An Opening of the Heart V2

An opening of the Heart!!!!Page 1 of 28 1. BUDDHISM IN THE WEST? NARRATOR 1 There are Buddhist centres like this all around the world where people come to meditate, study, practise ritual and meet friends. What are the roots of this Movement, the Friends of the Western Buddhist Order? (MAIN TITLES) The early history of the FWBO can be pieced together from hearing peoples experiences from the sixties and seventies. Nearly thirty years ago in London, Mike Rogers picked up a copy of Edwin Arnold's 1879 poem The Light of Asia. MIKE ROGERS When I’d gone through it I thought to myself, well, I think I am more or less a Buddhist, from having read that book. So I went to the telephone directory and looked up 'Buddhism' and I found the Buddhist Society. So I rushed off and joined the Bud. Soc. And they used to have lectures, I think, every Wednesday night or something like this, and a variety of people came along and gave what they thought was their view of certain aspects of Buddhist philosophy. NARRATOR 2 The Buddhist Society of Great Britain, established in the 1920s, was the main centre for the study and practice of all schools of Buddhism. MIKE ROGERS Another person who impressed me very much was Professor Conze. I went to one of his presentations at Saffron Walden when he was lecturing on the Heart Sutra. There were some several hundred people present including a number of monks and it was really one of the most An opening of the Heart!!!!Page 2 of 28 incredible performances I’ve ever been to. He’s so entertaining and so witty and what with his astrology and other things. Someone would ask a question and he would say, 'That's a typical question from a bleeding Virgo if I may say so', and the questioner would almost swoon, 'How on earth, did he know I was a Virgo?' It's difficult for foreign monks to communicate effectively, I find, with British audiences. And I've been to meetings at the Thai Buddhist Temple where Thai monks, even those who've been in this country for some time, gave presentations. But their English was generally so poor that they couldn't get the nuances of meaning across, and so one didn't get so much from the lectures. 2. RETURN OF SANGHARAKSHITA TO UK NARRATOR 3 Over the years a handful of Westerners had gone out to gain firsthand experience of Eastern Buddhism. Now one of them returned to British shores. NEWSPAPER REPORTER 1 Denis Lingwood, who embarked for India with the Army as youth of 19 in 1944, has returned to London as head of the first chapter of European Buddhist monks to be established in England. Signaller Lingwood, now 39, has become the Venerable Sangharakshita Sthavira, author, poet, and senior British Buddhist monk. MIKE ROGERS It wasn't very long before a new speaker, who I hadn't heard before, had been invited to come along, and I thought he presented the ideas of Buddhism in his several lectures there so well and so succinctly and clearly and logically that my An opening of the Heart!!!!Page 3 of 28 interest was rapidly growing. I thought, 'Well, this sounds like the real McCoy!' NEWSPAPER REPORTER 2 Sangharakshita has a lean, bespectacled face, honed and tempered by 20 years' spiritual studies and work with Indian 'untouchables' and Tibetan refugees. His headquarters are in a villa on Havistock Hill, Hampstead. MIKE ROGERS And I found he was incumbent up at the Hampstead Buddhist Vihara so my steps headed northwards, up to Havistock Hill, where he was giving regular Sunday lectures to a crowd of keen followers, and I got more and more interested. BHANTE My life at the Hampstead Buddhist Vihara was a very busy one, consisting mainly of taking classes, delivering lectures and seeing people individually. And those activities usually filled up my week very well. I also visited, quite regularly, all the little outlying Buddhist groups. Music NEWSPAPER REPORTER 3 One hundred and fifty people came together this weekend at a country house in Hertfordshire for the thirteenth annual Buddhist Summer School. BHANTE Attending the summer schools quite often were people who weren't Buddhists but who spent the whole summer, it seems, going from one summer school to another. MIKE ROGERS Endless different people would get up and give their views on all sorts of different subjects. It wasn't a bad beginning for anybody An opening of the Heart!!!!Page 4 of 28 interested in Buddhism to get different people's views on what it was all about. As I say, we can only judge things in the light of our own best ignorance at any one particular time! (Laughs) BHANTE At the very first summer school I asked Mr Humphreys if he minded if I conducted a little puja one evening. Puja meaning an act of Buddhist devotion. And he said, 'English Buddhists weren't into that sort of thing but if I really wanted to, well, he supposed I could and a few people might turn up'. So I announced that I'd be holding this puja in the evening and virtually everybody turned up! (Laughs) BHANTE 1970s 'With Mandarava, blue lotus and jasmine…' BHANTE …and they seemed very much to enjoy it. So this made it clear to me that ritual and devotion were very much one of the missing links in the Buddhism of those days. 3. DISCORD WITHIN THE GROUPS NARRATOR 4 Relations between the two Buddhist bodies, the Hampstead Vihara and the Buddhist Society were somewhat strained. Added to this, the Vihara had its own internal difficulties. MIKE ROGERS Havistock Hill had had a slightly up and down history. Several Buddhist monks had been incumbents there but they each in turn seemed to have fallen out with the Trust or the lay organiser, shall we say, behind the place, Maurice Walsh, and the other trustees. NARRATOR 5 An opening of the Heart!!!!Page 5 of 28 The aim of the Hampstead Vihara was to establish an English branch of the Buddhist Sangha based on a Theravadin order of monks. The Buddhist Society, on the other hand, had a broad church approach. To heal these differences Sangharakshita worked in both places and gave over 200 talks. BHANTE And in both places my activities were really quite successful and very much appreciated, appreciated also, I must say, by Christmas Humphreys himself. But it did transpire later that some people, including some who didn't actually attend, were not quite happy with a few things. Some people weren't very happy that I'd allowed my hair to grow just a wee bit longer than might be considered customary. It was only two or three inches but even so it was longer. But, I think, perhaps a more serious issue, which might have been fairly decisive eventually, was the fact that I had criticised a particular form of meditation which I did not consider a genuinely Buddhist form of meditation because I had seen that it led to a state of extreme alienation and even mental disturbance in the case of some of the people who had practised it. Some of them indeed had to be hospitalised. So I gradually phased out that kind of meditation from the Vihara. And that of course did upset some people, some of whom ceased to come along to the Vihara. NARRATOR 6 But not everyone was put off. VANGISA He was real. I had met one or two remarkable people in my life, but nobody who was quite so incontrovertibly, ineluctably real. BHANTE An opening of the Heart!!!!Page 6 of 28 By the end of my two years at the Hampstead Buddhist Vihara it was clear that a new Buddhism, at least a new presentation of Buddhism, was needed in the West and I decided to stay on in Britain. (Music) 4. FAREWELL VISIT TO INDIA NARRATOR 7 Sangharakshita's four month invitation to the UK had already been extended by a couple of years. But before he could really settle he had to bid farewell to friends and teachers in India. During his tour he stayed at his old vihara, met up with the Dalai Lama, and addressed a meeting of quarter of a million ex-untouchables BHANTE I went back to India for I think it was a four month period. I toured around. I visited my ex-untouchable Buddhist friends in Bombay, in Poona, in Nagpur and other places. I visited my teachers. I visited Jagdish Kashyap. I visited Dilgo Khentse Rimpoche. I visited, of course, Dhardo Rimpoche in Kalimpong and Mr Chen in Kalimpong and, later on, I visited also Lama Govinda, though technically he wasn't one of my teachers but I always admired him and his work. NARRATOR 8 While the Indian tour continued, at London Airport Soviet premier Kosygin was saying “Goodbye”, the Monkees were saying “Hello”, the Torrey Canyon was shedding oil off-shore, Prince Charles was inspecting his new college, and the Observer newspaper enlightened readers on the deepening crisis in Hampstead. NEWSPAPER REPORTER 4 An opening of the Heart!!!!Page 7 of 28 A major row is likely to develop among Britain's 3,000 Buddhists over the sacking of the Venerable Sthavira Sangharakshita. His supporters claim that he criticised Buddhism as interpreted in Britain and that this provoked the resentment which led to his dismissal. BHANTE And my teachers were all very supportive and, even when I told them that the English Sangha Trust had decided not to renew my invitation, they told me not to bother.

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