Bante's funeral

The funeral was streamed on FB.

I saw Vajramati do an offering. I will be forever grateful to him for teaching me meditation and guiding me for many years. I saw Parami talk, spent time with her brilliance. Spent time with others as well to my benefit, I greatly appreciate it. Forgive me if I couldn't hear some of the other speakers.

Subhuti said (paraphrasing) that Buddhism hasn't, as a whole, responded to consumerism and materialism. China tried to snuff out Buddhism in Tibet. It did not succeed. These two things make the 20th century a bad century for Buddhism.

Sangharakshita is complex, but the order of the TBC and TBO was founded through him, and that is quite a legacy. It was born the same year the Friends of the Western Buddhist Order was founded, later to be named Triratna because it wasn't just in the west! Thank you Bante.

More about name changes

The Western Buddhist Order was changed to Triratna Buddhist Order. Instead of Friends of the Triratna Buddhist Order, Sangharakshita and the order want to just call it Triratna Buddhist Community. So instead of the WBO and FWBO, there's the TBO and TBC. I await the offical announcements on FWBO/TBMSG News. Thus I have relied on e-mails to the order, which were shared by order members.

A friend had trouble adding the first R in, because there's a mantra that has a similar word. Here is a link to the mantra.

More on change to follow.

Another order member blogs...

A new name

The Western Buddhist Order has always had trouble with it's name in the east, where it has had various names, and so the order has changed it name so that it can have a global name: Triratna Buddhist Order. Sangharakshita changed it January 6th 2010. I'm still trying to get used to it.

Vishvapani wrote a paper suggesting as such 15 years ago.