so. And then there his disciples among the newly converted Buddhists of Maharastra who had such faith in him. And I felt I was caught up in something so much bigger than I had understood I was in the West. And I had a strange experience that I been, first of all through Bhante, was connected with all these different people. I had this feeling very strongly that I had been with Bhante for numerous lifetimes, a very strange feeling. When I got back to England I talked to Bhante about this, actually this was after my initial visit, and he'd been reading the books by, I think, Arthur Gurdam on the Cathars. And in this he talks about groups of people being reincarnated together in different ages. It was a very interesting experience for me because this is what seemed to A Circle of Friends!!!!Page 34 of 36

be the case. I can't say whether it is or not but certainly this was the feeling I got when I was in India.

NARRATOR 44 A couple of years later the Croydon centre, with shop, restaurant and arts activities, was evicted from the site so a new bus station could be built. Would nothing remain of four year’s hard work?

VESSANTARA We got £27,000 worth of compensation for this lease, plus we got re-sited into the High Street where the current Croydon Centre and 'Hockney's' is. But it all happened very, very quickly and as soon as we'd agreed the deal with the council we closed…within a day or two of us moving out the bulldozers moved in and the whole place disappeared. And I remember walking away with Padmaraja having just watched this happening, and we were both quite surprised I think to start with that we didn't feel more affected by it, we weren't actually that sad. And we were musing over why that was and as we walked away from the site with the sound of the bulldozers in the background it dawned on us that in a way what we'd been doing over that time wasn't really mainly building up a wholefood shop and a restaurant. What we'd mainly been working on were just friendships and connections between us within the Sangha, we'd been building a Sangha and we were taking those connections away with us and that had been really special. And in a way I'm quite pleased that we lost that building because it made it clear what really had been important and what we'd been doing: it hadn't been the building, it had been the people.

DHAMMADINNA A Circle of Friends!!!!Page 35 of 36

I think that in terms of single-sex activities in the Friends, just recently I've become aware from being in America, and reading books about American Buddhism, that having had single-sex activities in the Friends for what, something like 17 years, is very, very, very unusual in the Buddhist world, in the way we've done it. …But now, when we go on a women's Order Convention or something like that, and there is that strength of commitment to each other, the friendship, the commitment of practice, the independence, then I really appreciate that we were pushed in that direction, despite the difficulties of the time. I can see it in perspective now, much more than I could then, so I think it’s been a good move although it was tough to begin with.

NARRATOR 45 Our story is nearly over. The main theme running through the early history of the FWBO is the development of friendship. People were encouraged to practise all levels of friendship, from the ordinary to the spiritual, including developing a connection with the Transcendental Sangha, the third Buddhist Jewel. For many, the starting point was an experience of the friendliness and wisdom of Sangharakshita himself. Fifteen years had passed since Sangharakshita left India for the West and, as he had on a hundred other occasions, he witnessed the effective going for refuge to the Buddha, Dharma, and Sangha of young Mr. Manwatkar and gave him the name Sudarshana. The name means ‘Beautiful to Behold’. [1st June 1979]

SUDARSHAN Initially, I thought that this is personal development but when we came in contact with Bhante, the more I came in contact with Bhante, A Circle of Friends!!!!Page 36 of 36

and heard his lectures, I found this is a bigger movement. I am involved in a great movement, it is not an Indian movement, but it a worldwide movement, and it is going to change the world. And I am involved in the making of a new world, actually. Making a new man, in me and a new man in the society also.

LOKAMITRA We were discovering what it was to be an Order member - we didn't have many examples in front of us - a few, but they were scattered. And - you know - I think Bhante was - in a way - helping us to discover what sangha was as time went on. He didn't show everything at the very beginning. He was always taking us deeper and deeper. So we were discovering for ourselves at that time and I think in Finland that happened, and in New Zealand that happened, and in India it definitely happened, and it was a very hard initiation for people, but they survived. Yes [laughs].

SURYAPRABHA Thank you very much.

LOKAMITRA Good, well I hope you've got something there. History of the FWBO Pt 4: A Circle of Friends p 1