Sangharakshita is the founder of the Friends of the Western Buddhist Order (FWBO) and one of the pioneers of Buddhist practice in the West. He is an Englishman, born in London in 1925, and was one of the first Westerners to take the full Buddhist monastic ordination. He lived in India for nearly 20 years after World War Two, practising, teaching and writing about Buddhism, mainly in Kalimpong. He returned to visit the UK in the early 1960's and quickly saw that a genuine interest in Buddhism was developing, particularly among the young hippy counter-culture. After a farewell tour of India, he returned to live in the UK in 1967 and founded the FWBO and then conducted the first ordinations into the Western Buddhist Order during 1968.

He has presided over the growth of this new Buddhist movement for the last 40 years, giving many talks, seminars and retreats as well as travelling widely and developing a significant network of friendships. Now in his eighties, he has handed on his responsibilities for the FWBO and the Western Buddhist Order but continues to see people from his base in Birmingham.

Find out more about Sangharakshita's life, his main teachers in the East, or see a selection of his writings.

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"Buddhism is, in fact, not an Eastern religion. It is a universal religion. It can be understood and practised anywhere in the world, because Buddhism addresses itself to the individual human being regardless of race, nationality, caste, sex or age. This is one of the reasons I am a Buddhist. I believe that humanity is basically one. I believe that it is possible for any human being to communicate with any other human being, to feel for any other human being, to be friends with any other human being. This is what I truly and deeply believe."

from a talk given by Sangharakshita in Mumbai, India.