The Unity of Buddhism Page 3
Extracted from Sangharakshita: A New Voice in the Buddhist Tradition by Dharmachari Subhuti


Mahayana ordination to his ‘Hinayana’ ones as a samanera and bhikkhu. In 1962 he took from Dhardo
Rimpoche the sixty-four Bodhisattva vows that constitute the ordination. This Gelugpa ‘incarnate lama’had become his close friend and teacher and Sangharakshita had come to revere him as himself a livingBodhisattva.

In Kalimpong Sangharakshita could meet many Tibetan teachers and study Tibetan Buddhism at firsthand. He was impressed by the Tibetans’ acceptance of all three yanas or ‘paths’, the three majorcurrents in the development of Buddhism: Hinayana, Mahayana, and Vajrayana. He also found himselfdeeply moved by the intense but simple faith of ordinary Tibetans and the great learning and obviousspiritual stature of several of their leading teachers. Above all he was strongly attracted to the richsymbolic world of Tibetan Buddhism. He came to see Tantric initiation as preserved in the Tibetantradition as a way of contacting the highest dimension of reality. From 1956 onwards he received severalTantric initiations and practised Vajrayana meditation, as well as studying the Vajrayana extensively.
Besides receiving initiation and teaching from a number of prominent Tibetan lamas, Sangharakshitagained considerable guidance in this field from Mr C.M.Chen, a Chinese hermit living in Kalimpong.
Yogi Chen was a very learned man who had practised the Vajrayana intensively for many years. He wasalso well versed in Ch’an, the Chinese antecedent of the Japanese Zen School, thus givingSangharakshita first hand knowledge of that important tradition.

Sangharakshita’s openness to the entire Buddhist tradition found expression in his personal practice ofmeditation techniques derived from different schools. Reading as widely as he could, he kept abreast ofmost new Buddhist publications in English, whether translations of scriptures or works on all aspectsof Buddhism, including those of scholarly research. He also took every opportunity to discuss theDharma with scholars and monks from various traditions. His nonsectarianism was also manifest in his
work for the good of Buddhism. When he came to found his own vihara in 1957, it was given the nameTriyana Vardhana Vihara, ‘the Abode Where the Three Yanas Flourish’, by his first Tibetan teacher,
Chetul Sangye Dorje. [Footnote: This lama, whose name is variously spelt, is well known for theimpression he made on the American Trappist monk, Thomas Merton, who mentions him in his Asian
Journals.]

In a report on the Vihara’s first five years of existence, Sangharakshita made clear its commitment tononsectarian Buddhism:

One of the greatest needs of the Buddhist world today is unity. Not, indeed, unity in the sense of uniformity,

much less still in that of centralisation of authority, but in the sense of a deeper and more effective

recognition of the basic fact that despite differences, even divergences, of Doctrine and Method, all

Buddhist traditions have for their ultimate goal that state of Bodhi or Enlightenment whence the very name

of their religion derives. The Triyana Vardhana Vihara has therefore been dedicated by its founder to the

study, practice, and dissemination of the total Buddhist tradition.15

His friend and ‘kindred spirit’, Lama Govinda, who shared his vision of Buddhism as transcendingschool and yana, wrote of the Vihara, ‘Probably for the first time in the history of Buddhism theHinayana, Mahayana, and the Vajrayana have found a common centre in the Triyana Vardhana Vihara.
This is an important step forward on the road towards the unification of Buddhist tradition.’16 Modest
as were the facilities of the Vihara, its aspiration and its significance were great indeed.

His return to England in 1964 brought him up against sectarianism again. There were two principalBuddhist organisations in London at that time: the Buddhist Society and the Hampstead Buddhist Vihara.
Considerable tensions had arisen between them and it was to help resolve these that Sangharakshita hadbeen invited to visit. The Society, under its well-known president, Christmas Humphreys, was inprinciple open to all Buddhist schools. However, some of the trustees of the Hampstead Buddhist Vihara,
which was to be Sangharakshita’s base, tended to support a particularly narrow and puritanical brand ofTheravada Buddhism. Already, in British Buddhism generally, there was a marked tendency to espouseone or other Eastern school and to ignore - even reject - all others. Sangharakshita did what he could topromote an understanding of the entire tradition, giving notable series of talks on Tibetan Buddhism andon Zen. Above all, in his teaching he emphasised the core of doctrines that all schools hold in common,
such as conditioned co-production, the Four Noble Truths, and the Noble Eightfold Path.

However, he had, in all innocence, antagonised some of the trustees of the Vihara. He taught from theentire Buddhist tradition and not exclusively from the Theravada. He banned a form of meditation, dearto a leading trustee, when he saw that it was causing some people severe mental disturbance. He did notkeep austerely aloof, but valued friendship and intimacy. He went to the theatre and the opera a fewtimes. He did not keep his hair completely shaved but let it grow an inch or two, in the fashion of Tibetan