New Centre for the FWBO in Ghent, Belgium

For over ten years now there has been an FWBO presence in the old city of Gent, in Belgium. Their sangha has slowly grown from just one – Dhammaketu – to the present chapter of five Order Members and many mitras and friends, and in August they celebrated their first ordination on Belgian soil.

Their existing centre, however, has not grown – in fact they have outgrown it! Now, happily, they are moving to new, much larger premises, and this month members of the Gent sangha are hard at work in their new place. They are doing a lot of the building work themselves and you can follow their progress (in Dutch) on their new centre blog. Along with the building work they are performing dedication rituals and sangha events; not reading Dutch, FWBO News can only guess at the meaning, but a flavour can be guessed from a rather quirky translation provided by the Yahoo Babelfish service –

“The normal backstage sounds of a yard become here in the old streetstreet street in default gelaten: no droning radio barge, none empty bierflesjes, none whistling and grapjesmakende men in upper part of the body bares.
Only the harmonious singing of Peggy's descant, the gentle gone and sounds of verfrol-en brush, the fine aromas of green - and camomile tea and men and women who train themselves in honest, pleasant and well-advised speech.
Lively I took farewell of the sanghagenoten but at the buitenstappen could not I it let my tongue stick out to the other side. My lively poll kept now however score: the sun seemed, gentle roar blew by the Ghent streets…”

We hope to bring a new report (in English!) when the centre opens. You can find details of their classes here, along with links to the other FWBO centres and groups in Holland and the Low Countries.