These letters are the product of a friendship between Dinoo Dubash, who established one of the first Montessori schools in India, and Sangharakshita, founder of the international Triratna Buddhist Order and Community. Brought together for the first time in this volume, Sangharakshita's letters cover a wide range of subjects: from an exploration of samatha and vipassana meditation, to an account of his experiences when addressing the hundreds of thousands of followers of Dr Ambedkar immediately after their great leader's demise.
Sangharakshita, founder of the Triratna Buddhist Order, moved to Moseley, Birmingham in 1997. He was in his early 70s and stayed there 16 years. In some ways it was one of the most important periods of his life: he was handing on his responsibilities to senior disciples. What was it like to be Sangharakshita then? This miscellany of prose and verse brings us right into the life and mind of the author. These are not 'Buddhist teachings' in the traditional sense but the output of someone whose whole life has been lived in and for the Dharma.
Anagarika Dharmapala, founder of the Maha Bodhi Society, was the first person to take the Dharma to countries across the whole globe. He ranks as one of the greatest Buddhist figures of modern times. Sangharakshita's biographical sketch, based on Dharmapala's own diaries, recounts the extraordinary story with a vividness that leaves the reader uplifted and inspired. This volume also contains other writings including the sometimes controversial columns of 'Himavantavasi', as well as book reviews and the memorable sixty-five 'Immortal Sayings' of Anagarika Dharmapala.
In this volume of memoirs, Sangharakshita arrives back in England after twenty years in the East. He expects to stay no more than a few months, but as the months become years, he begins to realize that it is here that he may best be able to 'work for the good of Buddhism', as one of his teachers had once exhorted him. After a farewell tour of his friends and teachers in India, he goes on to found a new Buddhist movement and to ordain twelve men and women into a new Buddhist Order.
This volume of Sangharakshita's Complete Works includes Facing Mount Kanchenjunga, the second in the series of his memoirs, and, in Dear Dinoo, some very personal letters.Facing Mount Kanchenjunga covers the period 1950-1953, beginning with Sangharakshita's arrival in Kalimpong as a twenty-four-year-old sramaa'era, and his response to his teacher's injunction to 'stay here and work for the good of Buddhism!' In the pages that follow we are drawn into a deeply committed Dharma life lived in unusual circumstances and among some very colourful characters. As he recalls the significant events of those years - the setting up of the Kalimpong Young Men's Buddhist Association; the creation of a new Buddhist journal, whose contributors included Conze, Guenther, Govinda and other leading Buddhist writers of the time; accompanying the Sacred Relics of the Buddha's chief disciples; advising on the making of a Buddhist film; giving lectures; discovering Dharmapala; meeting Dhardo Rimpoche; in fact, working in every way to spread the Dharma - Sangharakshita also affords the reader glimpses of his inner life, his struggles and disappointments, his aspirations and inspirations, his responses to the beauties of nature, and his feeling for friendship.The twenty-nine letters collected together in Dear Dinoo span the period 1955-1974, giving a sighting of Sangharakshita's life as he experienced it at the time, including what happened on the day of Dr Babasaheb Ambedkar's untimely death in 1956. We are also afforded a glimpse of the unusual friendship that sprung up between the young English monk and the Montessori teacher. Kalyanaprabha's Introduction highlights some of the significances of the correspondence, including reflections on Sangharakshita, Women, and Friendship. A friend who often appears in the letters, Dr Dinshaw Mehta, Servant of God, and one time naturopath to Gandhi, is the subject of the appendix.
Through Buddhist Eyes continues Sangharakshita’s five volumes of memoirs. Covering journeys across five continents and two decades, this volume is made up of nineteen travel letters and one talk. They are Sangharakshita’s heartfelt communications to the growing membership of the new Buddhist movement he founded: the Triratna Buddhist Order.
This companion to volume 9 continues the story of Dr B.R. Ambedkar and his role in the revival of Buddhism in India. It includes a celebration of the fiftieth anniversary of Dr Ambedkar’s conversion to Buddhism, a commentary on Dr Ambedkar’s article ‘Buddha and the Future of His Religion’, articles on the mass conversion in 1956, an account of Sangharakshita’s visit to Nagpur at the time of Dr Ambedkar’s death, and notes from some of the hundreds of talks Sangharakshita gave in India during the next few years, as well as later talks he gave both in India and in the West.
The pieces collected here were written over a ten year period crucial to the development of Sangharakshita's thought and expression. From visionary early writings to the later articles leavened by deep reflection, there emerges the unmistakeable voice of the writer of A Survey of Buddhism. There is a wide range of subject matter from explorations of the entire field of Buddhism to the encounter of Buddhism with western culture and modern life and brilliant expositions of the implications for humanity of the Buddha's teaching of selflessness.
In the footstep of the Buddha is a collection of letters written whilst the author was based in Sri Lanka from 1986-90. They describe the phenomenon of ethnic Buddhism, as witnessed during the author's visits to temples and forest hermitages and his meetings with monks, laymen and laywomen in town and country. We learn of the author's practicing and teaching the principles of individual spiritual evolution, and meet the flora and fauna of the lush tropical landscape. We catch occasional glimpses of the civil war that sorely troubled the Island during those years. The author also tells of his visits to India during the same period, and of the new Buddhist Movement unfolding there some forty years after the great Mass Conversion to Buddhism inaugurated by Dr Ambedkar in Nagpur in 1956.
Sangharakshita introduces us to the wonderful world of three of the best-loved Mahayana sutras - a world from which we emerge with treasures in the form of teachings and advice that are a great support in how to live our lives in the everyday world. From the transcendental critique of religion and the means of unification offered by the Vimalakirti-nirdesa to the light shed on economics, ecology and politics by the Sutra of Golden Light, these commentaries offer a unique and deeply meaningful perspective on the value of human existence.
