In 1987 a book was published by Path Press, Colombo, with the title Clearing the Path: Writings of Nanavira Thera (1960 - 1965) . This hard-cover book of nearly six hundred pages contains the text of Nanavira's revised Notes on Dhamma (1960 - 1965) together with 149 letters of varying lengths written by Nanavira to nine correspondents, which serve (as the author himself stated) as a commentary on the Notes . The texts are scrupulously edited, extensively annotated and cross-referenced by means of a comprehensive index. The compilation, editing and publication of this book was a labour of love performed (anonymously) by Ven. Bodhesako (Robert Smith), an American samanera from Chicago, who died suddenly of gangrene of the intestines in Nepal in 1989, shortly after completing the work. With his death Path Press ceased to function and the book can now only be obtained from a Buddhist distributor (Wisdom Books) in London.

      Clearing the Path is presented by Bodhesako as a "work book. It's purpose is to help the user to acquire a point of view that is different from his customary frame of reference, and also more satisfactory." ⁶⁶ As such it is to be used as a tool for inner change. This supports Nanavira's own contention in his preface to the Notes that "the reader is presumed to be subjectively engaged with an anxious problem, the problem of his existence, which is also the problem of his suffering." He adds:

There is therefore nothing in these pages to interest the professional scholar, for whom the question of personal existence does not arise; for the scholar's whole concern is to eliminate or ignore the individual point of view in an effort to establish the objective truth - a would-be impersonal synthesis of public facts. ⁶⁷

He later remarked that the Notes "were not written to pander to people's tastes" and were made "as unattractive, academically speaking, as possible."⁶⁸ He declared that he would be satisfied if only one person were ever to benefit from them.

      In their final version, Notes on Dhamma consist of the two essays on "Paticcasamuppada" (conditionality) and "Paramattha Sacca"(higher truth) and twenty shorter notes on a range of key Pali terms, such as "Atta"(self), "Citta" (mind), "Rupa" (form) etc. They are all written in a dense, exact style in numbered sections, most of the key terms remaining in Pali. Nanavira composed them as an explicit critique of the orthodox Theravada position "with the purpose of clearing away a mass of dead matter which is choking the [Buddha's discourses]." ⁶⁹

      In keeping with Nanavira's wishes, the Notes have not been indexed. This, he felt, would turn the book into a "work of reference." Whereas "it is actually intended to be read and digested as a single whole, with each separate note simply presenting a different facet of the same central theme."⁷⁰ Elsewhere he describes his Notes as being like "so many beads inter-connected with numbers of threads, in a kind of three-dimensional network." ⁷¹

      This holomorphic character of the Notes is reflected most explicitly in the fourth and final section entitled "Fundamental Structure," which consists of two parts, "Static Aspect" and "Dynamic Aspect." In his usual ironic manner, Nanavira describes this section as "really a remarkably elegant piece of work, almost entirely original, and also quite possibly correct. I am obliged to say this myself, since it is improbable that anybody else will. It is most unlikely that anyone will make anything of it." ⁷² This is certainly true for the present writer.

      "Fundamental Structure" attempts to describe by means of terse philosophical language and symbolic diagrams the "inherent structure governing the selectivity of consciousness"⁷³ which is common to both the enlightened and unenlightened person alike. Nanavira compares this fundamental structure to a chessboard on which both "passionate chess," i.e. a game following the rules but complicated by the influence of passion, and its opposite, "dispassionate chess," can both be played. But he admits that these ideas are "only indirectly connected to the Buddha's Teaching proper."⁷⁴ He sees them as a possible corrective to certain tendencies in abstract, scientific thinking to distance oneself from a sense of concrete existential location. For someone who does not suffer from this problem, however, he acknowledges that it will serve no purpose to study "Fundamental Structure."

      Nanavira recognises a yawning gulf between the world-view of the average Western person and the Teaching of the Buddha. For those uninclined to the somewhat dry and technical approach of "Fundamental Structure" he recommends prior study of Existentialist philosophy, as found in the writings of Kierkegaard, Sartre, Camus and, in particular, Martin Heidegger's Being and Time . For these thinkers had also discarded the detached, rationalist approach to philosophy and emphasised immediate questions of personal existence. He also speaks highly of James Joyce's Ulysses , the early novels of Aldous Huxley, and the writings of Franz Kafka, all of which had a strong influence on him as a young man. Nanavira nonetheless warned against confusing Existentialism with Buddhism. For "one who has understood the Buddha's Teaching no longer asks these questions; he is arya 'noble,' and no more a puthujjana , and he is beyond the range of the existential philosophies."⁷⁵ The Dhamma does not offer answers; it shows "the way leading to the final cessation of all questions about self and the world."

      Nanavira also found the very positivism he so deplored in the West infecting the writings of some of the most respected Sri Lankan authorities on Buddhism. K.N. Jayatilleke, O.H. de A. Wijesekera and G.P. Malalasekera are all taken to task on this point. Despite their being professed Buddhists, Nanavira compares the former two unfavourably with the Christian thinker Kierkegaard. He criticises Jayatilleke, for example, for presenting the Four Noble Truths as though they were propositions of fact, thus obscuring their character as imperatives for action. He compares them to the bottle in Alice in Wonderland labelled "Drink Me!" From this perspective (also that of the Dhammacakkappavattana Sutta),

the Four Noble Truths are the ultimate tasks for a man's performance - Suffering commands "Know me absolutely!", Arising commands "Abandon Me!", Cessation commands "Realize me!", and the Path commands "Develop me!".⁷⁶

      Startling images of this kind abound throughout Nanavira's letters, which reveal him both as a rigorous analytical thinker and also a literary stylist of a high order. By reflecting, in addition, the radical seriousness and renunciation he adopted towards the personal realisation of the Buddha's Teaching, Nanavira's writings stand out as one of the most original and important contributions to Buddhist literature this century.

      But why then, if this is true, does Nanavira Thera remain such an obscure figure? The short answer is because he singularly fails to fit the popular stereotype of what a contemporary Buddhist should be.

It is frequently assumed in the West that Buddhists are mystically inclined, liberal, ecologically sensitive, democratic, pacifist, tolerant, life-affirming, compassionate and spiritual. After reading Clearing the Path, however, such are not the qualities one would readily ascribe to Nanavira Thera. Since the image he presents is at odds with this stereotype, he is liable to appear to many Western (and modern Asian) Buddhists as instinctively unattractive. What validity then does the stereotype have? Could it be that it is no more than a romantic re-invention of Buddhism, which presents a model of "spirituality" that embodies those values the "materialistic" West feels it has lost? Is the real reason for Nanavira's unattractiveness the challenge he presents to the assumptions on which the stereotype is based? Or, alternatively, is the stereotype valid and Nanavira Thera deluded and misguided?

      As the first step in unravelling Nanavira's motives, it is helpful to consider his relation to the book that inspired him to become a bhikkhu and its author Julius Evola. In only one of his published letters (21 February 1964) does he mention (in passing) Evola's The Doctrine of Awakening . He adds in parenthesis: "which, however, I cannot now recommend to you without considerable reserves." ⁷⁷ But nowhere does he state what those reserves are.

      While there is no evidence in Nanavira's writings that he subscribed to Evola's political or racist views, there are a number of threads that forge a link between the spiritual outlook of the two men. One of these threads would be Nanavira's privileged military background and somewhat aristocratic bearing, which would have been endorsed by Evola's ideas on the superiority of the warrior caste and the aristocratic nature of Buddhism. While nothing in the content of his writings suggests any conscious promotion of such values, his capacity for self-discipline and his wry, detached tone of voice reflect a person who assumed authority as a right rather than a privilege.

      Perhaps the strongest thread is the fact that Harold Musson's foreword to The Doctrine of Awakening could, with minor adjustments, have served as a foreword fifteen years later to Nanavira Thera's Notes on Dhamma. For the aim of the two works is essentially the same. To summarise Musson's foreword, these are: (1) "to recapture the spirit of Buddhism in its essential form;"⁷⁸ (2) "to clear away some of the woolly ideas"⁷⁹ (the preface to Notes on Dhamma says "dead matter") which have gathered around the Buddha's Teaching; and (3), and most importantly: the "encouragement of a practical application of the doctrine.⁸⁰

      While Nanavira makes no reference to, and could well have been unfamiliar with, Evola's Gu?nonist conception of Tradition, he certainly is a traditionalist, though in a narrower sense than Gu?non. He says at one point that there is nothing he dislikes more than someone who declares that the aim of all religions is the same. While Gu?non, who spent the last twenty years of his life as a convert to Islam in Cairo, eventually came to include Buddhism as part of the revelation that lies at the heart of all religions, Nanavira came to regard any view that did not accord with his reading of the early Buddhist Canon as deficient. He is dismissive of theistic belief and religion in general and Christianity in particular.

      Nanavira likewise shares Evola's contempt for the modern world. He is scathing about evolutionary and relativist conceptions of ethics and regards the Buddha's ethical code as an absolute and invariable truth. He also has littly sympathy for the Western devotion to democracy, which he describes as "a general inadequacy in modern European thought - the growing view that the majority must be right, that truth is to be decided by appeal to the ballot-box."⁸¹ For Nanavira the majority are simply a majority in delusion and therefore unlikely to arrive at the kinds of conclusions which would be reached by an enlightened minority of aryas . He would disagree with Evola, though, in the value of pursuing any course of political action. For Nanavira it is not the modern world that is flawed, but existence as such.

      A real but rarely acknowledged problem lies in the Buddhist conception of a "superior" person, one who has gained privileged insight into the nature of existence. This view is held in common by all Buddhist schools and is pivotal to the oft-repeated argument that Buddhism, unlike other traditions, offers a practical way of personal transformation through spiritual practice. As Evola was aware, this doctrine plays into the hands of the political right. This principle was the basis for the government of old Tibet, which believed that the best way to run a country was by an enlightened elite, particularly an elite motivated by boundless compassion for all beings.

      As soon as one seriously introduces Buddhist values into the arena of politics, one will encounter difficulties in reconciling them not only with capitalism and consumerism, but also with liberal democracy. While it may be fashionable to draw on Buddhist doctrines such as interconnectedness to support a Green political ideology, for example, one needs to be aware that the body of doctrine that enshrines such a notion could also be used to support a Green totalitarianism, a society governed by an enlightened minority who would compassionately dictate what would be best for the survival of the planet.

      Not that any of these questions would have been of concern to Nanavira. For in many ways Nanavira represents the kind of Theravada Buddhist monk that Mahayana Buddhists would criticise as self-centred and uncaring. (It comes as no surprise that he vehemently asserts that the "Mahayana is not the Buddha's teaching."⁸²) Only once in his writings does he mention the traditional Theravada meditation of loving-kindness (mettabhavana), only to say that he has never formally practised it. His tendency to physical isolation could arguably reflect a philosophical tendency to solipsism; in one letter he describes the appearance of another person as merely "a certain modification of my experience that requires elaborate description."⁸³ And elsewhere he writes: "I am far more strongly moved by episodes in books than by those in real life, which usually leave me cold."⁸⁴ He is quite unequivocal about Nirvana being the cessation of existence in any form. "There is a way out," he insists, "there is a way to put a stop to existence, if only we have the courage to let go of our cherished humanity."⁸⁵

      Nor should Nanavira's experience be judged negatively according to Mahayana Buddhist standards. A so-called "Hinayana" arya is considered even in the Mahayana traditions as part of the Buddhist Sangha, and, as such, an object of respect and refuge. Nanavira may not have been motivated by great compassion, but he did claim to have experienced directly the unconditioned reality of Nirvana, which is the central truth of all Buddhist traditions.

      Is a right-wing misogynist with uncontrollable lusts and a penchant for suicide thereby automatically disqualified from experiencing Nirvana? Nanavira points to passages in the Pali Canon where the stream entrant is shown to be capable of anger, jealousy, deceit and drunkenness, transgressing the lesser monastic rules, even disrobing on account of sensual desire, and, as a layman, breaking the five precepts. "Unless you bring the [practitioner] down to earth," he writes, "the Buddha's Teaching can never be a reality for you. So long as you are content to put the sotopanna (stream entrant) on a pedestal well out of reach, it can never possibly occur to you that it is your duty to become sotapanna yourself ... here and now in this very life."⁸⁶

      For Nanavira, Buddhism offers a radical and uncompromising praxis as a response to the deepest questions of human existence. As such it avoids the extremes of rationalism and romanticism. A scholar of Buddhism, he comments, can only feel safe as long as his subject "is not one day going to get up and look him between the eyes. ... (Quite the last thing that a professor of Buddhism would dream of doing is to profess Buddhism - that is left to mere amateurs like myself.)"⁸⁷ He is likewise aware of how his solitary life in the Ceylonese jungle is liable to be interpreted romantically: "The British public wants romance," he complains, "and I am not a romantic figure, and have no desire to be portrayed as one."⁸⁸ As in the Buddha's famous parable of the raft, Buddhism is a means to an end and not an end in itself. For Nanavira even the terms "Buddhism" and "Buddhist" carry "a slightly displeasing air about them - they are too much like labels one sticks on the outside of packages regardless of what the packages contain."⁸⁹

      Towards the end of his life Nanavira was convinced that the Dhamma was "very far from being understood in the West."⁹⁰ For whether aware of it or not, Europeans were still fundamentally preoccupied with the question of God, the very idea of a "moral but Godless universe"⁹¹ being utterly alien. Yet behind the belief in God lies the even more deeply entrenched sense that the universe has a meaning or purpose. He approvingly quotes Nietzsche:

Has existence then a significance at all? - the question that will require a couple of centuries even to be heard in all its profundity. ⁹²

Nietzsche's question disturbs in the same way as Nanavira's suicide. For such statements challenge those collectively held, Christian-based views about the nature of life which still dominate our instinctive ethical sense of good and evil. For Buddhism to penetrate deeply into the European psyche it will have to reach such pre-articulate strata of experience. Otherwise it is liable to become merely a consoling set of beliefs and views still founded on a Theistic ethos. Enlightenment is not a transcendent mystical rapture but an ethical experience that reveals the nature of the existential dilemma and the way to its resolution.

      Nanavira firmly challenges the idea that the Buddha's Teaching is in any way life-affirming. He condemns the fairly common practice at his time among Buddhists to call upon the good authority of notable non-Buddhists to attest to the Buddha's good character. He finds it particularly galling that a certain Sri Lankan professor would recruit Albert Schweizer to this purpose. For "Schweizer's philosophy is 'Reverence for Life', whereas the Buddha has said that just as even the smallest piece of excrement has a foul smell so even the smallest piece of existence is not to be commended." ⁹³

      This scatological view of existence is for many Western people very difficult to swallow. Yet Nanavira feels justified in making such statements not merely on the basis of Canonical authority, but on the authority of his own enlightenment, his stream entry. And it is this authority that he likewise calls upon to justify his final act of suicide.

      The debate over the validity of Nanavira's claim to be a stream entrant had already begun in Sri Lanka before he died. It is an offence deserving expulsion from the order for a bhikkhu to declare himself to have a spiritual attainment that he in fact does not have. Even if he does have the attainment, he is forbidden to tell of it to anyone except a fellow bhikkhu. Nanavira's claim to stream entry was recorded in a letter in a sealed envelope that was only to be opened by the senior bhikkhu of the Island Hermitage in the event of his death. For some reason (perhaps a rumour of suicide?), the letter was opened in 1964 and the contents became known. To defuse the matter, Nanavira spoke openly about it for the first time to a fellow bhikkhu in Colombo, thus letting "this rather awkward cat ... out of the bag."⁹⁴

      How does one decide whether another person really is a stream entrant or whether they are deluding themselves? According to the suttas , only an arya can recognise another arya . It would follow, therefore, that only a bona fide arya would have the authority to deny Nanavira's claim. But then the same questions would arise with regard to that person, which would require the authority of yet another bona fide arya , and so on ad infinitum.

      Subjectively, however, the attainment of stream entry can be validated by a discernible and definitive psychological change. For upon attaining stream entry three "fetters" (samyojana) disappear for good: (1) views that a self abides either in or apart from the psycho-physical aggregates (sakkaya-ditthi); (2) doubts about the validity of the Buddha, the Dhamma, the Sangha, the Training, Conditionality and other key doctrines (vicikiccha); and (3) attachment to the efficacity of mere rules and rituals (silabbata-paramasa). For Nanavira to have made the claim he did implies that he actually experienced the disappearance of these tendencies from his own mind. But only he (or another clairvoyant arya) would have been able to know this. Although his writings bear no trace of these attitudes, that alone would be insufficient evidence to conclude anything about the degree of the author's attainment; for it could reflect merely a commitment to doctrinal orthodoxy.

      One also cannot rule out the possibility that Nanavira Thera was suffering from a delusion, that he was driven to suicide by unconscious fears and desires over which he had no awareness or control. The clearest statement of his own views on the matter appears in a letter of 16 May, 1963. "Do not think," he writes,

that I regard suicide as praiseworthy - that there can easily be an element of weakness in it, I am the first to admit... -, but I certainly regard it as preferable to a number of other possibilities. (I would a hundred times rather have it said of the Notes that the author killed himself as a bhikkhu than that he disrobed; for bhikkhus have become arahats in the act of suicide, but it is not recorded that anyone became arahat in the act of disrobing.)⁹⁵

It might help overcome the unease about the stigma of suicide if one described Nanavira's act as one of "enlightened euthanasia."

      The greatest irony of this story is how a passage from a sutta saved an Italian fascist from committing suicide, in gratitude for which he wrote a book that impelled an English army officer to become a bhikkhu , who eventually committed suicide with the conviction that it was fully justified by the suttas.

      The value of Nanavira Thera's life lies not so much in the answers it gives but in the questions it raises about what it means for a European to be a practising Buddhist. His writings clear away many woolly ideas about the Buddha's Teaching (at least as found in the Pali Canon) and force one to address uncomfortable questions that are usually ignored. Are either Evola's fascist or Nanavira's life-denying interpretations of the Buddha's Teaching any more or less tenable than the liberal-democratic and life-affirming readings of the tradition that abound in the West today? Even if Nanavira's work only forces us to recognise the sub-conscious and culturally biased assumptions we project onto Buddhism, then it will have provided an important service. This does not mean that we would then have to adopt his (or, heaven forbid, Evola's) views rather than our own, but simply that we would have stepped free of one more "thicket of views," thus enabling a clearer vision of how to proceed along a path whose ultimate destination we cannot know.

      Whatever reservations one may have about Nanavira Thera, one has to acknowledge that he was the first European to have left such a vivid and rigorous account of a life dedicated to realising the truths disclosed by the Dhamma. Of course, it is impossible to say whether other Western Buddhists have not accomplished the same or more. But their published writings tend not to discuss these matters. Nanavira's uniqueness lies in his having embraced the Dhamma with wholehearted confidence, having sought to clear away with reason much of the confusion surrounding its orthodox interpretation, having practised it relentlessly, having recorded his experience of it in detail, and ultimately having sacrificed his life for it.

POSTSCRIPT

Since completing this essay (an earlier version of which was originally intended as a chapter in my book The Awakening of the West: The Encounter of Buddhism and Western Culture [London, Thorsons/ Berkeley, Parallax, 1994]) further writings by and concerning Nanavira Thera have come to my attention.

      By far the most significant of these is an unpublished volume of 638 typewritten pages entitled Early Writings (1950 - 1960) , likewise compiled by Samanera Bodhesako. The bulk of this volume (426 pp.) consists of Nanavira?s extensive correspondence with Nanamoli Thera from 1954-1959. Unfortunately, only fragments of Nanamoli?s side of the correspondence have been found. These letters shed considerable light on the relations between the two men and provide a wealth of material on the formation of Nanavira?s thought prior to his "stream entry." The remainder of the volume includes two early essays (Nibbana and Anatta and Sketch for a Proof of Rebirth) as well as notes from a Commonplace Book and Marginalia from books owned by Nanavira.

      I hope at some later date to be able to incorporate this additional material into a more detailed and critical study of Nanavira, Nanamoli and their times.

NOTES

66. ---. "work book. Its purpose...": Anon, vii.

67. ---. "the reader is presumed...": Anon, 5.

68. ---. "were not written to pander...": Anon., 321-3.

69. ---. "with the purpose of clearing away...": Anon., 339.

70. ---. "it is actually intended...": Anon., 254.

71. ---. "so many beads inter-connected...": Anon., 337.

72. ---. "really a remarkably...": Anon., 240.

73. ---. "inherent structure governing...": Anon., 302.

74. ---. "only indirectly connected...": Anon., 261.

75. ---. "one who has understood the Buddha's Teaching...": Anon., 12.

76. ---. "the Four Noble Truths...": Anon., 259.

77. ---. "which, however, I cannot...": Anon., 357.

78. ---. "to recapture the spirit...": Evola (1), ix.

79. ---. "to clear away some...": Evola (1), ix.

80. ---. "encouragement of a practical...": Evola (1), ix.

81. ---. "a general inadequacy...": Anon., 397.

82. ---. "Mahayana is not the Buddha's teaching...": Anon., 296.

83. ---. "a certain modification...": Anon., 270.

84. ---. "I am far more strongly moved...": Anon., 292.

85. ---. "There is a way out...": Anon., 444.

86. ---. "Unless you bring the [practitioner]...:" Anon., 282.

87. ---. "is not one day going to get up...": Anon., 452.

88. ---. "The British public wants romance...": Anon., 466.

89. ---. "a slightly displeasing air...": Anon., 255.

90. ---. "very far from being understood...": Anon., 442.

91. ---. "moral but Godless universe...": Anon., 307.

92. ---. "Has existence then a significance... ": Anon., 243.

93. ---. "Schweitzer's philosophy...": Anon., 256.

94. ---. "this rather awkward cat...": Anon., 381.

95. ---. "Do not think,...": Anon., 279.

BIBLIOGRAPHY

Anon. [Samanera Bodhesako] (ed.) Clearing the Path: Writings of Nanavira Thera (1960-1965) . Colombo: Path Press, 1987.

Evola, Julius. Tr. Harold Musson. (1) The Doctrine of Awakening: A Study on the Buddhist Ascesis . London: Luzac, 1951.

------. (2) Le Chemin du Cinabre . Milan: Arch?-Arktos, 1982.

Maugham, Robin. (1) Search for Nirvana . London: W.H. Allen, 1975.

------. (2) The Second Window . London: Heinemann, 1968.

Maugham, W. Somerset. The Razor's Edge . London: Mandarin, 1990. [First published by Heinemann, 1944.]

Nanavira Thera. The Tragic, the Comic and the Personal . The Wheel Publication no. 339/341. Kandy: Buddhist Publication Society, 1987. [This is comprised of 29 letters, 27 of which are included in Clearing the Path. ]

Rawlinson, Andrew. Western Gurus and Enlightened Masters. La Salle, Illinois: Open Court, forthcoming.

Waterfield, R. "Baron Julius Evola and the Hermetic Tradition," Gnosis, no. 14, Winter 1989-90.

Wettimuny, R. G. de S. The Buddha's Teaching: Its Essential Meaning . Sri Lanka: Private edition, 1990. [First published, 1969. Wettimuny was one of Nanavira's correspondents, to whom he dedicated this book. It is regarded by some as a systematic presentation of Nanavira's views.]

Zolla, E. "The Evolution of Julius Evola's Thought," Gnosis , no. 14, Winter 1989-90.