Who are the Triratna Buddhist Community?

The Manchester Buddhist Centre is part of the Tri­r­atna Buddhist Com­munity, formerly the Friends of the West­ern Buddhist Order (FWBO), an inter­na­tional net­work ded­ic­ated to com­mu­nic­at­ing Buddhist truths in ways appro­pri­ate to the mod­ern world

The FWBO was foun­ded in Lon­don in 1967 by Sangharak­shita. Hav­ing ori­gin­ally taken ordin­a­tion as a Theravadin Bhikkhu in India, dur­ing his twenty years prac­tising Buddhism on the Indo-Tibetan bor­der he went on to take ini­ti­ations from a num­ber of Lamas escap­ing the Chinese occu­pa­tion of Tibet.

Return­ing to Eng­land, he exper­i­enced first-hand the lim­ited con­text in which West­ern­ers had to prac­tise the Dharma and his response was to found a new Buddhist move­ment.
Sangharakshita and Order Members in 1960s

Bring­ing Buddhism into an entirely new cul­ture sug­ges­ted to Sangharak­shita a need to go back to basics — to look at the prin­ciples under­ly­ing all forms of Buddhism and work out how best to apply them here. So, Tri­r­atna is an ecu­men­ical move­ment, aligned to no one tra­di­tional school, but draw­ing on the whole stream of Buddhist inspiration.

Tri­r­atna has evolved new struc­tures allow­ing people to live out Buddhist teach­ings as an authen­tic Buddhist way of life in the 21st cen­tury. For example, Tri­r­atna has many centres teach­ing med­it­a­tion, and pro­motes Right Live­li­hood pro­jects in which Buddhists can work together and turn their work into a spir­itual prac­tice.
Windhorse Trading's stupa located in centre of warehouse

A video, Who are the FWBO?
http://www.dailymotion.com/videox9zhke

Buddhism for the Mod­ern World

Stupa at FWBO Convention
In the Buddha’s time there was no tele­vi­sion or inter­net to com­pete with. The Buddha never had to be con­cerned about glob­al­isa­tion or global warm­ing. But Tri­r­atna is explor­ing how the Buddha’s teach­ing of human poten­tial is still cru­cially import­ant, how Buddhists can be socially engaged and con­trib­ute to a bet­ter world.

Grow­ing and changing

In the last forty years Tri­r­atna has grown into a move­ment with dozens of centres all over the world. And not only in the West — Tri­r­atna has a sub­stan­tial pres­ence in India, as well as Dharma activ­it­ies in other devel­op­ing coun­tries, and its change of name from the Friends of the West­ern Buddhist Order reflects this.
Balwadi - kindergarden in India social project

Sangharak­shita has now handed on respons­ib­il­ity for Triratna’s spir­itual vital­ity to his fol­low­ers. Tri­r­atna is enter­ing a new phase of growth and con­sol­id­a­tion, learn­ing from, and build­ing upon its his­tory, and devel­op­ing into a broad-based, mature and exper­i­enced spir­itual com­munity. It is play­ing a sig­ni­fic­ant role in bring­ing Buddhism to the West.
FWBO Cambridge football team celebrating

Com­pas­sion in action

Kar­una was formed in 1980 as Aid for India, Triratna’s response to the suf­fer­ing of India’s Dalit com­munity and con­tin­ues to work with some of South Asia’s most dis­ad­vant­aged people

Tri­r­atna on the web

The main Tri­r­atna web­site acts as a door­way to many other sites, includ­ing a list of retreat centres, Sangharakshita’s own site and Free Buddhist Audio for talks, led med­it­a­tions and study material.

Tri­r­atna News is an online news­let­ter cel­eb­rat­ing what’s going on around the Tri­r­atna Buddhist Community

The Tri­r­atna Story

Pub­lished in May 2010, Vajragupta’s Tri­r­atna Story is an hon­est account of our movement’s growth, includ­ing an exam­in­a­tion of mis­takes made, les­sons learnt and how a Buddhist com­munity was built.

Avail­able from the Buddhist Centre’s shop at £7.99

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