Behind the Scenes: Shabda

"Shabda" is the name of the magazine from order members for order member. Only order members contribute articles and only (!) order members are allowed to read those articles - i.e. not even mitras or 'friends'.

Now an extract of more than two dozens quotations from Shabda has turned up, all of which deal with highly sensitive areas of F/WBO affairs.

Ranging from Lingwood's sexual appetite for young men, ["Bhante is homosexual and prefers young boys. This is fine by me." Moksharaja ]

the position of the F/WBO in the Buddhist scene,
[ "One clear lesson of the Guardian article was that we have very few real friends in the Buddhist world." Vishvapani ]

to the permanent deception of Indian order members,
[ "... in all this time, fellow order members in India were systematically deceived." Sahamati ]

many issues are discussed which the order would like to keep out of public.

A first and rather hectic reaction to these quotations comes from order member Vishvapani, head of FWBO's Communication Office. In his e-mail (25th January 2000) he writes:

"As the author of one of your quotations I would like to tell you that you are reproducing copyrighted material illegally. I further note that you have quoted it partially, and with no reference to the context."

So, apart from the hypocritical argument of "no reference to the context", Vishvapani confirms the correctness of those quotations. This for itself is already highly interesting.

But even more informative is a statement coming from order member Jinapalita in an e-mail dated 27th January 2000:

"Almost all of the contents are old news to me."

If so, one starts to wonder what is 'new' news to Jinapalita. What is going on in the F/WBO right now? What is going to come up in the future?


If you are now interested to read those "old news", just email me. You find the address at the bottom of the homepage.