Thirtyfive today. Nel mezzo del cammin.[1] A depressing day. A day for taking stock, as a shoplifter entering Harrods might say. But perhaps not thirtyfive years entirely wasted, if we are to follow Cyril Connolly (I think), who says that a man has lived in vain if, at the age of thirtyfive he cannot tell him, Cyril Connolly, something new. I could certainly tell C. C. something new; but I don't think he would listen.

...My present intention is to apply for Ceylon citizenship. With this in view I have written for a copy of my birth certificate, which may arrive VPP at the Hermitage in a few weeks time. If it does, I should be grateful if it could be paid for and I informed. My reasons for applying are not very clear: but I think I shall be no worse off as a citizen of Ceylon; it would be convenient if I wanted to travel (which at present I do not); I don't like the idea (however fallacious) that I am on the end of a piece of string stretching all the way from England, and that somebody may decide to start pulling it; as a Buddhist I prefer to belong to a country where Buddhist principles are sympathized with; and it is always possible, so it seems, to change back again if need be.



[EL. 12]   27.i.1955

Many thanks for your letter and for the results of your researches. Most useful. The essay -- or the book, rather -- now amounts to about 16,000 words without counting texts and there is still some way to go. I am following The Meaning of Meaning to some extent and the results seem satisfactory, but there are still difficulties. The final conclusion is disconcerting: -- In the only intelligible sense of the words it must be said that nibbána is anattá. And there is a Sutta confirmation of this -- the Múlapariyáya Sutta. However, the Ven. Narada and Nyanaponika Theras do not use the words in any intelligible sense, so we don't lose face. Without expanding nibbána and anattá, to ask 'Is nibbána anattá?' is rather like asking 'Is not-blue not-salty?' and demanding the answer yes or no. But sometimes I get fed up with writing the thing.

The Sunday before last, as a result of an urgent telegram requesting my presence at the bungalow, I left my razor's edge and went down to meet Senator J. and Mr. Z. Z. is a small fat successful structural engineer. He and J. appear to be thick as thieves, and they have the idea of spreading the Dhamma in England. They want to make a small Ashram. I had to be very firm with J., who insisted that I should go to England. Z. appeared to support me, however. (He has absorbed Evola, and many of his opinions come straight out of The Doctrine of Awakening. I seemed to see a ghastly re-hash of my own way of thinking some six or seven years ago. Z., of course, is intelligent, but he has a businessman's intelligence -- very worldy and conscious of the more sensuous pleasures of life -- and not, as he says, 'intellectual'; which means that he has no very clear idea of the meaning and use of words and that it is practically impossible to talk Dhamma with him except in terms of the utmost generality. Nibbána, alas! is an absolutely indescribable state into which the arahat enters at death, and being indescribable there is no point in trying to discuss it. I asked him how it could be known that there was such a state since it was inherently unperceivable. He answered that the fact that it could not be perceived did not disprove its existence. I said that he was tangling himself up in words, and he agreed, saying that therefore we should not discuss nibbána. However, he is going to read The Meaning of Meaning and Mencius. (Evola, you will remember, says that when a flame is extinguished it passes into another state which we cannot possibly describe.) But it was all very friendly, and the discussion was carried on in what I imagine to be the atmosphere of a business luncheon....



[EL. 13]   24.ii.1955

The weather here has been hot and dry for the past fortnight or so. I don't like this kind of weather, but apparently it likes me, and there have been a few signs of a meditational revival. If it continues I shall be obliged to look for somewhere to live on a temporarily permanent basis in the Hambantota region where I can be hot and dry (and uncomfortable) all the time. This would mean more reconnaissance down there.

...I have decided to translate the Satipatthána Sutta passage, Atthi káyo (etc.) ti vá pan'assa sati...na kiñci loke upádiyati as 'Or mindfulness "there is body (etc.)", is established in him until, from the measure of his knowledge and mindfulness, he dwells unsupported and clings to nothing in the world.' Is this wrong?

...The the very first rough draft (or draught?) of the essay (I mean 'the book') that began as a modest refutation of 'nibbána is anattá' is now finished, I have not dared read it through; and if I do by any chance look at a page at random I am appalled at what I have written. No doubt there are some good ideas in it, but there seems to be a lot of rubbish, and about six months' hard work at it would be needed to put it in any kind of order. In my more lucid moments I realize that it is a waste of time to put it into shape, but when I am unable to meditate there seems to be very little else to do. But I have not touched it for three weeks.

There is a tarantula living in a crevice in my parapet wall who looks as if she (presumably) is about to give birth. Most tarantulas allow themselves to be caught without making any fuss at all, but this one is very coy and retreats into her hole whenever she sees me coming. Last night I rigged up a kind of apparatus at the mouth of her hole whereby she could come out but not get back again, but it was too flimsy and she treated it with great disrespect. I have now made a stronger one and hope for results tonight. But I can't afford to delay long or I shall have fifty to deal with instead of one.

I am now losing whatever little enthusiasm I had for the Buddha Jayanti. The Sutta translations are good, though I can find them in books when I want; but the general rather naive atmosphere of moral uplift, with its appeal to national pride, of the rest of the paper is not my cup of tea at all.... Enthusiasm is a very poor substitute for the knowledge that whatever it is has to be done because there is no alternative, but it is much more exciting....



[EL. 14]   2.iii.1955

Z. and J. have just returned from Burma, and have met all sorts of wonderful people, and are fearfully enthusiastic, and Z. returns there to practise meditation (jhána in 24 hours), and they motored all the way from Colombo to tell me all about it and that I have the intellectual approach and am fearfully clever (just like my teacher Ñánatiloka) but that this is all wrong and that I must go to Burma and that they will arrange everything and that I must meet Lokanátha who is a wonderful person who has never had a woman and has such wonderful humanity (I nearly said that that was probably why), and they can't understand why after five years effort I haven't even got a jhána let alone a path, and when Z. has finished in Burma he is going to tell me all about it, and so on. I said my guts were still out of order and that I didn't think I should profit by a visit to Burma just yet. I think they must have been fearfully disappointed, but I got J. to agree to sponsor my application for Ceylon citizenship. They are very kindly people and mean well, no doubt, but oh! so exhausting. Paññavato ayam dhammo, n'áyam dhammo duppaññassa....[1].

I found (and fortunately captured) a scorpion in my privy with fourteen young clinging to her back. Do they feed their offspring, or are they (the offspring) simply taking a free ride until they can walk for themselves? The tarantula remains uncaptured, and I am afraid will soon have multiplied.



[EL. 15]   7.iii.1955

...It will be a great relief if it turns out that Suttas cannot be translated, but since the Visuddhi Magga (or so I consider) is not the Buddha's Teaching, you will not be exempted from publishing it (with Sutta passages untranslated)....



[EL. 16]   6.iv.1955

Thank you for your post card and enclosure. You forwarded to me, as you no doubt noticed, a letter from the Aldershot registrar. It is not that he doubts my identity, but that the supplying of birth certificates 'is of necessity a prepayment service', and if I can't arrange the business through a bank he suggests that I might get the Prior of Fairborough Abbey to pay the fee (7/6 & 1/3 air mail -- it used only to be a shilling a few years ago). His suggestion is meant kindly, but perhaps he thinks Buddhists are some obscure sect of Christians (Parangi Miccháditthi, as I read somewhere), and that all religions are One. Mrs. G. is arranging about the certificate. I have written to Sir John asking for the necessary papers, but I imagine that the supplying of Ceylon citizenships 'is of necessity a postponement service', since I have heard nothing. No doubt a number of different agencies are busy looking up my political and criminal past.

In preparation for my intended search for a suitable climate in Ceylon I have been making a brief study of the island's rainfall. A certain amount of order appears in the chaos of Ceylonese weather, and several interesting or curious facts. It seems that the indigenous or native weather is clear cool nights, bright mornings, and afternoon or evening thunderstorms particularly in the S.W. But we only have this weather when there is no outside interference, and particularly in March and April, and less in October and November. Other kinds of weather are foreign imports like expensive American cars, penicillin, and Players cigarettes; and these effectively swamp the market and the local weather doesn't have a chance. The S.W. Monsoon apparently starts as S.E. Trade Winds which, obeying Ferrel's Law (who Ferrel was that he should dictate the behaviour of the Trade Winds I don't know -- some Big Shot on the Stock Exchange, no doubt), begin blowing from the S.W. as they cross the Equator. Then, because of 'increased thermal intensity' -- i.e. heat -- in India, or for some other undiscovered reason -- the meteorologists are quarelling about it -- it blows harder, becomes damper, and is called the S.W. Monsoon.

...All things considered, Hambantota seems to offer the best climate, if I can find somewhere suitable to live. It is less hot than the rest of the dry zone, and the weather is remarkably uniform. Suitable diet with beli fruit is also available. Otherwise the eastern side of the mountains are dry in the S.W., but I should have to move in the N.E.

...Now the holidays are beginning the place is sounding like a rifle range, and next Friday -- good Friday -- will probably be the first of a number of our Guy Fawkes days.



[EL. 17]   21.iv.1955

...The Dhamma Synthesis remains stationary at the moment. The whole picture is now coherent, relatively speaking, and I do not find any unsatisfactory or provisional passages awaiting further elucidation (as there were in previous editions). This, of course, does not mean that I have expressed myself throughout in lucid perspicuous prose: far from it (it is a terrible mess in parts and will need a great deal of rewriting): but I know what I want to say. Still less does it mean that the picture would be coherent to anybody else.... Or that I am necessarily right (though the degree of coherence between hitherto contradictory passages is encouraging), or, least of all, that it is the last word (each time I rewrite the essay I think there is nothing more to say, and each time I find I am wrong). On the one hand I have not made any fresh discoveries (such as Dhamma = Idea, which has been so fruitful); on the other, I have not had to retrace my steps. The latest advances in coherence and understanding have been due to a more systematic expansion of doubtful terms. In case you are interested here are the main ones (though without explanation of how they are arrived at).

1. Yávatá dhammá sankhatá vá asankhatá vá... = 'Whatever (true) ideas there are, formed or unformed...' = 'Whatever (true) ideas are symbolized by any word (or phrase) "X", where the words "X is formed (or unformed)" symbolize a true idea....'

2. 'X is formed' = 'The presence of X is due to the presence of conditions'. (= Imasmim sati idam hoti.)

3. 'X is unformed' = 'The absence of Y is unformed, where "Y is unformed" is a true idea' = 'The absence of Y is due to the absence of conditions' (= Imasmim asati idam na hoti). (Try this on the Udána Sutta, Atthi bhikkhave ajátam abhútam akatam asankhatam...,[1] and we get 'There is the unformed; for otherwise no escape from the formed would be manifest' = 'Absence of Y is due to absence of conditions' is a true idea; for were it a false idea no escape from the presence of conditions would be manifest. Thus all bogus entities vanish.)

4. ''Nibbána is asankhata' = 'Bhavanirodha is asankhata' = 'The absence of bhava is due to the absence of conditions'.

5. Upádánakkhandha, a clinging aggregate = 'The idea of an aggregate,' which idea when cognized is liable (but not bound) to be accompanied by clinging.

6. 'X is attá' = 'The idea of X, falsely cognized (or cognized with ignorance), gives rise to ideas of self.' This follows directly from the Sutta, Ye hi keci samaná vá bráhmaná vá anekavihitam....[2] See also the next.

7. 'X is anattá' = 'The idea of X, truly cognized (or cognized with wisdom), gives rise to the ideas not of self.'

8. Sabbe dhammá anattá = 'All true ideas/All ideas, truly cognized, give rise to ideas not of self.'

9. 'Nibbána is anattá' = 'The idea of nibbána (e.g. 'Bhavanirodho nibbánanti'), truly cognized (or, the true idea of nibbána), gives rise to ideas not of self.' This statement, you will observe, is true provided it is expanded in this way; expanded in any other way 'nibbána is anattá' is unintelligible. You will note that when the idea of nibbána is falsely cognized ideas of self arise. Thus it would be true to say of Ven. Nyanaponika Thera that, for him, nibbána is attá; and also that when he says 'nibbána is anattá' he is unintelligible, for he certainly means something different to my expansion of the phrase. (By 'unintelligible' I mean 'cannot be understood without assuming bogus -- i.e. inherently unperceivable -- entities'.)

I expect the essay will remain in its present state until I have a long period of enforced idleness -- and perhaps even then. More intelligent people than I will not need the essay; those equally intelligent will find their way to the same point without my help; and those less intelligent will not understand it -- for whose benefit should it be written, then, but for my own? This, perhaps, is not entirely true, but it serves to remind me that desire for publication of such thing as this is largely personal vanity....



[EL. 18]   8.viii.1955

Having done abbhánakamma[1] in Colombo on the 2nd, having left Colombo on the following day, having arrived at my appointed destination, here I am.

Much work has been done to make the place comfortable -- or, shall we say, habitable? -- and the result is better than I had expected. The cave itself is much larger than I had remembered, and I have about 12 feet square in which I can walk about with about a foot's clearance; the floor space is about twice that. From inside looking out I appear to be inside a slightly flattened nissen hut -- as broad but not so high. At its longest the cave is about 18' from back wall to entrance. It is whitewashed inside and out and there is plenty of light, considering. The floor is cow dung and the front wall mud and wattle. The back wall is about a hundred yards of rock. Roof twenty foot of rock. The floor is not yet quite dry, and there is a small crop of seedlings coming up. Beetles make holes in it. There is a door and window, and inside the cave it is cool by day and warm by night. There is a drip-ledge and the faint remains of a Brahmi inscription -- the character is clearly visible twice, but the rest has more or less vanished. There is another, smaller, cave next door, so to speak.... I have a 30-foot cankamana cajan-covered outside the cave.

The weather at present is warm by day -- but by no means intolerably so -- and cool by night, and I feel well. So far, the climate suits me. There is no rain and no mosquitos, but these will come and will be a nuisance and the cave may be stuffy if mosquito-proofed (it still smells a little of bats, but I don't notice it so much now).

...My dáyaka, Mr. P., is staying here at present until things are in order, and has provided all meals so far, and I have yet to see whether outside dána arrangements will work smoothly. He caught a wounded deer two evenings ago and brought it here to try and cure it, but it was too late and it died the following morning: it was famished and very thirsty, and had a broken leg and one eye destroyed; we got it to drink, but it would eat nothing. This place, being the only water hole in the neighbourhood in the dry season, is a favourite resort of hunters, but our presence has scared away both hunters and game. This area is to be opened up for paddy cultivation in about a year's time, and my dáyaka could only get a few months' possession of the place and that with some difficulty; so even if the climate suits I should have to go elsewhere to live. I am told there are several similar places round about Hambantota that might be satisfactory.

Two sparrows have decided to inhabit the cajans over my cankamana, which is regarded as a good omen by the locals (for me? for them? for the sparrows?); but there was a sparrow in every cave at I. Arañña, so I am no more than in the fashion. The banyan tree does not, indeed, cover half an acre as I was led to expect, but it is a fine tree nevertheless; and an excellent rukkhamúlasenásana,[2] for you can sit in it -- i.e. the roots come down on all sides leaving a vacant space, just big enough to sit in, in the middle....



[EL. 19]   26.viii.1955

...I have started making a fair copy of 'The Meaning of Dhamma' in odd moments. So far so good, but I am a little distressed to find a 800-word footnote....



[EL. 20]   31.viii.1955

Many thanks for your letter -- life seems to be following its usual insonsequent course at the Hermitage. My last p. c. said that the 'M. of D.' was proceeding smoothly. In my experience it is always dangerous to say a thing like that, and this was no exception. No sooner had the p. c. gone off than I had an idea that has caused a certain amount of devastation in what I had (as so often before) regarded as the final version. I now agree with certain views about the paticcasamuppáda's not necessarily referring to three lives -- Dahlke, Evola and others --, but I agree with these views for different reasons, and think (from what I remember) that they are wrong. But the ferment has only begun, and I have yet to see[1] what the final brew will taste like.

...Reference your impending caucus: how flat, stale, and unprofitable seem to me all the people in this life who want to exploit the Dhamma as a 'Culture' -- as the 'Buddhist Way of Life' to be examined under the anthropological microscope and then put in a museum. Sometimes I think that all museums should be burnt.



[EL. 21]   13.ix.1955

...The ferment has now ended and the fresh brew is a great improvement -- the p. s. complete refers indifferently to two lives or three (not to one); but you will have to suspend judgement until you see how this is arrived at....



[EL. 22]   11.x.1955

...I visited Bundala the other day and found it has definite possibilities. Reasonable amenities -- water, clean, quiet, shady, bus, dispensary, well-disposed people. Must revisit for a more detailed reconaissance....

Back to Letters to Ven. Ñánamoli Thera - Contents

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[11.1] At the middle of the way. [Back to text]

[14.1] This is a Teaching for the wise; this is not a Teaching for the foolish.... (A. VIII,30: iv,227) [Back to text]

[17.1] There is, monks, (a) non-born, non-become, non-made, non-determined.... [Back to text]

[17.2] Whatever recluses or divines who, in various ways, regard 'self'.... [Back to text]

[18.1] An act of rehabilitation, pertaining to Vinaya. [Back to text]

[18.2] 'Tree-root dwelling-place.' [Back to text]

[20.1] Sic! [Back to text]