The Essential Sangharakshita: A Half-Century of Writings from the Founder of the Friends of the Western Buddhist Order [Englisch] [Taschenbuch]

Among the Westerners who went East and brought the Dharma home, one of the more prolific writers and lecturers was Englishman Sangharakshita (formerly Dennis Lingwood). Stationed to India during WWII, he stayed on 14 years to study Buddhism, reputedly taking ordination as a Theravadan monk, but studying as well with teachers from Chan and Vajrayan traditions before retuning to the UK in the mid-1960's to found the Friends of the Western Buddhist Order. Questions about the authenticity of his ordination, as well as the reason for his leaving India, surfaced following scandals of sexual impropriety and mismanagement in the 1990's.

None of these indiscretions or suspicions is even hinted at in the anonymous biographical sketch opening The Essential Sangharakshita, 700 pages of extracts from 38 of the teacher's many books and transcribed lectures. You might expect such a weighty career to outweigh a few improprieties. Not addressing them, or allowing them to be addressed, suggests continuing sensitivity to reputation.

And that's something of a shame, because this volume demonstrates that while he may not have always lived up to the teachings, Sangharakshita was witty, clever, and sensitive to his time and audience, able to explain the Dharma in ways relevant to the West.

He was also something of an anomaly among the many teachers who emphasized the rational, conceptual side of Buddhism. Sangharakshita was unashamedly a religionist and romantic, a teacher who placed great value in the emotional and the aesthetic. He loved ceremony, candles, incense, and chanting, and saw a place for them within Western Buddhism. He recognized the need to worship something greater, to devote oneself to something higher, of the need to engage emotionally with symbols. He was also eclectic, promoting a non-sectarian form of Buddhism that drew on many strands of thought and practice. He quoted liberally from Western philosophy and religion, English literature and contemporary psychology, and spoke on occasion of his efforts at poetry, samples of which are included in this collection.

With more than 20 years experience as Sangharakshita's personal editor, Karen Stout was in the unique position of being intimately familiar with much of the author's work and seems to have done a fine job of selecting and compiling. My only quibble is the omission of one of Sangharakshita's more widely read pieces, a lengthy review of a seminal work of Western Buddhism, Stephen Batchelor's "Buddhism Without Beliefs," as well as the omission of any writings about Ambedkar or Navayana Buddhism.

Essential Sangharakshita features an editor's preface, notes, a list of the works from which extracts have been taken, and an index. The excerpts are organized into 5 groups (page count for each group in parenthesis):

1 The Essentials (132): life of the Buddha, going for refuge, the eightfold path
2 Buddhism and the Mind (106): rational and emotional approaches, the self, karma, evolution
3 Art, Beauty and Myth (104): aesthetics in spiritual life
4 Buddhism and the Heart (154): psychology, meditation, devotion
5 Buddhism and the World (160): ethics, work, social engagement

I had listened to several of Sangharakshita's lectures before ordering this book (his eight-part series on the Eightfold Path is worth repeated listenings and is available online at dharmachakra dot com). In the interval before its arrival, I stumbled onto the FWBO Files, a collection of documents outlining improprieties within the Friends of the Western Buddhist Order. I felt somewhat sorry for having ordered it, but decided once I had it to give it a go.

With most of the selections being 3-5 pages in length, I found it a perfect book for daily reading. I'm glad now that I gave it a chance and plan to keep it in my collection, something I can dip into now and then for short readings on subjects of interest. Among the many quotable passages now marked in my copy is this:

"Someone came to me once and said that he did not feel that he could be very useful because he had no particular talent. I told him, "Think of yourself as an unspecialized human being." People think that if they can't make themselves useful in some way - they can't type, they can't keep accounts, they can't cook, they can't write or give a talk or paint or play a musical instrument - there's something wrong with them. But consider: this apparently useless human being is the product of millions upon millions of years of evolution. You are the goal; you are what it has all been for. You don't have to justify your existence by being useful. You yourself are the justification for your existence." p303

It's a beautiful book; the typesetting is impeccable. The compiler/editor did a commendable job trimming down the rambling verbiage of the original materials. The organization is excellent, but the text is quite cumbersome. The author is obsessed with words and ideas, and can't let go of the so many things that he has read about "Buddhism". Every topic seems to be accompanied with a host of off-hand references to this and that and the other tradition... For beginners? Too confusing. For advanced readers? Nothing really new. For practitioners? The intellectual reflections might be unwieldy.

Sangharakshita is the greatest fraud in the history of Buddhism in the West. He claims to be a lineage holder of the Vajrayana from ancient Oddiyana (Urgyen, the Tibetan rendering) to modern Tibet; this is a complete fabrication as he is nothing of the sort. He has admitted to sexually exploiting vulnerable young men in his care, and using them as sexual toys "out of curiousity". As a reviewer noted, his writing is largely spurious and speculative. Staunch supporters of the discredited FWBO are surely the only market for this book. For everyone else this should not even be on your wishlist.