SHAINBERG: How did he get to Buddhism in the first place?
LIFTON: He read extensively 111 Tibetan and tantric Buddhism. And in the early eighties, he was a member of Agon-shu, one of the so-called Japanese New Religions. Thousands of these have been founded in Japan since the nineteenth century, and a whole run of them following World War II. Certain of his ideas about the persona of the guru and the heritage of Tibetan Buddhism can be traced back to Agon-shu. After leaving Agonshu, he went to the Himalayas, where in 1986, he claimed to have achieved final enlightenment.
