Sangharakshita is the founder and spiritual inspirator of the Buddhist organization Friends of the Western Buddhist Order (FWBO). Born Dennis Lingwood in 1925 in South London, he considered himself a Buddhist since the age of 16, having studied Buddhist texts. At 18 years old he was conscripted to the British army and sent to Sri Lanka. After the war Lingwood stayed in India as a wandering mendicant and was ordained as a monk in the Theravada order in 1950. He received the Buddhist name Sangharakshita (‘protector of the order’) and settled down in Kalimpong in the Darjeeling district of northeast India where he became very active in publication activities. Enjoying close contact with Tibetan refugees in the area, he studied Tibetan Buddhism (see Vajrayana Buddhism) and received initiations in its different traditions. As a Theravada monk he conducted preaching tours throughout India and engaged himself in the conversion movement of the ex-Untouchables, initiated by B.R. Ambedkar in 1956.
After twenty years of life in India, Sangharakshita returned to England in 1967. There he started the Buddhist movement FWBO, holding that existing Buddhism offers in Britain did not match the interest of spiritual seekers of the then flourishing counterculture. Sangharakshita disrobed and started to conduct meditation classes, organized study groups and designed the FWBO as a spiritual movement to practise Buddhism under the conditions of a secularized and industrialized society.
Sangharakshita’s interpretation of Buddhism strives to discern the so-called ‘core of the Buddhist tradition’, favouring no organizational, doctrinal or practicewise ties to any Buddhist tradition. Sangharakshita claims to realign to ‘the spirit of the Original teaching’, considering himself a translator to communicate the ‘spirit’ of Buddhist teachings to western people. During the three decades of rapid growth of the FWBO Sangharakshita served as lecturer, instructor, prinicipal ordainer and prolific writer.
In 1997, Sangharakshita handed over the responsibility for ordination and spiritual leadership to Order members living at the Preceptors College Council, based in Birmingham (UK). In 2000, he appointed senior member Dharmachari Subhuti (Alex Kennedy) as the first chairman of the Council. Sangharakshita lives in Birmingham where he spends his time writing and receiving visitors.
