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.
Author Archives: Bhikkhu Yogananda
The Giant
On the grassy wind-beaten face of the tallest of the mountains at Nā Uyana, Yōdayā, The Giant, stands alone – the only big tree surviving the wood-chopping frenzy of the 70’s which took away the lush forest that once covered this whole range. The workers have cleared a footpath up the hill through the tall grass, so my Indian friend and I decide to pay a visit to The Giant.
Nameless Visitor
I’m sitting on the edge of my walking path, looking at the lines and lines of black ants marching along the low-hanging branch of the big Makulla tree. There’s a rustle, and a wild flash of colour appears twenty feet away from me. He doesn’t seem to fear my presence. Keeps looking at me from time to time though, just to make sure. And he hops closer, making sharp, quick jabs with his powerful beak, searching under the carpet of dead leaves for delicacies.
Escape: A Letter
Many years ago, on an uposatha night of the fifteenth of Vesakha like this, a young man became a Buddha, an ‘Awakened One’. It was out of faith for that Buddha that I left home two years ago. Tonight, in my small kuti in this forest monastery, against His compassionate advice, I’m hankering over the past, and I wonder what you are doing.
