The Triratna Buddhist Order

Our Buddhist movement was founded in 1967 as the Friends of the Western Buddhist Order (FWBO) by Urgyen Sangharakshita (pictured), an Englishman who realised at the age of 16 that he was a Buddhist and, after a long process of searching, was ordained as a Buddhist monk in India in 1950. After a further 14 years living and teaching Buddhism in India, he returned to England in 1964, and saw the need for a new kind of Buddhist organisation - a community of Buddhist practitioners committed to living a Dharma life, who were neither monastic nor lay. Despite feeling that he was not the ideal person to found such a thing, he felt it was needed and so he founded the FWBO in 1967 and a year later, the Western Buddhist Order (which was renamed the Triratna Buddhist Order in 2010). 

The Triratna Community is made up of Order members and all those people who attend Triratna Buddhist centres and groups across the world. The idea behind the Community is to make the living principles and practices of Buddhism accessible to people in the modern world, both west and east. It is now represented on all the world’s inhabited continents. You'll find more information on the Triratna Buddhist Community at the The Buddhist Centre Online.

The Triratna Buddhist Order is a community of people that have made the decision to place the practice of Buddhism within the Triratna Community at the heart of their lives. Order members live and practise in a wide variety of situations across the world - some live with their families and work in conventional jobs, others live in communities and work together in Buddhist teams, others live and practise in retreat centres with a more monastic focus.