Simple and Pure

“Venerable Ñāṇavimala was around 84 years old at the time I met him. He even joked, saying: “Lord Buddha lived till 80. I am already 84, it’s not necessary for me to live longer than that.”

But he lived on, and even though he didn’t like it, he was once taken to a hospital in Colombo to remove a cataract from his eye. Ven. Mettavihāri and I accompanied him. I remember him telling us “I don’t need this surgery. After all, I’ve seen enough of this world. What more do I need to see?” But a supporter who arranged the operation believed that the Venerable would really like to read books again. Thus, the operation was performed and his sight did get better. Nevertheless, he never read anything. He didn’t have any desire (or need) to read. As a young monk he memorised most of the important passages in Pāḷi and English, and he refused to study after that. Occasionally he would look at a small notebook with the passages, but only when he wasn’t sure about a quotation he wanted to share.

Interestingly, he refused to speak German even when people spoke German to him. He said it reminded him of his old country. At that time he had lived in Sri Lanka for over 40 years. He even became a Sri Lankan citizen, or at least, on his last visit to the Immigration Office in Colombo to renew his visa, the officer took away his German passport and promised to issue a Sri Lankan passport (even though it may not have happened since no one has seen that passport). The officer told him: “Hāmuduro, you are too old, no need to come here again to renew your visa. It’s taken care of, you are a citizen of Sri Lanka, I’ll send you the passport.” So Ven. Ñāṇavimala stopped going to the Immigration Office after that. I heard this story from some older monks.

He told me once about a woman, his adopted mother, who took care of him when he was a child in Germany. She didn’t have children of her own and was quite attached to him. During his first ten or so years in Sri Lanka, he would receive letters from her every once in a while. But he wouldn’t even read them at first. He would put them in a drawer, wait for some time, and only then open them. “There would usually be some issue or other that she would ask me about,” he told me, as he was instructing me how to stay unattached to my own family, “but by the time I would actually open the letter, it would be unnecessary to write back. By that time the issue in question would have been already solved, so I never wrote a single letter to her or to anyone since I became a bhikkhu,” he explained. I was never very good at following that instruction, I must admit.

As for the teachings that one could find in the texts, he often said: “Go and look for that passage, it’s in that Sutta. It’s from the Buddha who is the supreme teacher, so learn from him, it’s the best. I can’t say it better than him.” In that way he encouraged me to study the Suttas. He was a compassionate man, but it was ‘arahat’s compassion’. He stayed with the Dhamma, and only talked the Dhamma.

Venerable Ñāṇavimala spent many years walking from one end of Sri Lanka to the other. He carried all his possessions with him. It wasn’t much, and the begging bowl isn’t that heavy, but if you carry it day after day always on one side, the right side (as is necessary because of the style of the Theravāda robe), then the spine can slowly bend to the opposite side – and that’s what happened to him. So walking became difficult, and he returned to Polgasduwa after many years of doing his cārika.

Once, I asked him if during these wanderings anyone has ever stolen anything from him. He thought hard and said with a smile: “Yes, once I arrived late in the town of Matara, and decided to sleep at the railway station. When I got up in the morning to leave, I realised that my bag had been opened. The thief had stolen the rope I would carry and spread between two trees to dry my robes after I wash them.” I am sure the thief must have been bitterly disappointed that the bag didn’t have anything better to take away but a single old rope.

On one cārika, the Venerable was walking through a forest, one of the bigger National parks, perhaps Yāla. “There were not many villages there,” he said, “and these villages were very poor. On top of that, I would arrive unannounced and so nobody would have any food to give me. Two days went without receiving any food, and on the third morning I was really hungry. But I was still deep inside the National Park and I didn’t expect that I’d receive any food from the villagers even if I encountered any.

Early that morning I arrived in a small village and as I was walking through it an elderly lady came from her house with a pot in her hands. She came towards me and made an añjali. Then as I opened my bowl, she put the food inside. The food she offered was of excellent quality, so I was quite surprised. It looked as if she knew that I was coming and she had the food prepared and was waiting for me. So after I chanted a blessing, I looked at her and against my custom of not engaging in conversation during piṇḍapāta, I asked her about it. She answered “Venerable Sir, last night as I was offering flowers and praying in front of my altar a devatā appeared to me. He told me to get up early tomorrow morning and prepare the best food. He said that a bhikkhu is on his way and will pass through our village and that I should offer it to him to get some merit. So when I saw you coming I was already prepared and very happy because I already knew that you will come.” I heard this from the Venerable’s own mouth, I don’t remember the reason he told me, but there isn’t any reason to doubt that it really happened…

On another occasion, I entered his kuṭi bringing him his daily meal. As I was passing him his bowl with food he smiled and told me that I had woke him up from a nap. He said he had just had a dream. “What kind a dream was it, Bhante?” I asked curiously. “Oh nothing special,” he said,” I was walking through a village, carrying a bowl, doing my piṇḍapāta, and then a laywoman approached me to offer some dāna. As I was getting ready to receive it, you entered the kuṭi, and I woke up.” Interesting, I thought. His dreams weren’t all that different from his real life – simple and pure.” ~ Ven. Hiriko

~ Ven. Hiriko is a Serbian monk who lived in Sri Lanka ordained in the Theravāda tradition for a number of years around the end of the nineties. Later he became a monk in the Korean tradition and is now known as Ohkwang Sunim.

~ The Germany-born Ven. Ñāṇavimala was one of the great forest monks living in Sri Lanka in modern times. Everyone who came into contact with him, could not help but be deeply impressed.

Bhante was surely one of the most inspiring monks one could hope to come across. Old and infirm though he was, he could easily speak for an hour or more on just this subject, with his eyes alight and the atmosphere electric, inspiring the young monks, and we would all go back to our rooms more determined than ever to practice and do our very best to achieve what he himself assured us could be attained.

Bhante was an ascetic to the end, and although his legs were very swollen and he was barely able to walk, let alone go out on alms-round, he had his two monk attendants go out, and he lived on the almsfood (piṇḍapāta) that they brought back, and had blended so he could easily digest it.

Bhante himself was very severe in his practice, and some of the people writing here remember that, and are even critical of it, but there is no doubt that if Ven Ñāṇavimala was tough on others, he was even more tough on himself, and even by his own very strict standards, he lived what he preached and proved to be an exemplary monastic himself because of his total commitment to the life he had chosen."