It is from What Is the Western Buddhist Order? by Sangharakshita, founder of the WBO. It came out a few months ago, it seems to be some kind of definitive statement of what the WBO is and stands for.

The WBO is the biggest Buddhist group where I live, and I've been to the Centre in my home town. They teach standard meditation techniques (mindfulness of breathing, metta bhavana) and it all seems quite 'Buddhist'.

A few years ago I heard some strange stuff along the lines of "what the WBO does is not really Buddhism". I had assumed that this was just sour grapes - after all, the WBO is quite high profile and successful over here in the UK.

Then, reading the passage I quoted above, I did start to wonder whether there is some massive misunderstanding underpinning the whole thing. Whichever way I look at it, I just cannot see the path the Buddha taught in this way. It seems to be not just misleading, but simply wrong.

But then, what do I know? So I'm interested in anyone else's perspective.

I'm not sure if this is really the right forum for discussing this kind of thing, sorry if I am fundamentally off topic!



Thank you!

The context from the document is this:

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My particular presentation consists of those teachings and practices I have stressed during my teaching life, through speaking and writing, and I hope by example. What I have taught pertains both to doctrinal understanding and to practice and it is what I have said about these that is the basis for the Dharma as practised by my disciples in the Order and as taught by them – the basis of our 'particular presentation of the Dharma'.

At the doctrinal level, I see the teaching of pratitya-samutpada as most basic and from it follow the teachings of the Four Noble Truths, the Twelve and Twenty-Four Nidanas, and also the teachings concerning Nirvana, anatman, and sunyata. My teaching of Dharma as doctrine is essentially based upon and derived from, directly or indirectly, these teachings that, of course, go back to the Buddha himself. And I explicitly exclude whatever ideas are incompatible with them.

My teachings pertaining to method, and therefore those of my disciples, all centre, directly or indirectly, on the act of going for refuge to the Buddha, the Dharma, and the Sangha. These comprise all the practices that I have myself taught: for instance, the observance of the Five or Ten Precepts; the performance of the Sevenfold and Threefold Pujas; the practice of meditation, in the framework of the System of Meditation; the group study of the Buddhist scriptures; the cultivation of spiritual friendship, and the enjoyment of poetry, music, and the visual arts as aids to the spiritual life. These teachings pertaining to method are connected, directly or indirectly, with the Buddha’s teaching of pratitya-samutpada through the sequence of positive, spiral nidanas, for all these teachings contribute, in one way or another, to my disciples' progress to ever higher levels of being and consciousness, even from the mundane at its most refined to the transcendental. Looked at from another point of view, they contribute to the deepening of my disciples' going for refuge, so that from being provisional it becomes effective, and from being effective it becomes real in the sense of being irreversible.
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any thoughts, anyone? the words are very Buddhist, but what about the meaning they convey?