Only
in a vertical view,
straight down into
the abyss of his own
personal existence,
is a man capable of apprehending the perilous insecurity of his situation;
and only a man
who does apprehend this
is prepared to listen to the
Buddha's Teaching.
Ńānavīra Thera
Biography
Ven. Ńánavíra Thera was born Harold Edward Musson, on
the 5th of January, 1920, in a military barracks in England. His father,
Edward Lionel Musson, was Captain in the 1st Manchester Regiment
stationed in the Salamanca Barracks in Aldershot. A career officer,
Edward Musson reached the rank of Lieutenant Colonel, D.S.O., M.C. The
father apparently expected his son, an only child, to follow in his
footsteps. Some people from his town remembered the youth as a rather
solitary teen-ager, living in a duty-bound atmosphere which generated
some occasional tendencies toward rebelliousness. He was noticably
inclined to introspection and contemplation. A neighbour of the family
recalled his telling her, much to her puzzlement, that he often enjoyed
walking alone in the London fogs. She also recalled his marked distaste
for a tiger-skin proudly displayed by his father in the foyer of "Wivelrod
House", the country residence in the Hampshires. It was a trophy of a
hunt in India or Burma. His mother, née Laura Emily Mateer,
appeared to have been devoted to her son; "possibly over-devoted to
him", one person commented, "as her only child". She was deeply sorrowed
by her son's departure for Ceylon at the age of 28, and desperately
attempted by a visit there to persuade him to forsake his monastic
existence and return to England.
The setting of his youth was a greystone mansion, within sight of a fine abbey,
in the environs of Alton, a typical and restful English small town in the
Hampshiredowns, about an hour southwest of London by road or rail. No doubt the
young Musson's life was influenced at least equally by the nearby town of
Aldershot, the site of the celebrated military academy. It seems likely, too,
that he spent some time during his childhood in India or Southeast Asia.
According to an interview -- perhaps not wholly reliable --
published by the journalist and novelist, Mr. Robin Maugham, in a somewhat
sensational newspaper in 1965, the young Musson had been significantly affected
by a statue of the Buddha which he had seen when his father was commanding a
battalion in Burma.
His schooling was at Wellington college -- traditional for scions of military
families. He went up to Magdalene College, Cambridge, in 1938, and spent one
summer (probably the same year) studying Italian in Perugia, Italy. In June,
1939, he sat for Mathematics, and in 1940, for Modern Languages (in which he
earned a "Class One"). In 1939, immediately after the outbreak of war, he
enlisted in the Territorial Royal Artillery. In July, 1941, he was commissioned
2nd Lieutenant in the Intelligence Corps, for which his knowledge of modern
languages was doubtless an asset (he was an interrogator). In October, 1942, he
was promoted to Lieutenant, and in April, 1944, to Temporary Captain. His
overseas service with the British Eighth Army was primarily in Italy, from 1943
to 1946. A family acquaintance spoke of him, however, as having "completely
resented warfare". In a letter, written in 1964 in Ceylon, may be found the
sardonic comments that he had much enjoyed travel before the wartime
army, and that he agreed with the classification of intelligence into three
classes, "human, animal, and military". He received a B.A. degree in Modern and
Medieval Languages from Cambridge University for six terms of university study
together with three terms allowed for military service.
Little can be surmised concerning his initial interest in Buddhism. In his
university days, James Joyce's novel, Ulysses, had exerted a powerful
influence on him because (according to a letter
dated 28.ii.1965) Joyce had held up a mirror to the "average sensual Western
man" and had shown that "nothing matters". He wrote
of himself (19.v.1964) as having always preferred ideas to images. Poetry, he
once noted, only "pleased" him. Alongside this penchant, as one might put it,
for the realistic view over fantasy, was a great love of music, especially
Mozart, the late Beethoven, Bartok and Stravinsky. The first public indication
of an involvement with Buddhist thought was his translation of an Italian study,
written in 1943 by J. Evola, and published in English by Luzac (London) in 1951
under the title, The Doctrine of Awakening
-- A Study on the Buddhist Ascesis. In a letter
written in 1964, Ńánavíra Thera expressed "considerable reserves" about the
soundness of the book. Apparently he had chanced upon the Italian work during
his wartime assignment in Italy.
After the war, Musson found himself, according to his own
account, in
no special need of money (19.xi.1964) and highly dissatisfied with his life. At
the time of 1948 he was living in London, sharing a flat with a good friend and
sometime fellow-officer, Osbert Moore, who felt similarly dissatisfied. Osbert
Moore was born on the 25th of June, 1905, in England and graduated at Exeter
College, Oxford. His interest in Buddhism was roused by reading Evola's book,
later translated into English by Musson, during his time as an army
staff-officer in Italy. After the war Moore held the post of Assistant head of
the BBC Italian section at Bush House. In 1948, they both decided to settle
their few affairs in England, put the Western milieu behind them, and go to
Ceylon to become Buddhist monks. In 1949 both received Novice Ordination at the
Island Hermitage, Dodanduwa (from Ven. Ńánatiloka), and in 1950 the Higher
Ordination as bhikkhus at the Vajiráráma monastery, Colombo. Osbert Moore
was given the monastic name of Ńánamoli, and Harold Musson that of Ńánavíra.
Both returned soon to the Island Hermitage (an island monastery situated in a
lagoon of south Ceylon), where the Ven. Ńánamoli spent almost his entire monk
life of 11 years, until his sudden death on the 8th of March, 1960, due to heart
failure (coronary thrombosis). He is remembered for his outstanding scholarly
work in translating from the Pali into lucid English some of the most difficult
texts of Theraváda Buddhism.
Ven. Ńánavíra was more solitary and moved from the Island Hermitage to a remote
section of southeast Ceylon, where he lived alone for the rest of his life in a
one-room, brick-and-plaster kuti (hut) with a tile roof, less then half a
mile from the village of Bundala, on the edge of a large bird sanctuary. It was
an all-day, uncomfortable bus-ride from Colombo, where he had to repair at times
for medical treatment. The change of life was not physically easy. Not long
after arriving in Ceylon, he contracted a severe case of amoebiasis which
continued to plague him for the next fifteen years. The tropical climate and the
local food must have been taxing for the physically ailing Westerner.
Bhikkhus accept food which is offered to them by laypeople, and this custom
often leaves them with few options concerning their diet. Some indication of the
harsh physical effects of the amoebiasis may be glimpsed in the observation of
Ven. Ńánasumana, an American bhikkhu who had met Ven. Ńánavíra in
October, 1963, and began regular study with him. In a letter dated 30.x.1964,
Ńánasumana wrote of "a man of about 60 years.... He speaks and I learn". In
1964, Ven. Ńánavíra was only 44 years old. He died a year later, on the 5th of
July, 1965, by his own hand and deliberate decision. Suicide is of course
regarded with peculiar horror and condemnation in our Judaeo-Christian
civilisation, as an offence against God, perhaps incurring eternal torture in
Hell, and even as a legal offence against the proprietary State. Ńánavíra Thera
wrote extensively and carefully on the question of suicide, which arose for him
because of the severity of the amoebiasis and other health problems. He
mentioned
the occurrence of a nervous disorder associated with the chronic amoebiasis and
the prescribed medication, which combined to "leave me with little hope of
making any further progress in the Buddhasásana in this life". But it is
doubtless best to allow the late Thera to speak for himself in his
letters. Only after a careful reading of them should the reader form his own
opinion.
Ven. Ńánavíra's writings fall into two periods: from 1950 till 1960 (the
Early Writings), and from 1960 till 1965 (included in Clearing the Path).
On 22.iii.1963, the author wrote in a letter:
The earliest known piece of writing by Ven. Ńánavíra Thera on the Dhamma is
found in his "Translator's Foreword" to The Doctrine of Awakening -- A Study
on the Buddhist Ascesis (translated from the Italian -- La Dottrina Del
Risveglio by J. Evola -- by H. E. Musson and published by Luzac & Company,
London, 1951):
H. E. M.
The major portion of the Early Writings consists of
letters written to the late Ven. Ńánamoli Thera. With
the manuscript letters, which were preserved by the recipient (tied up in
bundles, one of which, containing letters written between August and December
1958, was not found), were found draft copies of some of the replies which were
sent to Ven. Ńánavíra Thera. These have been included here; it should be
remembered, however, that they are only draft copies and not final versions.
Following these are a few letters written to Ven. Ńánavíra Thera's chief supporters,
Mr. and Mrs. P. The two essays following the letters were published (the
Sketch was reprinted several times) in abbreviated form: the texts
reproduced here are taken from the author's typescripts, which may be regarded
as the definitive versions. Following these two essays are the contents of the
author's Commonplace Book, and then
Marginalia, being the comments the author made in the
margins of various books which engaged him (together with the text commented
upon, where useful). Finally there is a collection of
various papers discovered after their author's death: notes, translations, etc.
Apart from the two essays, the other texts have been edited, but hopefully all
the important passages are included here.
The difference between Ven. Ńánavíra's early writings and those included in
Clearing the Path is very marked and striking. The early texts show a man
who, in his own thinking and discussion with others, earnestly seeks a way of
approach to the heart of the Buddha's Teaching, by repeated trial-and-error.
This seeking has eventually yielded its fruit when, though suffering from
amoebiasis (which prevented him to a great degree from practising samádhi,
or mental concentration), Ven. Ńánavíra apparently attained sotápatti, or
Stream-entry, on 26.vi.1959, which he has himself described in a letter "to
be opened in the event of my death". A person who has "entered the stream" has
ipso facto abandoned personality-view (sakkáya-ditthi), which is
the self-view implicit in the experience of an ordinary ignorant worldling, and
understood the essential meaning of the Buddha's teaching on the Four Noble
Truths. Ven. Ńánavíra's writings after 1960 express just this kind of certainty:
no more groping in the dark, no more doubt or speculative guessing.
No later than
February 1963, the Ven. Ńánavíra Thera completed a book called Notes on
Dhamma (1960-1963), which was privately published by the Honourable Lionel
Samaratunga in the same year. Following production of that volume, the author
amended and added to the text, leaving at his death an expanded typescript,
indicated by the titular expansion of its dates, (1960-1965). Notes on
Dhamma has been variously described as "arrogant, scathing, and
condescending", as "a fantastic system", and as "the most important book to be
written in this century". The Ven. Ńánavíra Thera himself remarked of the book
that "it is vain to hope that it is going to win general approval... but I do
allow myself to hope that a few individuals... will have private transformations
of their way of thinking as a result of reading them".
And indeed, the influence of Notes on Dhamma on Buddhist thinkers
continues to increase more than three decades after its publication.
Inasmuch as the first edition, long out of print, consisted of only 250
copies, how is it that this book has aroused such extraordinary interest
and controversy? The answer, it seems, is to be discovered not only in
the specific content of the Notes but in their general attitude,
their view and direction. In describing that attitude their author wrote
of the Notes that they "attempt to provide an intellectual basis
for the understanding of the Suttas without abandoning saddhá";
that they "have been written with the purpose of clearing away a mass of
dead matter which is choking the Suttas"; and that, above all, "the
Notes are designed to be an invitation to the reader to come and
share the author's point of view".
That point of view -- achieved by the Ven. Ńánavíra through dedicated
self-investigation using the Buddha's Teaching as a guide -- is described
unflinchingly in the Notes, which assume that "the reader's sole interest
in the Pali Suttas is a concern for his own welfare". However, the Notes,
with their admitted intellectual and conceptual difficulties, are not the only
way to discuss right view or to offer right-view guidance. The letters
which
are collected here are not only "something of a commentary on the Notes";
they are, independently, a lucid discussion of how an individual concerned
fundamentally with self-disclosure deals with the dilemma of finding himself in
an intolerable situation, where the least undesirable alternative is suicide.
With openness, calmness, and considerable wit the Ven. Ńánavíra discusses with
his correspondents (including his doctor, a judge, a provincial businessman, a
barrister, a British diplomat, and another British citizen) the illnesses that
plague him and what he can and cannot do about them, and about his own
existence. His life as a Buddhist monk in a remote jungle abode is not
incidental to the philosophy he expounds: the two are different aspects of the
same thing, namely a vision that penetrates into the human situation both as
universal and as particular, and recognizes that it is this situation which it
is the business of each of us to resolve for ourselves. In presenting this view
the Ven. Ńánavíra offers a contemporary exposition of the Teaching of the
Buddha. In living this view he evokes a dramatic situation wherein an individual
resolutely faces those questions which every lucid person must eventually
face.
Most of the editorial work connected with Ven. Ńánavíra Thera's writings was
performed -- as a labour of love -- by the late Sámanera Bodhesako (Robert
Smith), who died in Kathmandu in 1988, aged 49, from a sudden intestinal hernia
while on a return journey to the United States to join his father for the
latter's eightieth birthday celebration. During the last years of his life in
Sri Lanka he founded Path Press which published Clearing the Path: Writings
of Ńánavíra Thera (1960-1965). He also worked as editor for the
Buddhist Publication Society in Kandy which
published The Tragic, The Comic & The Personal: Selected Letters of Ńánavíra
Thera (Wheel 339/341) in 1987. Prof. Forrest Williams of the University of
Colorado also participated as the co-editor of Clearing the Path.
Clearing the Path has so far been translated into Czech, Dutch, German,
Sinhalese, and Serbo-Croatian (only Notes on Dhamma).
...With regard to any of my past writings that you may come
across..., I would ask you to treat with great reserve anything dated before
1960, about which time certain of my views underwent a modification. If this
is forgotten you may be puzzled by inconsistencies between earlier and later
writings....
Before use is made of the Early Writings, the reader should be
familiar with Clearing the Path, which sets the former collection
(serving as a supplement to the latter) in the proper perspective.
Of the many books published in Italy and Germany by J. Evola, this is the first
to be translated into English. The book needs no apology; the subject --
Buddhism -- is sufficient guarantee of that. But the author has, it seems to me,
recaptured the spirit of Buddhism in its original form, and his schematic and
uncompromising approach will have rendered an inestimable service even if it
does no more than clear away some of the wooly ideas that have gathered round
the central figure, Prince Siddhattha, and round the doctrine that he disclosed.
Having come to Ceylon and after acquainting themselves thoroughly with
the Pali Suttas, the two English monks also explored many modes of
Western thought -- even quantum mechanics! -- through reading and
discussion. When Ven. Ńánavíra left Ven. Ńánamoli at the Island
Hermitage to live on his own, the two friends continued their
discussions through voluminous correspondence
which lasted until 1960, the year of the Ven. Ńánamoli's death.
Increasingly they found that the Western thinkers most relevant to their
interests were those belonging to the closely allied schools of
phenomenology and existentialism, to whom they found themselves indebted
for clearing away a lot of mistaken notions with which they had burdened
themselves. These letters make clear the nature of that debt; they also
make clear the limitations which the Ven. Ńánavíra saw in those
thinkers. He is insistent that although for certain individuals their
value may be great, yet eventually one must go beyond them if one is to
arrive at the essence of the Buddha's Teaching. Existentialism, then, is
in his view an approach to the Buddha's Teaching and not a substitute
for it.
The real significance of the book, however, lies not in its value as a weapon in
a dusty battle between scholars, but in its encouragement of a practical
application of the doctrine it discusses. The author has not only examined the
principles on which Buddhism was originally based, but he has also described in
some detail the actual process of "ascesis" or self-training that was practised
by the early Buddhists. This Study, moreover, does not stop here; it maintains
throughout that the doctrine of the Buddha is capable of application even to-day
by any Western man who really has the vocation. But the undertaking was never
easy, and the number who, in this modern world, will succeed in pursuing it to
its conclusion is not likely to be large.
London
April, 1948.
Nanavira Thera on Wikipedia:
www.en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Nanavira_Thera