In the second chapter of the book mentioned below, the author describes some of the distinguishing characteristics of contemporary western monks by studying the ideas of Nyanatiloka. While some of these characteristics seem to be normal, some of them seem to be affecting the views of him, according to the author.
relatively smaller importance the Europeans lend to Buddhist piety,
the library, though it has a smaller counterpart at most Sinhalese hermitages, is that of a working scholar.
the German Romantic, which influenced Nyanatiloka.
Even his love for music is subsumed under his spiritual and philosophical bent. … we can infer those characteristics of his German Romantic view which lent themselves to reinterpretation or improvement in the Buddhist view. … The incongruency -that Buddhist culture lends music no such all but supreme status- was irrelevant to Nyanatiloka’s sense of renunciation, however relevant it might be to our understanding of Buddhism.
Nyanatiloka then goes on to mention his great taste for foreign lands, languages, and peoples, as well as his Wanderlust, … Though an adventurous spirit is not, I think, a requisite for a hermit monk
“The Forest Monks of Sri Lanka, An Anthropological and Historical Study by MICHAEL CARRITHERS. Oxford university Press,1983.”
Nyanatiloka
A German, the first continental European ordained a Theravada monk in modern times, he flourished from 1905 till 1955. He was a learned translator of Buddhist texts and the founder of the Island Hermitage.
CHAPTER 2. European Monks
Though the Island Hermitage was founded and largely occupied by European monks, its physical arrangements, and the practices and ideals of the monks, set it firmly in the tradition of Theravada, and indeed Sinhalese, forest-dwelling life. There are three peculiar features which distinguish it from other hermitages.
First, it is set on an island, whereas most Sinhalese hermitages are separated from the world by the forest, and by a (largely symbolic) fence and gate set at the entrance to the hermitage.
Second, most Sinhalese hermitages (but not all) have a building, sometimes the largest, devoted to a Buddha image. The Island Hermitage has only a fine two-foot bronze image in the dana salava (alms-hall). This suggests the relatively smaller importance the Europeans lend to Buddhist piety, in which they were not trained from childhood (unlike the Sinhalese).
Third, the library, though it has a smaller counterpart at most Sinhalese hermitages, is that of a working scholar. This is perhaps the most significant difference. Some of the Europeans have been productive scholars in their own right, translating and explicating the Pali canon and commentaries in European languages ; and this solitary scholarly activity has betokened their relatively great isolation from their surroundings. Sinhalese forest-dwelling monks write as well, but they also preach and chant for the laity to a certain extent, and this very frequently compromises-or enriches-their anchoritic solitude.
Nyanatiloka, who founded the Island Hermitage, spoke of it affectionately and justly as ‘my island’.
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In the following pages I translate, from the German, selected portions of an autobiographical sketch which Nyanatiloka wrote in his old age. (This was kindly lent me by his pupil, Nyanaponika.) I will provide commentary where necessary, and try to emphasize the particular features of one European tradition, the German Romantic, which influenced Nyanatiloka. In the discussion which follows, it will be seen that the European tradition might be thought of -and was thought of by Nyanatiloka- as culminating in Buddhist monasticism. It will also be seen that there are differences between the European and the Buddhist traditions which illuminate both.
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These paragraphs summarize Nyanatiloka’s character and thought immediately before his turn to Buddhism. First, his spiritual aspirations remain strong, and colour his vision of everything, including (perhaps physical) love. Even his love for music is subsumed under his spiritual and philosophical bent.
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Most of this is explicit in the philosophy of Schopenhauer: the spiritual aspiration, the unsatisfactoriness of worldly existence, the sublime nature of music. Most significant is Schopenhauer’s- advocacy of asceticism and ’ world-renunciation, expressed through his praise of the saint and the genius;
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Nyanatiloka then goes on to mention his great taste for foreign lands, languages, and peoples, as well as his Wanderlust: he describes many walking tours he took up and down Germany. Though an adventurous spirit is not, I think, a requisite for a hermit monk, it is necessary for one who contemplates taking the robes seven thousand miles from home.
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Nyanatiloka writes more about his musician friends, this time those he met while in Paris. But all the while he is intent on the East:
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Nyanatiloka grew away from Catholicism to the secularized lay religion of German Romanticism, and then left that, or part of that, behind to embrace Buddhism. Clearly he regarded much of this change as development. He saw the rejection of Catholic ceremonialism, for example, as a conscious choice, culminating in his secluded forest life.
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While it is not possible to follow this change in all its dimensions directly through Nyanatiloka’s testimony, we can infer those characteristics of his German Romantic view which lent themselves to reinterpretation or improvement in the Buddhist view.
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the Buddhist idea of conscious renunciation as applied to music matches Schopenhauer’s view of the relative value of music and the saintly life. The incongruency -that Buddhist culture lends music no such all but supreme status- was irrelevant to Nyanatiloka’s sense of renunciation, however relevant it might be to our understanding of Buddhism.
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It is important that Nyanatiloka stands in a line of what might be called secular philosophers of the inner self, Schopenhauer and von Hartmann, and that these may be considered predecessors of Freud and Jung.
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Buddhism is by no means merely an Oriental equivalent of these views, though it was taken as such by many early German enthusiasts of the religion. It holds, in fact, that for practical psychological purposes there is no such thing as a self, but merely a collection of interdependent psychophysical events (skandha) with serial but not essential identity in time. This doctrine is intellectually difficult, but Buddhists claim that it is not a mysterious and esoteric doctrine to match a mystic subject.
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These are deep and, for many, irreconcilable differences in sensibility: some Western Buddhists and Buddhist scholars to this day have failed, at great length in print, to accept the consequences of the doctrine of non-self (anatta). But for Nyanatiloka and those who followed in his footsteps there is a congruence which sets these differences aside, namely the common conviction in the effectiveness of self-cultivation in solitary spiritual discipline. Self-cultivation -Selbstbildung- is one of the great and abiding themes of late eighteenth and nineteenth century German thought, from Goethe to Thomas Mann. It plays a great part, too, in von Feuchtersleben. Nor need one seek very far for a Buddhist equivalent: bhiivanii. Bhiivanii is usually translated as ‘meditation’, but as Walpola Rahula points out it really refers to the entire process of physical, psychological, and intellectual training in Buddhism. It means, in short, cultivation, in a sense not very far removed from that of Bildung.Not very far removed: but far enough removed for the Buddhist discipline to constitute, in the eyes of a seeker like Nyanatiloka, a perceptibly better solution to self-training than was offered by his sources.
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