Daham Asapuwa

How does a bhikkhu know the ford? Here a bhikkhu goes from time to time to such bhikkhus who have learned much, who are well versed in the tra­di­tion, who main­tain the Dhamma, the Dis­ci­pline, and the Codes, and he enquires and asks ques­tions of them thus: ‘How is this, ven­er­a­ble sir? What is the mean­ing of this?’ These ven­er­a­ble ones reveal to him what has not been revealed, clar­ify what is not clear, and remove his doubts about numer­ous things that give rise to doubt. That is how a bhikkhu knows the ford.

–Mahāgopālaka Sutta (MN 33)

Bhante Ñāṇananda is not the monk I thought he would be. He is much more. As I recall my first meet­ing with him in his small cave kuti, the first word that crosses my mind is “inno­cent”. For a senior monk who has been in the order for more than 40 years, he is dis­arm­ingly sim­ple, unpre­ten­tious and friendly. Child­like even. But you would not get that impres­sion from his clas­sics Con­cept and Real­ity in Early Bud­dhist Thought and The Magic of the Mind.

I was intro­duced to his writ­ings by my friend Ven. Sumana, an Eng­lish monk. It was Bhante Ñāṇananda’s Nib­bāna – The Mind Stilled col­lec­tion that I first read. Later I would go through The Magic of the Mind, which I would find both enchant­ing and baf­fling at the same time. It would take me even longer to take up Con­cept and Real­ity. All of them would leave a last­ing impres­sion on me, and define the way I inter­pret the Dhamma. But not before com­pletely mis­con­ceiv­ing what he was say­ing, engage in a lengthy cor­re­spon­dence with him, and finally meet him only to learn that I was mis­er­ably wrong on many things all that time. And it would be a meet­ing I’ll always remember.

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People often say that the way Buddhism teaches constantly about the suffering of living beings is unpleasant to them and makes them so depressed that they get no joy out of listening to the Dhamma.

They feel as if the sufferings and discontentment being talked about were joining forces with the sufferings and discontentment already inside them, making them despondent and sad. If that weren’t enough, the basic principles of the Buddha’s teaching – the four Noble Truths (ariya sacca) – start out with suffering as their primary theme, since that’s what the religion teaches about far more than anything else.

It’s as if the Buddha were driving away the people who, out of fear of suffering, come running to the Dhamma for shelter, so that instead they will run away from the Dhamma inasmuch as they don’t want to sit and listen to anyone talking about suffering and discontent.

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