Re: Ubon R. Wat Nanasat / Nanachat

Dear Navako,

I agree that learning SE Asian scripts is easier than learning Chinese.
Devanagiri is a fairly easy script to learn. Clear distinct letters.
Even for Sinhalese it can be difficult to distinguish some Sinhalese
letters as they are so similar, e.g. g, bh, h, this is why there are
typical mix ups resulting in variant readings like anigata and anibhata
in Sinhalese Pali manuscripts.
If there is an old Lan Na Patimokkha manuscript around I would learn
that script. Do you know of any?
I feel sorry that I was not able to read your message about visiting WPN
earlier on. I stayed there a year myself and would have encouraged you
to write to them first rather than just turning up because this is not
considered the proper procedure. There are many visitors and the monks
tend to stay aloof from the laity, especially members of the other sex,
as it is a meditation monastery of a very strict and renunciant
tradition similar to a Trappists in the Catholic tradition. In general
the Thai Sangha is organised in a somewhat militaristic way. There have
been Pali courses in the past but the monks who did those moved on to
other places so that stopped. In the anti scholarly Thai Forest
Tradition studies are generally discouraged, but in the last couple of
years some western monks in that tradition have been catching up a bit.
I will send you a copy of Sacred Island to your own e-mail address in a
week or two. You can help proofreading it. The BPS, of which I am the
editor, is going to publish it. I have made a paper on Meditation
monasteries in Sri Lanka which would provide a lot of useful information
for you. Dr Ratnayaka and Dr Migaskumbara at Peradeniya are very
helpful. Books in the the library can be difficult or impossible to find
as there is no computer catalogue anymore and even then sometimes
hundreds of books are under one index number and many books have been
misplaced, etc.
Yours,
              Bh. Nyanatusita


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