The Six Distinctive Emphases of the FWBO
Sangharakshita sets out six features of the Friends of the Western Buddhist Order and places the movement in the context of the wider Buddhist tradition
So what are these six distinctive features of the FWBO? At the outset I’d like to make clear that they are distinctive emphases. Emphases that differentiate the FWBO from other Buddhist movements, both those of the past and those of the present. But though they differentiate the FWBO from other Buddhist movements they are not the only features of the FWBO. The FWBO has a great deal in common with the rest of the Buddhist world, past and present. The FWBO is very much a Buddhist movement, and it shares with the rest of the Buddhist world, it shares with all the schools, the basic characteristics, the general features of all Buddhist schools and traditions, especially with regard to teachings.
Like the rest of the Buddhist world we study, we try to practise the Four Noble Truths, the Noble Eightfold Path. There’s the pratityasamutpada, there’s the six or the ten paramitas, there are the four samgrahavastus (means of unifying the Sangha). There are a host of other teachings that we share with the rest of the Buddhist world, and which are at the same time very much a part of the FWBO. We share a preoccupation with ethics. We share various meditation practices; in all our centres we teach the Mindfulness of Breathing, and the metta bhavana — these meditation practices are found all over the Buddhist world. We have these practices in common with many other parts of the Buddhist world. And then of course there are the teachings about Wisdom (prajna), about Emptiness (sunyata), about no self (anatma) — we share these also with the rest of the Buddhist world.
So the FWBO has a very great deal in common with the rest of the Buddhist world. At the same time it has its own distinctive characteristics and it’s about these that I am going to speak briefly.
First of all the FWBO is what I’ve called an ecumenical Buddhist movement. Ecumenical is not a very satisfactory word in this connection; I’ve really borrowed it from Christianity but it’s the best word we have. What I mean is that the FWBO does not identify itself exclusively with any one eastern Buddhist tradition. We don’t say we are Theravadin; we don’t say that we are Mahayana; we don’t say that we follow Tibetan Buddhism; we don’t say that we’re a Vajrayana tradition. We don’t say any of those things. We say simply that we’re Buddhist. That we are Buddhist movement, a Buddhist tradition, if you like a Buddhist lineage.
So it’s important to understand that. And because we’re simply Buddhist we feel free to draw upon the enormous wealth of the entire Buddhist tradition. We feel free to study the Pali scriptures, free to study the great Mahayana sutras, whether translated from Sanksrit or from Tibetan or from Chinese. We feel free to study Zen, or Shin — all the other Buddhist schools’ traditions. There’s a great treasury there upon which we draw. And we draw from that great treasury of Buddhist tradition and teaching those ideas, those principles and practices, which help us to develop as Buddhists within the context, for the most part, of western social and cultural life. And of course we have called ourselves (so far) the Western Buddhist Order and the Friends of the Western Buddhist Order. (It’s quite possible that that nomenclature will be changed — discussions about changing the name are going on.)
I made it clear originally that when we say Western, or at least when I say Western, I don’t mean Western in a very narrow sense. I mean we’re trying to practise Buddhism under the conditions of a secularised and industrialised society here in the West, and that kind of society, which perhaps we could call the modern Western society, is fast spreading to other corners of the world. So that there are people even in traditionally Buddhist countries, who are finding our approach as the FWBO more acceptable to them than their own indigenous Buddhist tradition. So we’re in this, as it were, twofold position. We are ecumenical, in the sense that we feel free to draw upon the wealth of the entire Buddhist tradition, and to take from that wealth whatever helps us in the way of teaching, to practise the Dharma, to develop spiritually within what we may broadly describe as a Western context. So it’s in this way that we are an ecumenical Buddhist movement.
So that’s first distinctive feature. But of course when you’ve got such a great wealth of teaching and practice to draw upon, and Buddhism is a very old and rich tradition, now 2,500 years old, it’s easy to become confused. It’s very easy, just to pick and choose according to one’s own whims and fancies and to move from this, to flit from this to that without settling down to really serious practice and development. So this brings me to the second of our distinctive features and that is our emphasis on what we call the centrality of going for Refuge to the Buddha, the Dharma and the Sangha. Many years ago, especially at the beginning of the FWBO in the late 60s, I asked myself — What is it that all Buddhists have in common, whether they’re Theravadins or Mahayanists or Tibetan Buddhists or Ch’an or Zen or Shin Buddhists — what is it that they all have in common?
There are some teachings that they all have in common but what about practices? Do all Buddhists meditate? Well, not all Buddhists meditate by any means. Sometimes in the West non-Buddhists think that all Buddhists meditate, but they don’t. You might think all Buddhists are vegetarians, but they’re not. I remember in this connection, just a few months ago, a Japanese Buddhist came to visit me and after we’d had a bit of discussion and he’d asked a few questions about the Order, he asked me, rather tentatively, Are any of your Order members vegetarians?
. I said, I think probably about 99%
, and he was really taken aback, and he said, Oh, they must be very highly developed.
I didn’t enlighten him! So, yes, lots of things that we think are common to all Buddhists, or should be, are often not. So to cut a long story short, what I eventually concluded was that what all Buddhists had in common was the fact that they all went for Refuge to the Buddha, the Dharma and the Sangha. No Buddhist would say they did not go for Refuge to the Buddha, the Dharma and the Sangha. That was basic, that was fundamental. And because it is fundamental, because it is common, it is absolutely central. So this is our second distinctive emphasis. We emphasise the central act of going for Refuge, and years ago I coined this little slogan: Going for Refuge is primary and lifestyle is secondary
. I later amended it to Going for Refuge is primary, ethics is secondary
, that is the precepts are secondary, and lifestyle is tertiary
. That’s the latest revised version.
So going for Refuge is primary. Going for Refuge is central, and one of the reasons that I saw this so clearly was that when I was in the East it was so often said that the real Buddhist is the monk. The lay person is, as it were, a second-class Buddhist — or even for some people hardly a Buddhist at all: if you want to be a real Buddhist you must become a monk. So this put monasticism at the centre, and I felt this was entirely wrong. It was going for Refuge which should be at the very centre of the Buddhist life. And of course this has been the second distinctive characteristic of the FWBO. Even though all Buddhists do go for Refuge, they don’t by any means all give it the same importance or the same central place in their life as we do in the FWBO.
As well as identifying the act of going for Refuge as central, I have also developed my thinking with regard to the different levels of going for Refuge, and in a sense this particular formulation is a contribution of my own, even though it does fit in with traditional Buddhist thought. I distinguish five different levels of going for Refuge and this is very important for us to understand.
I speak of Cultural going for Refuge, of Ethnic going for Refuge, of Provisional going for Refuge, of Effective going for Refuge, of Real going for Refuge and another one which perhaps I don’t need to mention now; one which goes even further. I haven’t always distinguished between Cultural going for Refuge and Ethnic going for Refuge but here I want to make that distinction clearer. When I speak of Cultural going for Refuge I mean the going for Refuge of someone who is born in a Buddhist country, who considers himself or herself a Buddhist and perhaps repeats: Buddham saranam gacchami, Dhammam saranam gacchami, Sangham saranam gacchami
, but simply accepting it as part of their culture without it having, perhaps, any spiritual significance at all. I speak of that as a merely cultural going for Refuge.
And then there’s Ethnic going for Refuge. By Ethnic going for Refuge I mean the going for Refuge of someone who is born in a Buddhist country, in the midst of Buddhist culture, and who does also repeat the refuges and precepts, but not with very much understanding of what they really represent; perhaps just a glimmer of it, maybe expressed in the form of devotion, making offerings to the Buddha and so on, but not going very far, and certainly not stepping outside the bounds of their own indigenous Buddhist culture. This I speak of as Ethnic going for Refuge. It represents a somewhat higher level than the purely cultural going for Refuge.
Then I speak of Provisional going for Refuge. Provisional is when you’re trying things out as an active Buddhist practitioner. You’re not quite sure. You’re making some sort of tentative steps in the direction of going for Refuge. Very often this is the going for Refuge of at least some Mitras (novices), though obviously I don’t want to generalise here.
And then of course there is the Effective going for Refuge of someone who has the Three Jewels quite clearly in view, who does regard the Buddha or Buddhahood as the highest spiritual ideal, who wants to practise the Dharma, who accepts the teachings embodied in the Dharma and who also has regard for those members of the sangha, those followers of the path more advanced than himself or herself. So such a person is said to be effectively going for Refuge. And when you effectively go for Refuge or when it is recognised that you are effectively going for Refuge then, within the FWBO, you are considered to be ready for ordination into the Western Buddhist Order. Ordination therefore represents the formalisation and recognition of the fact that you are effectively going for Refuge.
So this is an extremely important step, and extremely important point. You could almost say that our whole movement revolves around this. If there were no people effectively going for Refuge, if there were no more people coming forward and effectively going for Refuge, the Order and movement would gradually die out, everything depends upon that. So it is of extreme importance, not just for individuals but for the movement as a whole, that there should be a continuity of effective going for Refuge; that more and more people should be taking that step — effectively going for Refuge.
And after this is Real going for Refuge, which comes about when your effective going for Refuge becomes irreversible. There are various technical traditional ways of describing that; I won’t go into those now, because even though you may be effectively going for Refuge it isn’t easy. Everybody knows that. Provisional going for Refuge isn’t easy, Effective going for Refuge isn’t easy, and you can perhaps, unfortunately, sometimes, backslide and you have to pick yourself up and start all over again; but Real going for Refuge is so firmly established, where you have so much insight into the true nature of things, that you can’t fall back, that you can’t possibly renounce the Buddha, the Dharma and the Sangha. You can’t possibly give up your quest for Enlightenment, you can’t possibly give up your effort to practise the ten precepts. You then become irreversible from full Enlightenment. Your going for Refuge is Real, you have entered the Stream.
So it’s very important not only to understand the centrality of the act of going for Refuge but also to understand that there are these different levels of going for Refuge and one should try to ascend from one level to another. There should be that constant upward movement or, we might say, that constant deepening. People often use the expression deepening their going for Refuge
and I suspect it’s become a bit hackneyed. Sometimes people will say I’m going to do this because it will help me deepen my going for Refuge, but you have to ask yourself — is what you propose to do really going to deepen your going for Refuge? Is it really going to help you to go, say, from Provisional to Effective, from Effective to Real? Will it really have that effect or are you just using that language as an excuse, a rationalisation, for doing something that you just want to do.
So, this is our second distinctive emphasis in the FWBO, emphasis on the centrality of the act of going for Refuge, especially as represented by these five different levels. And it’s because we see the act of going for Refuge as central that when we look upon this vast panorama of Buddhist teachings and practices we have a principle on the basis of which we can make a selection. We can ask ourselves, will this traditional practice help us deepen or advance our going for Refuge. So this centrality of going for Refuge is a bit like Mount Meru, in the traditional cosmological system. I don’t know if you know about Mount Meru but the ancient Buddhists and Hindus didn’t know anything about modern geography. They believed that at the centre of the world was a great mountain called Mount Meru and the whole universe was organised around that. The sun and the moon circumambulated that great peak on the top of which the gods had their abode. So this principle of the centrality of the act of going for Refuge, we might say, is the Mount Meru of the Western Buddhist Order, of the FWBO. Everything revolves around that. That is absolutely central. That is the great soaring peak, to change the metaphor, to which we direct our eyes. Perhaps that’s enough about our second distinctive feature, the centrality of going for Refuge.
Thirdly comes the fact that the Order is what I’ve called a unified Buddhist Order. Now unified is quite a vague term, so what do we mean a unified Buddhist Order? Initially it meant that the Order was open on completely equal terms to both men and women. This is its basic meaning, its basic significance, because there are some Eastern Buddhist orders which are not open to men and women on equal terms. But the Western Buddhist Order is a unified order in the sense that it is open to both men and to women. In some quarters in the Buddhist East it’s regarded as rather revolutionary, not to say almost heretical, to accept both men and women into the same order on equal terms. So this has been our principle, one of our distinctive features from the very beginning.
We’re also a unified Buddhist Order in the sense that we accept people from whatever cultural, racial or social background, and we make no distinction between people, also, with regard to sexual orientation. There’s still even in Britain, a certain amount of prejudice in this particular respect, but I hope it’s a prejudice from which the FWBO, especially the WBO, is completely free — we do not discriminate against people on account of their particular sexual orientation. But having said that we’re a unified order in the sense that we accept both men and women, giving them equal responsibilities, equal duties and so on, I want to make it clear that we’re not — and here perhaps I’m coining a phrase to some extent — we are not a unisex Buddhist order. Now what do I mean by that? We are not a unisex Buddhist order. In other words men Order members remain men Order members and women Order members remain women Order members. So they’re equally Order members. We don’t try to sort of blend them so that you can’t really tell a male Order member apart from a female Order member. It’s not like unisex hairdressing salon, it’s not a unified Buddhist order in that sense. It’s not, as I say, unisex.
When you become a member of the Western Buddhist Order and suppose you’re a man — you don’t have to cease to be a man. You don’t have to tone down your specifically masculine attributes or attitudes; I mean to the extent of course that they are in harmony with the Dharma and ethical principles. You aren’t obliged to develop your feminine side
or anything of that sort. And in the same way, of course, women need not feel obliged to develop their masculine side in the rather one-sided manner that sometimes people say we ought to. So there’s nothing wrong with being a man, and I’m afraid that it’s necessary to say that these days because over the last 30 years, since I’ve been back in Britain, I’ve seen and heard so much propaganda about it not being a good thing to be a man. Men have got all these nasty habits: they’re aggressive, cruel, responsible for all the bloodshed and wars; they’re narrow minded and not sympathetic or empathetic like women. They’re not very touchy or feely. So they’ve got to develop their feminine side or perish!
I’ve been hearing this sort of thing and reading about it for years! But don’t let anybody — whether in the sangha or not — make you feel ashamed of being a man. And if this was a female audience I was speaking to I would say the same — don’t let anyone make you feel ashamed of being a woman. I think it’s very important to understand that, although we’re a unified Buddhist order we are not a unisex Buddhist order, and we’re certainly not a eunuchoid Buddhist order! I haven’t got around to saying this before but I think it’s high time it was said. Becoming an Order member doesn’t mean giving up your masculinity or your femininity. We need well-rounded characters who are not ashamed of being either men or women, and who can happily collaborate when the occasion requires.
So how many of the six distinctive features have we had? Ecumencial, centrality of going for Refuge, and now a unified Buddhist Order. The fourth is Right Livelihood, especially team-based right livelihood. This is a quite distinctive emphasis of the FWBO. In all forms of Buddhism you will find right livelihood mentioned. Right livelihood is one of the steps on the Buddha’s Noble Eightfold Path, so of course you find it in all forms of Buddhism wherever the Eightfold Path is mentioned. But from early on in the movement, and perhaps even when I was still in India, I felt that this principle of right livelihood deserved much more emphasis than it usually receives in the traditional Buddhist East. You can find lots of people in the East who consider themselves pious Buddhists but who are making their money — sometimes a great deal of it — in all sorts of unethical ways (even prostitution); but they still support the temples and regard themselves as being good Buddhists.
So this emphasis on the importance of right livelihood, especially team-based right livelihood, is connected in my mind with the fact that economics occupies a crucial place in our collective life, and a very important place in the collective life of the West today. I’ve been listening to the radio a bit and apparently there’s some gigantic American corporation that has recently gone bankrupt. I don’t know the details but some terrific scandal is involved and all sorts of very, apparently, unethical and illegal goings on. This is the sort of world in which we live. It’s not a very ethical world and it’s a world in which ethical considerations are seldom allowed to get in the way of making money.
One conclusion I arrived at early on in the history of the FWBO was that we ought to try to make some inroads into the economic life of society, by starting up institutions which were economic, which represented a form of economic activity but which were based on ethical principles. I believe it’s not enough just for the individual Buddhist to try to be ethical and have an ethical job, though that is important, but there should be team-based right livelihood. And I’m glad that over the years these team-based right livelihood businesses have become a key part of the FWBO structure, and provide a very positive situation for those who are working within them. Of course if you work in the world, so to speak, you should try to follow an occupation which is ethical, which doesn’t oblige you to violate your Buddhist ethical principles. But I think wherever possible we could go a step further and try to join a Buddhist right livelihood team.
Now I’m going to briefly just recapitulate what I see as the four essential features of the team-based right livelihood business. They’ll be familiar to some of you but perhaps not to others. First of all, obviously, the business must be run on ethical lines. You mustn’t cut corners ethically in order to make more money. So the team-based right livelihood business is an ethical business. It doesn’t do anything or encourage anything of an unethical nature. I needn’t go into details here. You can think of examples for yourself.
Secondly, the business, the team-based right livelihood business, should give those who are working within it sufficient support — and I use the word ‘support’ and not wages or salary — sufficient support for them to have a reasonable standard of living. This raises a very important point, that as a Buddhist one should be trying to live as simply as possible, using as little of the earth’s resources as possible — within reasonable limits; not spending too much on clothes or amusements or unnecessary travel or anything of a frivolous nature. Trying to lead a simple life, which of course obviously is easiest within a community — I’ll say something about that in a minute — so yes, secondly, the team-based right livelihood business should provide an adequate level of support, financial support.
Then, thirdly, the team-based right livelihood business should provide a framework for spiritual practice, especially for the development of friendships within the business. Very often within businesses of various kinds, within offices, within factories, personal relationships are not of the best, and people are certainly not thinking in terms of helping one another to grow spiritually or even psychologically; but within the team-based right livelihood business the way of working should be such, the co-operation should be such, the friendship should be such, that people are helped to grow as Buddhists. In fact they are helped, in words I used earlier, to deepen their going for Refuge.
And, fourthly, the team-based right livelihood business should make a profit. There’s no virtue in not making a profit, and the reason why it’s important is that other non-profit making activities of the FWBO obviously need financial support. One reason why in the early days of the FWBO I was keen that we have team-based right livelihood businesses was that I was very concerned that this western Buddhist movement of ours, should not be dependent on donations from wealthy Buddhists in the East. I felt this would be demoralising, that we should stand on our own feet, and be self-supporting. I used to quote that old Ch’an or Zen saying, A day of no working is a day of no eating.
So this is why I felt that as a matter of self-respect the FWBO should be self-supporting, not look to Eastern Buddhists for financial support. The money for our activities should come from ourselves, from individual members and from the profits of the team-based right livelihood ventures.
So these are the four characteristics of the team-based right livelihood business: that it is ethical; offers sufficient financial support to those working within it; provides structures helpful to the development of the member spiritually, especially opportunities to develop personal spiritual friendships, and then is able to make donations to support non-profit making activities around the FWBO. And from what I’ve seen, for many people — perhaps not for everybody but for many, many people — the team-based livelihood situation is a very highly positive one. Apart from a vihara-type situation (which obviously would attract a minority of people), I think the team-based right livelihood situation is the most positive that one could find. I’m thinking of a team-based right livelihood business where the workers not only work together but live together in communities, share puja, meditation and study. It’s a very intensive situation. It’s almost a monastic situation, you could say, and I’ve watched people — young and not so young — who’ve come through a team-based right livelihood business and they do in some ways have a definite sort of character. They are usually quite positive, have lots of energy and idealism and they’re healthy. They seem to be more healthy than people in certain other situations.
So I would certainly encourage anyone who has the possibility of working in a team-based right livelihood business to try it. Perhaps I could also mention something of a very similar nature — the Karuna Trust fundraising teams. A six-week door-knocking appeal is also a very intensive situation. It helps the individual to grow and is also very important as regards providing money for our welfare and Dharma work in India and elsewhere. So yes, this is one of our distinctive emphases — team-based right livelihood businesses.
Next comes our emphasis on the spiritual value of the arts. I’m not going to say much about this area because I think it’s pretty obvious and quite a few of you are involved in the arts in one way or another. Speaking from my own experience, even before I encountered the Dharma (which I did when I was 16), I was very inspired and even uplifted by the poetry I came into contact with, especially the poetry of Shelley, Shakespeare, Rilke and Wordsworth; and I was inspired by the great art that I encountered. I believe experience of the arts can play a very important part in our lives. I’m not saying everybody needs to be widely read or very knowledgeable about the arts — no — but, yes, a poem or a picture can be a source of great inspiration to us, and our own creative activity can be a source of very great inspiration to us.
We all know how inspiring we find certain Buddha and Bodhisattva images, thangkas and icons. We shouldn’t underestimate the importance of these sort of aids. I’m just going to make one particular point here. This is a point that one or two people have raised recently and which I’d like to underline. They’ve said going for Refuge is primary, yes, going for Refuge to the Buddha, the Dharma and the Sangha, but they’ve also made the point that we don’t seem to have too many symbols for the Buddha, the Dharma and the Sangha. We have the Three Jewels which appear on the Order kesa: the yellow jewel for the Buddha, the blue one for the Dharma, the red one for the Sangha, but it has been suggested that we might make more of this, that we could see in all our centres perhaps large, ornate, coloured, illuminated representations of the Three Jewels to remind us that this is what the FWBO is all about — these are our three great objects of refuge. We go for Refuge to these Three Jewels, to the Buddha, the Dharma, the Sangha. So it’s been suggested that the artists in the movement could provide us with beautiful and inspiring representations, symbols of the Three Jewels. So if there are any artists listening, perhaps they’ll take note of this. So that’s the fifth distinctive emphasis.
The sixth and last one is the importance of friendship, especially spiritual friendship. There is no sangha without friendship. Spiritual friendship is the bedrock of the sangha. I’m sure this is a very well ventilated subject. We all know what the Buddha said about friendship — spiritual friendship being not a half but the whole of the spiritual life
— so I’m not going to try to cover this particular ground in the way that I’ve covered the other five distinctive features of the FWBO. Instead I’m going to speak about my third topic, my friendship with Dhardo Rimpoche, and here we begin to approach the end of the talk.
I did mention at the very beginning that when I was asked to make my friendship with Dhardo Rimpoche the subject of a whole talk I wasn’t sure I had enough material. That might have surprised you but it’s true. What is the reason for that? Well, the reason was that in a sense my friendship with Dhardo Rimpoche, which extended over practically the whole of my 14 years in Kalimpong, was not a very eventful friendship. A friendship after all is not like a love affair. (Well not usually, some friendships are perhaps but that hasn’t been really my experience.) A friendship doesn’t have the ups and downs and the dramatic turns and reversals that a love affair has. It’s a comparatively sober affair. So there’s no very dramatic history to relate. It just continues usually on its own steady course. This is why I felt that I didn’t really have much to say about my friendship with Dhardo Rimpoche. There were no dramatic developments. We never quarrelled, so there was never any reconciliation. Our friendship was — I was going to say on the same steady level, but no, it did very gradually sort of ascend, but there weren’t any dramatic leaps or bounds. However, digging around in my memory, there are some things which I could say about my friendship with Dhardo Rimpoche.
The first thing that occurred to me when I started reflecting was that we were two very different people, very different in our background. I was born in England, in London, in Tooting of all places. Usually in England — our friends from overseas may not appreciate this — but usually or very often I’d find in England when Tooting is mentioned people usually laugh. It’s a ridiculous sort of place. It’s not the sort of place one would choose to be born in, but that was where I grew up, Tooting. So yes, I grew up in a very ordinary family, was in bed for a couple of years, had very little education. I worked in a coal merchant’s office for a month. I was a minor civil servant for two years. Then I was in the army for three years and then I had a wandering life in India and became a monk and moved to Kalimpong. Well, that was my background!
So what was Dhardo Rimpoche’s background? Well, to begin with he was an incarnate lama! He was a Bodhisattva. I was nowhere near being a Bodhisattva. I found it difficult even to be an Arahant. Not only was he an incarnate Bodhisattva, he had a very elaborate Buddhist education in one of the top Gelugpa universities in Lhasa and passed through the whole course with flying colours and became the Dalai Lama’s cultural and religious representative in India and he was very highly regarded. I was at that time just an ordinary Theravada bhikkhu, to all appearances, so we were very different in background. I’m not sure how different we were in character and temperament. I must admit I think Rimpoche had a kinder nature than I did. I think I’ve had to work a bit on my compassion but Rimpoche seemed to find it came quite naturally to him, but then of course he was a Bodhisattva, so what would one expect? Bodhisattvas are naturally compassionate.
But I think we were similar in certain respects. We were both not exactly reserved — well, we weren’t very touchy-feely — put it that way! It took us quite a while to become friends. I remember the circumstances under which we first met. Rimpoche was the abbot of the Tibetan monastery down in Buddhagaya, and there was a Mahabodhi Society centre there almost next door, and there had been some friction between the two and one of my friends in Calcutta connected with the Mahabodhi Society asked me to go and see Dhardo Rimpoche who was at that time in Kalimpong and see if I could sort it out; those were the circumstances under which I first met Dhardo Rimpoche. I was at once struck by his straightforwardness and his honesty, and I realised at once that as regards the friction between the Gompa and the Mahabodhi Society centre it certainly wasn’t Rimpoche’s fault. I was quite convinced of that.
So that was our first contact and subsequently he invited me for the opening of the Indo-Tibet Buddhist Cultural Institute and School, and I gave a few talks there, and so in that way gradually we got to know each other. I think an important element in our friendship was the fact that we each appreciated that the other really did try to cherish the doctrine. Certainly Rimpoche cherished the doctrine, I knew that. And I cherished the doctrine and I think he realised that from my general attitude and from some of the lectures I gave under the auspices of his institute — lectures which were translated into Tibetan.
So our friendship was also based on mutual respect, and that’s quite important I think. We don’t always emphasise this, that respect, mutual respect, is an important element in friendship. The fact that you’re friends doesn’t mean that you should lose your respect for one another. There shouldn’t be an unhelpful sort of familiarity. In the early stages of friendship perhaps there should even be a sort of slight reserve. You shouldn’t sort of go over the top. That’s more like a love affair. So my relationship with Rimpoche — one can’t really call it a friendship at this stage — it continued in this way for some years, and then something happened.
It was the year of the Buddhajayanti, the 2,500th Buddhajayanti and the government of India invited I think it was 56 eminent Buddhists from border areas, as we were called, to tour the holy places at government expense in a special train and end up in Delhi and take part in the celebrations there. Dhardo Rimpoche and I were both invited and it so happened — I think we probably decided — that we occupied the same compartment in the special train all the way through, and we always sat beside each other on the buses that took us from place to place on the tours to the holy places. And in this way we became much closer. We really got to know each other better because for the 10 days of that tour we were literally together day and night with two other people, sharing the same compartment, and that marked a turning point. This underlines a point that if you really want to become friends with someone I think you have to live with them, and I think this is where the importance of community life comes in. The best way, or at least one of the best ways, of developing friendships is to live with the people with whom you want to become friends. In fact you might almost say that if you do live together, if you’re normal human beings and especially if you’re committed to the Dharma, you are sure to become friends, but it’s usually a gradual process, not a sudden process. So this is what happened in the case of Dhardo Rimpoche and myself.
The tour that we made together really marked a turning point, and after that I think I can say we were friends, not just acquaintances who respected each other for the fact that we both cherished the Dharma, and we helped one another in various ways; I used to do Rimpoche’s typing for him quite often and, I used to give talks. I learned quite a bit about the Dharma from him and eventually of course I received certain initiations from him. But as I’ve written in my memoirs, he became my teacher without ceasing to be my friend.
We were also thrown together quite a bit in 1962 at the time of the Chinese invasion. There was a lot of fear in Kalimpong at that time because the Chinese had already invaded parts of Nepal and Assam I think it was, and there was fighting along the border between India and China, and rumours were going round that the Chinese were going to advance to Kalimpong, that they were going to advance to Siligiri, there were even rumours they were going to advance all the way to Calcutta because they wanted to have access to the Indian Ocean. There were all those rumours and people were leaving Kalimpong — certainly many Indian officials were leaving — and one day an Indian official came to see me and to see Dhardo Rimpoche and asked us to stay in Kalimpong because he said if people see that you two are staying then they’re less likely to leave because they’ll think Rimpoche and Sangharakshita, they must know something — maybe Rimpoche knows through his divination and if you two don’t leave, they said, others are less likely to leave so please stay. So we did — not that we had any thoughts of leaving anyway, but we said yes, and we really did co-operate during that period. I used to organise meetings for the Tibetans of which Dhardo Rimpoche would speak and I was frequently at his place; and he was often at mine. Also I must say he probably helped me much more than I helped him.
But there was one respect in which I think I helped him: I was able to listen sometimes to his difficulties. He wasn’t upset by his difficulties, though he was sometimes puzzled by the fact that people could behave in a certain way, especially people that he helped. You may be thinking — those of you who know anything about Dhardo Rimpoche, who may have read Suvajra’s book [The Wheel and the Diamond], you may be under the impression that Dhardo Rimpoche was popular with everybody, but that wasn’t the case. Dhardo Rimpoche in Kalimpong had some very bitter enemies who were out really to destroy him and wanted to get him sent back to China, or even get him arrested by the Indian authorities as a communist spy. They tried very hard to harm him in that way and to close down his school, and Rimpoche used to talk to me about that. But he never got upset, but he was just puzzled that people could behave in such a way.
I mention this to make it clear that just because you’re good and compassionate, it doesn’t necessarily mean that everyone’s going to love you. So if they don’t you mustn’t be disappointed. You mustn’t think that goodness by itself is any insurance against calamity. I really saw this in the case of Dhardo Rimpoche. Such a good man but unfortunately some people tried to destroy him. However Rimpoche was not only a very good man, he was not only just a wise a man, he was also quite clever. I used to admire this in him because he was always one step ahead of the people who were trying to do him down. And they didn’t succeed, and we used to have many a laugh over this! Although, yes, it was very unfortunate and unpleasant for Rimpoche what people (mostly Tibetan government officials) were trying to do. But when Rimpoche explained how he’d outwitted or outmanouevred them — I must say, of course in an ethical manner, the pair of us always had a good laugh. And these sort of exchanges cemented our friendship. So I do have a few things to say about my friendship with Dhardo Rimpoche who was not only a teacher but also a friend, or a teacher without ceasing to be a friend.
So I am pleased that on this occasion when we’re reminding ourselves of that motto of Dhardo Rimpoche, or motto of his school — Cherish the doctrine or Dharma, live united, and radiate love. And I’m glad to have the opportunity of saying something about him. Rimpoche himself certainly lived united with those who allowed him to live united with them, and he certainly cherished the doctrine. I saw this myself on so many occasions. And, yes, he certainly radiated love. Not in any sticky, sentimental sort of way. It was a very clean, wholesome, straightforward and unattached type of love. You could almost say it was like the sunshine shining on everything, and sometimes you could see his kindness, his compassion just lighting up his face. It was an incredibly beautiful thing to see and I remember it very well.
Of course you must also remember that when I knew Rimpoche well he wasn’t much older than me. There was only a seven-year age difference. I was in my 20s and 30s, he was in his 30s and 40s when I knew him, so I don’t remember Dhardo Rimpoche as an old man. People may have seen some video footage of Dhardo Rimpoche as an old man, but that is not the Dhardo Rimpoche I knew. I remember Dhardo Rimpoche as a young man, a very active, vigorous man, a very outward-going man and, of course, a very compassionate man. So I’m very happy to have had this opportunity of saying these few words about my spiritual friend.
This talk was given to men in the Western Buddhist Order in January 2002.