Building Buddhism: Beaufoy Institute featured in blog of Buddhist centres

Our very own Beaufoy Institute has been featured on a blog about Buddhist Buildings in the UK. As part of a project for English Heritage, two researchers from Leeds University are photographing and documenting the stories of sixteen Buddhist buildings around the country over the course of a year, starting in September 2013.

The Building Buddhism blog already contains several reports about different Buddhist centres in London, and will expand to include notable buildings in other areas. Buddhist buildings, they say, are under-researched in the UK although Buddhism itself is a fast-growing religion, according to the last census. Their latest entry is about Diamond Way Buddhism’s restoration of the Beaufoy Institute.

The writeup of the work done so far on our London Buddhist Centre is especially interesting because one can see how someone not directly involved sees the project. For example, as the researchers astutely observe regarding the amount of care and sheer effort that we have put into restoring the Beaufoy Institute:

…what is most interesting, is that this herculean effort is, indeed, the point. Buddhist practice doesn’t start when the building is completed. Building and Buddhist practice are carefully intertwined into the renovation plan and the work being done at the Beaufoy Institute … The Diamond Way community in the UK had spent 10 years fundraising and searching for an appropriate building, and the renovations will take some time to complete in entirety. The idea of all this effort taking place in a building that, throughout its history, also housed great effort with its industrial school seems not so much a change of purpose, than a continuation.

building buddhism – Researching Buddhist Buildings in England