When we hear the name Ananda Maitreya two words delightedness (Ananda) and having loving kindness (Maitreya) come to our mind. Thera promenaded for a long time on the soft clouds of our mind. We tried to draw in our minds a portrait of an unseen Buddha from him.
Jan 01, 2011 Balangoda Anandamaitreya Mahanayaka TheroLate Ven. Balangoda Anandamaitreya Mahanayaka Thero was one. Speaker and author to several books in Sinhala. Sinhalese and balangoda ananda maitreya thero sinhala books pdf them to fight for their freedom during Sri Lankan Independence movement. He is now considered a national hero of Sri Lanka.
It is with great wonder that the Maha Thera appeared in front of my mind’s eye when I started turning the pages of the book, ‘Unpublished letters of Ven. Ananda Maitreya. The pleasing way of writing this book is one. The other is the fact that this presentation comes from a young writer we know only too well. Considering the youth of today, who generally run after popular works will not write a book about a Maha Thera. Venerable Balangoda Ananda Maitreya was one of the great personalities of Theravada Buddhism in the twentieth century, and it is testimony to his vast store of past merits that his life span stretched clear across this century from its beginning almost to its end. In the course of his exemplary life this outstanding Mahathera has held some of the most prestigious academic and ecclesiastical posts in the country.
Yet such honor and fame hardly touched him inwardly: at heart he always remained a simple monk whose greatest joy was quiet study and meditation at his small village temple near the town of Balangoda. For me it is a personal honor to be able to name Ven. Ananda Maitreya as my own ordination teacher, the one who brought me into the Sangha and guided my first steps in the life of a bhikkhu. The background story to my meeting with the Mahanayaka Thera goes back to the year 1971. At that time I was living at a Vietnamese Buddhist meditation center in Los Angeles. I had been ordained as a samanera (novice) in the Vietnamese Mahayana Order and was lecturing in world religions at a local university. One day our center received notice that a Buddhist monk from Sri Lanka would be arriving in Los Angeles.
We invited him to stay with us and give a series of lectures on Theravada Buddhism at our center. That Buddhist monk was none other than Ven. Piyadassi Nayaka Thera of Vajirarama.
I served as Ven. Piyadassi’s host during his stay, drove him around town over Los Angeles’s forbidding maze of freeways, and accompanied him to the airport when it was time for him to leave. When we parted, Ven.
Piyadassi suggested to me that some day I should come to Sri Lanka, where he could arrange for me to stay at a Buddhist monastery. Hhhhhhhhhh The next year the decision had crystallized in my mind to go to Asia to take ordination as a Theravada Buddhist monk. I wrote to Ven. Piyadassi to remind him of his invitation, and he wrote back, giving me the name of a senior prelate who, he said, had previously ordained Westerners.
The name was that of Ven. Balangoda Ananda Maitreya. I wrote to the Mahanayaka Thera, telling him of my background and of my desire to come to Sri Lanka to ordain as a bhikkhu and to study Pali and Buddhism. The Venerable promptly replied, extending me a warm welcome and assuring me that he could oversee my ordination and my instruction in the Dhamma.
It was at the end of October 1972 that I at last arrived in Sri Lanka, and a week later I made the trip out to Balangoda. I was accompanied on this trip by the late Ven. Baddegama Vimalavamsa Nayaka Thera, who had been my host in Colombo, and by Ven.
Pimbure Sorata Nayaka Thera, in whose vehicle we traveled to Balangoda. Though both spoke highly of the excellent qualities of my prospective guru, all along the way I felt somewhat apprehensive about my impending meeting with the Venerable One. Again and again the doubts plagued my mind: Would I make my prostrations in the correct manner? Would I fumble hopelessly for words? Would I make some blunder that would immediately convince the Mahathera that I was unsuited for ordination as a monk?
We arrived in Balangoda in the middle of the afternoon and headed for the Sri Dhammananda Pirivena, where we were to meet Ven. Ananda Maitreya.
As we approached the room where he was awaiting us, my mind was torn between a keen desire to see my chosen teacher and the anxious thoughts that played havoc with my good intentions. My anxiety increased even to the point where I wanted to flee — back to the familiar smog-drenched roadways of Los Angeles, which I had left a few months earlier — abandoning this “noble quest for the Dhamma” as a foolish figment of youthful idealism. But there was no turning back: the two Nayaka Theras had already entered the room, and now it was my turn. As soon as I crossed the threshold and set eyes on the Ven.
Ananda Maitreya, all my fears were dispelled like the morning mist before the rising sun. It was no stern, cold, ascetic glare that met my questioning eyes, but a bright radiant kindness, a natural simplicity, and a twinkling immediacy of presence which instantly put me at ease. At once I felt delighted that my kamma, and the good offices of Ven.
Piyadassi, had brought me into contact with such a luminous being. My fears of bowing in the wrong way were also laid to rest.
As soon as I came up close to the Mahanayaka Thera to begin my bow, he waved me towards a chair, as though he thought he should not impose Asian monastic formalities on a visitor from urbane America. Of course, I did not accept his invitation but made the customary triple prostration — with no fear at all that a pair of censorious eyes would be watching to see where I would trip up. Later that afternoon, after tea and light talk, the two Nayaka Theras who had so kindly brought me out to Balangoda departed, and the Ven. Ananda Maitreya, a few novices, a lay attendant, and the American postulant piled into the quaint, ancient British-made car that was to take us to Sri Nandaramaya, the Mahanayaka Thera’s temple in Udumulla, a village about 3 km from Balangoda town.
A light rain had started to fall, and after several stopovers along the way we entered the rough dirt road that led to Udumulla. By this time darkness was thickly descending, and thus, when we reached the temple, I could barely see farther than the small area illuminated by the kerosene lantern I was given. Over the next few days I had the chance to explore the full extent of Sri Nandaramaya. Earlier, while living in the U.S., I had heard worrisome reports about the comfortable living standards that Sri Lankan prelates were inclined to stake out for themselves. Piyadassi had already warned me that I must be ready to “rough it” at Udumulla, on my first morning there I had still been half-expecting a monastic palace to emerge from the mist. Well, one quick walk around the Mahanayaka Thera’s temple was enough to pull the ground away from any bold generalizations about luxury-loving prelates. The temple was, in a sense, an external reflection of the Mahanayaka Thera’s own character: simple, stripped to bare essentials, without ostentation, revealing an almost complete indifference, even oblivion, to the perks and privileges of high office.
The main part of the temple, the “pansala” or monks’ residence, was a simple wooden structure with tile roof, mud-and-cowdung floor, a plain verandah with a chipped wooden lattice facade, and a few cells for the monks. These contained little more than beds, book cases, and wooden tables; it was in one of these that Ven. Ananda Maitreya was living at the time. A primitive alms hall in the back could accommodate about ten monks, none very comfortably.
Behind the temple was a hill on which two “kutis” or cottages had recently been built and were still drying out: one, lower down on the hill, was a wattle-and-daub structure intended for myself; the other, higher up, was made of concrete and was to be occupied by the Mahanayaka Thera. Over the next few months I came to learn, as a hard lesson, that the diet at Sri Nandaramaya conformed to the same austere standards as the temple’s physical structures.
No gourmet’s delight here! Breakfast generally consisted of thin rice gruel (lunu kenda) with a few cream crackers and occasionally a couple of small bananas. The midday meal was usually country rice with a dhal curry and a single vegetable, and a local confection for dessert.
Occasionally a piece of papaya provided a special treat. For a year before I came to Sri Lanka I had already been a vegetarian, but the fare at Udumulla was still too spartan for my needs. Free latest urdu writing software inpage. I soon enough learned how to go on alms round to the surrounding hamlets, where I collected a variety of nutritious curries and could supply the monks in the temple with my surplus.
For two and a half years (1972-75) I lived with Ven. Ananda Maitreya at Sri Nandaramaya. During this happy period I received regular instruction from him in Pali, Suttanta, and Abhidhamma, fields in which his erudition was impeccable. The guidance he gave me so generously at that time has continued to benefit me right up to the present.