For most people it takes about 8 to 10 years between their first involvement and being ordained into the WBO. Since the only way to “take over the FWBO” would be for people to successfully pretend to be Buddhists for that period of time, and then to become members of the governing councils of FWBO centers, it would be pretty much impossible for such a takeover to happen. Plus, every FWBO center is run independently, so this would have to be carried out at many centers. Plus decision-making at centers is done by consensus and not by majority vote, and so basically it would be a multi-generational project involving thousands of people. I would think the Scientologists would have better things to do with their time, especially since Scientology makes a lot of money and the FWBO doesn’t.

I understand that you’re unlikely to know all of the above, but your comment is a good illustration of how critics of the FWBO score successes, though. Some people are prone to give credence to anything they read on the internet, no matter how outlandish.

I don’t know of course, but perhaps the idea was to present Dharma teachings in their own right rather than seeing them as anchored in any particular institution – including the order. I might get a chance to ask him about it when he’s in town next month.

Cheers
Jayarava

I don’t think Sangharakshita has written anything in response to the critical information about him and the FWBO, although there is a video in which he discusses his sexual activities. I don’t think he’d dignify his fiercest critics with a response. There are three principle actors. There’s Mark Dunlop, who was formerly an Order member and who had a sexual relationship with Sangharakshita. Some time after the relationship ended he became increasingly bitter, and then he started his campaign. The second (the author of the FWBO Files) is Gary Beesley, who is a religious education teacher and Tibetan Buddhist. He’s never had any direct experience of the FWBO. His campaign isn’t just against the FWBO, but also against SGI and the NKT, and is a kind of personal crusade. The third is Jurgen Schnake, who runs fwbo-files.com. He also has no experience of the FWBO. Schnake has nakedly asked for money in return for ceasing his activities. I don’t think that was his initial motivation, which seems mainly to be mischievous. He’s quite happy to make stuff up, like claims that the FWBO is a branch of scientology. Unfortunately none of these people has any great regard for honesty or accuracy, and they’ll say anything if they think it helps damage the FWBO (Dunlop has accused the FWBO of murdering children, and I’ve mentioned Schanke’s alleged Scientology takeover). I’d be astonished if Sangharakshita was to address their often outlandish accusations. We’re dealing with “fake moon landing” psychology here.

But for the record, I think this is all Sangharakshita’s karma playing out (in conjunction with the karma of his critics). There were sloppy ideas in the 1970s (not just in the FWBO, but in the western Buddhist world and indeed in the world) that sexuality could be reinvented, and my take is that Sangharakshita was very unwise to buy into that and to get sexually involved with his students. If there was no Mark Dunlop there would quite probably be no Gary Beesley and no Jurgen Schnake.

My surprise is less about the nature of the FWBO’s activities and who generates them than it was about some of the less than flattering information floating around the web. Not that the book needs to address that stuff, but that having a basic concept of what Sangharakshita had in mind in founding his own order might have been helpful to novice readers of his work, such as me.

I think people underestimate the extent to which the FWBO is a ground up movement. Many of the features such as right-livelihood coops, single sex communities, Buddhafield, or indeed online meditation instruction(!) were instituted by enthusiastic members. Sangharakshita encouraged and supported these developments, certainly, but did not create them. Sangharakshita seems to keep an overview, and spell out principles and allow the movement to manifest as it will. Sangharakshita has said that he sees his role as translator (in the cultural sense) and spiritual friend, rather than as a creator of institutions or a teacher – so perhaps the emphasis of the book is more natural than it seems to William. JR