Padmaloka Buddhist Retreat Centre

Padmaloka Buddhist Retreat Centre is a Buddhist retreat centre for men, located at Lesingham House in Surlingham, Norfolk, England. The centre is part of the Friends of the Western Buddhist Order (FWBO), a Buddhist movement that aims to make the teachings of the Buddha [http://www.fwbo.org/buddhism/buddha.html] and Buddhism available in the modern world. The name "Padmaloka" means 'Realm of the Lotus' in Pāli, "padma" meaning lotus, and "loka" meaning realm, place, or abode.

History

Padmaloka, originally known as Lesingham House, was first established in 1976 by Sangharakshita, the founder of the FWBO and of the Western Buddhist Order (WBO). Padmaloka soon became the FWBO's first permanent retreat centre.

Community

Padmaloka is run by a resident community of thirteen men. Some members of the Padmaloka community are full time teachers and retreat leaders. Others look after the day-to-day running, such as gardening, cooking, administration, and maintenance. The community engage in work as spiritual practice by bringing mindfulness into their work, themselves, and of the other community members and retreatants present.

Retreats

Padmloka runs a full annual retreat programme with retreats ranging from weekends up to 2 weeks in length. Some of the retreats are available for all men to attend, some are for men training for ordination into the Western Buddhist Order whilst other cater for actual ordained members of the Western Buddhist Order.

Stupa

One of the significant aspects of the centre is the Padmaloka stupa. This stupa contains some relics of Dhardo Rimpoche. Rimpoche was a teacher of Sangharakshita. Its inscriptions read "Cherish the Doctrine. Live United. Radiate Love [http://www.flickr.com/photos/90664717@N00/290885159/in/set-72057594133885668/] " - which was Dhardo Rimpoche's motto.

Criticism

The most up to date material on the fwbo (which padmaloka is part of) from an academic, neutral, public quotable source is probably Robert Bluck's 2006 book "British Buddhism, Teachings, practice and development" [Bluck, Robert (2006) British Buddhism, Teachings Practice and Development, Abingdon, Routledge]

His short conclusion to the chapter on the fwbo is quoted here and this is perhaps a more impartial view than the criticism that follows on.

"The FWBO has made the most conspicuous adaptation from traditional Asian Buddhism, drawing on teachings and practice from several schools, while still claiming to be true to ‘Basic Buddhism’. This combining of elements is seen not only in their meditation practice, devotional activities and use of scriptures, but also in the multi-tradition context in which teachings, ethical precepts and narrative elements are set, and in their visual iconography. Moreover, the WBO is described as neither monastic nor lay, emphasizing personal commitment rather than lifestyle, as part of a self-conscious attempt to westernize Buddhism, presenting teachings and practices appropriate in modern Britain rather than ancient India.

The FWBO emphasizes both the commitment of Going for Refuge and the emotional positivity of spiritual friendship, but also the importance of scripture study and the need for Right Livelihood. The movement’s unusual organization, with centres, Right Livelihood businesses and single-sex communities, forms a spiritual and socio-economic matrix unseen in other traditions. This has had an experimental feel to it and the situation is still changing, with some members reverting to nuclear families and conventional employment.

In contrast to some other traditions, the FWBO firmly emphasizes stages or levels on the spiritual path. This is seen in the categories of membership (Friends, Mitras and Order members), the progressive teaching of different forms of meditation and the progressive experiential commitment of levels of Going for Refuge.

The movement has remained controversial from the time of its origins in the 1960’s counterculture, and has been criticized for being eclectic, doctrinaire, intolerant, male-dominated, anti-family and sexually permissive. Much of the criticism is unfair, though its persistence is partly due to the FWBO’s self imposed isolation from other Buddhist organizations. In recent years there has been a willingness to engage with other Buddhists, and this may allay some of the suspicions.

The role of Sangharakshita as founder, teacher and leader has been crucial to the development and character of the movement. In a sense the FWBO rests on his personal experience, teaching and practice of Buddhism. His own choices of Buddhist teachings, of meditational and devotional practice, of ethical precepts and personal behaviour, have become those of Friends, Mitras and Order members since the 1960’s. As a new leadership takes over, the emphasis of the movement may change quite rapidly.

Opinions about the FWBO often remain polarized. Observers may perceive an aggressive approach, a distorted Buddhism and personal misconduct, while insiders may experience a confident inspiration, a link with the essential Dharma and deep spiritual friendship. The rather doctrinaire approach seen in the writings of Sangharakshita and Subhuti may no longer be reflected in the attitudes of individual members. According to Waterhouse (2001: 146), the FWBO has overcome its early reputation to become ‘a major player in terms of a voice for Buddhism in the UK’, and because of its active engagement with the media, it is often found ‘acting as an unofficial representative of UK Buddhism’. Vishvapani (2004) argued that people engage with Buddhism in different ways in contemporary Britain, and may well ‘draw on the Buddhist tradition as a whole’, so that the FWBO may be seen as ‘an accommodation between the cultural context and traditionally-derived Buddhist forms’. It remains to be seen whether the FWBO and other Buddhist traditions in Britain can engage with each other on equal terms as spiritual friends". [ibid p.177]

Padmaloka's parent organisation, the Friends of the Western Buddhist Order (FWBO) has been the object of a good deal of criticism, due to controversial religious practices, unorthodox teachings, and allegations of sexual abuse and misogyny. [citation | first=James William | last=Coleman | year=2001 | title=The New Buddhism: The Western Transformation of an Ancient Tradition | Publisher=Oxford University Press ISBN=0-19-515241-7 | page=163, 171 and 144] The FWBO is considered by some Buddhists to be a cult [Citation | last =Crook | first = John | title =Dangers in Devotion: Buddhist Cults and the Tasks of a Guru - '...It is this that leads many of us to see the FWBO more as a cult than as a Buddhist institution or school in accordance with tradition.' | journal =Western Chan Fellowship, Paper presented at the conference 'The Psychology of Awakening' at Dartington Hall, UK, October 1998 | url =http://www.westernchanfellowship.org/dangers-in-devotion.html ] , and is also listed on a number of cult awareness organisations' websites [cite web | title = Cult Information Centre | work = Links Page | url = http://www.cultinformation.org.uk/links.html ] [cite web | last = Hassan | first = Steven | title = Freedom of Mind Center | work = Resource Center | url =http://www.freedomofmind.com/resourcecenter/groups/f/friends/ ] [cite web | last =Ross | first =Rick | title =The Rick A. Ross Institute for the Study of Destructive Cults, Controversial Groups and Movements | work = Links Page | url =http://www.rickross.com/links.html] . Throughout 2007, a number of questions were raised in the UK Parliament concerning allegations of cultic behaviour against the organisation. [ PQs 147208&9, 152364, 152368, 156701, 157746 & 7. A further PQ (45434) was raised in 1998 http://www.publications.parliament.uk/cgi-bin/semaphoreserver?DB=semukparl&FILE=search]

The Guardian newspaper published a crtitical article about the FWBO on 27 October 1997, called 'The Dark Side of Enlightenment.' [http://www.ex-cult.org/fwbo/Guardian.htm] Among other things, this article quoted the following statement by senior FWBO member Dharmachari Subhuti who, like Sangharakshita, was based at Padmaloka for a number of years. The statement is from a paper by Subhuti presented to 'The Conference on the Ordination Process for Men', held at Padmaloka on 9th - 10th July 1986. This paper was subsequently published in the FWBO magazine, 'Shabda':

'Sexual interest on the part of a male Order member for a male mitra [novice] can create a connection which may allow kalyana mitrata [spiritual friendship] to develop. ... Some, of course, are predisposed to this attraction, others have deliberately chosen to change their sexual preferences in order to use sex as a medium of kalyana mitrata - and to stay clear of the dangers of male-female relationships without giving up sex'. (Subhuti, pub Shabda, September 1986, p125).

This statement was also read out on BBC East's 'Going for Refuge' TV programme about the FWBO, which was partly filmed at Padmaloka. This programme (part of the 'Matter of Fact' series) was broadcast on 12 November 1992. In it, Rev. Daishin Morgan, of Throssel Hole Priory in Northumberland, UK [http://www.throssel.org.uk/] made the following comment on Subhuti's above statement:

'To me this is totally contrary to the Buddhist precepts, it's totally contrary to the Buddhist scriptures, and it's absolutely contrary to any sort of good practice. It to me is a form of manipulation.'

In 1999 Tricycle Magazine published an article entitled 'Friends of the Western Buddhist Order: Friends, Foes, and Files' by Henry Shukman (Vol. VIII No. 4 Summer 1999), which reported that:

As reported in the Guardian, the FWBO's Croydon Centre (which - like most FWBO communities - is single-sex) had by the late 1980s become the scene of intense psychological manipulation: one man committed suicide and many others were reported to have suffered mental trauma. The center's head was accused of having coerced several men into homosexual relations by using a convoluted corruption of the Buddhist doctrine of conditioning promulgated by Sangharakshita himself, which proposed that spiritual friendships are essential to spiritual development, that such friendships between men could be inhibited by the fear of homosexual contact, and that the best way of overcoming that fear was to engage in homosexuality. (p 113)

The FWBO claim that the problems revealed in the Guardian article had only occurred in their Croydon centre, and that such events had never happened at any other FWBO centre (Kulananda, FWBO Communications Office, Wed 29 Oct 1997 [http://www.ex-cult.org/fwbo/Guardian.htm] ). However, the Tricycle article went on to report that:

Other observers fault the FWBO for refusing to accept that Croydon was not an aberration, but a fairly predictable outcome of the Sangharakshita ideology. And early critic Dunlop remembers Padmaloka, the FWBO's retreat center in Norfolk, as rife with homosexual activity.

In response, the FWBO says there was indeed a climate of sexual experimentation in the past, and, yes, mistakes were made, - but there was nothing consciously coercive going on. According to Vishvapani, "What happened in Croydon was an aspect of certain attitudes around in the FWBO, but taken to an extreme. In Padmaloka, you had a lot of people who were gay. It did get a bit out of hand and it got disbanded in 1989. But I've never heard of anything unethical going on there. It was just a rather tangled sexual mess."

According to Ananda, "it was inevitable that it would all blow up, because people were just so messed up. Yes, gaysex was definitely in the air. It was the way to become part of the new Buddhist revolution. People took that whole sexual liberation thing too literally. In the early days we weren't big on practice; we were just Buddhists hanging out, going to lectures, doing yoga. We were naive. People who had been ordained by Sangharakshita tended to develop their own little castles of which they were the unchallenged masters." (p 114)

FWBO's Response to Criticism

As is often the case with a New Religious Movement the FWBO has attracted some criticism during it’s existence, some of which relates to experiences of people living at or attending retreats at Padmaloka.

Much of the criticism relates to a period in the history of the FWBO around the 70’s and 80’s when there was a climate of sexual experimentation. These days probably most people involved in the FWBO would consider that period of experimentation as one of naive idealism and feel saddened by any damage it may have caused to the people involved. [cite web | title = Controversy in the FWBO: some Responses and Reflections | work = FWBO Discussion Website | url = http://discussion.fwbo.org/ ]

The primary document used to criticise the FWBO and which contains references to Padmaloka is known as the FWBO Files [cite web | title = The FWBO Files | url = http://www.fwbo-files.com/FWBOFiles/fwbofiles.htm] . In response the FWBO Files has been criticised by the FWBO. [cite web | title = The FWBO-Files: A Response | work = FWBO Response Website | url = http://response.fwbo.org/fwbo-files/response.html ] [cite web | title = A Comment on the Refutation of the FWBO’s Response to the FWBO Files | work = FWBO Response Website | url = http://response.fwbo.org/response-refutation.html ] Also in response a statement by the Network of Buddhist Organisations (UK), which is signed by seven prominent UK Buddhists says

“The FWBO Files set out to blacken the reputation of one of our members, and much of the material contained in them has been regurgitated in the current attack on the NBO. The FWBO Files have been thoroughly discredited, although they are still in circulation.” [cite web | title = The NBO-Files | work = Network of Buddhist Organisations Website | url = http://www.nbo.org.uk/Background/nbofiles.htm ]

References

External links

* [http://padmaloka.org.uk Padmaloka Retreat Centre website]
* [http://padmaloka.org.uk/views_of_padmaloka.html Views of Padmaloka and Lesingham House]