Sudarshanaloka Retreat Centre, Lotus Realm gift shop and the Thames Buddhist Centre are owned and administered by the Sudarshanaloka Trust, a registered New Zealand charitable trust. The Trust itself is run by members of the Western Buddhist Order (WBO) and postulants to the WBO, while people of all levels of commitment and interest are involved with running Sudarshanaloka Retreat Centre, Lotus Realm gift shop and the Thames Buddhist Centre.

Sangharakshita

The Western Buddhist Order (WBO), Friends of the Western Buddhist Order (FWBO) are world-wide organisations founded in 1967/8 by The Venerable Urgyen Sangharakshita, an English Buddhist monk who spent 20 years studying and practising Buddhism in the East. Upon returning to England in 1964 he saw the need for a new interpretation of the teachings of the Buddha, a reinterpretation firmly rooted in the timeless fundamental principles of the Dharma (the teaching of the Buddha) that would speak to the modern Western mind and heart. In 1967 he founded the Friends of the Western Buddhist Order and a year later conducted the first ordinations into the new Order.