Then, when the brahmin student Jotipàla had washed his head, the potter Ghañãkàra seized him by the hair and said; ‘My dear Jotipàla, there is the monastery of the blessed one Kassapa, accomplished and fully enlightened, quite nearby. Let us go and see the blessed one Kassapa, accomplished and fully enlightened. I hold that it is good to see that blessed one, accomplished and fully enlightened.’

Then the brahmin student Jotipàla thought: ‘It is wonderful, it is marvelous that this potter Ghañãkàra, who is of a different birth, should presume to seize me by the hair when we have washed our heads! Surely, this can be no simple matter.” And he said to the potter Ghañãkàra: ‘You go as far as this, my dear Ghañãkàra?” — ‘I go as far as this, my dear Jotipàla; for so much do I hold that it is good to see the blessed one Kassapa, accomplished and fully enlightened!” — ‘Then, my dear Ghañãkàra, let go of me. Let us visit him.’

Ghañãkàra the Potter Sutta

David: Has meditation shaped you?

Pemasiri Thera: Views of my self change over time. A great deal came through meditation, as I have been meditating since I was a child.

You treat everyone fairly and equally. What’s more, a young bhikkhu told me you are interested in learning about his meditation practice. You’re a senior teacher who can be taught.

My mother and father taught me many things, how to be generous, how to speak to people, and ways of thinking. There is also book knowledge.

Did members of your family teach you meditation?

My brother did to a degree and my father was a yogi. However, I didn’t ask my father for meditation instruction because he used an old style of meditation that was different from the Burmese tradition I was following at the time. I thought the way he was going was wrong. He lived like an Indian sadhuÞgrew his beard very long, put his hair up in a topknot, and always wore white clothes. Bathing was a ritual. Normally in the villages everyone bathes at the wells. Not my father. He went to the river because he wanted to bathe in running water and to perform rituals, such as patting his head. He maintained silence on his way to and from the river. My father became an adherent to the teachings of Krishnamurti, following the layman Dr. E. W.Adikaram.

Was your father’s lifestyle a problem for your mother?

No. There were no problems between my mother and my father because they didn’t talk to each other. My father stopped talking to my mother when I was about twelve years old and they never spoke to each other for the following thirty years. No talking. No fighting. No anger. My father lived in a shack in our backyard.

That’s a novel way to solve marital problems. Did she still cook his meals?

Yes. She provided one meal a day and either my sister or I carried it out to him. We also took him some drinking water. He didn’t like to get the water in a jug because the jug had to be returned to the house. He preferred to get water in an old tin he could throw away. Occasionally, my father came into the kitchen to make a cup of tea. He never went into any other part of the house. Many people thought my father was a fool. My father was no fool. He knew the suttas, had a vast knowledge of the dhamma, and was a skillful dhamma teacher. There were no bhikkhus who could debate with him because his knowledge of the Tipiñaka was far more extensive than their knowledge; even a learned professor of Buddhism found it a challenge to debate the Buddha’s teachings with my father. Though my father valued the Buddha’s teachings found in the Tipiñaka, he disapproved of many bhikkhus. Something must have happened late in my father’s life because he stopped supporting them. He condemned Burmese meditation methods as all…

Hogwash?

Yes. He disapproved of teachers like Goenka and my teacher who both came from the Burmese tradition, as he considered these as new methods of meditation. Despite strong views about bhikkhus, my father did help one bhikkhu set up a hermitage in caves in the Gampaha District, and for many years my father climbed a steep hill to visit him. My father took meals to him on a daily basis. Along with three other people, my father went so far as to carry the bhikkhu around in a specially built chair. If I had ordained with that bhikkhu, my father would have approved. My father had nothing against the dhamma. He was just against organized religion, which is why he didn’t want me to become a bhikkhu. He was really quite opposed to organized religion, even though he had helped set up hermitages earlier in his life.
When I was twenty, I talked with my father about meditation. I wanted him to study at the Kanduboda Meditation Centre. My father objected, “I don’t want to go there because the toilets are dirty.” When I mentioned Kanduboda a second time, he said, “The food is bad.” When I mentioned it a third time, he said, “I have been meditating since I was your age and I don’t need any more teaching. You try and develop yourself, and don’t try to teach me.” That was the last time I talked with my father about meditation. At the time, I didn’t know my father had a nimitta from ànàpànasati. Since he had this clear image obtained from his meditation practice, he considered other teachings to be insignificant. People who train on their own and have strong results generally have some conceit. My father was strongly established in his own practice. There was no way he was about to go to the Kanduboda Meditation Centre and accept the teachings of a bhikkhu.

Towards the end of my father’s life, my brother pulled down my father’s old shack in the backyard and my father was forced to move inside our house. He had no choice in the matter. Life changed. My father started speaking again with my mother and the rest of us. It was good for me to talk with my father as we had been at odds and hadn’t spoken much for thirty years. He acknowledged that I was on the right path and he gave me his books; even so, I let him keep his strong views.

A few years later, my mother died. And a week after she died, we invited relatives, friends, neighbours, and the workers of our family business into our home to listen to a bhikkhu give a talk. This is a traditional practice for the transference of merit. My father did not attend and instead remained out in the backyard. One of the mason workers, who enjoyed discussing the dhamma with my father, was in attendance. Out of consideration for the bhikkhu, we specifically instructed the mason not to visit my father during the bhikkhu’s talk. But the mason went into the backyard and asked my father how old he was. “I am the age I am now,” said my father. “I am just one moment of mentality and materiality.” Citing Abhidhamma teachings, my father then delivered a lengthy and detailed discourse on the nature of human experience, and because my father spoke so loud during his discourse, everyone inside the house heard him. At first, just a couple of people went out to the backyard to investigate. Regrettably, they came back inside the house and told everyone else my father was more interesting than the bhikkhu and eventually no one except the immediate family members were inside the house listening to the bhikkhu. We were quite annoyed with the mason!

Then my father died. He had told us that he wanted his death to be trouble free. It was. One day without warning, he simply said, “I will be dead by 6:00 a.m. tomorrow morning.” Our family didn’t believe him, “The old fool.” That evening, he smoked what he said were his last cigarettes, and added, “There’s no need for me to eat supper because I will soon be dead.” He then shaved and cleaned himself. However, in the middle of the night, he got hungry and ate something. Still, no one took him seriously, “That crazy old man.” The next morning, he sat down to breakfast with us and died while eating. His death was indeed very simple and easyÞno trouble at all. We lived right next door to a cemetery.

Your father was an interesting character. What were your grandparents like?

My grandparents on my mother’s side were self-indulgent. They drank and partied. One time, my grandmother found my grandfather in bed with another woman. “Oh,” said my grandfather, “here comes my sister.” To which my grandmother said, “I am not his sister!” My grandmother ate plenty of meat and eggs. And she was always drunkÞdrinking a bottle and a half every day. How many eggs do you think she ate?

Half a dozen?

Twenty-five eggs per day.

She must’ve had a lot of chickens. With this diet, did she have a long life?

She died at the age of sixty-five, while I was still in school. I returned home from class one day and she was laid out in a coffin. Later, whenever I visited her old home, I saw that her family still thought of her. They visualized her as being alive and still sitting in her armchair. They could hear her talking. When a stranger entered the house, he thought my grandmother was still alive because of this visualization of her form. My mother’s aunt lived to be one hundred and eight years of age. She was a good woman. For one hundred years of her life she was a Catholic. The last eight years of her life she practised the Satipaññhàna Sutta. On her deathbed, she said, “It isn’t good for me to die in my bedroom. I want to die in the living room.” Members of the family helped her to the living room where she took the five precepts. Just a few minutes later, she died with equanimity, whilst listening to my father chant the Satipaññhàna Sutta. My drunken grandmother was a lifetime Buddhist. My great aunt practised the teachings of Christ for one hundred years and the teachings of the Buddha for eight years.

ORDINATION

And what about you? Why did you ordain as a bhikkhu?

Despite knowing the benefits of ordination, I had no intention of ordaining when I was a young man. I didn’t ordain to meditate because I could meditate either at home or at a meditation centre. You don’t have to be a bhikkhu to meditate. In my early teens, I worked in the family business and whenever I was free I meditated at the Kanduboda Meditation Centre where I received instructions from the abbot, Sumathipàla Na Himi. My family had various activities on the goÞcarpentry, masonry, plumbing, electrical, manufacturing fireworks, Sinhala and Pali classes. I worked primarily in the construction end of things. The construction crew wasnt working well together and I was getting fed up. So, since I liked what Sumathipàla Na Himi was teaching me, I began spending more time at Kanduboda and less time at home working with the crew. At one point, I was travelling almost daily from my home in the village of Kidagamulla to the Kanduboda Meditation Centre. In those early days, Kanduboda had one hundred acres of land and there were lots of wild rabbits running around, which the dogs liked to chase. To escape the dogs, the rabbits hid under Sumathipàla Na Himi’s robes and stayed there until the dogs gave up the chase and went away. Even leeches left Sumathipàla Na Himi alone. Even if a leech were placed on him, it didn’t bite! I became a bhikkhu mainly because of Sumathipàla Na Himi. He was a fine person.

Did you have other good teachers of meditation?

I believe I had the best possible teachers. These Sri Lankan meditation teachers were the equals of any teachers in the world, and I am not referring to teachers of the Tipiñaka. No. I mean teachers of meditation. These teachers selflessly and honestly taught meditation to lots of people, and their only needs were one meal a day, a set of three robes, and a bowl. These meditation teachers were of a much higher quality than the meditation teachers currently living in Sri Lanka. They dedicated their whole lives to teaching others without any concern for themselves. They taught meditation whatever the time of the day, whether it was raining, or whether it was hot or cold. And they never bothered if the meditators were rich or poor, or were of this or that nationality. Most of their time was spent supporting others. They were concerned that the needs of meditators were met, needs such as getting good meals.

Since I could see the high quality of these teachers, I associated as closely as I could with them. I was only a teenager when I first met them and as a rule teenagers never associate closely with senior meditation teachers. Certainly, I was very fortunate to have a close association with senior teachers and I developed a strong confidence in them. With Sumathipàla Na Himi, for example, I interacted on a friendly and personal basis, and occasionally he even gave me a portion of his own meal. He was the embodiment of equanimity. Never disturbed. Once while working on the top of a cabinet, I dropped a can onto Sumathipàla Na Himi’s head, badly cutting him. Even though blood flowed and the cut must have been painful, he didn’t react. He remained calm.

At that time, the Kanduboda Meditation Centre wasn’t prosperous and Sumathipàla Na Himi had to work very hard. He cleaned the grounds, washed gunny rugs that were used as doormats, and wove coconut fronds for the septic pit cover. He was in his sixties and he was the abbot. I didn’t think he should have to work so hard. To help him and give him some free time, I considered ordaining for a year. Up until then, I had been going to the centre only to meditate. Knowing my construction skills to be useful, I reasoned, “Why not stay here and help my teacher? I can meditate in my free time.” Though my family approved of me going to Kanduboda just to meditate, they disapproved of me ordaining as a bhikkhu. So from eighteen to twenty years of age, I stopped going to Kanduboda and lived with a group of beggars to test whether I had the capacity to be a bhikkhu. Could I live in the way beggars live? Of course, my parents objected to me begging. So as an alternative, I used the money I brought from home to buy bread from a shop, which I shared it with the beggars. I didn’t beg. I ate what the beggars ate and slept where they slept, in a crude shelter or under a tree.

They were good beggars, who lived pure brahmacariya lives. They ate only one meal a day, never asked for anything more, and were always satisfied with what they got. They were genuine. When making tea, the beggars boiled the water, milk, sugar, and tea leaves all together in one pot, and then strained the brew with a dirty old cloth. Very tasty! The owner of a bus company and a university professor also lived with this group of beggars. They too wanted to experience the life of beggars and to test themselves. When the professor finally returned home, his wife had left him. He wrote a book about his experiences as a beggar. My mother realized I was better off as a bhikkhu at Kanduboda than as a beggar on the street, and gave me permission to ordain under Sumathipàla Na Himi for a period of one year. At least as a bhikkhu, she knew my whereabouts. Staying fulltime at Kanduboda, I arranged for eight construction workers from the family business to work at Kanduboda. They built and repaired many buildings, some of which still exist. This work was done free of charge and sometimes the workers had their meals out of the centre.

How old were you?

Twenty. My father stopped talking to me after I ordained.

Was this a problem for you?

No. No problem. Though my father was a well-learned dhamma teacher, he never paid respects to bhikkhus. At the end of my first year at the Kanduboda Meditation Centre, I went home and asked my mother if I could continue for another year. She said yes. Likewise for the next two years, either I went home to gain permission from my mother or my mother came out to Kanduboda and told me, “Wait for another year before disrobing.” Since I was not a permanent resident at Kanduboda, I had no hut of my own and slept wherever I could, sometimes under a tree if nothing else was available. One hut that was often available had an asbestos roof, which made it very hot inside. At the beginning, I worked on construction projects at the centre and then meditated in my free time. Before long, I began integrating my construction work with my meditation practice. There came a time when the construction work and the meditation practice became one. That was my way of living.

To support my practice, I asked Sumathipàla Na Himi if I could bottle up all thirty-two parts of the body and display the bottles. Many people objected as they thought displaying body parts was unsuitable for children and for some adults. Always agreeing with the majority, Sumathipàla Na Himi forbade me from bottling up body parts. I too soon realized there was no benefit in bottling up body parts as it didn’t support my practice. I did, however, think that two human skeletons would support my practice. So I went to a local cemetery and acquired some bones. Then after assembling the bones, I sat the skeletons down on chairs in my hut. A couple of days later, a human scream shook the curtains with its force. The scream seemed to come from one of the skeletonsÞthe one seated right beside me. The doors and windows of the hut were closed. If the scream didn’t come from one of the skeletons, where did it come from? I searched all around, and could not see anything. I asked the bhikkhu in the next hut if he had heard anything. “No,” said the bhikkhu. “Apart from the sound of a snail being crushed by my foot while I was in the toilet, I didn’t hear anything.”

A few days later, it happened a second timeÞa loud, human scream. This time I asked a meditator in the centre if he had heard screams. “Yes. I heard someone scream. It came from the street.” I asked a woman on the street; she said, “I too heard someone scream. It came from your meditation centre.” There you have itÞthree different views from three different people. When the screams happened the third time, I concluded the skeletons weren’t compatible, that they weren’t happy with each other. We buried one skeleton and moved the other into an adjacent hut. Soon afterwards, we hung this skeleton up in a glass-fronted closet at the end of a meditation walking path. It is there to this day. And curiously enough, though the door to the closet is locked, the skeleton sometimes faces the side of the closet and sometimes it faces the front!

Seems you’re saying that human life remains active even after death.

Don’t be too concerned. It’s just a story.

ARAHATS

After three years at Kanduboda, I lived for the following twelve years in various forest hermitages. And though I never went home and had no visits from family members, I did keep my mother informed of my whereabouts through a third party. Boys in their twenties usually chase girlsÞI chased enlightenment. I undertook training in meditation practices, that over the years slowly pushed down my defilements, my kilesas. I clearly saw the defilements receding from my system; they gradually wore away. Eventually, my defilements didn’t arise at all and many people thought I had attained arahatship. I too thought I had possibly attained something. But just because a person’s defilements aren’t arising, you can’t say that he or she is an arahat. Yes, it could be that I had actually destroyed my defilements and had attained, or it could be that my training had only suppressed my defilements without any attainment.

Then while walking along a forest path one day, I caught a glimpse of a snake and a touch of fear arose, just the slightest of shimmers ran through my body. No one would normally notice such a slight shimmer. However, the fact that it was possible to be afraid of something made me realize that I hadn’t destroyed all of my defilements and that I definitely was not an arahat. And it wasn’t even a snake that brought up the fear; it was only a piece of a coconut frond! Nonetheless, aside from that one brief moment of fear that arose, because my practice was strong, through the sheer force of suppression, no other defilements were seen to be arising, not at that time. I chose to stop that particular practice and within two to three years my defilements were back again to normal levels. A few years were spent to suppress the defilements down deep below the surface and a few years for them to come back up to the surface. It takes time for the defilements to come back up to their normal levels of arising.

If you were back to where you started, what was the point of living in the forest and doing all this hard training in meditation practices?

Much of what I now teach about dhamma and about renunciation is based upon my experiences in the forest. I learned a great deal there. We must be open-minded and honest about these things. Many strong meditators are fooling themselves, making a big deal about suppressing their defilements and then jumping to false conclusions, “I am a great meditator.” or “I have attained arahatship.” They aren’t fooling themselves about their defilements not arising. No. Defilements are not to be seenÞthat is real and true. Many of them can give nice descriptions of dhamma, speak eloquently, and create a wonderful picture of nibbàna. These talks make for quite nice listening. In spite of this, when they don’t admit that their defilements are only suppressed, not destroyed, that there have been no real gains, they are giving in to a pettiness of mind; they are giving in to a conceit, which is foolish and dangerous. We all need to have an open mind about the results of our practices. We must be honest at least with ourselves.

In our hearts, we know when something is true. We can lie to everyone else!

Yes, that sannà of honesty has to be there. We need to face the nature of things, “Okay, if it’s over, let it be. If the attainment of arahatship happens, I’ll face it.” When you have an open mind like that, your practice will lead to the real goal. We aren’t fooling ourselves when we admit that our meditation practices are only suppressing our defilements. Fine. No problem. Maybe if I had forced myself to continue the training, I would have eventually destroyed my defilements and attained arahatship. Difficult to know for sure. Even when a meditator’s practice is highly developed, still if he or she wants, the meditator can hold back attainment. We make our choices. I left the forest and, when I did finally return home, my mother had aged considerably.

She must have thought that you had aged a bit too.

Yes, she did indeed. In due course, I took my higher ordination with Sumathipàla Na Himi at Kanduboda. And though my father didn’t want anything to do with bhikkhus, he did attend the ceremony. It was the one and only time my father met Sumathipàla Na Himi. My father didn’t bother to pay respects to any of the bhikkhus and he acted up a bit. Sumathipàla Na Himi asked me, “Who will tame your father?”

My confidence in Sumathipàla Na Himi strengthened when he was sick. Yes, he got sick. But he never showed any signs of being sick. Instead, he behaved as if he was healthy, showing no signs of pain and most people didn’t know he was sick, even when he was nearing his own death. That was his way. When Bhante Sãvalã, an accomplished Sri Lankan meditation teacher, died in Honolulu, his relics were sent to Kanduboda for burial in an ash vault, and Sumathipàla Na Himi told the mason, “Build a second ash vault because someone will die within two days.” The mason was surprised, “You must be joking.” Although Sumathipàla Na Himi was a great teacher, he often joked, putting on a serious expression and pretending to be a strict teacherÞjust to make people laugh.

The following morning, Sumathipàla Na Himi inspected the site for the ash vaults, returned to his hut, placed the box containing Bhante Sãvalã’s relics under his bed, and then went into the dining hall to give his midday dhamma talk. He suffered a heart attack while talking and was taken to his hut. When I saw him, he was lying in bed and very ill. Sumathipàla Na Himi said to me, “Massage my legs.” I massaged his legs and I felt an icy coldness; his legs were already dead. He said, “I must go to the hospital. And I won’t be returning to Kanduboda. Do your best for the meditation centre.” His last words were similar to the Buddha’s last words, “Don’t be concerned about me. Be concerned about yourselves. Strive on with diligence.” At about 1:00 p.m., he was taken to the hospital and by 6:00 p.m. he was dead. Sumathipàla Na Himi died the day after he told the mason to build the second ash vault.