Madhuri’s review of Bhante Walpola Piyananda’s book. “An enormously genial Buddhist rant… peppered with anecdotes from the author’s life as a monk, teacher, Abbott, chaplain, and Chief Sangha Nayaka Thera of the USA.”
Saffron Days in L.A.
Tales of a Buddhist Monk in America
by Bhante Walpola Piyananda
Shambala Publications Inc.
Boston, 2001
An enormously genial Buddhist rant, somewhat in the style of the Readers’s Digest; peppered with anecdotes from the author’s life as a monk, teacher, Abbott, chaplain, and Chief Sangha Nayaka Thera of the USA. There is not a little pathos included: people regularly mistake the ochre-robed monk for a Hare Krishna, and revile and spit upon him. (He never, of course, shouts at them or anything, but endeavours to understand and forgive them.)
Bhante Piyananda is originally from Sri Lanka, but has degrees from universities in Calcutta, Chicago, and Los Angles. He’s lived in the States, mostly on the west coast, since 1976.
It’s an enjoyable book – the rants seemed to me overly intellectual, if well-meant; nobody here has discovered Osho’s active meditations. But we hear about all sorts of green-haired punks, trapped and angry husbands, alcoholics, and so on, who are introduced to Buddhism and go on to lead better lives. The author comes across as a really friendly soul, humble and yet unwavering, who does his best to help people in order to fulfill what he sees as his purpose and his duty, and indeed his privilege.
I liked this quotation from the Emperor Ashoka, in the 3rd century. It’s inscribed in stone on a pillar at Karnataka:
One should not honour one’s own religion and condemn the religions of others, but should honour others’ religion for this or that reason. In doing so, one helps one’s own religion grow, and renders service to the religion of others, too. If acting otherwise, one digs the grave of one’s own religion, and does harm to other religions. Whosoever honours his own religion and condemns that of others does so indeed through devotion to his own religion, thinking, “I will glorify my own religion,” but, on the contrary, in so doing he or she injures his or her own religion more gravely. So, concord is good. Let all listen and be willing to listen to the doctrines professed by others.
It would be nice, I think, if anyone had ever listened to this!
I remember Osho saying, “Never criticise the way someone prays, or how they love. They are loving or praying in exactly the way that is right for them,” or words to that effect!
Related discourse excerpts
- The Indian emperor in prayer pushed over by a running girl – A Sufi story featuring Akbar: “That girl’s love was far deeper. She was closer to God than I was…”
- Not the right prayer – “Love is a law unto itself; it needs no other law,” states Osho
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