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May 2010

Bhante is continuing to enjoy his excursions to the local parks, and especially to the botanical gardens, which is he very fond of. My birthday treat, yesterday as I write, was to accompany him there, and to enjoy tea and cake in the cafe. The gardens date from 1830s, and are a like a miniature Kew, containing quite a variety of trees and flowers, as well as cactuses, and bonsais, and various species of tropical bird. Some of the plants are under glass, in rooms imitating various different kinds of climate, and the rest are distributed around the fifteen acres of land.

The other part of my birthday treat was to read Bhante one of my attempts to write philosophy, which he said he found interesting. Other reading has included continuing with Learning to Walk, and Plotinus, Bhante’s memories of the ideas of which philosopher he wished to have refreshed. Audio books that he has listened to include In My Way, the political memoirs of George Brown, who in the 1960s was foreign minister in the Wilson government; The Adventures of Peregrine Pickle, by Tobias Smollett, which tells one quite a lot about life in Hogarthian England; Mrs Oscar Wilde by Anne Clark Amor, the story of a woman who shared in the rise – and spectacular fall – of her celebrated husband; and On the Other Side (abridged) by Mathilde Wolff-Monckeberg, an elderly German woman’s account of her life in Hamburg during World War II, written for the benefit of her children in different parts of the world. He has also recently been listening to radio 4, and he says he is beginning to appreciate Gustav Mahler. In fact he quite enjoyed Mahler’s Sixth Symphony, though he was not a little surprised to hear it described by the presenter of the programme as ‘bleak’.

Particularly memorable among his steady flow of visitors from all over the Movement, are Nityabandhu, who came for a weekend, and a few groups of people, including some mainly Indian friends, Order members and mitras from Cambridge and London, and some Birmingham men who study together in a group led by Alokavira.

Bhante’s health has been stable. He had a lucentis injection a few weeks ago, and is due another around the end of the month.

April 2010

Spring has come, which means that Bhante, aside from enjoying the spring flowers of the Madhyamaloka garden, has been getting out and about more, including taking advantage of his season ticket to the Botanical Gardens. Such excursions will be aided by my recently having passed my driving test, making Bhante less dependent on Paramartha, who is often away working. Paramartha has also continued archiving. This month he has catalogued 74 ring binders containing mainly lecture notes and copies of letters written by Bhante. Also 27 photo albums containing mainly photos taken by Bhante from 69 onwards.

I have continued reading Shabda to Bhante, as well as wading through Geunther’s book on Padmasambhava. The latter may as well be Arabic as far as I am concerned, but Bhante seems to get something out of it. We have also started going through Learning to Walk, because Bhante wanted to refresh his memory of the contents, and correct any factual inaccuracies he might find, as when he wrote it he was in Kalimpong, and had no way of checking some of the details. Paramartha has started reading him The Gospel of Philip, from the Nag Hammadi Library. Bhante has also enjoyed listening to two classic novels: Washington Square by Henry James, and The Mayor of Casterbridge by Thomas Hardy. He appreciated the artistry of the first but felt that the second went deeper.

Aside from these things Bhante has kept up his daily programme. His visitors have included only one group, which consisted of friends and mitras from Southampton. He has also continued to work on correspondence. Those who have received a letter from Bhante in the last few weeks may have been pleased to see the Three Jewels emblem on the letterhead, which seems more appropriate for the founder of the Triratna Buddhist Order than the previous picture of Padmasambhava.

Bhante’s health has generally been reasonable. He had a cold over the weekend, and had to cancel a few appointments, but he has now largely recovered.

March 2010

You will be glad to know that Bhante has recovered well from his recent angina attack, and after a week or two of taking things relatively easy, is now back to his usual routine of walks, interviews and correspondence. Other than this dramatic and worrying episode the most noteworthy feature of the last month has been a series of visits by Subhuti, who interviewed Bhante on some of his more recent ‘philosophical’ thinking. He has also had a visit from a Manchester GFR group.

With Bhante’s assistance, Paramartha has started cataloguing Bhante’s personal archive. So far 37 box files have been catalogued. Material includes lecture notes, press cuttings, correspondence, articles and book reviews.

I have read to Bhante the whole of Suzuki’s translation of The Awakening of Faith in the Mahayana, as well as reading Shabda to him. Paramartha has read him some of the Gnostic texts from The Nag Hammadi Library. The audio book service has provided information and entertainment by way of Congo Journey by Redmond O’Hanlon in which the author meets Bantus, pygmies, and sourcerers, adopts a baby gorilla, and encounters an amazing variety of flora and fauna. Bhante also enjoyed In Search of the Dark Ages, which he thought was history writing at its best. It emphasises dominant personalities such as Boudicca, Alfred the Great, Athelstan, and Eric Bloodaxe, rather than emphasising economics and social trends. The last audio book to which Bhante listened this month was My Invented Country by Isabelle Allende, in which the author gives a vivid picture of pre-Pinochet Chile as she remembers it.

February 2010

Bhante’s routine has carried on unchanged. The snow having gone, his daily walks have resumed, and the steady flow of visitors has continued. Bhante particularly enjoyed receiving, from Lokamitra, who came in January, a model of the 30ft high walking Buddha, recently inaugurated at Nagaloka, and was pleased with the artist’s execution. Another highlight was a weekend visit from Nityabandhu, who took the opportunity to interview Bhante about his early life, particularly the first eight years, before he was confined to bed with alleged heart disease.

As spring approaches Bhante starts to consider the possibility of accepting various invitations to visit centres in the UK and abroad, though he has made no definite commitments yet. He received an invitation from Aryaloka to attend their 25th anniversary, and would have liked to accept, but in view of age and health felt that he could not.

Bhante continues to do his best to keep up with correspondence, despite the difficulties of having to dictate all letters. He has been pleased to see that the great majority of Order members seem to welcome the change of name. He has also been moved by some of the letters he has received regarding the Conversation with Mahamati and Subhuti.

Highlights from the audio book service include A Social History of England, by Asa Briggs, a standard work which Bhante found both informative and illuminating; Macbeth, one of his favourite Shakespeare plays, in which he thought Irene Worth was particularly good as Lady Macbeth; and most recently Florence: A Delicate Case, by David Leavitt, an account of some of the more prominent members of the city’s ex-patriot community during the last hundred or more years.

I have continued to read to Bhante from The Book of Kadam. I have also read Shabda to him, as have Paramartha and Nityabandhu.

The only news regarding Bhante’s health is that he had a vision test and macular scan, following his recent series of operations, and there seems that there has been a very slight improvement.

Vidyaruci

January 2010

This month has been even more quiet than the last. Vidyadevi has visited a few of times, in order to interview Bhante about some of his favourite poetry. Bhante has received visitors most days, though even this tailed off a bit over Christmas and New Year. For a week of this period I was away visiting family, so Dharmamati stepped back into his old role, for which thanks to him. Bhante’s own Christmas celebrations extended no further than having a meal with the Madhyamaloka community, followed by a chat round the open log fire. The snowy weather, as well as disrupting the travel plans of some if his visitors, has precluded his daily walks for a number of weeks.

Bhante has had a number of friends read to him from various books. Paramartha read him Porphory’s <italics>The Cave of the Nymphs</italics>, a neo-Platonic allegory of the soul’s descent into the world of space and time. Devamitra read him extracts from <italics>A God Who Hates</italics>, in which Wafa Sultan describes the effect of Islam on her early life in Syria. I have read him the beginning of Francis Brassard’s <italics>The Concept of Bodhicitta in Santideva’s Bodhicaryavatara</italics>, the new introduction to <italics>The Religion of Art</italics>, by Dhivan, and we have recently started <italics>The Book of Kadam</italics>, a new translation of an important text from Tibetan Buddhism. Bhante has also listened to a few interesting audio books. These include <italics>To The Navel of the World</italics> by Peter Somerville-Large, the navel in question being the region around Mount Kailash and Lake Manasarova in Western Tibet; <italics>A Nation of Trees</italics> by Rosemary Millington, an account of the author’s two and a half years in the Australian outback, and <italics>Isambard Kingdom Brunel</italics> by Adrian Vaughan, a biography of the famous nineteenth century engineer.

Bhante had another lucentis injection, the last planned for the time being. Other than this his health has been good, despite the wintry weather.

Vidyaruci

December 2009

Bhante has been continuing to eschew travel, but has nonetheless been kept busy by his daily meetings with visitors, as well as correspondence, which he has been giving more attention to, despite his finding dictating letters difficult. His only trip out of Birmingham was to Worcester, to meet sangha members at their new centre, where they had a discussion mainly on the topic of Team Based Right Livelihood. He has enjoyed meeting with two groups of men at Madhyamaloka, one from Croydon, and another all the way from Dublin. Conversation with the latter group centred largely around Bhante’s article The Path of Regular and Irregular Steps, which they had come over to study with Dhammaloka and Abhaya.

Bhante has continued to have me read to him. We finished Nagapriya’s Visions of the Mahayana, which Bhante enjoyed, describing it as ‘a well researched, sympathetic, but not uncritical account of the Mahayana in India and the Far East’. I also read him an article by Bernard Stevens, a mitra from Belgium, which explored the Japanese philosopher Nishida’s thought in relation to the Abhidharma. Bhante enjoys hearing reportings- in from Shabda, and we get through as much as we can of each issue.

The RNIB audio book service that Bhante has recently joined seems to be working out well, and he has particularly appreciated two of its offerings recently. Firstly The Last Days of the Raj by Trevor Royle, which describes the political and economic background of Bhante’s early years in India. Of course he knew much of it already, but he also learned things that were new to him. The second audio book was Peter the Great, by Derek Wilson, which Bhante described as giving a ‘thorough and interesting, if lurid light on Russia past and present’.

Bhante’s health has been stable. On Wednesday 16th December he had another lucentis injection into his eye, which is the last planned for the time being.

Vidyaruci

October 2009

Having travelled quite a lot in the summer, Bhante has been enjoying a quiet period at Madhyamaloka, which he intends to continue through the winter. Apart from attending to correspondence, he has been receiving visitors every day, some of them from far away places.
The only other events of note have been dinner engagement at one of the Birmingham communities, and a session with a seminar led by Vishvapani held here at Madhyamaloka, on the life of the Buddha. Bhante was happy to spend an hour or so with the seminar participants, especially since he considers it very important to know of the Buddha’s life, especially through acquaintance with the Pali Scriptures.
Bhante finished hearing Gombrich’s book, What the Buddha Thought, which gives an assessment of the Buddha as a thinker. He considers it a useful book, and thinks it may especially have a good effect in India, where there is still a popular misconception of the Buddha of the kind propagated by Swami Vivekananda, who said ‘..it is possible to have the intellect of a Shankara with the heart of a Buddha’, implying that the Buddha did not have such an intellect! Bhante, of course, contributed to correcting this wrong view in his essay Buddhism as Philosophy and Religion, published more than fifty years ago. We have now started on Nagapriya’s new book Visions of Mahayana Buddhism, which Bhante is enjoying. He has also recently joined a talking book service which will hopefully help to feed his continued appetite for learning and artistic enjoyment.
As I write Bhante is at the hospital for a further Lucentis injection into his eye. Another one is planned in December. Other than this, his health has been reasonable, though his energy seems slowly to be running down, to the extent that he considered it necessary to cancel all engagements that he felt would be too demanding.

September 2009

Bhante has had no trips away from Birmingham since the Conventions, but has nonetheless had a pretty busy schedule of meetings, both with individuals and groups, the latter category having consisted of a GFR group from Croydon on one occasion, and a group of friends from Rivendell, including Suryaketu, on another. A highlight for Bhante was a visit from Nityabandhu for a weekend in September. They spent their time together visiting the local parks and enjoying each other’s company.
Bhante also met with Mahamati and Subhuti over a number of days, for a conversation about various aspects of his character and their bearing upon his life.
Paramartha has been on solitary retreat for two weeks, and I have therefore had the opportunity to spend some evenings with Bhante, in which I have been reading to him from Gombrich’s new book What the Buddha Thought. It offers revealing insights into how the Buddha’s ideas were framed in the language of his culture. It is also interesting to note how familiar some the ideas in the book will be to us in the F/WBO, Bhante’s thinking being so ahead of its time.
Bhante continues to explore his enthusiasm for English literature. I recently had the unusual experience of finding a classic novel that I have read and Bhante has not, whereupon I obtained the audio book. The novel in question was The Turn of the Screw by Henry James. Bhante was not as impressed by it as I had been, but was nonetheless glad to have filled that particular gap in his knowledge.
Though Bhante’s health has generally been reasonably good, there have been a number of incidents recently that may serve to remind us all that he is an old man. In August he felt unwell enough to call NHS Direct, who, perhaps upon hearing of his medical history, immediately advised calling an ambulance crew round to check up on him. It was decided that no further checks were needed. Now as I write (on 13th October) Bhante is at the doctor having had some chest pain that he thought best to have checked. He continues to find acupuncture very beneficial, though his acupuncturist thinks his heart has weakened a little recently. In view of this and other incidents Bhante is considering whether or not to cancel some of his forthcoming engagements, especially those which make heavy demands upon his energy.
Vidyaruci
Madhyamaloka

July/August 2009

After Bhante’s visit to Cambridge, detailed in the last report, his next visit was to the Glasgow and Edinburgh centres, accompanied by Dharmamati. Bhante and Dharmamati were accommodated by the very warm and hospitable Shantiketu and Jyotipakshini at their house in a pleasant suburb of Glasgow. From there on the following day Bhante made an excursion to  the Edinburgh Buddhist Centre in time for an evening meal with Order members. After this the doors were opened to the public and Bhante launched his two new books The Essential Sangharakshita and Living Ethically by giving a short talk followed by a book signing.

The following evening Bhante gave a slightly longer talk at the Glasgow Centre. Again he introduced both the books, mentioned above, but to the delight of his audience included a commentary on his poem ‘Meditation’ composed in 1947. It is a short poem, so, it has been included at the end of this report.

Bhante also met people individually and in small groups for meals.

A week later Bhante, again accompanied by Dharmamati, found himself ‘royally’ accommodated by Saccavicaya, at his house near Blackburn. This was the base from which visits to the Northern Centres of Liverpool, Lancaster, and Blackburn would be undertaken. On the day of arrival and after Bhante’s afternoon rest he was driven to Liverpool where he had an evening meal with the local sangha, at a mitra’s home. After that he was taken to the hired room that the Liverpool Sangha use as their Centre. There, as in the Scottish centres, he gave a short talk introducing his latest books followed by a book signing. The next Bhante went to Vidyacitta’s house near Lancaster where he had meal with local Sangha.  After that he was taken to the Friends Meeting House (Quakers) in Lancaster, where the local sangha hire rooms for classes. There he gave another talk to launch his books and sign copies. The following evening Bhante enjoyed a meal with the Order members from Liverpool, Lancashire and Blackburn at the Blackburn Buddhist Centre. This was followed by an informal Q&A session with those Order members. The next day’s event was at the Blackburn Buddhist centre again, this time it was their turn for Bhante to give a talk to launch his latest books followed by a book signing. Bhante also saw some people individually during his stay.   

Only a few days later Bhante, accompanied by Paramartha found himself winging his way to Valencia. Bhante was primarily in Valencia to officially open their new centre, but, also took the opportunity to run two Q&A sessions one for Order members and the other for Women who had asked for Ordination. He opened the centre by giving a talk on … (please ask Bhante to fill this in as well as anything else he would like to say here). He also purchased a Panama hat which some of you may have seen him wearing during the conventions.
Two days after their return from Valencia, Bhante and Paramartha, were off again, though this time only as far as Ipswich to open the new centre. There he gave a talk to open the centre as well as launching his latest books.
The following weekend Bhante gave a Q&A session for Private preceptors at the Birmingham Buddhist Centre.
The weekend after that Bhante led a second session of study on the Ratnaguna Samcaya gatha for a group of men ordained by Arthapriya at Madhyamaloka.
Combined and Men’s conventions.
Bhante stayed at Padmaloka during both the combined and Men’s conventions.
During the combined convention Bhante attended all of the colloquia sessions and met with small groups of Order members for meals. On the last full day there was a book launch during which Bhante gave a long talk the highlight of which was his emphasis on Sila not only being ethics but including manners. On the Men’s convention Bhante did not go to any events apart from a talk by Subhuti. He did, however, meet Order members individually and eat meals with small groups.
Over this period, when at Madhyamaloka, Bhante continued, as usual, to see people individually. The most noteworthy of which was two visits by David Brazier from the Amida trust. He is author of the book New Buddhism which Bhante has been recommending order members to read particularly the chapters on Critical Buddhism. He also had his daily walk in the garden and
Bhante’s health
Bhante’s health continues to be reasonably good. He has recently completed a series of Lacentis injections to inhibit macular degeneration. This appears to have been successful in arresting further degeneration.
Change of Bhante’s secretary.

Vidyaruci recently returned from being ordained at Guhyaloka and he has now taken over fully as Bhante’s secretary. For me personally it has been a great privilege and honor to work closely with Bhante over the last 3 years.
Dharmamati - Madhyamaloka

June 2009

The first activity that Bhante did since the last report was to lead a study seminar on the Virya chapter from Bodhicaryavatara with 4 Order members and 4 Mitras from Belgium and Holland.
This was followed by a visit to Cambridge accompanied by Paramartha and Dharmamati. On the Friday evening of his arrival he met up with the Windhorse publications team in their new offices at the Cambridge Buddhist Centre.  On the Saturday morning he had a Q&A session with the men who had requested Ordination.  In the afternoon he gave a 50 minute talk launching his latest books The Essential Sangharakshita and Living Ethically followed by a book signing. On the Sunday in the context of an Order day Bhante did a first for many a year, much to the delight of those Order members present, he led the Green Tara sadhana.  In the afternoon he gave a Q&A session for Order member. On the Monday morning, the day of his departure, he met up with the Women who had asked for Ordination.
On a day to day level Bhante continues to deal with correspondence, engage with various issues concerning the F/WBO, meet with people individually nearly every day, as well as go for his daily walk. He has also nearly finished listening to Vajragupta’s ‘History of the FWBO’.
Bhante’s health continues very well and he has recently been receiving a series of Lacentis injections to arrest the macular degeneration. This is the second series of these injections which, although not having improved Bhante’s eyesight, appear to have been successful in arresting further degeneration.
Dharmamati - Madhyamaloka