Found this obituary in a Sri Lankan website. It is so well written and I would like to know more about this man.
The pointer who showed the moon: Professor Y. Karunadasa (1934–2026) – The Island https://share.google/328UkqmYBbYrUqrdE
On 27 April 2026, Sri Lanka lost a quiet giant. Professor Y. Karunadasa, one of the world’s foremost scholars of Abhidhamma and Buddhist philosophy, passed away in Colombo. He was 92.
For those who never sat in his classroom, the name might sound distant. But for anyone who has ever wondered what the Buddha really meant by anatta (no‑self) or sabhāva (intrinsic nature), Karunadasa’s work was a lantern in the dark. He did not write to impress other academics. He wrote to make the Dhamma clear.
Born in 1934, he graduated with First Class Honours in Pali from the University of Ceylon in 1958. A decade later, his PhD thesis from the University of London became his landmark book, The Buddhist Analysis of Matter. One reviewer called it “the final word on the subject for many years to come.” He later served as Dean of Arts at the University of Kelaniya and founded its Postgraduate Institute of Pali and Buddhist Studies. The nation honoured him with Sri Lanka Sikhamani in 2005.
Yet his true gift was teaching. He once said he loved students who knew nothing about Buddhism. “It’s more adventurous,” he explained. “For those already exposed, it’s not so fascinating. In a way, it’s easier because they carry no prejudices.” He taught at SOAS, Toronto, Calgary, and Hong Kong, but he always returned to Sri Lanka – because, he said, “the Dhamma lives best where the language of the texts is still spoken.”
What exactly made his scholarship so special? Before Karunadasa, Western, and even some Asian scholars, often dismissed Abhidhamma as dry scholasticism – a medieval invention far from the Buddha’s original words. Karunadasa spent four decades proving otherwise. He showed that Abhidhamma is not a later corruption but a natural extension of the early suttas. His analysis of sabhāva (intrinsic nature) was revolutionary: he demonstrated that the Abhidhamma schools never posited eternal substances, only conditioned, momentary realities. In doing so, he rescued the entire Abhidhamma tradition from the charge of being “proto‑Hindu” or essentialist. Philosophers in London and Chicago began citing him alongside Western phenomenologists. Yet he never lost his Sri Lankan accent or his habit of drinking plain black tea while discussing citta and cetasika.
His most profound contribution was to Abhidhamma, the analytical heart of the Buddha’s teaching. Western scholars often dismissed Abhidhamma as dry scholasticism. Karunadasa showed it was a living philosophy of mind and matter, free from eternalism and nihilism. He argued that the Buddha’s refusal to posit a permanent self was not a mere negation but an invitation to see reality as a process – a stream of conditioned moments, luminous and awake.
What made him rare was his humility. He never claimed to be a meditation master or a saint. He was a reader of texts, a lover of words, a man who believed that truth shines brightest when pointed at, not possessed. “I present what I find,” he said. “Whether one decides to accept it is an individual matter.”
I recall a small story that students often told. Once, a young monk asked him after a lecture, “Venerable Professor, after all this analysis, does the self exist or not?” Karunadasa smiled. “That question,” he said, “is like asking whether the flame in this oil lamp is the same as the flame a moment ago. The Buddha’s answer is neither ‘yes’ nor ‘no’ but ‘it is not proper to say so.’ Learn to live with the question, and you will be freer than any philosopher who claims to have an answer.”
Students remember him not for grand speeches but for small kindnesses – a patient explanation of a Pali compound, a gentle nod when a young scholar stammered through a seminar. He never raised his voice. He never needed to.
The Buddha once said that the Dhamma is like a finger pointing to the moon. Do not stare at the finger, he warned. Professor Karunadasa spent a lifetime perfecting that finger – polishing it, straightening it, making sure it pointed true. We may now look at the moon and remember the hand that showed us where to turn.
May his passing be his final lesson: that even the greatest scholar must one day let go. And in that letting go, become the silence from which all teaching first arose.
May he attain the supreme bliss of Nibbana!
Dedicated to the memory of a teacher who never stopped learning.
K.L. Senarath Dayathilake