Christian doctrine was from beginning to end thoroughly repugnant to me. This realization gave me a sense

of relief, of liberation as from some oppressive burden, which was so great that I wanted to dance and sing

for joy. What I was, what I believed, I knew not, but what I was not and what I did not believe, that I knew

with utter certainty, and this knowledge, merely negative though it was as yet, gave me a foretaste of that

freedom which comes when all obstacles are removed, all barriers broken down, all limitations

transcended.11
The fifteen-year-old boy who returned to London in 1940 was in a state of intense fervour. He wasliberated from the oppressive influence of Christianity. The words of the great masters of philosophy andliterature rang in his ears. Moreover, his senses were stirring with the onset of puberty. At this time, hehad various spontaneous psychic experiences in which he would foresee a sequence of events that wouldtake place half an hour or an hour later. He also began to have what can only be described as mysticalexperiences. These were of two principal kinds: he would experience in one ‘the complete absurdity ofthe mind being tied down to a single physical body’12 and in the other the total unreality of the ordinaryworld. It was at this time of turbulence and heightened intensity that he encountered the Diamond Sutra
and that it made its profound and decisive impact upon him.

Although his first encounter was with the Mahayana tradition as expressed in the Diamond Sutra, he read
as widely in all schools of Buddhism as was then possible. Books on the subject and translations ofscriptures were, however, still comparatively rare. The most accessible texts were those of the PaliCanon, the greater part of which had early been translated into English. This was the scriptural collectionof the Theravada and it was this South-east Asian school, with its yellow-robed monks, that was mostwell known in the West. Until he settled in Kalimpong almost all the Buddhists he met in India and SriLanka were Theravadins. When he came to seek ordination, without really considering the matter, it wasto the Theravada that he looked. This was not because he especially wanted to identify himself with thatschool. He took ordination from Theravadins because they were the ones who happened to be accessibleto him in India. However, he had also unquestioningly imbibed the popular image of the Buddhist monkas yellow-robed. It was therefore a yellow-robed monk he became. For him, however, ordinationrepresented renunciation of the world, complete dedication to the Buddhist path, and acceptance into theBuddhist community as a whole. Perhaps somewhat naively, he had not thought about which school he
was being ordained into.

From his arrival in the East, he had begun to form considerable reservations about the Theravada School.
He certainly had a great love and respect for the Pali Canon, which it had successfully preserved.
However he saw that modern Theravadins, with a few notable exceptions, showed little spiritual vitality.
Buddhism in Sri Lanka ‘seemed dead, or at least asleep’.13 He encountered among many Theravadins astrong conviction that theirs was the only true and pure form of Buddhism, all others being degenerationsand distortions. His own first teacher, Jagdish Kashyap, though himself a Theravadin, confirmed himin his reservations. The Indian monk openly acknowledged the shortcomings of the school to which hebelonged. While he taught Sangharakshita much about the Pali scriptures, he never denigrated otherschools or claimed any special place for his own. Throughout his time in India, Sangharakshitaconstantly found himself confronted by the arrogance, narrow-mindedness, and literalism of manyTheravadins. In his editorials for Stepping-Stones and the Maha Bodhi he continuously drew attention
to these failings.

In Kalimpong, Sangharakshita wore the yellow robe and was in friendly contact, through the Maha BodhiSociety, with many Theravadin monks from various countries. He was forced, however, to look to othersources for his principal spiritual inspiration. His first years on his own, ‘working for the good ofBuddhism’, were exceptionally difficult. He faced lack of co-operation and occasionally outrightopposition, even from those who were nominally helping him. He derived no support from the order towhich he belonged. Indeed, it was from some members of that order that he experienced the most openhostility. His guidance and support were to come not from any earthly agency but from that sublime idealof the Bodhisattva, which is the very heart of the Mahayana schools of Buddhism. The Bodhisattva, whodedicates him or herself for countless existences to the spiritual welfare of all beings,

provided me with an example, on the grandest possible scale, of what I was myself trying to do within my

own infinitely smaller sphere and on an infinitely lower level.14
From the time of discovering that he was a Buddhist this ideal had inspired him, central as it is to boththe Diamond Sutra and the Sutra of Hui-neng. It came now to have a deeper and more powerfulinfluence on him in his present spiritual isolation. Nonetheless, it was several years before he felt himselfready to take the Bodhisattva ordination, thus formally espousing the Bodhisattva Ideal and adding