Neither monastic nor lay.

Because Going for Refuge is primary, while lifestyle is secondary, the Triratna Buddhist Order is ‘neither monk nor lay.’ Some Order members live what is effectively a monastic life. Some live a ‘lay’ life, bringing up a family and earning the money needed to do this. Many combine elements of both lifestyles, perhaps living in a semi-monastic community without being celibate, or alternating periods of meditative monastic living ‘on retreat’ with periods of activity ‘in the world’. Some live in communities (not just with other Order members), others are chaste (anagarikas). But there is no difference in status, simply a different approach to practice.

What unites members of the Order is not a lifestyle, but the fact that they have all been recognized as ‘effectively’ Going for Refuge, which means that their commitment has been seen to be powerful enough, consistent enough, and central enough in their lives to have a noticeable effect over a significant period of time. 

The Triratna Buddhist Order is also financially independent. Our local Buddhist Centers are financially autonomous, and are not run exclusively by Order members, nor materially dependent an ecclesiastical hierarchy or central entity. In the US, most Order Members are not able to make a living by being Dharma teachers or supporting a center: they must have other forms of livelihood to get by. This is a challenge, but it can also be a blessing, in that Centers and teachers can be independent of one another, and Order Members must engaged in the wider world.

Sangharakshita was not the only Buddhist innovator in history to challenge the monastic-lay divide in the Buddhist world. Dr. Ambedkar did so as well, for example. While many leaders and historical circumstances have led to the reformation of monasticism or elevated lay ordination, Sangharakshita is one of the few to explicitly imagine an ordination that is fact neither monastic nor lay, in the traditional understanding of these categories. In a world of binaries, this is a challenge and an experiment for Order Members to live into.