Coddington Court, abreast the Herefordshire bazaar boondocks of Ledbury, is a late-18th-century red brick abode amidst by farmland.
These canicule it goes by the name of Adhisthana, absorption its reincarnation as the abode of one of the best affecting Buddhist orders in the world, the Triratna Community, whose founder, Sangharakshita, lived there until his afterlife aftermost year at the age of 93. With its absorbing area and gardens, it looks like a serene abode for addition to absorb their final years. But abaft the scenes, the account is a rather added agitated one.
For decades the adjustment has been adamant by claims of animal misconduct, claims that about absent into allegations of browbeating and corruption but which were anticipation to absorb alone a scattering of individuals at worst.
But now a affliction centralized report, produced by anxious associates and aggregate with the Observer, has activate that added than one in 10 of them affirmation to accept accomplished or empiric animal delinquency while in the order. Abounding of the allegations are adjoin Sangharakshita himself, but others accomplish it bright that he was not the alone declared perpetrator. Indeed, the abode seems to announce that the alone ability the authority encouraged back he accustomed his aboriginal centre in the 1960s, at a time back Timothy Leary was advancement bodies to “turn on, tune in, bead out”, flourished beyond the order.
Yet, admitting the ashen revelations, Sangharakshita’s access lingers. The Adhisthana website carries abounding pictures of him, a bespectacled, slight man draped in angelic robes. The photographs allure comparisons with Gandhi, but the two gurus appear from actual altered backgrounds.
Born Dennis Lingwood, the son of a French ass-kisser from Tooting, Sangharakshita, acceptation “one who is adequate by the airy community”, bare from the British army in India during the additional apple war and wandered the subcontinent, belief with several arch Tibetan lamas.
Two decades on, he alternate to London at the allurement of a accumulation of Buddhists in Hampstead, with a mission to set up one of Britain’s aboriginal monasteries, afore abrogation for affidavit that are disputed. Some affirmation that he was bent application hire boys, an accusation that the Triratna association said it had not heard before. At the time of his departure, the Hampstead accumulation issued a account that said: “Whatever may accept been said to the accident of his appearance in the advance of contempo belief and account may now be withdrawn.”
Venturing out on his own, Lingwood developed his own, abominable interpretative cast of Buddhism, cartoon on elements of Nietzsche and Freud. Critics would allege him of a blame a “semi-intellectual assortment of Buddhism” but he shrugged off the attacks, claiming he was allowance the adoration acquisition new followers in the west.
Many of his account were unorthodox. Lingwood encouraged heterosexual followers to agreement with homosexuality as a agency of accretion their minds; he was acutely analytical of the nuclear ancestors and of mixed-sex communities in general; he encouraged adolescent men to breach abroad from their families.
“I anticipate the son has to cut chargeless and maybe not accept abundant to do with his parents for a year or two,” he already explained.
His cerebration addled a chord.
“There was article anarchic and anti-establishment about it,” one man who has been a affiliate back the backward 80s told the Observer. “I’d apparent the rows my parents had, how they’d approved to aggregate money and it hadn’t helped them. I absitively that the nuclear ancestors didn’t assignment for me. I didn’t appetence the get-married-get-a job narrative. I was attractive for article altered and what it offered helped me.”
As a growing cardinal of predominantly adolescent men flocked to Triratna, afresh declared the Accompany of the Western Buddhist Adjustment (FWBO), it advertisement dramatically. Today it has added than 30 centres in the UK alone and operates in 26 countries.
Thousands mourned Lingwood back his burial was advertisement at Triratna centres about the world. His obituary in the Times appropriate that he had arguably done “more than any added actuality to popularise Buddhism in the west”.
But fissures aural the association he founded are now acceptable above accountability lines. An centralized abode by nine antagonistic members, who alarm themselves the Interkula, makes adverse account about the order’s actual absorption behavior and the assignment of affliction it had to its followers.
Its damaging allegation accept ahead gone unpublicised: a accepted affiliate explained that it was not the Triratna way to allotment centralized criticisms with the alfresco world. But they were fatigued to the Observer’s absorption by a above affiliate who claims he was manipulated into accepting sex with Lingwood.
Of 423 respondents to a analysis featured in the report, of whom two-thirds are adjustment associates and a division are “Mitras” – followers who may aspire to become adjustment associates – 55, about 13%, said that either they themselves, or addition they knew, had “experienced animal delinquency by either Sangharakshita or added Triratna adjustment members, in accomplished and contempo times”.
The report, which acknowledges that “some acceptable progress” has been fabricated in responding to the allegations, an access the adjustment describes as a “restorative process”, states: “While abounding respondents declared delinquency amid a added accomplished macho OM [order member] and beneath accomplished macho Mitra, as has been declared abounding times in the past, added types of delinquency were additionally reported, including macho adjustment associates acceptable sexually complex with actual accessible women … and inappropriate behaviour by a changeable adjustment member.”
Some of the comments in the abode are damning. One adjustment affiliate of added than 15 years said: “I apperceive of several cases and the capacity are awful. They accommodate declared action on the allotment of one of the best high-profile OMs to try and animate a victim not to affirm to the badge if questioned.”
Another said: “Yes, I apperceive three OMs alone who accomplished animal delinquency by added OMs and accept not been arrive to participate in the alleviation process.”
A third said: “I was sexually abused by earlier adjustment members.”
A fourth added: “I apperceive of four bodies who this describes. Alone one of these was in the UK. I anguish that this blazon of behaviour was abundant added boundless than about believed.”
“I accept accompany who were sexually assaulted by chief OMs in contempo times,” addition said. “They appear it to added chief OMs. Nothing happened.”
It was not aloof men who were targeted.
“I apperceive of a brace of women ‘friends of the movement’ who were pursued by macho adjustment associates … both actual accessible women – one ex-prison[er] pursued and one astringent brainy bloom problems – entered into animal accord with.”
Some of those who completed the analysis questioned Triratna’s appetence for investigating the abuse.
“I anticipate there is a ample abnegation agency … I’m up for affairs assets and authoritative apology as allotment of us affective on and acknowledging our benightedness of the abuse,” one said.
If it came to that, and several law firms accept floated the abstraction of bringing claims adjoin Triratna, it would absolutely accept assets to sell. The latest accounts of its accommodating arm, the Triratna Preceptors’ College Trust, acknowledge that in 2017, the best contempo abstracts available, it alone was sitting on net assets account added than £3.3m. It bought Adhisthana several years ago for a rumoured £5m.
But this is alone allotment of the picture. The accounts explain that the assurance acts as a hub for dozens of charities that accomplish in the UK and overseas. One affiliate told the Observer that, in Cambridge alone, Triratna had eight or nine backdrop account amid £700,000 and £2m each. Addition affiliate appropriate that its absolute acreage authority was account added than £100m.
It helps that the adjustment is a alms and enjoys tax perks. And the actuality that its associates are about blessed to assignment in its bookshops or cafes for actual little helps accumulate its amount abject low.
Today, abundant of the trust’s assets comes from donations and organising airy retreats and brainwork courses. Its position at the beat of the fashionable amenity movement was anchored four years ago back several of its arch associates helped a cross-party accumulation of MPs aftermath their affecting Mindful Nation UK report, which acclaimed the allowances of the new cerebral access in alleviative brainy bloom problems such as depression.
Mark Dunlop larboard the adjustment in 1985 afterwards abounding years alive for it. A heterosexual man, he acquainted accountable to accept animal relations with Lingwood over a four-year period. “He didn’t accept any charisma,” Dunlop said. “He was a hardly awe-inspiring guy, in a way that formed in his favour because I thought: ‘I’m not actuality affected by his charisma.’
“One approach about narcissists is that they accept accomplished some affectionate of agony in their adolescence so they don’t accept any aplomb in themselves, and they actualize this accomplished apple as a advantage and dispense added bodies to body up their own ego.
“That fits with how Lingwood behaved. He congenital up this fantasy of himself as a airy teacher, addition on a college alike of understanding, but I consistently sensed he wasn’t a blessed bunny. There was a faculty of annoyance lying underneath. I acquainted apologetic for him, in a way. That’s one of the affidavit I capital to advice him accompany Buddhism to the west.”
It now seems that Lingwood’s behaviour provided a arrangement that was affected by others who exploited the order’s hierarchy. Abounding who came to it gluttonous broad-mindedness aspired to become members. But this fabricated them accessible to browbeating by those in chief positions.
“There was a accepted activity about at the time that you were ‘blocked’ if you had an abhorrence to gay sex,” one above affiliate recalled in an online forum.
One Triratna retreat, in Norfolk, area Lingwood was citizen for abundant of the 80s, was declared by the affiliate as “more evocative of a San Francisco gay bath-house than a Buddhist retreat”.
A accepted affiliate told the Observer that in the aboriginal 90s a 17-year-old boy with accessible brainy bloom problems concluded up in a animal accord with an adjustment affiliate in his 40s back residing at a centre in the south-east.
Five years ago, an adjustment affiliate at addition centre in London was bent advertisement himself to a adolescent adolescent in a supermarket. Afterwards actuality activate to accept committed several agnate offences, he was abeyant indefinitely.
Misconduct has additionally been appear at centres overseas. One woman who abounding an FWBO centre in New Zealand in the 90s said: “There was one advancing affiliate back I was there who seemed to amusement the centre as his own claimed Tinder app, hooking up with one woman afterwards another, application his position as authority to abundant advantage.”
Concerns were aboriginal aloft about the adjustment in a BBC account abode in the aboriginal 90s, and afresh again in 1997 back the Guardian appear animal delinquency at one of its centres, in Croydon, south London. That exposé prompted the abandonment of one affiliate of the order.
In acknowledgment to the Guardian’s report, one of the order’s chief members, Kulananda, wrote to the cardboard affirmation that the corruption was bedfast to one centre and one individual. But in a blog announcement 20 years later, Kulananda accepted hehad been in a animal accord with Lingwood and that he had appear to see that the guru’s behaviour appear others had engendered a “cultish-ness at the affection of things that, I believe, will ultimately be our downfall”.
The FWBO Files website contains a all-inclusive and growing athenaeum of allegations from ex-members cogent agnate views.
Towards the end of his life, Lingwood appears to accept accustomed the accident he had unleashed, cogent “deep affliction for all the occasions on which I accept hurt, afflicted or agitated adolescent Buddhists”. But, alike today, the adjustment seems afraid to accost its accomplished arch on: Triratna now describes Lingwood’s behaviour as “unskilful”, a key Buddhist term, but one which, to outsiders, seems to abbreviate the after-effects of his bloodthirsty actions.
The order’s absorption officer, who goes by the airy name Munisha, insisted the adjustment had abstruse acquaint from accomplished mistakes and said every Triratna centre in the UK now has a absorption officer.
“I’m acutely apologetic if delinquency appear to any affiliate of the adjustment was not appropriately addressed at the time,” she said. “The Interkula’s analysis includes accounts of delinquency which we would be agog to address. However, some of these are references to delinquency accomplished by bearding others, and we can alone abode a case area a called complainant is accommodating to acquaint us their adventure aboriginal hand.
“It is the action of Triratna’s axial absorption aggregation that annihilation appear to us of a bent – or alike potentially bent – attributes is appear to the police, afterwards exception.”
She accepted that one of the order’s best chief members, Suvajra, who some had apparent as a abeyant almsman to Sangharakshita, had been “suspended in December 2018 afterwards a accurate centralized antidotal console action activate on a antithesis of probabilities that austere ethical delinquency had taken place.” She beneath to explain the attributes of the declared misconduct.
Lingwood, of course, able such admonishment in his lifetime, adequate the tranquillity of his final years cosseted abroad in the idyillic ambience of Coddington Court, feted by his followers. Perhaps, though, in the afterglow of his life, he advancing that a college acumen accessible him. His adaptation of a Buddhist argument – Verses that Protect the Truth – was apprehend out at his funeral.
One ballad charge accept accustomed him abeyance for thought: “Lead a angelic life, not one that is corrupt. The angelic alive happily, both in this apple and the next.”
Key extracts from Abrogation Mother and Admission into Manhood, a certificate accounting by a chief affiliate of the Accompany of the Western Buddhist Adjustment in the 1970s and aggregate bottomward the years aural the order. The certificate reflects and helped appearance the order’s cerebration and confirms that abundant of Lingwood’s added arguable article were accepted and answer by others.
“An admission into manhood, then, is an empiric bearings in which the apocryphal man dies in adjustment that the accurate men may be born. The adolescent man has to realise that he charge abide and become absolutely acquiescent to that which will deliver him from the ascendancy of his mother.”
“Having alone the apple of mother and all that it implies, the adolescent man can now activate to realise that his assertiveness is accustomed to him and that it is no best an act that he has to put on.”
“Many ‘mummy’s boys’ accept a abhorrence of aloofness in a homosexual accord alike admitting that is what they may artlessly want.”
“I would alike go so far as to advance that demography the acquiescent role in a homosexual accord could, for some men, aggregate an admission into adulthood as (a) the man is surrendering his own pseudo-assertive ancillary and accordingly ability a array of allegorical death, and (b) is experiencing his female in a bearings that is chargeless from women and all their associations (ie, affecting dependency).”
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