Anagarika Dharmapala (17 September 1864 - 29 April 1933) was a leading figure in initiating two outstanding features of Buddhism in the twentieth century. He was a pioneer in the revival of Buddhism in India after it had been virtually extinct there for several centuries, and he was the first Buddhist in modern times to preach the Dharma in three continents: Asia, North America, and Europe. He was a major reformer and revivalist of Sri Lankan Buddhism.
Biography
He was born Don David Hewavitarne in Colombo, Sri Lanka, to Don Carolis Hewavitharana and Mallika Dharmagunawardhana (the daughter of Andiris Perera Dharmagunawardhana), who were among the richest merchents of Ceylon. His younger brother was Dr Charles Alwis Hewavitharana.
Sri Lanka was then a British colony known as Ceylon, so Hewavitarne's state education was a English one: he attended Christian College, Kotte and the Colombo Academy.
This was a time of Buddhist revival. In 1875 in New York, Madame Blavatsky and Colonel Olcott had founded the Theosophical Society. They were both very sympathetic to what they understood of Buddhism, and in 1880 they arrived in Ceylon, declared themselves to be Buddhists, and publicly took the Refuges and Precepts from a prominent Sinhalese bhikkhu. Colonel Olcott kept coming back to Ceylon and devoted himself there to the cause of Buddhist education, eventually setting up more than 300 Buddhist schools, some of which are still in existence. It was in this period that Hewavitarne changed his name to Anagarika Dharmapala.
'Dharmapala' means 'protector of the dharma'. 'Anagarika', a term coined by Dharmapala, means "homeless one." It is a midway status between monk and layperson. As such, he took the eight precepts (against killing, stealing, sexual misconduct, harmful speech, intoxication, eating after noon, entertainments and fashionable attire, and luxurious beds) for life. These eight precepts were commonly taken by Sri Lankan laypeople on observance days.[1] But for a person to take them for life was highly unusual. Dharmapala was the first anagarika - that is, a celibate, full-time worker for Buddhism - in modern times. It seems that he took a vow of celibacy at the age of eight and remained faithful to it all his life. Although he wore a yellow robe, it was not of the traditional bhikkhu pattern, and he did not shave his head. He felt that the observance of all the vinaya rules would get in the way of his work, especially as he flew around the world. Neither the title nor the office became popular, but in this role, he "was the model for lay activism in modernist Buddhism."[2]. In fact, he is widely considered a bodhisattva in Sri Lanka.[3]
His trip to Bodh-Gaya was inspired by an 1885 visit there by Sir Edwin Arnold, author of The Light of Asia, who soon started advocating for the renovation of the site and its return to Buddhist care.[4]
At the invitation of Paul Carus, he returned to the U.S. in 1896, and again in 1902-04, where he traveled and taught widely.[5]
Dharmapala eventually broke with Olcott and the Theosophists because of Olcott's stance on universal religion. "One of the important factors in his rejection of theosophy centered on this issue of universalism; the price of Buddhism being assimilated into a non-Buddhist model of truth was ultimately too high for him."[6] Dharmapala stated that Theosophy was "only consolidating Krishna worship."[7] "To say that all religions have a common foundation only shows the ignorance of the speaker...Dharma alone is supreme to the Buddhist"[8]
At Sarnath in 1933 he was ordained a bhikkhu, and he died at Sarnath in December of the same year, aged sixty-nine.
Religious contribution
The young Dharmapala helped Colonel Olcott in his work, particularly by acting as his translator. Dharmapala also became quite close to Madame Blavatsky, who advised him to study Pāli and to work for the good of humanity - which is what he did. It was at this time that he changed his name to Dharmapala (meaning "Guardian of the Dharma").
In 1891 Anagarika Dharmapala was on a pilgrimage to the recently restored Mahabodhi Temple, where Siddhartha Gautama - the Buddha - attained enlightenment at Bodh Gaya, India.[9] Here he experienced a shock to find the temple in the hands of a Saivite priest, the Buddha image transformed into a Hindu icon and Buddhists barred from worship. As a result, he began an agitation movement.[10]
The Mahabodhi society at Colombo was founded in 1891 but its offices were soon moved to Calcutta the following year in 1892. One of its primary aims was the restoration to Buddhist control of the Mahabodhi Temple at Bodh Gaya, the chief of the four ancient Buddhist holy sites.[11][12] To accomplish this, Dharmapala initiated a lawsuit against the Brahmin priests who had held control of the site for centuries.[11][12] After a protracted struggle, this was successful, with the partial restoration of the site to the management of the Maha Bodhi Society in 1949.[11][12]
Mahabodhi Society centers were set up in many Indian cities, and this had the effect of raising Indian consciousness about Buddhism. Converts were made mostly among the educated, but also among some low caste Indians in the south.[13]
Due to the efforts of Dharmapala, the site of the Buddha's parinibbana (physical death) at Kushinagar has once again become a major attraction for Burmese Buddhists, as it was for many centuries previously. Mahabodhi Movement in 1890s held the Muslim Rule in India responsible for the decay of Buddhism in India.[9][14][15] Anagarika Dharmapala did not hesitate to lay the chief blame for the decline of Buddhism in India at the door of Muslim fanaticism.[16]
In 1893 Dharmapala was invited to attend the World Parliament of Religions in Chicago as a representative of "Southern Buddhism" - which was the term applied at that time to the Theravada. He was a great success and by his early thirties he was already a global figure, continuing to travel and give lectures and establish viharas around the world during the next forty years. At the same time he concentrated on establishing schools and hospitals in Ceylon and building temples and viharas in India. Among the most important of the temples he built was one at Sarnath, where the Buddha first taught.
Dharmapala's voluminous diaries have been published, and he also wrote some memoirs.
The above was adapted from Sangharakshita, Great Buddhists of the Twentieth Century, Windhorse Publications 1996, with permission.
Dharmapala, Science, and Protestant Buddhism
The term 'Protestant Buddhism,' coined by scholar Gananath Obeyesekere[17], is often applied to Dharmapala's form of Buddhism. It is Protestant in two ways. First, it is influenced by Protestant ideals such as freedom from religious institutions, freedom of conscience, and focus on individual interior experience. Second, it is in itself a protest against claims of Christian superiority, colonialism, and Christian missionary work aimed at weakening Buddhism. "Its salient characteristic is the importance it assigns to the laity."[18] It arose among the new, literate, middle class centered in Colombo.
The term 'Buddhist modernism' is used to describe forms of Buddhism suited the modern world, usually influenced by European enlightenment thinking, and often adapted by Asian Buddhists as a counter to claims of European or Christian superiority. Buddhist modernists emphasize certain aspects of traditional Buddhism, while de-emphasizing others.[citation needed] Some of the characteristics of Buddhist modernism are: importance of the laity as against the sangha; rationality and de-emphasis of supernatural and mythological aspects; consistency with (and anticipation of) modern science; emphasis on spontaneity, creativity, and intuition; democratic, anti-institutional character; emphasis on meditation over devotional and ceremonial actions.[19]
Dharmapala is an excellent example of an Asian Buddhist modernist, and perhaps the paradigm example of Protestant Buddhism. He is particularly concerned with presenting Buddhism as consistent with science, especially the theory of evolution.
Survey of Writings
Most of Dharmapala's works are collected in Return to Righteousness: A Collection of Speeches, Essays, and Letters of the Anagarika Dharmapala. (Edited by Ananda Gurunge. Colombo: Ministry of Education and Cultural Affairs, 1965).
The World's Debt to Buddha (1893)
This paper was read to a crowded session of the Parliament of World Religions in Chicago, September 18, 1893. At this early stage of his career, Dharmapala was concerned with making Buddhism palatable to his Western audience. This talk is full of references to science, the European Enlightenment, and Christianity. While presenting Buddhism in these familiar terms, he also hints that it is superior to any philosophy of the West. In addition, he spends considerable time discussing the ideal Buddhist polity under Asoka and the Buddha's ethics for laypeople.
"The essence of the vast teachings of the Buddha is: The entire obliteration of all that is evil. The perfect consummation of all that is good and pure. The complete purification of mind."[20]
"The strongest emphasis has been put by Buddha on the supreme importance of having an unprejudiced mind before we start on the road of investigating the truth. Prejudice, passion, fear of expression of one's convictions and ignorance are the four biases that have to be sacrificed at the threshold."[21]
"Speaking of deity in the sense of a Supreme Creator, Buddha says that there is no such being. Accepting the doctrine of evolution as the only true one, with its corollary, the law of cause and effect, he condemns the idea of creator and strictly forbids inquiry into it as being useless."[22]
"Never was the religion propagated by force, not a drop of blood has ever been spilt in the name of Buddha."[23]
"Buddhism is a scientific religion, in as much as it earnestly enjoins that nothing whatever be accepted on faith. Buddha has said that nothing should be believed merely because it is said. Buddhism is tantamount to a knowledge of other sciences."[24]
Message of the Buddha (1925)
In the later stages of his career, Dharmapala's vociferous anti-Christian tone is more evident. Dharmapala must be understood in the context of British colonization of Sri Lanka and the presence of Christian missionaries there. This work is a good example of "Protestant Buddhism," as described above.
"With the exception of Buddhism all other religions have been destructive."[25]
"Christian governments are making use of the services of mission—arises as political scouts [sic]. the Christian capitalists and traders employ them as advance agents of commerce, and the history of missionary operations in asia has yet to be written. for a hundred years Christian missionaries have exploited Buddhist lands, and the children of poor parents have been converted to christianity by offering bribes, and now the attempt is made to convert the poor people by offering them medical aid. It is scandalous and utterly contemptible to sell religion for worldly gain."[26]
"The Message of the Buddha that I have to bring you is free from theology, priestcraft, rituals, ceremonies, dogmas, heavens, hells and other theological shibboleths. The Buddha taught to the civilized Aryans of India 25 centuries ago a scientific religion containing the highest individualistic altruistic ethics,a philosophy of life built on psychological mysticism and a cosmogony which is in harmony with geology, astronomy, radioactivity and relativity."[27]
"The mystic psychology in Buddhism is not know in the West."[28]
Desire in Buddhism (1917)
This is primarily a criticism of the morals of Christian Europe, European colonialism, and Christian missionaries.
"Desire is of two kinds, the noble and the ignoble. Noble desires prompt man to do works of charity, they make men sober, enlightened and good; ignoble desires make men to adopt the policy of Machiavelli, to distribute opium, intoxicating liquor, and introduce syphillis [sic] and create bastards, and murder helpless people for the sake of rubber, gold and land....Buddhism condemns ignoble desires and emphasises [sic] on the necessity of cultivating noble desires."[29]
The Constructive Optimism of Buddhism (1915)
Buddhism was often portrayed in the West, especially by Christian missionaries, as pessimistic, nihilistic, and passive. One of Dharmapala's main concerns was to counter such claims, and this concern is especially evident in this essay.
"The destructive religions are either polytheistic, monotheistic or materialistic. Monotheistic religions are Judaism, Christianity, Islam....Christianity is materialistic inasmuch as it posits a known beginning, and ultimate annihilation, at least for those who had no belief in the divinity of Jesus."[30]
"The civilization of ancient India was of a spiritual character."[31]
Evolution from the Standpoint of Buddhism (1926)
Darwin's theory of evolution was the cutting edge of science during Dharmapala's life. As part of his attempt to show that Buddhism is consistent with modern science, he was especially concerned with evolution. Nowhere in any of his writings is evidence that he understood Darwin's theory; his use of the word 'evolution' seems to have a broader, more general, meaning. For example, karma and rebirth have no place in Darwin's theories. He draws on the Agganna Sutta's cosmology and theory of human origin.
"The earliest human beings before the sex differentiation took place had spiritual bodies, and by their own glory the illumined the earth. when they had shown desire to eat the food that was produced from the earth and had eaten it their spiritual nature disappeared and became materialized, Darwinian evolution is more acceptable to Buddhists than the genesis theory of the mud man created by a deity who had agricultural tendencies."[32]
"...the Buddha taught the biological view of life 2,500 years ago showing how the consciousness associates itself with the germ cell in the mother's womb, and how evolution takes place week after week of the dying man ceases [sic] only to be reborn by the force of karma in another life..."[32]
Contributions to Sinhalese Buddhist Nationalism
Dharmapala was one of the primary contributors to the Buddhist revival of the 19th century that led to the creation of Buddhist institutions to match those of the missionaries (schools, the YMBA, etc), and to the independence movement of the 20th century. DeVotta characterizes his rhetoric as having four main points: "(i) Praise – for Buddhism and the Sinhalese culture; (ii) Blame – on the British imperialists, those who worked for them including Christians; (iii) Fear – that Buddhism in Sri Lanka was threatened with extinction; and (iv) Hope – for a rejuvenated Sinhalese Buddhist ascendancy" (78). He illustrated the first three points in a public speech:
-
- "This bright, beautiful island was made into a Paradise by the Aryan Sinhalese before its destruction was brought about by the barbaric vandals. Its people did not know irreligion... Christianity and polytheism [i.e. Hinduism] are responsible for the vulgar practices of killing animals, stealing, prostitution, licentiousness, lying and drunkenness... The ancient, historic, refined people, under the diabolism of vicious paganism, introduced by the British administrators, are now declining slowly away." (Anagarike Dharmapala, quoted in A. Guruge, Return to Righteousness: A Collection of Speeches, Essays and Letters of the Anagarike Dharmapala. Colombo: Ministry of Education and Cultural Affairs, 1965. 482)
He once praised the normal Tamil vadai seller for his courage and blamed the Sinhalese people who were lazy and called upon them to rise. He strongly protested against the killing of cattle and eating of beef. In short, Dharmapala's reasons for rejecting British imperialism were not political or economic. They were religious: above all, the Sinhala nation is the historical custodian of Buddhism.
One of the manifestation of the new intolerance took place in 1915 against some Sri Lankan Muslims. Successful retail traders they became the target of their Shinhala competitors.[33] In 1912 Darmapala wrote:
-
- "The Muhammedans, an alien people,... by shylockian methods become prosperous like Jews. The Sinhala sons of the soil, whose ancestors for 2358 years had shed rivers of blood to keep the country free of alien invaders...are in the eyes if the British only vagabonds. The Alien South Indian Muhammedan come to Ceylon, sees the the neglected villager, without any experience in trade...and the result is that the Muhammedan thrives and the sons of the sol go to the wall."[34]
In short, Dharmapala and his associates very much encouraged and contributed to something aptly called the "ethnocratic state."[33]
As some of the quotes above demonstrate, Dharmapala sometimes resorted to racist language. Here are a couple of other examples. At one point he refers to "the semisavage half-animal people of Africa"[35] He claims that "...all that [Christian missionaries] can offer are the myths of Canaan and Galilee which had their origin in the backwash of Arabia."[36]
References
- Anagarika Dharmapala Archive at Vipassana Fellowship
- WWW Virtual Library: ANAGARIKA DHARMAPALA at www.lankalibrary.com
- Anagarika Dharmapala, The Arya Dharma - Free eBook
- Anagarika Dharmapala, Return to Righteousness: A Collection of Speeches, Essays and Letters of the Anagarika Dharmapala, ed. Ananda Gurunge, The Anagarika Dharmapala Birth Centenary Committee, Ministry of Education and Cultural Affairs, Ceylon 1965
- DeVotta, Neil. "The Utilisation of Religio-Linguistic Identities by the Sinhalese and Bengalis: Towards General Explanation". Commonwealth & Comparative Politics, Vol. 39, No. 1 (March 2001), pp. 66-95.
- Ven. Kiribathgoda Gnanananda Thero, 'Budu Sasuna Bebala Wu Asahaya Dharma Duthayano', Divaina, 17 September 2008
- Sangharakshita, Flame in Darkness: The Life and Sayings of Anagarika Dharmapala, Triratna Grantha Mala, Poona 1995
- Daya Sirisena, 'Anagarika Dharmapala - trail-blazing servant of the Buddha', Daily News, 17 September 2004
- Anagarika Dharmapala A religio-cultural hero
- Bartholomeusz, Tessa J. 1993. "Dharmapala at Chicago : Mahayana Buddhist or Sinhala Chauvinist?" Museum of Faiths. Atlanta : Scholars Pr. 235-250.
- Gombrich, Richard F. 1988. Theravada Buddhism; A Social History from Ancient Benares to Modern Colombo. New York: Routledge and Kegan Paul.
- Harvey, Peter. 1990. An Introduction to Buddhism: Teachings, History, and Practices. Cambridge: Cambridge University Press.
- Kloppenborg, Ria. 1992. "The Anagarika Dharmapala (1864-1933) and the Puritan Pattern". Nederlands Theologisch Tijdschrift, 46:4, 277-283.
- McMahan, David L. 2008. The Making of Buddhist Modernism. Oxford: Oxford University Press. 91-97, 110-113.
- Obeyesekere, Gananath 1976. "Personal Identity and Cultural Crisis : the Case of Anagārika Dharmapala of Sri Lanka." Biographical Process. The Hague : Mouton. 221-252.
- Prothero, Stephen. 1996a. "Henry Steel Olcott, Anagarika Dharmapala and the Maha Bodhi Society." Theosophical History, 6:3, 96-106.
- Prothero, Stephen. 1996b. The White Buddhist: The Asian Odyssey of Henry Steel Olcott. Bloomington: Indiana University Press.
- Saroja, G V. 1992. "The Contribution of Anagarika Devamitta Dharmapāla to the Revival of Buddhism in India." Buddhist Themes in Modern Indian lLterature, Madras : Inst. of Asian Studies. 27-38.
Genealogy
Notes
- ^ Harvey, Peter. 1990. An Introduction to Buddhism: Teachings, History, and Practices. Cambridge: Cambridge University Press. 208.
- ^ Harvey 205
- ^ McMahan, David L. 2008. The Making of Buddhist Modernism. Oxford: Oxford University Press. 291.
- ^ Harvey 303
- ^ Harvey 307
- ^ McMahan 111
- ^ Prothero, Stephen. 1996b. The White Buddhist: The Asian Odyssey of Henry Steel Olcott. Bloomington: Indiana University Press. 167.
- ^ Prothero 172
- ^ a b The Maha-Bodhi By Maha Bodhi Society, Calcutta (page 205)
- ^ Sean O'Reilly, James O'Reilly, Pilgrimage: Adventures of the Spirit, Travelers' Tales, 2000,ISBN 1885211562 pg 81-82
- ^ a b c Arnold Wright, Twentieth Century Impressions of Ceylon: its history, people, commerce, industries, and resources, "Angarika Dharmapala", Asian Educational Services, 1999, ISBN 812061335X pg.119
- ^ a b c C. J. Bleeker, G. Widengren, Historia Religionum, Volume 2 Religions of the Present: Handbook for the History of Religions, Brill Academic Publishers, 1971, ISBN 9004025987 pg. 453
- ^ Harvey297
- ^ A Close View of Encounter between British Burma and British Bengal
- ^ The Maha-Bodhi By Maha Bodhi Society, Calcutta (page 58)
- ^ The Philosophy of Mahatma Gandhi: And Other Essays, Philosophical and Sociological By Ardeshir Ruttonji Wadia (page 483)
- ^ Gombrich, Richard F. 1988. Theravada Buddhism; A Social History from Ancient Benares to Modern Colombo. New York: Routledge and Kegan Paul. 174
- ^ Gombrich 174
- ^ McMahan 4-5
- ^ p.6
- ^ p.8
- ^ p.9
- ^ p.14
- ^ p.20
- ^ p.24
- ^ p.25
- ^ p. 27
- ^ p. 29
- ^ p.234
- ^ p.391
- ^ p.393
- ^ a b p.435
- ^ a b Little D. 1994. Sri Lanka The Invention of Enmity, United States Institute of Peace Press, p.32
- ^ Cited In Jayawardena, Ethnic and class conflicts, pp.29-27
- ^ Gurunge 438
- ^ Gurunge 25
