‘Thumpanen Americavata’ (From Thumpane to America) — The autobiography of Ven. Dr. Henepola Gunarathana (Ven. H. G.) the chief priest of USA and Canada and the abbot of the West Virginia Meditation Centre is indeed a miniature (though running into a thick volume of 400 odd pages) example of this journey of Samsara, full of misery and despair right from his humble beginnings as a little novice in a village temple up to the present dizzy heights as a spiritual leader of an ever-expanding Buddhist community in the US. The book happens to be an unprecedented kind of chronicle in many ways: The incredible sincerity of narration, amazingly thrilling events and episodes and most of all the extra-orinarily lucid Sinhala diction that can only be expected from a savant with his roots running deep into the rustic backwoods of a Sri Lankan village.
What Ven. H. G. reiterates in the preface to the book is that no end of troubles he has been called upon to undergo were symbolic of our gruelling journey through Samsara. He states that his object in presenting these episodes in this book has been to illustrate how the phenomenon of ‘kamma’ operates in order to bring about either suffering or otherwise of human life. He urges the reader not to misinterpret his expatiating upon many things as an egoistic exercise, yet it turns out as we read on that the tone of the writer has been quite the opposite — that of one nurtured by the edifying influence of Buddhist philosophy who is extremely frank and outspoken and also has no qualms about talking openly of even one’s most ignominious defeats.
An episode towards the end of the volume amply illustrates this. Here the Buddhist elite domiciled in America convenes a meeting at the Washington Buddhist Vihara where Ven. H. G. was the chief priest. The object of the meeting was to register a protest against Ven. HG’s plans to establish the West Virginia meditation centre. A speaker at this meeting severely castigates the priest for allegedly neglecting the Washington Vihara in his preoccupation with the meditation centre.
This half-hour long broadside was enough reason for any human being to erupt into a fury and react violently. Yet the priest’s response to it was quite the opposite — one following the Buddha’s principles. He writes: If I had said something harsh it would have created a row and would have been a stigma on me and the place too. Instead I recalled the Buddha’s dhamma and generated compassion to all.’
Then the chief priest addresses the gathering and recalls all good things done by the former speaker to the temple and without a word of blame gets them to observe the five precepts and follows up with a chanting of ‘Karaneeya Metta Sutta’ which indeed had been meant by the Lord Buddha to be used by monks to spread compassion on evil spirits who had disturbed their meditation in the jungle! (A fitting repartee to those who opposed setting up of a meditation centre!)
Dr. Gunarathana’s odyssey described in this book amounts to a veritable bridge spanning an incredibly wide chasm between his formative years and the present heights achieved in terms of his mission as well as of his own education. He very humbly confesses that he even feels when contemplating this reality whether he is living in America in a dream.
The beginning was so humble that he reveals it in terms of a host of privations suffered by him ‘Being born to an extremely poor family I hadn’t even seen anything like toys nor had I enjoyed other ordinary comforts like good clothes and books. Almost all my ordained life was lived by alms received into the begging bowl, I had no wealthy or educated relations and so spent years without a red cent in hand...; Quite miraculously, just as he attributes it all to past kamma, his subsequent position was the amazing antithesis — ‘I now travel in the first or the business class on planes with expensive computers in hand... There is no luxury car in this world in which I haven’t travelled — Rolls Royce, Mercedes Benz, BMW, Audi, Porche, Jaguar etc. and also I have travelled in helicopters and most elite liners.
Putting down all his initial suffering to alleviation or cessation evil deeds acquired in past lives is the quintessential mark of the whole autobiography. It is from this standpoint that he considers that all those who inflicted pain and suffering on him were not enemies, but his benefactors who made possible that cessation of kamma. He summarizes all those episodes of suffering in a nutshell in his preface thus. ‘My father beat me up until part of my kamma ended. At Malandeniya temple the chief priest there was good enough to do the same by slapping me and hitting me with canes, broom sticks, rocks, the ‘Buddha puja bowl’, slippers and even legs. Some other kamma were spent by suffering from wounds made by bites of leeches, by nearly drowning in water, felling off trees, being chased away from temples, getting blackguarded etc. etc. I now treat all these people as my friends as they helped end my past evil deeds.
Ven. HG’s suffering begins at home with a father whose love for his children was hidden under a gruff exterior and so often beat them up severely only with the intention of bringing them up well.
‘If the father had loved me outwardly as he did thoroughly inside’ says the priest, ‘I wouldn’t have thought of leaving home’. It was the family’s indigence, father’s vehemence and the proximity of the temple that motivated him to leave home which, however, he believes to be due to a great meritorious deed (kusala kamma) which idea is amply corroborated by the eventual heights he was able to reach in his career as a true disciple of the Buddha. A highly prophetic statement he himself made during his early childhood is interesting in this instance — when he was repeating several English words learnt from his elder brother, the elders asked him why he wanted to learn them and his answer was ‘I will learn this language one day and after getting ordained will preach dhamma in that language.’ This indeed turned out to be reality when he became a leading preacher with a great demand in the international sphere, as the book itself reveals.
His suffering did not end by getting ordained, for the chief priest of Malandeniya temple proved to be a great tormentor of this pupil monks as well as other urchins in the temple. The severity of his corporal punishment he describes with a telling metaphor - compared to the priest’s beating, that of his father had been a mere dessert as against a main meal!
The ordeals Ven. HG was compelled to undergo were perhaps the bitterest any monk has ever happened to suffer. He ran away from the temple three times being unable to tolerate the ill-treatment at the hands of his chief priest, the third time being the most excruciating having to trek all the way from Galagedara on the Kandy-Kurunegala road right up to Anuradhapura - more than a hundred miles on foot!
From the following day after ordination at the age of 14 years Ven. HG had to go round the village with the begging bowl. Poverty-stricken as they were the villagers willingly filled his bowl, yet the hungry stray dogs bit him seven times on these treks. It is a strange coincidence that all these seven dogs died within three days of each incident ‘due to some reason I do not know’ says the author. It is indeed yet another indication of the phenomeno beyond human comprehension that has probably to do with powers related to kamma.
The many adversities Ven. HG was compelled to suffer even after embarking on learning were extraordinary and perhaps represent a profile of similar suffering many such novices in temples can be undergoing in silence. It is when he goes to learn at the Bendiyamulla Pirivena in Gampaha that this phase of his misfortunes begins. (It is on his way to this place while waiting for a train for several hours that he nearly drowns in the river and was extricated by an unknown man running a boutique near the railway station).
At Bendiyamulla pirivena he has no place to stay and so manages to improvise a lodging by covering part of a thatched hall with gunny sacks. He finds his meals, as usual in major part of his life, by begging into the bowl precisely the way the Buddha has prescribed for a true recluse leading a homeless existence. He even manages, as there was no means of lighting at night, electricity being quite out of the question, to study by a clay lamp with coconut oil gained again from begging around. Even his higher ordination (upasampada) is marked by this ever haunting poverty of his early life, having no pomp and pageantry that was associated with others who obtained the higher order together on the same day.
The incident connected with the Kohilawatta temple in Kelaniya while studying at Vidyalankara Pirivena is again an antithesis of the honours he was destined to get in later life. After performing a preaching session before a panel of such calibre as Ven. Walpola Rahula and Ven. Siri Seevali, he was stranded on the road late in the evening as the buses did not stop. (The author comments that Sri Lanka’s bus crews are the worst hoodlums in the world!). After walking six miles he arrives at the riverside late night and being woken up unexpectedly the boy in the temple who paddles the canoe blackguards the young priest in filthy language. His travails were not yet over, not for a long time thereafter too.
Abandoning his fitful pirivena studies he joins an English school in Gampaha now determined to pursue his fervour for a missionary career. This he gains with the kind patronage of Ven. Madihe Pannasiha starting with a stint in India and then proceeding to US where his destiny was to flourish. He exerts himself tremendously to build up the Washington Viharaya sometimes even physically carrying building materials on his shoulder to the temple. The troubles, threats, backbiting and let-downs he has had to suffer in his long crusade have been described in this book in gripping detail that makes extremely interesting reading.
‘Thumpanen Amerikavata’ is a landmark book on two counts: One being an entertaining guide to any priest or layman, particularly to novice monks who sometimes lead a life of extreme difficulties, to take life in one’s stride cheerfully whatever the odds obstructing one’s progress. The second and even more important aspect of the book is that it stands as a beacon to both the clergy and the practising Buddhists to take up, or get encouraged if already taken up, the true Buddhist practice - meditation.
From the very outset in his book Ven. Dr. Gunarathana lays ample stress on his attachment to meditation even when there are inhibitions evinced on such practice by other bhikkhus. There is the very heart-rending experience of the writer engaging in an extremely arduous session of pirith-chanting striving to surpass the sound of drums in a burst of youthful adventure and as a consequence losing his voice and memory power too disastrously causing him to fail in his studies as well. It is by engaging in meditation on the sly when others were fast asleep in the night, that he manages to regain his lost powers proving the validity of this age-old practice of self-improvement. This incident is described in vivid detail of how with each step of meditation regaining of new life inside his skull was gradually experienced. It is therefore quite fitting that the book ends with the very successful establishment of the ‘Bhavana Society Forest Monastery in West Virginia, USA and incidentally, his PhD thesis being Critical Analysis of Jhanas in Theravada Buddhist meditation’.
