Controversial founder of Buddhist order later regretted ‘experiments’ in sexuality
Life Story
Dennis Lingwood, who has died aged 93, was an Englishman from Tooting who deserted from the Royal Corps of Signals in India in 1947 to live the life of an itinerant searcher after enlightenment; Sangharakshita, as he was renamed, became a Buddhist monk and spent 17 years studying with Indian, Tibetan and Chinese teachers until he returned home to found the Friends of the Western Buddhist Order (FWBO).
Renamed the Triratna Buddhist Community in 2010, the order draws its inspiration from various strands of Buddhism and describes itself as ‘‘an international network dedicated to communicating
Buddhist truths in ways appropriate to the modern world’’. It absorbed ideas from Western philosophy, psychotherapy and art.
One of the largest Buddhist movements in Britain, with more than 100 affiliated groups around the world, the majority of its followers live in India, where Sangharakshita is revered – especially among the Dalits or ‘‘Untouchable’’ caste.
He devised a non-monastic ordination system open to both sexes, though his teachings tended to be hostile to heterosexuality and families. He departed from Buddhist tradition by not insisting on members taking a vow of celibacy, but he encouraged heterosexual couples to live separately in same-sex communities, and it was within same-sex relationships that members were expected to discover the full benefits of ‘‘spiritual friendship’’.
It was no secret that Sangharakshita encouraged followers to experiment with homosexuality as a form of self-development. In an official biography, published in 1994, his senior adviser Dharmachari Subhuti (aka Alex Kennedy) wrote: ‘‘Sangharakshita believes that men must break down their fear of homosexuality by facing the fact that there may be some element of sexual attraction towards their friends.’’
Writer and actor Phil Kingston, who joined FWBO in his 30s, recalled in an interview in 2009 that ‘‘there was a lot of ‘anything goes’. I remember saying to one of the guys, ‘There seems to be an awful lot of shagging going on in this male-only community’.’’
In October 1997 a report in The Guardian made wide-ranging allegations of sexual misconduct within the movement, including homosexual abuse, personality destruction and manipulation. More damagingly for Sangharakshita, the report included claims by a former follower, who maintained that, in the 1970s, at the age of 22, he was persuaded into a four-year sexual relationship with Sangharakshita, 23 years his senior, who had told him that he had to overcome his antihomosexual conditioning before he could develop spiritually: ‘‘I told him I hated it. He said, ‘Well, you need to keep persevering, you mustn’t give up’.’’
A spokesman rejected this interpretation and Sangharakshita remained a revered figure in the movement – even after he gave an interview in 2009 in which he said of the sex between him and students: ‘‘Perhaps in a very few cases they were not as willing as I had supposed at the time – that is possible.’’
In 2016, following discussion on social media from past and present members, Sangharakshita issued a statement expressing ‘‘deep regret for all the occasions on which I have hurt, harmed or upset fellow Buddhists, and ask for their forgiveness’’.
Dennis Philip Edward Lingwood was born in Tooting, south London. Diagnosed aged 8 with a heart condition, he spent much of his childhood confined to bed. There he read voraciously and, inspired by the occultist Madame Blavatsky’s Isis Unveiled, and various Buddhist Sutras, he concluded that he
‘‘Perhaps in a very few cases they were not as willing as I had supposed at the time.’’ Sangharakshita on his relationships with his students
had always been a Buddhist. In 1943 he joined the Buddhist Society.
Conscripted into the army the same year, he was posted in 1944 to India and Ceylon as a radio engineer in the Royal Corps of Signals. At the end of the war, however, he left the camp where he was stationed and deserted.
He and an Indian friend gave away their possessions, destroyed their passports and took to the roads as homeless wanderers, or sannyasis, drifting from village to village with begging bowls for two years before being ordained as novice Buddhist monks in the Theravada Buddhist tradition.
On his ordination, Lingwood received the name Sangharakshita, which means ‘‘One who is protected by the spiritual community’’.
He remained in India for 17 years, settling in Kalimpong, a small Himalayan town in which he established a hermitage. During this time he came under the influence of Buddhist teachers from India, Sri Lanka, Burma and Tibet, and met many prominent figures, including the Dalai Lama.
In 1964 leading figures in the British Buddhist movement invited Sangharakshita to take over the Hampstead Buddhist Vihara, a monastery that had been set up in 1956. He returned to Britain but, feeling increasingly constrained by the monastic lifestyle, grew his hair long and began mixing his orange robes with Western clothes, blending in with London’s hippie culture.
In later life he also admitted to having broken his monastic vow of celibacy and to ‘‘experimenting’’ with sex. As a result he was ousted from the Vihara.
In 1967 he founded the FWBO from a London basement and set out on his mission to refashion a Buddhism that would be more relevant to Western culture.
Articulate and energetic, its members have established themselves beyond the Buddhist community as authoritative voices of Buddhism. Some sit on local authority committees drawing up religious syllabuses for schools, others run courses in meditation, and some are active as broadcasters.
Starting in the late 1980s, Sangharakshita handed on responsibility for running the movement to senior members of the order, and in 1994 he moved to Madhyamaloka, a Buddhist centre in Birmingham, and later, in 2013, to a retreat centre in Herefordshire, called Adhisthana. –