Residential communities
Over the past 35 years many people in the FWBO have chosen to live together in residential spiritual communities. Buddhists involved in centres around the world have set up a wide range of communal living situations. The aims are to live simply, develop friendships with like-minded people, and support and encourage each others’ attempts to practise the Dharma.
These Buddhist communities vary from a few friends informally sharing a house or a flat to larger or more intensive situations with regular periods of meditation, study, ritual, and community meetings. Community life is a practice in itself — learning to share, tolerating other people’s habits and communicating honestly to resolve differences. It helps people to develop loving-kindness, loosen the divide between self and other, and gradually to realize the interconnected nature of life.
There is also an environmental benefit because communal life is generally cheaper; people can live more frugally, split bills, and need, say, only one fridge, washing machine and so on shared between half a dozen or a dozen people.
Buddhist communities usually consist of individuals rather than couples. Many are in partnerships but chose to live with friends. In the early days of the FWBO, communities were sometimes mixed and sometimes single sex; over time it emerged that the single-sex situations were more stable and satisfying. Currently some people are again experimenting in various ways with mixed and family communities.