My friend Senaka Seneviratne, whenever he calls me, addresses me as ‘Captain Seneviratne.’ I have duly appointed him to a higher rank, Admiral Seneviratne. We’ve known each other for more than 40 years now, but back then he was just a junior scout and I was, so he says, his instructor.
Time passes. Acquaintances become friends and friends become brothers. My brother, Admiral Seneviratne, called me a few days ago. He had a proposition.
Now Admiral Seneviratne’s propositions are all about giving. Sometimes he proposes gifts; most times he just gifts. He loves his school and country. He loves his friends. He will do anything to help them, he will do anything to make them shine. In this instance it was ‘an experience’ that was being proposed. It involved traveling through beautiful country to a place I hadn’t known of before, the ‘Bhavana Society,’ a Buddhist monastery in the backwoods of West Virginia established some 40 years ago by the Ven Henepola Gunaratana Thero.
The Admiral knows the ‘Loku Hamuduruwo.’ He knows the monastery. He’s been going there annually for over 15 years along with his family and several other families. A clan, you might say. So, during the four hour drive to the Bhavana Society he told me all about the monastery and the scholarship of Ven Gunaratana Thero, affectionately referred to as Bhante G by those who have visited the place, either to offer alms, as the Admiral and his clan do, or to participate in the numerous residential meditation programs conducted at this remote, idyllic and absolutely calming facility.
Bhante G is widely known and respected for the many insightful and easy-to-read books on meditation that he has authored. ‘Mindfulness in plain English,’ first published in 2011, has been read by hundreds of thousands and is considered ‘the bible of mindfulness,’ especially for those who are venturing for the first time into those regions of exploration. Equally acclaimed are ‘The four foundations of mindfulness in plain English,’ ‘Meditation on perception’ and ‘Beyond mindfulness in plain English.’
Obviously, I was ignorant of all this. For me, ‘the introduction’ came in the form of Rev Ethkandawaka Saddhajeewa Thero’s sermon the evening we arrived. The explication of dana, sila and bhavana, to be practiced together and not individually to the exclusion of the other two, as a necessary prerequisite in the pursuit of wisdom was lucid to the point that it compelled me to peruse the books authored by the Loku Hamuduruwo freely available at the monastery.
Now over 90 years of age, the Loku Hamuduruwo elaborated on this same theme the following day. Not a word out of place.
I later discovered that Douglas John Imbrogno, who had first visited the monastery when he was the feature editor of the Charleston Gazette, had compiled and edited a book, ‘gathering up his, Gunaratana Thero’s, responses to the most common questions about meditation, mindfulness, and Buddhist teachings in more than 50 years of teaching,’ a book released by Wisdom Publications a few years ago. It was titled ‘WHAT WHY HOW: Answers to your questions about Buddhism, Meditation and Living Mindfully.’
It is not easy for me to capture ‘Bhavana Society’ in word or image or both. Imbrogno can and has in an article titled ‘Buddhist daily life in backwoods West Virginia’ published in www.westvirginiaville.com in March 2022. Having attended numerous retreats, chopping firewood, cleaning dishes and other chores and serving on the Bhavana board for many years, he has seen the changes, the challenges and triumphs of ‘running a complex spiritual community.’ He has written and promises to write more.
What of the principle thrust? How can it be captured? One way of course is to practice as recommended. There are no shortcuts to such insight. Nevertheless, Imbrogno has offered a glimpse of the spiritual in a less spiritual form. It is a photograph of Bhante Dhammaratana contemplating the rain falling into the pond outside the meditation hall. A koan, I am convinced. I felt it is an entry point to the examination of the four foundations of mindfulness, that of the body, of feelings, of the mind and the Dhamma. One of many, true.
Both
Gunaratana Thero and Saddhajeeva Thero contend that these explorations
are possible, right and and right now, wherever the practitioner may be.
‘The Word,’ after all, is not containable within four walls, even if it
is a meditation hall in a monastery. Wherever and whenever an
individual practices, right there is a monastery constructed (to be
abandoned eventually, hopefully).
That said, the Bhavana
Society does offer an environment conducive to the uninitiated, the less
disciplined and ignorants such as I. There was no rain to watch. There
was sunlight. Moonlight. And light that surpassed both in the matter of
illumination. Admiral Seneviratne recommended that I spend a few days
there. At the right time, perhaps.
Other articles in this series:
Through strange fissures into magical orchards
There's sea glass love few will see
Re-residencing Lakdasa Wikkramasinha
Poisoning poets and shredding books of verse
The responsible will not be broken
Ownership and tenuriality of the Wissahickon
Did you notice the 'tiny, tiny wayside flowers'?
Gifts, gifting and their rubbishing
Journalism inadvertently learned
Reflections on the young poetic heart
Wordaholic, trynasty and other portmanteaus
The 'Loku Aiya' of all 'Paththara Mallis'
Subverting the indecency of the mind
Character theft and the perennial question 'who am I?'
Saji Coomaraswamy and rewards that matter
Seeing, unseeing and seeing again
Alex Carey and the (small) matter of legacy
The insomnial dreams of Kapila Kumara Kalinga
The clothes we wear and the clothes that wear us (down)
Every mountain, every rock, is sacred
Manufacturing passivity and obedience
Sanjeew Lonliyes: rawness unplugged, unlimited
In praise of courage, determination and insanity
The relative values of life and death
Poetry and poets will not be buried
Reunion Peradeniya (1980-1990)
Sorrowing and delighting the world
Encounters with Liyanage Amarakeerthi
Letters that cut and heal the heart
A forgotten dawn song from Embilipitiya
The soft rain of neighbourliness
Reflections on waves and markings
Respond to insults in line with the Akkosa Sutra
The right time, the right person
The silent equivalent of a thousand words
Crazy cousins are besties for life
The lost lyrics of Premakeerthi de Alwis
Consolation prizes in competitions no one ever wins
Blackness, whiteness and black-whiteness
Inscriptions: stubborn and erasable
Deveni: a priceless one-word koan
Recovering run-on lines and lost punctuation
'Wetness' is not the preserve of the Dry Zone
On sweeping close to one's feet
Kumkum Fernando installs Sri Lanka in Coachella, California
To be an island like the Roberts...
Debts that can never be repaid in full
An island which no flood can overwhelm
A melody faint and yet not beyond hearing
Heart dances that cannot be choreographed
Remembering to forget and forgetting to remember
Authors are assassinated, readers are immortal
It is good to be conscious of nudities
Saturday slides in after Monday and Sunday somersaults into Friday
There's a one in a million and a one in ten
Kumkum Fernando installs Sri Lanka in Coachella, California
Hemantha Gunawardena's signature
Architectures of the demolished
The exotic lunacy of parting gifts
Who the heck do you think I am?
Those fascinating 'Chitra Katha'
So how are things in Sri Lanka?
The sweetest three-letter poem
Teams, team-thinking, team-spirit and leadership
The songs we could sing in lifeboats when we are shipwrecked
Jekhan Aruliah set a ball rolling in Jaffna
Awaiting arrivals unlike any other
Teachers and students sometimes reverse roles
Colombo, Colombo, Colombo and so forth
The slowest road to Kumarigama, Ampara
Some play music, others listen
Mind and hearts, loquacious and taciturn
I am at Jaga Food, where are you?
On separating the missing from the disappeared
And intangible republics will save the day (as they always have)
The circuitous logic of Tony Muller
Rohana Kalyanaratne, an unforgettable 'Loku Aiya'
Mowgli, the Greatest Archaeologist
Figures and disfigurement, rocks and roses
Sujith Rathnayake and incarcerations imposed and embraced
Some stories are written on the covers themselves
A poetic enclave in the Republic of Literature
Landcapes of gone-time and going-time
The best insurance against the loud and repeated lie
So what if the best flutes will not go to the best flautists?
There's dust and words awaiting us at crossroads and crosswords
A song of terraced paddy fields
Of ants, bridges and possibilities
From A through Aardvark to Zyzzyva
Words, their potency, appropriation and abuse
Who did not listen, who's not listening still?
If you remember Kobe, visit GOAT Mountain
The world is made for re-colouring
No 27, Dickman's Road, Colombo 5
Visual cartographers and cartography
Ithaca from a long ago and right now
Lessons written in invisible ink
The amazing quality of 'equal-kindness'
The interchangeability of light and darkness
Sisterhood: moments, just moments
Chess is my life and perhaps your too
Reflections on ownership and belonging
The integrity of Nadeesha Rajapaksha
Signatures in the seasons of love
To Maceo Martinet as he flies over rainbows
Fragrances that will not be bottled
Colours and textures of living heritage
Countries of the past, present and future
Books launched and not-yet-launched
The sunrise as viewed from sacred mountains
Isaiah 58: 12-16 and the true meaning of grace
The age of Frederick Algernon Trotteville
Live and tell the tale as you will
Between struggle and cooperation
Neruda, Sekara and literary dimensions
Paul Christopher's heart of many chambers
Calmness gracefully cascades in the Dumbara Hills
Serendipitous amber rules the world
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