A BIT ABOUT THE FRIENDS OF THE WESTERN BUDDHIST ORDER

The FWBO was founded in 1967 by Sangharakshita in England. Born in 1925 Sangharakshita realised that he was a Buddhist and not a Christian at the tender age of 16; he’s now an old man in his 80’s. Between 1944 and 1964 he lived in the East, mainly in India. For most of that time he was a Buddhist monk and had a deep connection with the main Buddhist traditions: the Theravada, Mahayana and Vajrayana. He spent his time deepening his insight, writing books, articles and poetry, giving lectures and befriending people. The Buddhist movement that Sangharakshita founded draws its inspiration from the whole Buddhist tradition rather than just this or that school and and stresses the importance of spiritual friendship to support and encourage our efforts to grow and develop. Sangharakshita has sought to make the Buddha’s teachings relevant and accessible to us living in the modern world. At the heart of the FWBO is the Western Buddhist Order (WBO); men and women who have made a definite spiritual commitment to learning how to apply Buddhist principles and values to the affairs of every day life. Today the FWBO is now an international Buddhist movement with Buddhist centres in over 20 countries including Mexico, the United States, Germany, France, India, New Zealand and South Africa.

Quotes by Sangharakshita:

“Psychologically speaking, awareness is the most powerful transforming agent that we know. If we apply heat to water then the water is transformed into steam. In the same way, if we apply awareness to any psychic content, the content is refined and sublimated.”
“One of the most important aspects of the spiritual life is that one should be aware of the consequences of one’s own actions.”

“Never promise anything which is not in your power to perform. That is, never promise anything for the performance of which you have to rely on other people.”

“A fool can give more advice in a day than a wise man can follow in a year.”

“You don’t have to justify your existence by being useful. You yourself are the justification for your existence. You haven’t come into existence after all these millions of years of evolution just to sit down in front of a typewriter, or to keep accounts. You are the justification of that whole process. You are an end in yourself. All that you can really be said to be here for is to develop into some higher form of human life…So don’t be ashamed of sitting around and doing nothing. Glory in it. Do things spontaneously, out of a state of inner satisfaction and achievement. It is a virtue to be ornamental as well as useful.”

“Receptivity is the first requisite of the disciple, and indeed of anyone who wants to learn anything. We can be anything else we like: we can be wicked, we can be stupid, we can be full of faults, we can backslide…In a sense it doesn’t matter. But we must be spiritually receptive; we have to be willing and ready to learn. When we know that we do not know, everything is possible.”