Buddhism for Today and Tomorrow | Summer Sanghas

25 Sept – 2 Oct | led by Parami, Nagabodhi + team

In 1976, Sangharakshita gave a series of public talks, collectively entitled Buddhism for Today and Tomorrow.

Under four headings – A Method of Personal Development, A Vision of Human Existence, A Nucleus of a New Society, and A Blueprint for a New World – he shared his vision of what the Friends of the Western Buddhist Order had to offer.

From the first of these talks, Sangharakshita tells us:

Perhaps it would be best to assume that nobody really knows anything about Buddhism in the West, and that perhaps we do have to make … a completely fresh start, to take, as it were, a completely new look at Buddhism. And this, we may say, is what the FWBO was founded for in 1967, and what it tries to do. It tries to take a completely new look. It tries to make a completely fresh start… It exists, we may say, to cut the Buddha’s teaching down to its absolute essentials and to make those essentials relevant to people’s lives.

Fifty years on, the world around us – even our community’s name – are very different. So, are those offerings still relevant? Are they still alive in our community? How might we make them, and the principles they embody, manifest in this new age?

As well as meditation, puja and general discussion, part of our exploration will include dialogue between some Order members of many years’ standing, and some younger, newer Order members.