Nidahas

My friend Tom Rosen­berg sent me a copy of his film Ñāṇavīra Hamuduru. It’s a labour of love and a fit­ting trib­ute to a monk who has influ­enced many of us in the way we approach the Buddha’s teach­ing. I’m glad that the film seems to have trig­gered an inter­est among Colombo Bud­dhists when it was screened on July 18, and I hope that it could even­tu­ally be made avail­able for free online viewing.

The Island reviewer of the film, though clearly being sym­pa­thetic, seems to be fas­ci­nated with the sui­cide rather than Ven. Ñāṇavīra Thera’s writ­ings. Accord­ing to the arti­cle, “[m]uch more con­tro­ver­sial to the inter­ested and sym­pa­thetic per­son is Nanavira Thera’s sui­cide, more than his unique inter­pre­ta­tion and expo­si­tion of the Dhamma”. The reviewer admits to being “sadly igno­rant of his views on the Teach­ings hav­ing not read a sin­gle of his books but feel­ing real karuna at his suf­fer­ing phys­i­cally, emo­tion­ally and mentally”.

This line of think­ing seems to have pre­vented many Bud­dhists from mak­ing use of Ven. Ñāṇavīra Thera’s writ­ings mean­ing­fully. To quote Dr. John Stella:

Crit­ics have been appalled by the cor­re­spon­dence with his physi­cian and his pub­lisher wherein he con­tem­plates putting an end to his life. They have used it as a weapon to attack him per­son­ally and to dis­credit his Notes on Dhamma. Sup­pos­edly, one who could com­mit such a des­per­ate act was surely non com­pos men­tis and could not pos­si­bly per­ceive the Dhamma cor­rectly: those ‘mor­bid’ thoughts prove his ideas are flawed, or worse, deluded. But such spe­cious rea­son­ing should really be an object of satire. Had Shake­speare taken his life, would his plays be a whit less mean­ing­ful? Should we dis­miss the dia­logues of Socrates because he drank poi­son? And what about the ara­hants men­tioned in the Sut­tas who ‘used the knife’? Did they not com­pre­hend the Buddha’s Teaching?

Clearly, the real ques­tion is whether Ven. Ñāṇavīra’s ideas on Dhamma hold up to scrutiny. It is a pity to spend even a few words refut­ing ad hominem argu­ments, but as he would say, although the ‘sea­soned thinker’ will be wise to them, they could deceive read­ers unac­quainted with log­i­cal fallacies.

Appar­ently the notice sent out announc­ing the screen­ings said: “This film looks at the issue of monas­tic sui­cide within the con­text of Ñāṇavīra Thera’s com­mit­ment to prac­tic­ing the Bud­dhist Dhamma.” I believe what one con­sid­ers more impor­tant here — the sui­cide or the com­mit­ment to prac­tice (and the resul­tant writ­ings) — is an indi­ca­tion of how seri­ous a per­son is about the Buddha’s teachings.

The film itself does not go into the details of Ven. Ñāṇavīra Thera’s inter­pre­ta­tion. It is no doubt dif­fi­cult for a 20-minute bio­graph­i­cal doc­u­men­tary to ade­quately cover such a com­plex topic. Yet it did include a good overview fea­tur­ing one of my favourite Ñāṇavīra quotes:

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.

I was a lit­tle dis­ap­pointed then that the experts inter­viewed for the film failed to dis­cuss this most impor­tant point. Nei­ther Prof. Asanga Tilakaratne nor Mr. Bogoda Pre­maratne found it worth­while to say that Ven. Ñāṇavīra Thera’s biggest con­tri­bu­tion was point­ing out that the Buddha’s teach­ing needs to be applied sub­jec­tively; that it has litle to do with an objec­tive world. In Dr. Stella’s words:

Heav­ily reliant on twentieth-century West­ern phi­los­o­phy and lit­er­a­ture, [Notes on Dhamma] boldly intro­duces exis­ten­tial­ist ideas into the Canon, and the mean­ing to be deduced from it becomes read­ily appar­ent. Ven. Ñāṇavīra quickly cau­tions us that the Exis­ten­tial­ists are in no wise a sub­sti­tute for the Bud­dha, for what­ever their mer­its, they found ‘No Exit’ to the dilem­mas they posed and con­se­quently remained puthu­j­janas. Nev­er­the­less, he learned from them that one must take a ‘ver­ti­cal view, straight down into the abyss of his own per­sonal exis­tence’ in order to progress in the Dhamma. He relent­lessly asserts that mean­ing of the Canon relates to me, to my prob­lems, my frus­tra­tions, my sor­rows, and their resolution—and noth­ing else. He regarded the ‘hor­i­zon­tal’ or impar­tial view, so often taken by post-canonical texts, as a kaṇha dhamma: a ‘dark teach­ing’, not lead­ing to awak­en­ing, or to bor­row an exis­ten­tial­ist idiom, yet another act of ‘bad faith’.

I find this to be the least under­stood aspect of Ven. Ñāṇavīra Thera’s writ­ings, prob­a­bly because it is incred­i­bly dif­fi­cult to change one’s per­spec­tive as required, espe­cially if one is entrenched in the tra­di­tional inter­pre­ta­tion. But with­out get­ting this right, I do not see how one can under­stand or appre­ci­ate Notes on Dhamma. Sub­jec­tiv­ity is fun­da­men­tal to the ‘Ñāṇavīrist’ inter­pre­ta­tion. Inci­den­tally, this is some­thing ignored by Mr. Bogoda Pre­maratne in his Sin­hala ‘trans­la­tions’ of Ven. Ñāṇavīra Thera too, thus sadly mis­rep­re­sent­ing him.

Though I no longer con­sider myself a ‘Ñāṇavīrist’, I would always be grate­ful to Ven. Ñāṇavīra Thera for point­ing out this extremely impor­tant char­ac­ter­is­tic of the Buddha’s teach­ings. I deeply admire him for being such a com­mit­ted prac­ti­tioner for whom the Dhamma was the ‘only thing to be taken seri­ously’. Tom Rosenberg’s film is a beau­ti­ful intro­duc­tion to the life and works of this often mis­un­der­stood monas­tic rebel who has inspired many of us to ques­tion the tra­di­tion and our own com­mit­ment to the Dhamma.