Hi Sukhdev,

If you check the Buddhist Dictionary again, you will notice that the compiler is Ven
Nyanatiloka (1878-1957), and not Nyanaponika.

Sukhi

Piya

Sukhdev Singh wrote:

> Hi Ong Yong Peng,
>
> I might be using your Pali forum for my learning in a little
> different way.� I visited your `genesis' and it was very
> interesting to find out how the reigns of this forum were placed in
> your hands way back in the year 2001 and how you, with the help of
> other members, have progressed from there.
>
> However, it was msg #9 that got this response going because I
> recognised the name of� Ven. Nyanaponika Mahathera as the person who
> edited the third� and enlarged revised version of the "Buddhist
> Dictionary" authored by his beloved teacher and mentor Ven.
> Nyanatiloka.� I happen to own a copy of this wonderful dictionary,
> mine, having been published by the Buddhist Missionary Soceity, based
> at the Buddhist Maha Vihara, here in Kuala Lumpur, Malaysia.
>
> The most poignant matter that I learnt was about how Ven. Nyanatiloka
> completed� this dictionary and other publications while at
> the "Central Internment Camp" in Dehra-Dun, India.� This
> matter appears in the "Preface to the First Edition" dated
> 28-8-1946, from the the premises of the "Central Internment Camp".
>
> All that you have posted in your post helped to fill in the gap and
> the "mystery" of the "Central Internment Camp".
>
> However, I would also like to take this opporuinity to hightlight
> possible discrepancies in your dates about the passing away of Ven.
> Nyanatiloka.
>
> The date given in the "Editor's (Ven. Nyanaponika Mahathera)
> Preface to the Third Edition" is 28th May 1947 and not May 1957 as you
> have mentined in your post.
>
> Actually, it is not directly mentioned like this but here is the
> statement :
>
> <<<The present revised and enlarged Third Edition was intended to be
> issued in commemoration of the tenth anniversary of the Venerable
> Author's passing away on the 28th May 1957.>>>
>
> Your two statements are as follows:
>
> <<< Like his teacher, Ven. Nyanatiloka (1878-1957), also from
> Germany,...� >>>
>
> And
>
> <<<In May 1957 Ven. Nyanatiloka passed away after a long illness.>>>
>
> Anyway, your post about the good Venerable and some information about
> his mentor is rather long and I need more time to study it after I
> have printed a hard copy of it.
>
> Let me also join some other early members, some of whose posts� I
> have read, in congratulating you on your good work on this forum
> which has brought benefit to many students of the Dhamma.
>
> Regards
>
> Sukhdev Singh
>
> --- In Pali@yahoogroups.com, "Ong Yong Peng" <ypong001@...> wrote:
> > Ven. Nyanaponika Mahathera a hundred years from birth
> >
> > Ven. Bhikkhu Bodhi
> > President and Editor-in-Chief, Buddhist Publication Society
> >
> > Introduction
> >
> > July 21st this year marks the hundredth birth anniversary of the
> late Ven. Nyanaponika Mahathera and on this occasion I wish to offer
> some reflections on the significance of his life and work. Ven.
> Nyanaponika was a colossal bridge-builder in understanding who
> through his writings helped to shape the contemporary expression of
> Theravada Buddhism. A thinker with deep insight into the human
> condition, a gifted communicator and masterly stylist, he sought in
> his writings to relate the Buddha's teachings to the momentous
> existential problems that face humankind in the modern age. Like his
> teacher, Ven. Nyanatiloka (1878-1957), also from Germany, he
> possessed a thorough and profound grasp of the essential principles
> of the Dhamma. But as a creative thinker he went far beyond the
> exposition of orthodox Buddhist doctrine and clarification of
> technical terms to forge a distinctive vision of Dhamma which is at
> once uniquely his own yet true to the authentic Buddhist tradition at
> its best.
> >
> > Keenly aware of the moral and spiritual vacuum that had opened up
> at the very core of Western civilization, he saw in the Buddha's
> Teaching the most effective remedy for the spiritual malaise
> besetting contemporary man. Through his work as a scholar and
> commentator he sought to make this remedy known to the world at
> large. His silent labour in solitude bore as its fruit an impressive
> body of translations and expository works in both German and English
> which have guided thousands of people, both in the East and the West,
> to a correct understanding and practice of the Dhamma.
> >
> > Life sketch
> >
> > The person who was to become Nyanaponika Mahathera was born in
> Hanau on 21st July 1901 as Siegmund Feniger, the only child of a
> Jewish couple. His parents gave him a traditional Jewish upbringing,
> and even at a young age he evinced a keen personal interest in
> religion. In his late teens, soon after he finished his schooling, he
> started work in the book trade. At this time disturbing religious
> doubts stirred him to an intense spiritual search, in the course of
> which he came across books on Buddhism. The new discovery had an
> immediate appeal to him, an appeal which grew increasingly stronger
> until by his twentieth year he considered himself a convinced
> Buddhist.
> >
> > When he encountered the writings and translations of Ven.
> Nyanatiloka, a compelling urge took shape in his mind to go to Asia
> and become a monk. This idea, however, could not be acted upon for
> some time. For in 1933, shortly after the death of his father, Hitler
> came to power and began his heartless program of persecuting German
> Jews. At first Siegmund tried his best to stand his ground in the
> expectation, shared by many, that the persecution was a passing phase
> that would soon cease. In time, however, it became clear to him that
> the waves of hatred, ignorance, and violence unleashed by the Nazis
> were gaining momentum at an alarming rate, and he realized that
> neither he nor his mother could safely remain in Germany. Thus in
> November 1935 he left Germany along with his mother heading for
> Vienna, where relatives of theirs were living. Having arranged for
> his mother to stay with their relatives, in early 1936 he left Europe
> for Sri Lanka, where he joined the Sangha as a pupil of Ven.
> Nyanatilka at Island Hermitage.
> >
> > When war broke out between Germany and Britain in 1939, the two
> German bhikkhus, like all German males resident in British colonies,
> were consigned to internment camps, first at Diyatalawa and later at
> Dehra Dun, in northern India. Despite the difficult circumstances of
> internment, Ven. Nyanaponika completed German translations of the
> Sutta Nipata, the Dhammasangani (the first book of the Abhidhamma
> Pitaka), and its commentary the Atthasalini. He also compiled an
> anthology of texts on Satipatthana meditation. When the war ended the
> two monks were released from internment in 1946 and returned to Sri
> Lanka, where they resumed residency at Island Hermitage. In early
> 1951 they were both made citizens of the newly independent Sri Lanka,
> their adopted homeland.
> >
> > In May 1957 Ven. Nyanatiloka passed away after a long illness. Six
> months later Ven. Nyanaponika's career as an exponent of the
> Dhamma
> launched out in a new direction when, together with several lay
> friends, he established the Buddhist Publication Society (BPS). In
> his earlier writings Ven. Nyanaponika had been developing a vision of
> the Buddha's teachings as the most viable solution to the
> spiritual
> crisis faced by modern man. Now, as President and Editor of the new
> society, he found himself presented with the opportunity to transform
> this vision from the personal guideline of his own writing into the
> governing philosophy of an entire publishing enterprise aimed at an
> incipient world-wide interest in Buddhism. The measure of his success
> in achieving his aim is indicated by the success of the BPS itself,
> which through his guidance has become one of the world's most
> prolific publishers of Theravada Buddhist literature.
> >
> > As advancing age began to sap his strength, in 1984 Ven.
> Nyanaponika retired as Editor of the BPS, and in 1988 he retired as
> President, accepting appointment as the BPS's distinguished
> Patron.
> Despite minor infirmities and advancing blindness over the last years
> of his life, Ven. Nyanaponika had enjoyed remarkably good health
> through his 93rd birthday on 21 July 1994. His last birthday was
> celebrated joyously by his friends and the BPS staff with the release
> of the BPS edition of his book The Vision of Dhamma, a collection of
> his writings from the Wheel and Bodhi Leaves series. In late August,
> however, the relentless process of ageing suddenly accelerated, and
> on 19 October, the last day of his 58th Rains Retreat as a bhikkhu,
> he breathed his last in the pre-dawn quiet at the Forest Hermitage in
> Kandy.
> >
> > The exponent of the Dhamma
> >
> > Through his own writings and in his editorship of the BPS, Ven.
> Nyanaponika played a momentous role in shaping the expression of
> Theravada Buddhism appropriate for the latter half of the twentieth
> century. Gifted with keen intelligence, a profound grasp of the
> Dhamma, and extraordinary sensitivity to the needs of his fellow
> human beings, he endeavoured both in his personal writings and in his
> publication policy to articulate a vision of the Buddha's
> teachings
> that underscored its crucial relevance to the present age. The early
> decades of the century provided the background to this vision. In his
> own mature years he had witnessed two world wars (one involving the
> mass extermination of his own ancestral people, the European Jews) as
> well as countless smaller scale conflicts and, in the post-war
> period, the breakdown of existential meaning in the lives of so many
> thoughtful, well-intentioned people. Against this background he
> constantly sought to emphasize, from different angles, those aspects
> of the Buddha's teachings that speak most directly and
> meaningfully
> to earnest men and women in search of clear spiritual direction.
> >
> > Here I would like to discuss briefly several of the dominant
> strands that enter into Ven. Nyanaponika's vision of Dhamma, the
> themes that give his presentation of the Teaching its distinctive
> stamp. I have organized these themes under four headings.
> >
> > (i) The Prospect and Challenge of Freedom
> >
> > For Ven. Nyanaponika the Buddha's Teaching is first and
> foremost a
> doctrine of freedom, of freedom from suffering. This is the explicit
> aim of the Dhamma as embedded in the Four Noble Truths, and for Ven.
> Nayanaponika it is also the underlying aim and origin of all
> religion. The uniqueness and greatness of the Buddha's Teaching,
> among the various world religions, consists in its enunciation of a
> path that leads to experiential release from suffering. What it
> offers is not the promise of salvation in the next world, but the
> prospect of deliverance attainable here and now through an utterly
> realistic insight into the human situation.
> >
> > For Ven. Nyanaponika, what is most impressive in the Buddha's
> Teaching is its clear definition of the path to freedom. The path is
> explained in minute detail with all its essential elements plainly
> described and its major milestones marked. To follow this path does
> not depend upon momentous leaps of faith or reliance upon external
> redeemers. The path calls only for moral earnestness, self-reliance,
> honest reflection, and diligent effort. It does not lead us away from
> immediate experience, but to a profound penetration of the true
> nature of experience through the cultivation of the simple faculty of
> close, careful attention to ones's own processes of body and
> mind.
> Even though the path may be long and hard, Ven. Nyanaponika
> repeatedly stresses that it is a gradual path which advances in
> stages. Thus even those without much spiritual strength to start with
> can still take the first steps, and any earnest effort brings
> concrete results.
> >
> > Ven. Nyanaponika's couches this conception of the Dhamma in
> terms
> especially addressed to Western man in the late 20th century and by
> extension to those in Asia whose mental horizons have been shaped by
> Western influences. He speaks to those who can no longer rest content
> with doctrines of salvation through faith, who no longer seek refuge
> in ideologies or systems of belief, yet who demand deeper answers to
> the fundamental questions of existence than materialistic modes of
> thought can provide. He is thus tackling the doubts of the countless
> men and women who find themselves stranded between the old religions
> of faith, which they no longer believe in, and the new religions of
> technological progress and economic consumerism, which they find vain
> and hollow. For such seekers, the Buddha's teaching offers a path
> to
> freedom that scales the highest towers of spirituality yet remains
> fully respectful of the moral and intellectual autonomy of the
> individual.
> >
> > (ii) A secure foundation for ethics
> >
> > One of the major spiritual problems of our age that weighed heavily
> on Ven. Nyanaponika's mind was the widespread erosion in moral
> standards that had infected modern society. He was keenly aware of
> course that even in past ages, when religion reigned supreme human
> behaviour was often ruled by blind lust, ambition, cruelty, and
> hatred. In our epoch, however, even an objective foundation for
> ethics was in jeopardy. ln the West, ethics had always been seen as
> rooted in God. Hence, as belief in God ceased to be an effective
> force in many people's lives, moral principles were left without
> an
> anchor. The cult of unrestrained self-interest had started to spread
> with alarming speed, threatening to trample all higher ideals
> underfoot.
> >
> > Ven. Nyanaponika saw in the Buddha's Teaching a secure
> foundation
> for ethics that does not require any appeals to external authority
> but can be derived directly from the constitution of the human mind.
> He found the key he was seeking above all in the teaching on the
> unwholesome and wholesome roots if greed, hatred, and delusion, and
> their opposites to which he devoted an entire booklet, The Roots of
> Good and Evil.
> >
> > In this essay Ven. Nyanaponika investigates the teaching on the
> roots in extensive detail. With numerous citations from the Pali
> texts he explores not only the psychological inter-relations of the
> roots, but their kammic consequences, their effect on the process of
> rebirth, and their social repercussions. He devotes separate sections
> to the methods for overcoming the evil roots by meditative training,
> and finally he discusses the significance of Nibbana as the
> destruction of greed, hatred, and delusion. For him it is important
> that the Buddha's Teaching displays an inviolable internal
> consistency: from its simplest maxims on ethics to its conception of
> final liberation, it focuses upon the task of internal purification
> through the overcoming of the three unwholesome roots and the
> perfecting of detachment, loving kindness, and wisdom.
> >
> > (iii) The comprehension of Inner reality
> >
> > This theme leads us to the next strand in Ven. Nyanaponika's
> vision
> of Dhamma. According to Ven. Nyanaponika, the process of self-
> transformation to which the Buddha directs us must begin with self-
> knowledge, with the understanding of one's own mind: In the
> Buddhist
> doctrine, mind is the starting point, the focal point, and also, as
> the liberated and purified mind of the Saint, the culiminating point.
> Self-understanding, according to the Mahathera, requires the
> discipline of inward contemplation, particularly the practice of
> methodical mindfulness. But besides this, it also calls for a precise
> and detailed analysis of the contents of the mind. Through his deep
> study of the Buddha's discourses and the Abhidhamma, as well as
> through his long meditative experience, Ven. Nyanaponika had acquired
> a profound understanding of man's psychological makeup his
> passions,
> struggles, and anxieties, his potential for good and for evil, which
> he explores with extraordinary acumen in his writings.
> >
> > Ven. Nyanaponika is perspicacious not only when describing our
> disruptive psychological pathologies, but also (or especially) when
> exposing the condition of the ordinary undeveloped mind, which we
> commonly take for granted as normal and unquestionable. Thus, on the
> theme of tidying up the mental household, he writes:
> >
> > If anyone whose mind is not harmonized and controlled through
> methodical meditative training should take a close look at his own
> everyday thoughts and activities he will meet with a rather
> disconcerting sight. Apart from the few main channels of his
> purposeful thoughts and activities, he will everywhere be faced with
> a tangled mass of perceptions, thoughts, feelings, and casual bodily
> movements, showing a disorderliness and confusion which he would
> certainly not tolerate in his living room.... Hundreds of cross-
> currents flash through the mind, and everywhere there are bits and
> ends of unfinished thoughts, stifled emotions, and passing moods....
> If we observe our own minds we shall notice how easily diverted our
> thoughts are, how often they behave like undisciplined disputants
> constantly interrupting each other and refusing to listen to the
> other sides arguments.
> >
> > (iv) The training and liberation of the mind
> >
> > Examing the long-neglected quarters of our own minds will deliver a
> wholesome shock, convincing us of the urgent need for methodical
> mental training. This brings us to the fourth topic in our study, the
> most significant contribution Ven. Nyanaponika has made to our
> understanding of the Dhamma: his disclosure of Satipatthana, the
> meditative discipline of right mindfulness, as the foundation-stone
> of Buddhist mental training. This thesis is already indicated by the
> title of his best known book The Heart of Buddhist Meditation, which
> squarely demonstrates that the systematic practice of right
> mindfulness is indeed the heart of Buddhist meditation.
> >
> > The book, translated into some seven languages, takes the form of a
> modern commentary on the Satipatthana Sutta, which it includes in
> translation along with an anthology of texts on Satipatthana. But
> Ven. Nyanaponika does not merely repeat stereotyped explanations of
> right mindfulness: instead, happens our eyes to aspects of this
> system of meditative discipline that had never been articulated so
> clearly before, at least not in European languages. He begins his
> work by placing the practice of Buddhist meditation in the particular
> historical context in which he is writing opening with a chilling
> account of the crisis confronting the world at the height of the Cold
> War. After two world wars, he cautions, humankind has still not
> learned its lesson; again, it is preparing for a new bout of that
> raving madness called war. And at its root the same old mechanism is
> at work again: the interaction of greed and fear, lust for power and
> the fear of our own instruments of destruction. Yet the author
> observes despite the gravity of the danger, men are still bungling
> only with the symptoms of the malady, their own undeveloped minds.
> >
> > The Buddha's Teaching addresses this sick and truly demented
> world
> of ours with words of eternal wisdom and unfailing guidances. The
> advice the Teaching offers can be summed up in three challenges,
> which the Ven. Nyanaponika expresses thus: (i) to know the mind, that
> is so near to us, and yet is so unknown? (ii) to shape the mind, that
> is so unwieldy and obstinate, and yet may turn so pliant; (iii) to
> free the mind, that is in bondage all over and yet may win freedom
> here and now. Hence he writes, the resolute turning away from
> disastrous paths, the turning that might save the world in its
> present crisis, must necessarily be a turning inward, into the
> recesses of man's own mind. Only through a change within will
> there
> be a change without.
> >
> > The instrument for this transformation, and for mind's final
> liberation, is the practice of Satipatthana meditation. Satipatthana,
> the Mahathera holds, is the master key for knowing the mind; the
> perfect tool for shaping the mind; and the lofty manifestation of the
> mind that has been liberated. The first task represents the
> theoretical aspect of Satipatthana, the other two its practical
> application.
> >
> > Ven. Nyanaponika's treatment of Satipatthana in the book
> harmonizes
> with his entire approach to the Dhamma. He stresses its balanced
> combination of simplicity with profundity, its practicality, its
> univerality. It is beneficial not only to the confirmed Buddhist but
> to all who endeavour to master the mind and develop its latent
> potential. It is a message of self-help and self-reliance which leads
> to tangible results, results that unfold in a eraded sequence
> throughout the gradual training: in the initial stages it brings the
> immediate fruits of greater self-understanding, deeper contentment,
> pliancy and adaptability. It restores simplicity and naturalness to a
> complicated, problematic world addicted to artificial devices. At
> deeper levels it reveals more and more clearly the three
> characteristics of phenomena impermanence, suffering, and
> egolessness; and at its highest level it eradicates the root-causes
> of all bondage and suffering, greed, hatred and delusion.
> >
> > What Ven. Nyanaponika stresses in his writings on Satipatthana is
> that Buddhist meditation is not an exotic, spiritual technology that
> leads to bizarre landscapes of the imaginary beyond. At its core it
> is, rather, a decipline that centres around the systematic
> cultivation of a simple, very ordinary mental faculty that is
> normally employed only in a superficial manner. This is the faculty
> of awareness or attention. In our usual dealings with the world, the
> initial moment of attention with which any experience begins is
> almost immediately overwhelmed by currents of associative thought and
> conceptual construction, by which our awareness of our object is
> subordinated to our ego-centred desires and pragmatic aims. The
> Buddhist practice of mindfulness aims at sustaining the rudimentary
> moment of attention, and, by repeated practice, at transforming it
> into a steady, uninterrupted, potent beam of awareness that can then
> be used to probe into the very constitution and structure of
> conscious experience. Ven. Nyanaponika states that it required the
> genius of the Buddha to discover the hidden talent in this homely,
> unobtrusive faculty of bare attention: Through the master mind of the
> Buddha, mindfulness is finally revealed as the Archimedean point
> where the vast revolving mass of world suffering is levered out of
> its twofold anchorage in ignorance and craving. I would add that
> while the efficacy of mindfulness has been known to Buddhist
> meditators through the ages, it took the master mind of Ven.
> Nyanaponika to reveal so lucidly, with such penetrating psychological
> insight, exactly how mindfulness fulfils the onerous duties entrusted
> to it by the Enlightened One.
> >
> >
> > --------------------------------------------------------------------
> ------------
> >
> >
> > "an just evan so, though you say that the Brahmans are not able to
> point out the way to union with that which they have seen, and you
> further say that neither any one of them, nor of their pupils, nor of
> their predecessors evan to the seventh generation have ever seen
> Brahma (GOD).
> > and you further say that even the rishis of old whose words they
> hold in such deep respect, did not pretended to know, or to have seen
> where or whence or whither Brahma is, yet these Brahmans versed in
> the three Vedas say, forsooth, that they can point out the way to
> union with that which they know not. neither have seen! Now what
> think you, vasettha? Does it not follow that, this being so, the talk
> of the Brahmans versed in the Three Vedas is foolished talk?"
> >
> > Discourses of Buddha - Knowers of Veda
> > The Wheel publication #57/58
> > BUDDHIST INTERNATIONAL
> > Radical approach to Human Rights
> >
> >
> > [Non-text portions of this message have been removed]
>
>
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