Dear Order members and friends,

In 1949, when visiting Bodhgaya for the first time, Sangharakshita wrote a poem called ‘The Birthplace of Compassion’. Now, seventy-five years later, on the centenary of his birth, I send this letter from this very place, where around 800 members of the Order that Sangharakshita went on to found, are gathered for an International Order Convention.

Here, where the Goatherd’s banyan-tree
O’ershadowed, was, to world forlorn,
The first child of Enlightenment,
Compassion, born.

Seeing men bloom like lotus flowers
With petals closed, or half apart,
Her pulses fluttered underneath
The Buddha-Heart.

And when that high and holy hour
With stars shone down upon her birth,
There opened wide a way to peace
For all on earth.

Watch Sangharakshita reading the poem (Aryaloka, 1993)

Compared to 1949, and compared to my own first visit around thirty years ago, the town of Bodhgaya is considerably busier, and in many ways this is not a peaceful place! However, once inside the precincts of the Mahabodhi Temple, gathering in the morning for meditation, and in the evening for Puja, the sense of 'a way to peace for all on earth’ is not at all difficult to discern.

I was honoured on the first evening of the convention to be welcomed as the new Chair of the College. I took the opportunity to recite again before the assembly, and with the added significance of being in Bodhgaya, the acceptance verses which I mentioned in my last letter. 

I then reflected that I hold this responsibility with my fellow College members, and that in the last ten or fifteen years the College has become increasingly international. There are now 47 active members of the College, also 23 who have retired and remain active in the Order, and 6 who have died and are much missed. From these 47 active College members, 15 live in England. The second largest body of College members in one country is in India, with ten. I mentioned this, and mention it again in this letter, because perhaps not all Order members will have caught up with how international the College has become in recent years.

I said that one simple way to explain the responsibility of the College is to keep alive and ensure the faithful passing on of our ordination lineage and our particular tradition. The College does not and cannot hold this responsibility alone for keeping alive and faithfully passing on our tradition. This is held by all Order members. We have in common the same ordination, the same Refuges and Ten Precepts, and the same Acceptance Verses (sometimes known as the Four Vows.).

For the convention I suggested that we adapt the acceptance verses:

With loyalty to our teachers, we come together for this convention.
In harmony with friends and companions, we come  together for this convention.
For the attainment of Enlightenment, we come together for this convention.
For the benefit of all beings, we come together for this convention.

Having said a few words about these verses, which you can watch and listen to here, I lead us in our Triratna Dedication Ceremony written by Bhante for the dedication of the very first Triratna Centre on 6 April 1967.

I entreat you, O Buddha Shakyamuni, revealer of the Dharma,
And you, Urgyen Sangharakshita, who have given me the gift of the Dharma,
Please witness my Going for Refuge to the Buddha, Dharma and Sangha,
And grant me your blessings.

As part of our programme for this Convention, I was very pleased to lead the Order’s Kalyanamitra Yoga practice, which includes recitation of these verses a number of times, as we open ourselves to the blessings of the Three Jewels, received from the Buddha through Sangharakshita and our preceptors. We practised this together at the Three Jewels Centre, Triratna’s own Centre at Bodhgaya, a thirty minute walk from the Mahabodhi Temple. It was named by Sangharakshita at the time of our first International Convention here in 2009. Though permanent facilities are limited so far, the organising team had done a great job preparing for us. No doubt many Order members and Mitras have been involved in preparing and organising, but here I will particularly single out for appreciation the two international order convenors, Vajrapriya and Aryajaya, and Ratnashila, one of the overall Indian Order Convenors. 

It seems to me that on this convention something very special has been happening: our Order meeting in large numbers, dwelling in different ways on our own tradition - talks, discussion, rituals; experiencing Triratna as one of the multitude of different streams and rivers of teachings and inspiration that come from that moment so many centuries ago, just down the road from here, where, beneath the ‘Goatherd’s banyan tree’, on the fifth week after Shakyamuni’s Enlightenment, Compassion was born.

This six day convention concludes on 31 January, and by the time this letter goes out I will be staying on our Nagaloka Campus in Nagpur, Central India, for a nine day meeting of Triratna’s International Council (IC). It strikes me that the journey from Bodhgaya to Nagpur has a mythic significance - Nagpur being the place of the modern day revival of Buddhism, a revival of the flame lit by Shakyamuni at Bodhgaya, but that for close on one thousand years had all but gone out in India, the land of its birth.

In the coming week we will visit the Dikshabhumi, the place of the first conversions, and we will also get down to work with the wish to make Triratna worldwide more and more effective in offering a “way of peace” to a world desperately in need of it. And it does require work, co-ordination and planning if the inspiration that we have enjoyed on the Convention is to translate into effective action for the benefit of others. Which might remind us again of that fifth week after the Buddha’s Enlightenment, under the Banyan Tree, when the Buddha moved from contemplation to action, or one might say that the Compassion inherent in his Wisdom, fully manifested.

When the IC was set up in 2011 it was decided that the Chair of the College would also be the Chair of the International Council, so I find myself stepping into two responsibilities, Chair of both the College and the International Council. I look forward to working with the International Council, and no doubt I shall have something to say about our coming meeting when I write to you next month. 

Meanwhile I shall conclude with a young 25 year old Sangharakshita’s paean (song of praise) to Bodhgaya, after that first visit of his in 1949:

Bodh Gaya! Bodh Gaya! How many people have come to you in the course of ages! How many pilgrim feet have trodden the dust of your groves, how many pairs of hands been joined in silent adoration beneath the wide-spreading boughs of the Tree of Enlightenment, how many heads touched in profound thanksgiving the edge of the diamond throne! Bodh Gaya! Bodh Gaya! How beautiful you are in the morning, with the sunlight streaming on the renovated façade of your great temple as it rises four-square against the cloudless blue sky! How beautiful in the evening, when in the shadowy depths of the deserted temple courtyard a thousand votive lamps glitter like reflections of the stars! Bodh Gaya, I shall always remember how beautiful you were the first time I saw you, when my heart was young, and you made me your own! 

– The Rainbow Road from Tooting Broadway to Kalimpong, Complete Works of Sangharakshita, vol. 20, pp 453-4

With best wishes from Bodhgaya,
Mahamati