Tricycle | Awake in the World

It’s Tuesday night in Moseley, a suburb of Birmingham, in the heart of England. People are streaming into a large white house, a former synagogue, now the Birmingham Buddhist Centre. The shrine room and its gallery are packed: A crowd of 250 have come to hear Sangharakshita speak. A small academic figure, gray-haired, in gray suit and glasses, he takes up his position behind a lectern. The talk, lasting nearly two hours, is about Atisha, the 10th-century Indian adept who helped bring Buddhism to Tibet. Here and there the speaker offers a sprig of wisdom about how to apply the tale to one’s own life.

How he applies it to his life remains unstated but tantalizing nonetheless, for like Atisha, this elderly British gent, who looks like he could be John Major’s elder brother, a picture of Middle England, has spent the better part of his life transmitting the teachings of Buddha from one culture to another. At the end of the talk, the applause is rapturous.