The FWBO
– Friends of the Western Buddhist
Order – arose from this thought: Wherever Buddhism has put
down roots and flowered, it has done so by adapting to the prevailing
culture. The FWBO draws from venerable Buddhist traditions to
develop a viable strain of Buddhism for today. Review our welcome
and come to our next Friends
Evening to find out more about what we do at the Vancouver
Buddhist Centre.
For more on the FWBO,
and for information about the
Western Buddhist Order itself, click on the relevant items in the links
box on the contact page: fwbo-main, fwbo-other, and
fwbo-wiki. When you get back to the contact
page, make that important next step: contact
us. Keep in mind that you cannot practice Buddhism – or meditation –
simply by reading about it. You have to do it.
Sangharakshita,
conscripted in World War II (as Dennis Lingwood) and posted to Ceylon/Sri Lanka, stayed in South Asia for the next 20 years. During that time, Theravadin elders ordained him as a monk in their tradition, naming him Sangharakshita. Both before and after his ordination, he visited and lived in different parts of India.
In India,
Sangharakshita
made a point of studying and directly observing as much as he could of
the various religious traditions that surrounded him. Buddhists from
Tibet, living in Northern India at the time, influenced him in ways
that carry over into the FWBO today.
When Sangharakshita
returned to England, he saw the need
for a Western
Buddhism and started working on the chain of cause-effect-cause...that
ends up, for now, with your reading this. Of course it does not end
there. Nothing ever does.
Sangharakshita
For the next link
in the chain, here and elsewhere, just click on the lotus.
click on welcome
or on re-enter
above, or on the logo at top left, to review the introduction and
welcome to the Vancouver Buddhist Centre, home of FWBO Vancouver
click on the lotus for the next step