Hithawath Lenni,

Oba lipiyata bohomath sthuthy. Ema Sinhala lipiya mata
mahath sathutak duni. Enamuth, an ayage pihitata den
ingrisiyen liyannam.

(Dear Lenni,

Your letter has my profuse thanks. That sinhala letter
to me great joy gave. Yet, for others benefit, now, in
English shall write.)

I translated the above as you can see almost verbatim
yet grammatically - isn't Sinhala a beautiful lyrical
language with wonderful cadences? I love it, but
unfortunately learnt to do so only in my adult life.
My school days I gave my love to English Literature
though I studied the ancient Sinhalese literature too.
They, like Chauser's English (which I studied only in
modernised form) were too heavy - or so I then
thought.

I would love to meet you. I have 2 Sinhalese friends
here both married to your fellow men, from Wattala a
Roman Catholic and from Matale a buddhist. In Schuby
there is another, and Hamburg has scores, but very few
Sinhalese couples and even fewer buddhist couples from
what I hear. So far only Tissa & I and another that I
know of, and I have met also only 3 other females so
far. There are also yet no Theravadin temples or
priests that I have been able to find in North Germany
- heard of a sole buddhist temple in Hamburg - a
Vietnamese one. Luebeck has a Karma kagyi group but
I'm very ignorant about that system. Any information
on Theravadins? I'm longing to give a sangika dana - a
traditional alms offering. Matale girl visited the
Bonn temple recently - we are waiting till the priest
visits Hamburg again but getting 4 priests seems to be
near impossible.

When were you in SL? Were you at Meetirigala? (You
dont have to reply if you dont want to.) It's Ven
Nanarama's forest hermitage off Colombo, in the Mahasi
Sayadaw method of meditation, isn't it? In 1997 the
Kamattanacharya there was a priest from Kandy -
Peradeniya, who had trained in Thailand - Bhikku
Dhammajiva. I too have a little reservation about
Amitha Gavesi priest meditation group (though not
about the priest ofcourse) mainly because the study
group they had off Kandy at Pallekele though very
populer was so very huge. And inevitably, as the
Blessed one said, idle talk. My personal prefernce too
is for the Ven Kassapa/ Dhutanga/Thai forset tradition
type meditation- seclusion, & great unremitting
effort. I hoped to be a renunciate, and still hope so.
Perhaps, I will be so blessed. But this is mostly a
secret wish not confided openly to family and friends.


If you like you can reply direct to me. I think the
list is mainly for PALI studies, so it may be unfair
to others to write on off list subjects even though I
put OT on the subject line. Sorry for the delay in
reply - I'm down with the 'gripper' for the first time
here - I'm about finished with this cold.

With much metta,
renuka.

__________________________________________________
Do You Yahoo!?
Everything you'll ever need on one web page
from News and Sport to Email and Music Charts
http://uk.my.yahoo.com