About this site
This is a resource for pilgrims who wish to visit — or simply reflect on — the places associated with the life of Urgyen Sangharakshita (1925–2018), founder of the Triratna Buddhist Community. From the streets of wartime London to the foothills of the Himalayas, from the villages of rural India to retreat centres across the West, Sangharakshita's life traced a remarkable arc. This guide gathers those places, drawing on his own words, so that a pilgrim can walk the same ground with some sense of what happened there.
Each site includes a passage from Sangharakshita's memoirs, key facts, a map, and — where available — photographs. The app works fully offline once loaded, so it can be used in the field without an internet connection.
How it was made
This site was created by Suryanaga, a member of the Triratna Buddhist Order. The content was generated by reading Sangharakshita's six published memoirs — The Rainbow Road, Facing Mount Kanchenjunga, In the Sign of the Golden Wheel, Moving Against the Stream, Crossing the Stream, and Through Buddhist Eyes — and extracting every named place with a geographical location.
The site itself was built with the assistance of Claude Code, an AI coding tool made by Anthropic. Claude Code helped write and structure the code, while the editorial judgements — which places to include, how to describe them, and how to frame the pilgrim's experience — are Suryanaga's own.
Visiting the sites
Some of the places listed here are active Triratna centres — Buddhist centres, retreat centres, communities — where you can expect a warm welcome. Others have long since ceased to be connected with Triratna, or were never closely aligned with it in the first place. Some are dilapidated; some have become something else entirely. Such is the passage of time, and the law of impermanence we engage with on pilgrimage. Discovering what is still there, and having your own unique experience of the site, is part of the adventure.
If possible, when you reach each location, you may like to chant the White Tara mantra for Bhante's long life — Oṃ Tāre Tuttāre Ture Bhante Ayuḥ Punya Jñānā Puśtiṃ Kuru Svāhā — perform puja, or simply meditate.
Another important part of pilgrimage is the travelling itself, which often takes much longer than the time you spend at the actual site. You can reflect on your journey — how, in a sense, the journey is the destination.
As you set out for Ithaka
hope your road is a long one,
full of adventure, full of discovery.
Contributions
If you know of a site that should be included, have a correction, or can contribute photographs from a visit, please use the contribution form on any site's detail page. Pilgrimage is a collective practice.