Buddhism and the New Age
Vishvapani
The editor of Dharma Life magazine
© copyright retained by the author
ON MAY 25TH 1880 Madame Helena Petrova Blavatsky and Colonel Henry Steel Olcott, took
the three refuges and the five precepts from a Buddhist priest in a temple in Galle, a
coastal town in Sri Lanka, before a large crowd of Sinhalese. 'When we had finished the
last of the Silas and offered flowers in the customary way', Olcott wrote in his diary,
'there was a mighty shout to make one's nerves tingle'.1
He and Blavatsky were the founders of the Theosophical Society, one of the most
influential religious movements of the late 19th Century and in this ceremony Olcott
became the first American and Blavatsky the first European 2
formally to convert to Buddhism. The twin legacies of Theosophy are the introduction of
Buddhism to the West and the amorphous set of beliefs and practices which have come to be
known as 'the New Age'.
Buddhism and the New Age have been associated ever since, converging spectacularly in
the counter-cultural movements of the 1960's. In a recent paper Denise Cush concludes that
'there is a close, entangled and ambiguous relationship between British Buddhism and the
New Age' which 'can be traced back to a common ancestor in Theosophy'.3
This entanglement has led to popular identifications of Buddhism as a part of the same
movement as the New Age; the assumption on the part of many 'New Age' people that Buddhism
supports their views; and the subtle influence of New Age attitudes and assumptions on
Buddhists' understanding of their own tradition.
Nonetheless, Buddhism and the New Age are very different. They have emerged from very
different histories, travelling on different historical trajectories and based on
different philosophical assumptions. Cush identifies a changing relationship over the last
two decades between British Buddhist groups and New Age activities from 'closeness to a
conscious differentiation, followed by a diversification of approaches'. The initial
closeness derived from the influence of the counter-cultural trends of the 1960s is
thrusting both Buddhism and the New Age to prominence. The period of separation occurred
as Buddhists sought, in the 1970s and 1980s to establish their own identity. But by the
1990s alienation from conventional religion, party politics and the conditions of
consumer-capitalist society have generated renewed interest in both movements throwing
them together once more. With the increased size and confidence of Buddhist movements in
the West, Buddhists are in a position to explore ways of working alongside others and the
last few years have seen a number of Buddhist initiatives in New Age venues. But what are
the issues involved in this renewed encounter?
THE NEW AGE
THE INDEFINABILITY OF THE NEW AGE is at the heart of its nature. Is it a coherent
entity, or simply a catch-all phrase describing essentially separate developments? There
is no definitive set of beliefs or practices which are held in common by everyone to whom
the term may be applied, but something is clearly happening. What are the distinguishing
characteristics of the phenomenon we call New Age? What are the underlying attitudes and
assumptions of which New Age practices are expressions?
Most commentators date the emergence of a distinctive New Age philosophy from the work
of the American Theosophist Alice Bailey (1880-1949) which blended occultism, spiritualism
and apocalyptic vision with the prevailing Zeitgeist. As Dell deChant comments
'The New Age is the product of mid-20th century America. It becomes noticeable in the
late sixties and ever more pronounced since then as its chief carrier, the 'baby-boom'
generation' continues to experiment with beliefs and ideologies which are, at best,
distinct from those of capitalism, mainline Christianity and participatory democracy. Its
most obvious origin is found in the work of Alice A Bailey'.4
Many New Age activities found in Britain have their origin in the USA and the UK has,
in any case been subject to similar trends. But rather than attempting to account for the
forms the New Age has taken or comparing New Age activities with Buddhist ones it is more
important to discern their respective philosophical bases and underlying attitudes. A
British New Age Creed is offered by William Bloom of St. James Piccadilly, which gives a
starting-point for deducing these.
- "All life-all existence-is the manifestation of Spirit, of the Unknowable, of that
supreme consciousness known by many different names in different cultures.
- The purpose and dynamic of all existence is to bring Love, Wisdom, Enlightenment into
full manifestation.
- All religions are expressions of this same inner reality.
- All life, as we perceive it with the five human senses, or with scientific instruments,
is only the outer veil of an inner, causal reality.
- Similarly, human beings are two-fold creatures-with an outer temporary personality and a
multi-dimensional inner being (soul or higher self).
- The outer personality is limited and tends towards materialism.
- The inner personality is unlimited and tends towards love.
- Our spiritual teachers are those souls who are liberated from the need to incarnate and
who express unconditional love, wisdom and Enlightenment. Some of these beings are
well-known and have inspired the world religions. Some are unknown and work invisibly.
- All life in all its different forms and states, is interconnected energy-and this
includes our deeds, feelings and thoughts. We therefore work with spirit and these
energies in co-creating our reality.
- Although held in the dynamic of cosmic love, we are jointly responsible for the state of
ourselves, of our environment and of all life.
- During this period of time the evolution of the planet and of humanity has reached a
point when we are undergoing a fundamental spiritual change in our individual and mass
consciousness. This is why we speak of a 'New Age''.5
The Religion of the Self
Bloom's creed is characterised by its emphasis on 'inner reality' as the source of
meaning and value. But in what sense, one might ask, is this reality 'inner'? It must be
that it pertains to experience and in this way it overlaps with the 'inner personality'.
But experience has been universalised and, with the substitution of a capital letter, love
becomes 'Love' and wisdom, 'Wisdom'. This implies a substratum of existence which is
'Unknowable' and indescribable, but at the same time is crucial to the philosophy which
follows (which is the cause of the vagueness and indeterminacy of so much New Age
discourse). These are mystical beliefs which are neither rationally elaborated nor
theologically defined, but which may-possibly-be experienced. 'Spiritual' qualities are
separated from the 'outer' world of actions and ethics except where that world is
redefined in spiritual terms: 'All life-all existence-is the manifestation of Spirit, of
the Unknowable, of that supreme consciousness'. In a similar way 'all religions are
expressions of this same inner reality'.
This, then, is the 'religion of the self'. At its heart is a Rousseau-esque
sanctification of 'Inner being' which is outside history, innocent, pure, but nonetheless
authoritative. And there is plainly no question of examining the assumptions out of which
'inner being' might be constructed. In practice, this results in a recurrent concern with
personal experience. In psychological terms, the New Age speaks the language of
individualism while in philosophical terms it speaks the language of immanence, at times
implying a monistic metaphysic. These characteristics underlie its remaining features.
Eclecticism
The variety and all-inclusiveness of New-Age activities is perhaps its most remarkable
feature. Organisationally there is deep mistrust of institutions and a preference for
non-hierarchical models of operation. This is informed by a bias against rational thought
or systems of belief and towards intuition and 'holistic paradigms'. But in practice the
extent of New Age eclecticism suggests that the particular activity a New Ager chooses to
participate in is secondary to the question of what they get from it, what it does for
them, how it makes them feel.
New Age as a Market Sector
Another factor influencing the eclecticism of the New Age is its role within consumer
society. Ethnic art and music, traditional medicines, handicrafts and clothes expand the
range of consumer options. Markets exist in ideas (which can be obtained via books,
magazines and seminars) and in experiences (which can be bought through workshops,
therapies and retreats). And market forces will define as 'New Age' whatever can be sold
as such (or alternatively, whatever cannot be sold as anything else).
For the consuming New Ager these phenomena offer the prospect of perpetual novelty on
one's own terms. If you don't like the goods, you find another supplier. Where there is an
acknowledgement that commoditisation means a qualitative erosion there is a compensatory
stress on compression and intensity:
Enlightenment in a weekend workshop
Carrying this a stage further, one branch of the New Age discards counter-cultural
orientations in favour of 'prosperity teachings' (money as energy, life and empowerment;
poverty as self-hatred). As the Sanyassin slogan had it 'Jesus saves, Moses invests,
Bhagwan spends'. This is spiritualised materialism masquerading as materialised
spirituality.
Neo-Paganism-the Decontextualisation of
Tradition
New Age-ism is predicated on dissatisfaction with Christianity and an attempt to find
alternative forms of spirituality. It is informed by the revival of non-Christian
spiritual traditions such as Wiccan, Rosicrucianism, alchemy, Egyptian religion and the
Eastern traditions of Buddhism, Hinduism, Taoism and Sufism all of which are cheerfully
added to the eclectic mix.
But eclecticism should not be confused with openness. The self-orientation and
spiritual consumerism of the New Age impose their own agenda and its approach to paganism
as natural religion and animism is informed by modern perspectives. Thus the sense of the
sanctity of the natural world augments both ecological concerns and the view of the self
as natural and pure. The pagan notion of the immanence of gods, powers and spirits coheres
with modern (and sometimes quasi-scientific) interest in psychic phenomena. Ancient
mythologies inform psychologically derived 'personal myths' and the cult of the Goddess
provides feminism with a deity. Gaia does all these things for everyone.
The New Apocalypse
A final strand is the belief that mankind is or may be entering a New Age-a golden age of
spiritual awakening governed by new paradigms of thought. This can be seen as an outgrowth
of Christian apocalypticism shorn of the Christian eschatological imagery-Armageddon, the
return of Jesus and images from the Book of Revelation. In its place are symbols from (for
example) astrology (the Age of Aquarius), biology (the evolution of the human race),
parapsychology (harmonic convergence), occultism (the influence of the spiritual masters
of Theosophy and Scientology who preside over the world) and science fiction (where the
spiritual masters may inhabit UFOs)
. Some of the judgmental qualities of traditional eschatology live on in the notion
that we are faced with a choice between a New Age and ecological or nuclear catastrophe.
For the most part, however, there is a utopian and optimistic sense that the movement into
the next phase of mankind's development is inevitable. In this respect the New Age is
reminiscent of the Marxist and socialist utopias and indeed they have historical roots in
common. However, the New Age has turned against the Marxist philosophy of revolution and
socialist engagement. Alienation from conventional politics has been one of the principal
factors in its development which displaces its idealism into an inconceivable future to be
attained, in Bloom's words, by 'a fundamental spiritual change in our individual and mass
consciousness' rather than through tangible reforms. In the UK the political movements
which have influenced the New Age have mainly been concerned with protest and
opposition-especially CND, Animal Liberation and the environmental pressure groups.
Philosophical Underpinnings
Christian theology distinguishes between immanence and transcendence as ways of describing
the manner in which God is related to the world. Immanence denotes God's indwelling and
omnipresence in the world while transcendence indicates a God who is infinitely above and
beyond it. As Bloom's concern with 'inner reality' suggests, New Age discourse tends to be
expressed in terms of immanence. 'Self-religion' finds meaning within; paganism sees the
world as ensouled while apocalyptic utopianism envisages a variation on the theme of
heaven on earth.
2. BUDDHISM AND THE NEW AGE
THEOSOPHY AND ITS NEW AGE OFFSPRING have been central influences in the construction of
Western views of Buddhism which Mme. Blavatsky favoured as 'incomparably higher, more
noble, more philosophic and more scientific than any other church or religion'7. In particular the esoteric interests of the Theosophists
underlie the contemporary attraction of the tantra and Tibetan Lamas-whose true
progenitors are perhaps the Mahatmas who communicated telepathically with Mme. Blavatsky.
As AP Sinnet wrote in true orientalist fashion in Esoteric Buddhism (1883), 'Ceylon
concerns itself merely with morals, Tibet, or rather the adepts of Tibet, with the science
of Buddhism' 7. The Buddhist Society of London was founded in
1924 as a lodge of the Theosophical Society and Christmas Humphreys, its president,
retained a commitment to Mme. Blavatsky's teachings throughout his life.8
Sangharakshita, too, was decisively influenced by Theosophy through his reading, at the
age of fourteen, of Blavatsky's Isis Unveiled which brought him to a realisation that 'I
was not a Christian-that I never had been and never would be'. However, enthralled as he
was by the book, its effect was 'almost entirely negative' 9
and it was overwhelmed by his reading of Buddhist texts on which he realised 'that I was a
Buddhist and always had been' 10. This set him on an Eastward
trajectory, to encounters with Buddhism in the land of its origin.
When Sangharakshita and other experienced Buddhist teachers arrived in the West in the
1960s they had been preceded, and in some respects pre-empted, by the
Theosophically-influenced versions of Buddhism popularised by Humphreys and Alan Watts and
enthusiastically travestied by Lobsang Rampa and the Beats. In these ways, Buddhism
overlapped with the New Age which, in many respects has continued to support its spread.
Buddhist books are sold in New Age bookshops, Buddhist teachers frequently appear in New
Age magazines and meditation has become widely popularised. In return Buddhism has
provided New Age thinkers with a wealth of images, terms, concepts and texts.
The two movements were also connected by their counter-cultural principles. This
association was deeply invigorating for British Buddhism and enabled the FWBO, for
example, to cast off the staid and middle-class character of the previous generation of
British Buddhists and distance itself from the ossification of much Eastern Buddhism.
Buddhism is intrinsically 'alternative' in the West in that it offers an alternative to
Christianity and to the many forms of materialism. For this reason a kinship exists
between Buddhists and the world-views and counter-cultural experiments of the New Age. But
'identity is the vanishing point of resemblance', as Wallace Stevens says, and this
kinship should not be allowed to obscure the profound differences. In an atmosphere of
eclecticism, minorities can thrive: vegetarians are no longer considered cranks and
neither are Buddhists. But Buddhists should beware of being added to the New Age
soup-vegetarian or not.
If it is difficult to define the New Age, it is perhaps no less difficult to define
Buddhism, but unless we can be clear what is distinctive about Buddhism we will be at the
mercy of endless compromises and obscurations. I suggest that at the heart of the many
expressions of the Dharma is a concern with the Truth, the full realisation of which is
conterminous with Enlightenment. This emphasis runs contrary to the common Western
perception of Buddhism as a path of progressively intensifying spiritual experience. That
is to say, Buddhism is seen as a form of mysticism and mysticism is understood in terms of
experience. In an address to a conference of 'scientists and mystics' Sangharakshita was
at pains to stress that he identifed himself with neither party:
'To me as a Buddhist, terms such as 'mystic' and 'mystical' are in fact quite strange,
even alien, not to say repugnant, and in speaking and writing about Buddhism I prefer to
avoid them'11
This does not mean that Buddhism is not concerned with experience, but it does not see
experience-even mystical experience-as an end in itself. When mysticism is turned into a
philosophy it becomes monism-the belief in an underlying unity between all phenomena
within the context of a metaphysical absolute, mysticism being the personal experience of
such an absolute. Buddhism seeks to avoid all such absolutisation and reification and to
understand experience in a broader, non-dualistic context:
'One might say Science represents an extreme of objectivity and reason whereas
Mysticism represents an extreme of subjectivity and emotion... Science seeks to reduce the
subject to the object, Mysticism to absorb the object in the subject. Buddhism, following
here as elsewhere a Middle Way, represents a dissolution of the subject-object dichotomy
in a blissful non-dual Awareness wherein... 'that which is exterior coincides with that
which is interior'.12
In a similar vein, in a lecture on 'Enlightenment as Experience and Non-Experience'
Sangharakshita proposes that we think of the spiritual life not in terms of experience,
but in terms of the metaphors of growth, work and duty.13 The
'Truth' to which a Buddhist aspires has to be lived, felt and seen and it is likewise the
Truth of his or her experience, but this is not the same as saying that it is experience.
This is a crucial point of divergence from the New Age, as 'the religion of the Self'. For
Buddhism there is no abiding Self or soul which is not subject to change.
The Buddhist concern with Truth is fundamentally at odds with the eclecticism and
relativism of the New Age and Buddhists have to make distinctions between teachings and
traditions which the New Age is happy to mix together. 'Truth' here does not refer to the
various doctrinal expressions of the Dharma which Buddhist tradition does not consider to
be ultimately 'true' in themselves. But such expressions are nonetheless considered
indispensable means to Enlightenment and for this reason Right Understanding is the
starting point of the Eight-fold path. It is therefore incumbent upon Buddhists to clarify
their own views and to distinguish which of the views they encounter are compatible with
the Dharma.
Thus a Buddhist cannot agree that 'all religions are essentially expressions of the
same inner reality'. Sometimes this stance is urged on Buddhists with the coercive
pressure of a theological correctness, but Buddhism does not even regard itself as 'an
expression of reality'. It sees its own teachings and practices as means of creating
conditions which conduce to the perception of reality and Buddhists will judge other
teachings by the same criterion. Where there are differences of belief and practice
Buddhists need to ask (in the ample spirit of friendly dialogue and tolerance) whether
other religions, philosophies and spiritual paths are based, ultimately on one of the two
essential 'wrong views': nihilism and eternalism. For example, in his belief in 'spirit'
and 'the Unknowable' Bloom proposes a metaphysical substratum underlying and uniting all
phenomena. A Buddhist analysis will see this, like Bloom's belief in a 'soul or higher
self', as a form of eternalism-not to say as disguised theism. Alternatively, some
manifestations of the New Age proceed on the assumption that true happiness is possible if
we can but change to this diet, use this ethnic medicine, align these energies using those
crystals, amulets, or charms, or take up a particular form of alternative medicine,
martial art, or therapy. The suggestion that ultimate satisfaction can be found in a
physical training or a particular form of therapy is essentially materialist and a
Buddhist analysis will interpret them as a form of nihilism.
Similarly problematic is the belief that all religions are simply differing forms of
'spirituality'. Such an approach will see the Buddhist tradition as one resource among
others from which an individual can draw. But why should one chose Buddhist spirituality
rather than Christian, feminist or 'earth' spirituality when they are all just different
kinds of experience and are all equally true/false/useful? If we simply take what we want
from Buddhism we are in danger of ignoring the aspects which are uncomfortable and
challenging-in other words, those parts of the tradition which will force one to change.
For this reason it is important that Buddhism is presented in a way which makes it
clear that it cannot be incorporated into a life which is otherwise unchanged or subsumed
innocuously into a New Age mix. Like the New Age, Dzogchen, Tantra and Zen tend to use the
language of immanence: the doctrine of Buddha nature, the idea that we are already
Enlightened-and the approaches to practice which follow from this-are all examples. In a
cultural context which asserts subjective experience above universal values and where
consumption is a primary mode of being such teachings are open to misinterpretation. An
alternative approach-using the language of transcendence-asserts that we are not presently
Enlightened (and, in fact that we are primordially deluded), that we need to change
ourselves if we are to become Enlightened and that Buddhism is a path from delusion to
Enlightenment, from Samsara to Nirvana. Some approaches will work and others will not, but
one cannot say, with the New Age, that all approaches are equally valid.Buddhists cannot
agree that they are helping to prepare for the Golden Dawn and the Age of Aquarius. A
Buddhist approach to politics and society has to rest on pratiitya samutpaada, the
principle that 'all things arise in dependence upon conditions'. Speaking of the FWBO
Subhuti writes in Buddhism for Today
'there are... no millennial illusions. No golden age is at hand. The modern world is
too complex and too pluralistic to be transformed in that way'. 14
However, Buddhists can work for meaningful change. As at any other time in history it
is possible to create conditions which are more conducive to human well-being and allow
the possibility of spiritual development. But this development takes place individually,
not en masse in the manner of a totalitarian state or imperial expansion. As Subhuti says,
'empires deny individuality and breed their own expansion'. There is a Buddhist saying
that 'Samsara is endless' and any belief that a utopian full-stop can be placed at the end
of history will strike Buddhists as naïve escapism, speaking more of the fin de
millennium fear of social collapse than of spiritual aspiration.
In spite of this the theosophical heritage lives on among contemporary Western
Buddhists in the continuing idealisations of Tibet and Tibetan Buddhism, which Donald
Lopez dubs 'new age orientalism'. He has in mind the fantasy version of Tibet:
'exalted as a surrogate self endowed with all that the West lacks. It is Tibet that
will regenerate the West by showing us, prophetically, what it can be by showing us what
it has been. It is Tibet that can save the West, cynical and materialist, from itself.
Tibet is seen as a cure for the ever-dissolving West, restoring its spirit'.15
This Tibet is shrouded in snows and mystery in equal measure, secreted behind the
Himalayas in the most inaccessible region of the world: the last abode (now cruelly
displaced in its turn by the Chinese shadow of Western materialism) of legendary beasts,
magical powers and perennial wisdom. To the extent that Western followers of Tibetan
Buddhism perceive it in this way they merge into New Age appropriations of that tradition.
The Dalai Lama, the Bardo Thödol and, to a lesser extent, the idea of tantric initiation
all figure prominently in New Age mythologizing.
As an articulation of fantasy compensations for psychic inadequacy the New Age movement
is not a cure so much as a symptom. Over fifty years ago W.H. Auden prophesied a New Age
apocalypse in a long work called 'For The Time Being'. Herod is contemplating the
impending massacre of the innocents. He does not want to issue the order because, as he
says 'I am a liberal. I want everyone to be happy'. But civilisation is already crumbling:
'I have tried everything. I have prohibited the sale of crystals and ouija boards; the
courts are empowered to sentence alchemists to hard labour in the mines; it is a statutory
offence to turn tables or feel bumps'.
What he fears is a future where:
''Reason will be replaced by Revelation.... Knowledge will degenerate into a riot of
subjective visions-feelings in the solar plexus induced by under-nourishment, angelic
images generated by fevers or drugs. Whole cosmogonies will be created out of some
forgotten personal resentment, complete epics written in private languages, the daubs of
school-children ranked above the greatest masterpieces.... Idealism will be replaced by
Materialism. Life after death will be an eternal dinner-party where all the guests are
only 20 years old... Divine honours will be paid to silver teapots, shallow depressions in
the earth, names on maps, domestic pets. The New Aristocracy will consist exclusively of
hermits, bums and permanent invalids'.16
This is the icy hell of subjectivity whose inmates, relativizing truth, can speak only
to themselves or of themselves to each other. Is it a portrait of the New Age? So elusive
a phenomenon can never be adequately defined, but the characterisation I have suggested
implies an ideology of underlying assumptions-the religion of the self, eclecticism and
social fantasy-whose influence extends far beyond the many-tentacled reach of its
institutions and organisations. Buddhism, too, contains underlying assumptions and has a
distinctive approach which derives from them. These distinctions must be insisted upon
however useful Buddhism and the New Age may be to each other and however much certain
formulations of Buddhism may conceal the differences. This is not to say that the people
one meets in New Age contexts are necessarily definable in its terms: the New Age is where
people start looking when they want an alternative to conventional society. There may well
be ways in which the two can live together. Buddhists might see the New Age as a kind of
contemporary ethnic religion which can co-exist with Western Buddhism as tribal and
national traditions co-exist with Eastern Buddhism. But Buddhists must retain a sense of
the universality of their own tradition and of the extent to which it surpasses the New
Age frameworks which will seek to define it. One has only to think of the absorption of
Indian Buddhism by Hinduism to see how such a relationship can break down. Denise Cush
suggests that the New Age, needing to be grounded in a tradition, 'could root itself in a
Western form of non-sectarian or Mahayana Buddhism'.17 One
sees something of the sort already taking place in the USA. However, Buddhists will insist
that what passes as Buddhism is true to its name.
Finally the New Age is not paganism. It is a modern (or even a post-modern) phenomenon;
it is a symptom of rootlessness, not a restoration of roots. The New Age seeks to consume
traditions such as Buddhism as resources for personal experience. In these respects it
embodies a reductio ad absurdum of contemporary liberalism in the realm of religious
belief and practice. A New Age Buddhism would be a reductio ad absurdum of Buddhist
tradition; it would be a Buddhism constructed from Western fantasies of the East and
post-Christian yearnings for salvation. As Stephen Batchelor comments:
'Today the fear of invasion is more one of psychological and social breakdown than of
external invasion. instead of Theosophy, there is now the New Age, another resurgent
Gnostic/Romantic fantasy that claims Buddhism as its own, just as Mani did in the Third
century and Mme. Blavatsky in the 19th. But the Dharma will remain unheard as long as its
voice is drowned out by the clamour of these irrational and eclectic yearnings'.18
Buddhism in the West is growing out of old traditions, but it should not simply consume
those traditions according to modern agendas and discard them as worthless husks. Western
Buddhists are attempting to create a new tradition - a tradition of Western Buddhism
within which individuals can develop beyond subjective experience, can grow through
activity and engagement and finally come not just to follow the Truth, but to embody it.
Notes
- How the Swans Came to the Lake R. Fields, London 1986, p.97
- The Awakening of the West, S. Batchelor, London, 1994 p. 269.
- British Buddhism and the New Age, D. Cush, unpublished paper.
- Taproots of the New: New Thought and the New Age, D. deChant, in The Quest, Vol 4 No.4
1991, Wheatton, Illinois, p72.
- The New Age in Cultural Context', P. Heelas, in Religion Vol 23 No 2 April 1993, p104.
Heelas also develops the idea that the New Age is 'the religion of the self'.
- S. Batchelor, loc cit.
- R. Fields, p98.
- S. Batchelor, p 316
- Learning to Walk, Sangharakshita, Glasgow, 1990 p91
- Ibid. p118.
- The Priceless Jewel, Sangharakshita, Windhorse Publications, Glasgow 1993 p142.
Delivered as an address to The Wrekin Trust conference on Reality, Consciousness and Order
in 1983.
- Ibid p144.
- The Taste of Freedom, Sangharakshita, Windhorse Publications, Glasgow, 1990 p87ff.
- Buddhism For Today, Subhuti, Glasgow 1988 p174.
- New Age Orientalism: the Case of Tibet', Lopez, in Tricycle; III, 3; 1994 p 43
- For the Time Being', Auden W.H., in Collected Longer Poems, London 1968, pp187-9.
- D. Cush, op. cit.
- S. Batchelor, p 271.