Old age has come to Sangharakshita. He is 77 and a year ago he lost much of his eyesight to macular degeneration. 'I can see your face when you sit next to me,' he tells me, 'but across the room it's just a blur'. His mind is still sharp, and the lifetime of encyclopaedic reading – evidence of which is arrayed in the books that line the walls of the Birmingham flat where we met – is still there. His eyes sparkle as he throws in a quote or an allusion, and he likes it if you get the reference. But he can no longer read, write or go for walks alone, and the plans he had made for travel and writing in a well-earned retirement seem unrealisable.
Sangharakshita's outer world has receded. There has been a rapid change from vigorous middle age to debilitating old age. He moves slowly, with a frailty that was absent even two years ago when he announced how he would be handing on the headship of the Western Buddhist Order (WBO), and leadership of the Friends of the Western Buddhist Order (FWBO), the Buddhist movement he founded. The loss of independence has hit him hard. 'I think I have come to terms with death, but as for old age ...' The sentence trails off as if he's wondering what faculties he might lose next.
Sangharakshita's life overlaps with a key period in the development of Buddhism in the West, and it is no overstatement to describe him as one of the founding fathers of western Buddhism. We met to discuss his latest volume of memoirs, covering the period 1964 to1967, that led up to the foundation of the FWBO. The last chapters were dictated to a secretary, and polished in a painstaking process of reading back and revision. As we speak I see that he has been reliving intensely the events of nearly 40 years ago – and he wants to talk.
The three well-received previous volumes of memoirs concerned Sangharakshita's early spiritual career and his life as a young bhikkhu (Buddhist monk) based in Kalimpong in North-eastern India in the 1950s. This volume starts with his return to the West after a 20-year absence. He was invited back to conciliate fractious strands of British Buddhism, but three turbulent years later he had himself been sidelined by the British Buddhist establishment, begun his own movement, watched the mental breakdown and suicide of his best friend, and started moving away from a strict monastic lifestyle.
The controversy sparked then lives on 35 years later. For some British Buddhists a cloud settled over Sangharakshita at that time which can never pass. So here we are: me and Sangharakshita. He's written a book about it, and this is my chance to ask what he thinks it meant. He even skipped several years following the period described in his last volume of memoirs to take up the story when he returned to England.
As the previous volumes attest, Sangharakshita's years in Kalimpong were intensely creative. He was involved with the conversion to Buddhism of millions of Dalits ('Untouchables' under the Hindu caste system); he wrote extensively and published his most famous book, A Survey of Buddhism; he studied with Tibetan teachers; and he made contacts across Indian society. The invitation to return came from the English Sangha Trust, which owned the Hampstead Buddhist Vihara, where controversy had arisen around Ananda Bodhi, their incumbent bhikkhu, and the strict form of vipassana meditation he taught. 'As I was the seniormost English monk, the hope was that I might restore harmony,' Sangharakshita explains. 'I'd had no thought of returning to England, but Khantipalo [the young monk who lived at his Kalimpong Vihara] felt it was my duty to respond.'
The initial four months of Sangharakshita's stay extended to 18, and eventually it became indefinite. Staying in India was not straightforward. 'Kalimpong was a restricted area and I'd even been accused of spying. I had done all I could with the Dalits by way of travelling and lecturing, but their new Buddhist movement had spli
