Ñāṇavīra Thera

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Ven. Ñāṇavīra Thera
Title	Thera (Elder)
Personal
Born	Harold Edward Musson (1920-01-05)5 January 1920 Aldershot, England
Died	5 July 1965(1965-07-05) (aged 45) Bundala, Sri Lanka
Religion	Buddhism
Nationality	British/Ceylonese
School	Theravada
Education	B.A. degree in Modern and Medieval Languages from Cambridge University
Occupation	Buddhist monk
Website	nanavira.org pathpress.org pathpresspublications.com

Ñāṇavīra Thera (born Harold Edward Musson; 5 January 1920 – 5 July 1965) was an English Theravāda Buddhist monk, ordained in 1950 in Sri Lanka. He is known as the author of Notes on Dhamma, which were later published by Path Press together with his letters in one volume titled Clearing the Path.^[1]

Biography

Harold Edward Musson was born at a military barracks at Aldershot in England.^[2] His father, Edward Lionel Musson, was a captain in the 1st Manchester Regiment. He spent his youth in the environs of Alton, a small town in the Hampshire Downs, and was equally influenced by the nearby town of Aldershot. It is also very likely that the young Musson spent some time in India or Southeast Asia while his father was on his military assignments.

He went to

When the war ended Musson was, according to his own account, in no special need of money and very dissatisfied with his life. In 1948 he was living in London, sharing a flat with a good friend and onetime fellow-officer,

Ñāṇavīra Thera inclined to a solitary life and after a few years at the Island Hermitage he went to a remote section of southeast Ceylon, where he lived alone for the rest of his life in a one-room, brick-and-plaster kuti (hut) with a tile roof, not far from the village of Bundala, on the edge of a large

Ñāṇavīra Thera's writings fall into two periods: from 1950 until 1960 (the Early Writings), and from 1960 until 1965 (included in Clearing the Path).

The early texts show a man who, in his own thinking and discussion with others, earnestly searches a way to approach the essence of the Buddha's Teaching by repeated trial-and-error.^[

-

HOMAGE TO THE AUSPICIOUS ONE, WORTHY, FULLY AWAKENED. - At one time the monk Nanavira was staying in a forest hut near Bundala village. It was during that time, as he was walking up and down in the first watch of the night, that the monk Nanavira made his mind quite pure of constraining things, and kept thinking and pondering and reflexively observing the Dhamma as he had heard and learnt it, the clear and stainless Eye of the Dhamma arose in him: "Whatever has the nature of arising, all that has the nature of ceasing." Having been a teaching-follower for a month, he became one attained to right view.

The one who has "entered the stream" has ipso facto abandoned personality-view (sakkāya-ditthi), which is the self-view implicit in the experience of an ordinary worldling not free from ignorance, and understood the essential meaning of the Buddha's teaching on the Four Noble Truths.^{[citation needed]} Ñāṇavīra Thera's writings after 1960 express this very kind of certainty: no more wandering in the dark, no more doubt or speculative guessing.^{[citation needed]}

One of the foremost purveyors of Buddhism to the West after WW2, Thera had personal correspondence with Julius Evola and translated some of his work on Buddhism.^[4][5]

Early Writings – Seeking the Path (1950–1960)

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The main portion of the Early Writings consists of letters written to late Ñānamoli Thera, where the two English monks explored many modes of

Western thought (including quantum mechanics). This correspondence lasted until 1960, the year of Ñānamoli Thera's death. Gradually they discovered that the Western thinkers most relevant to their interests were those from the closely allied schools of phenomenology and existentialism

, to whom they found themselves indebted for clearing away a lot of mistaken notions with which they had burdened themselves. These letters make clear the nature of that debt; they also make clear the limitations which Ñāṇavīra Thera recognised in those thinkers. He insists upon the fact that while for certain individuals their value may be great, eventually one must go beyond them if one is to arrive at the essence of the Buddha's Teaching. Existentialism, then, is in his view an approach to the Buddha's Teaching and not a substitute for it.

Along with the manuscript letters, which were preserved by the recipient, were found draft copies of some of the replies which were sent to Ñāṇavīra Thera. A few letters written to Ñāṇavīra Thera's chief supporters, Mr. and Mrs. Perera are also included. The two essays following the letters were published: Nibbāna and Anattā and Sketch for a Proof of Rebirth in abbreviated form. In the end there are also the contents of the author's Commonplace Book, Marginalia and a collection of various papers discovered after their author's death (notes, translations, etc.).

Later Writings – Clearing the Path (1960–1965)

In 1963, Ñāṇavīra Thera completed a book called Notes on Dhamma (1960–1963), which was privately published by the Honourable Lionel Samaratunga in the same year (250 copies). Following production of that volume, the author amended and added to the text, leaving at his death an expanded

typescript, indicated by the titular expansion of its dates, (1960–1965). Notes on Dhamma has been variously described as "arrogant, scathing, and condescending",^[6] as "a fantastic system", and as "the most important book to be written in this century". Ñāṇavīra Thera himself remarked of the book that "it is vain to hope that it is going to win general approval... but I do allow myself to hope that a few individuals... will have private transformations of their way of thinking as a result of reading them".^[7]

The influence of Notes on Dhamma on Buddhist thinkers continues to increase more than three decades after its publication. This book has aroused extreme interest and controversy. The Notes "attempt to provide an intellectual basis for the understanding of the Suttas without abandoning saddhā (faith)";

Suttas is a concern for his own welfare. However, the Notes, with their admitted intellectual and conceptual difficulties, are not the only way to discuss right view or to offer right-view guidance.

Letters are a selection of 150 letters written by Ñāṇavīra Thera from his kuti in the Bundala Forest Reserve to local and foreign readers of the Notes who had requested explanation and clarification. Some are thinly disguised essays in a wholly modern idiom. The letters which are collected and published in Clearing the Path are not only something of a commentary on the Notes; they are, independently, a lucid discussion of how an individual concerned fundamentally with self-disclosure deals with the dilemma of finding himself in an intolerable situation, where the least undesirable alternative is suicide.

With openness, calmness, and considerable wit Ñāṇavīra Thera discusses with his correspondents (including his doctor, a judge, a provincial businessman, a barrister, a British diplomat, and another British citizen) the illnesses that plague him and what he can and cannot do about them, and about his own existence. His life as a

Most of the editorial work connected with Ñāṇavīra Thera's writings was performed by

• Ven. Kheminda Thera – 1964,
• Ven. Ñānamoli
  – 1945–1960,
• Sister Vajirā
  – 1961–1962,
• Mr. N. Q. Dias – 1962,
• Mrs. Irene Quittner – 1964,
• Mr. Wijerama – 1964,
• Dr. M. R. de Silva – 1961–1964,
• Mr. R. G. de S. Wettimuny – 1962,
• the Honourable Lionel Samaratunga – 1963–1965,
• Mr. Ananda Pereira – 1964–1965,
• Mr. Robert Brady – 1964–1965,
• Mr. G. – 1964.

Paṭiccasamuppāda

According to Nanavira Thera, Paṭiccasamuppāda does not refer to a chain of events. This has been criticised by Bhikkhu Bodhi. On the other hand, Buddhadasa took the same stance on Paṭiccasamuppāda, and multiple scholars have noted inconsistencies in the Paṭiccasamuppāda, concluding that it is a composite of several older lists, which were reinterpreted as pointing to rebirth.^{[11][12][13][note 1][14][15][16][17]}

Published books

English:

• Notes on Dhamma, Path Press Publications, 2009,
  ISBN 9789460900013
• Letters to Sister Vajirā, Path Press Publications, 2010,
  ISBN 9789460900020
• Clearing the Path, Path Press, 1987 (out of print)
• Clearing the Path, Path Press Publications, 2011,
  ISBN 9789460900044
• Seeking the Path, Path Press Publications, 2011,
  ISBN 9789460900037
• The Tragic, the Comic, and Personal, BPS, 1987,
  ISBN 978-955-24-0000-1
• Mindfulness and Awareness, BPS, 1973

German:

• Notizen zu Dhamma, Verlag Beyerlein-Steinschulte,
  ISBN 978-3-931095-63-5

• The Hermit of Būndala, by
  ISBN 978-94-6090-008-2

• Nyanatiloka Mahathera
• Nyanaponika Thera
• Ñāṇamoli Bhikkhu
• Samanera Bodhesako
• Island Hermitage
• Path Press
• Buddhist Publication Society
• Buddhist Cultural Centre

Notes

References