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Malthusian League
by Wikipedia
Accessed: 8/5/20

The Malthusian League was a British organisation which advocated the practice of contraception and the education of the public about the importance of family planning. It was established in 1877 and was dissolved in 1927. The organisation was secular, utilitarian, individualistic, and "above all malthusian." [1] The organisation maintained that it was concerned about the poverty of the British working class and held that over-population was the chief cause of poverty.

History

The league was initially founded during the "Knowlton trial" of Annie Besant and Charles Bradlaugh in July 1877.[2] They were prosecuted for publishing Charles Knowlton's Fruits of Philosophy which explained various methods of birth control.[3] The League was formed as a permanent body to advocate for the elimination of penalties for promoting birth control as well as to promote public education in matters of contraception. The trial demonstrated that the public was interested in the topic of contraception and sales of the book surged during the trial.[4]

Origins

The first president was Charles Robert Drysdale, who was succeeded by his free union partner Alice Vickery. The league initially restricted itself primarily to an "educative role" which emphasised the importance of Malthus' economic arguments rather than practical information about birth control. The league had an increasingly socially and economically conservative tone as the 19th century wore on. Thus some earlier agreement between Malthusians and social reformers was replaced by mutual distrust. The league believed that the sole cause of poverty was an excess of births, and therefore opposed socialism, considered strikes and reforms of labour laws to be "useless."[4] League members were primarily middle class and did not make many serious efforts to communicate with the working class aside from some debates with socialists during the 1880s. Although the league doctrine as a whole was hostile to socialism, some members were indeed socialists who were sympathetic to arguments in favour of birth control. The league also maintained some overlap with the women's rights movement, which was concerned with birth control. The League began plans for a birth control clinic in 1917 but these stalled until they received funds from the philanthropist Sir John Sumner and finally the clinic opened on 9 November 1921 at 153a East Street, Walworth with Norman Haire as their honorary medical officer, three afternoons a week. Marie Stopes and her husband had opened their clinic nine months earlier. Stopes’ clinic was the first in the British Empire (but not the first in the world) and the League always emphasised that theirs was the first English clinic where birth control instruction was given under medical supervision.[5]

International Movements

Similar leagues were founded in several other European countries including Germany, France, and the Netherlands in the following years. In 1892, the Dutch league became the first to set up a medical clinic to provide information directly to the poor.[6]

The period of the league's activity coincided with a substantial drop in the birth rate in Britain, and many European countries. Some have credited its activities, but others have disputed this conclusion, citing the general fall in birth rates even in countries without active league activity.[7]

The Malthusian League forms part of the society within Aldous Huxley's novel Brave New World.

See also

• List of population concern organizations

References

1. Simms, Madeleine (27 January 1977). "Revie w: A History of the Malthusian League 1877-1927". New Scientist.
2. D'Arcy, F. (November 1977). "The Malthusian League and the resistance to birth control propaganda in late Victorian Britain". Population Studies: A Journal of Demography. 31 (3): 429–448. doi:10.1080/00324728.1977.10412759. JSTOR 2173367.
3. Knowlton, Charles (October 1891) [1840]. Besant, Annie; Bradlaugh, Charles (eds.). Fruits of philosophy: a treatise on the population question. San Francisco: Reader's Library. OCLC 626706770. A publication about birth control. View original copy.
4. McLaren, Angus (1978). Birth control in nineteenth-century England. Taylor & Francis. ISBN 9780856645044.
5. Diana Wyndham. (2012) "Norman Haire and the Study of Sex". Foreword by the Hon. Michael Kirby AC CMG. (Sydney: "Sydney University Press)"., p. 77
6. Sanger, Margaret (2003). The selected papers of Margaret Sanger, Volume 1. University of Illinois Press. ISBN 9780252027376.
7. McLaren, Angus (1978). Birth control in nineteenth-century England. Taylor & Francis. p. 107. ISBN 9780856645044.

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Part 1 of 2

The Decay of Lying
by Oscar Wilde
1905 [1889]

A DIALOGUE.
Persons: Cyril and Vivian.
Scene: the library of a country house in Nottinghamshire.

CYRIL (coming in through the open window from the terrace). My dear Vivian, don't coop yourself up all day in the library. It is a perfectly lovely afternoon. The air is exquisite. There is a mist upon the woods like the purple bloom upon a plum. Let us go and lie on the grass, and smoke cigarettes, and enjoy Nature.

VIVIAN. Enjoy Nature! I am glad to say that I have entirely lost that faculty. People tell us that Art makes us love Nature more than we loved her before; that it reveals her secrets to us; and that after a careful study of Corot and Constable we see things in her that had escaped our observation. My own experience is that the more we study Art, the less we care for Mature. What Art really reveals to us is Nature's lack of design, her curious crudities, her extraordinary monotony, her absolutely unfinished condition. Nature has good intentions, of course, but, as Aristotle once said, she cannot carry them out. When I look at a landscape I cannot help seeing all its defects. It is fortunate for us, however, that Nature is so imperfect, as otherwise we should have had no art at all. Art is our spirited protest, our gallant attempt to teach Nature her proper place. As for the infinite variety of Nature, that is a pure myth. It is not to be found in Nature herself. It resides in the imagination, or fancy, or cultivated blindness of the man who looks at her.

CYRIL. Well, you need not look at the landscape. You can lie on the grass and smoke and talk.

VIVIAN. But Nature is so uncomfortable. Grass is hard and dumpy and damp, and full of dreadful black insects. Why, even Morris' poorest workman could make you a more comfortable seat than the whole of Nature can. Nature pales before the furniture of "the street which from Oxford has borrowed its name," as the poet you love so much once vilely phrased it. I don't complain. If Nature had been comfortable, mankind would never have invented architecture, and I prefer houses to the open air. In a house we all feel of the proper proportions. Everything is subordinated to us, fashioned for our use and our pleasure. Egotism itself, which is so necessary to a proper sense of human dignity' is entirely the result of indoor life. Out of doors one becomes abstract and impersonal. One's individuality absolutely leaves one. And then

Nature is so indifferent, so unappreciative. Whenever I am walking in the park here, I always feel that I am no more to her than the cattle that browse on the slope, or the burdock that blooms in the ditch. Nothing is more evident than that Nature hates Mind. Thinking is the most unhealthy thing in the world, and people die of it just as they die of any other disease. Fortunately, in England at any rate, thought is not catching. Our splendid physique as a people is entirely due to our national stupidity. I only hope we shall be able to keep this great historic bulwark of our happiness for many years to come; but I am afraid that we are beginning to be overeducated; at least everybody who is incapable of learning has taken to teaching -- that is really what our enthusiasm for education has come to. In the meantime, you had better go back to your wearisome, uncomfortable Nature, and leave me to correct my proofs.

CYRIL. Writing an article! That is not very consistent after what you have just said.

VIVIAN Who wants to be consistent? The dullard and the doctrinaire, the tedious people who carry out their principles to the bitter end of action, to the reductio ad absurdum of practice. Not I. Like Emerson, I write over the door of my library the word " Whim." Besides, my article is really a most salutary and valuable warning. If it is attended to, there may be a new Renaissance of Art.

CYRIL. What is the subject?

VIVIAN. I intend to call it "The Decay of Lying: A Protest."

CYRIL. Lying! I should have thought that our politicians kept up that habit.

VIVIAN. I assure you that they do not. They never rise beyond the level of misrepresentation, and actually condescend to prove, to discuss, to argue. How different from the temper of the true liar, with his frank, fearless statements, his superb responsibility, his healthy, natural disdain of proof of any kind! After all, what is a fine lie? Simply that which is its own evidence. If a man is sufficiently unimaginative to produce evidence in support of a lie, he might just as well speak the truth at once. No, the politicians won't do. Something may, perhaps, be urged on behalf of the Bar. The mantle of the Sophist has fallen on its members. Their feigned ardours and unreal rhetoric are delightful. They can make the worse appear the better cause, as though they were fresh from Leontine schools, and have been known to wrest from reluctant juries triumphant verdicts of acquittal for their clients, even when those clients, as often happens, were clearly and unmistakeably innocent. But they are briefed by the prosaic, and are not ashamed to appeal to precedent. In spite of their endeavours, the truth will out. Newspapers, even, have degenerated. They may now be absolutely relied upon. One feels it as one wades through their columns. It is always the unreadable that occurs. I am afraid that there is not much to be said in favour of either the lawyer or the journalist. Besides what I am pleading for is Lying in art. Shall I read you what I have written? It might do you a great deal of good.

CYRIL. Certainly, if you give, me a cigarette. Thanks. By the way, what magazine do you intend it for?

VIVIAN. For the Retrospective Review. I think I told you that the elect had revived it.

CYRIL. Whom do you mean by "the elect"?

VIVIAN. Oh, The Tired Hedonists of course. It is a club to which I belong. We are supposed to wear faded roses in our buttonholes when we meet, and to have a sort of cult for Domitian. I am afraid you are not eligible. You are too fond of simple pleasures.

CYRIL. I should be blackballed on the ground of animal spirits, I suppose?

VIVIAN. Probably. Besides, you are little too old. We don't admit anybody who is of the usual age.

CYRIL. Well, I should fancy you are all a good deal bored with each other.

VIVIAN. We are. That is one of the objects of the club. Now, if you promise not to interrupt too often, I will read you my article.

CYRIL. You will find me all attention.

VIVIAN (reading in a very clear, musical voice). "THE DECAY OF LYING: A PROTEST. -- One of the chief causes that can be assigned for the curiously commonplace character of most of the literature of our age is undoubtedly the decay of Lying as an art, a science, and a social pleasure. The ancient historians gave us delightful fiction in the form of fact; the modern novelist presents us with dull facts under the guise of fiction. The BlueBook is rapidly becoming his ideal both for method and manner. He has his tedious ' document humain,' his miserable little 'coin de la creation,' into which he peers with his microscope. He is to be found at the Librairie Nationale, or at the British Museum, shamelessly reading up his subject. He has not even the courage of other people's ideas, but insists on going directly to life for everything' and ultimately, between encyclopaedias and personal experience, he comes to the ground, having drawn his types from the family circle or from the weekly washerwoman, and having acquired an amount of useful information from which never, even in his most meditative moments, can he thoroughly free himself.

"The loss that results to literature in general from this false ideal of our time can hardly be overestimated. People have a careless way of talking about a 'born liar,' just as they talk about a 'born poet.' But in both cases they are wrong. Lying and poetry are arts -- arts, as Plato saw, not unconnected with each other -- and they require the most careful study, the most disinterested devotion. Indeed, they have their technique, just as the more material arts of painting and sculpture have, their subtle secrets of form and colour, their craft mysteries, their deliberate artistic methods. As one knows the poet by his fine music, so one can recognize the liar by his rich rhythmic utterance, and in neither case will the casual inspiration of the moment suffice. Here, as elsewhere, practice must precede perfection. But in modern days while the fashion of writing poetry has become far too common, and should, if possible, be discouraged, the fashion of lying has almost fallen into disrepute. Many a young man starts in life with a natural gift for exaggeration which, if nurtured in congenial and sympathetic surroundings, or by the imitation of the best models, might grow into something really great and wonderful. But, as a rule, he comes to nothing. He either falls into careless habits of accuracy "

CYRIL. My dear fellow!

VIVIAN. Please don't interrupt in the middle of a sentence. "He either falls into careless habits of accuracy, or takes to frequenting the society of the aged and the well-informed. Both things are equally fatal to his imagination, as indeed they would be fatal to the imagination of anybody, and in a short time he develops a morbid and unhealthy faculty of truth-telling, begins to verify all statements made in his presence, has no hesitation in contradicting people who are much younger than himself, and often ends by writing novels which are so like life that no one can possibly believe in their probability. This is no isolated instance that we are giving. It is simply one example out of many; and if something cannot be done to check, or at least to modify, our monstrous worship of facts, Art will become sterile and Beauty will pass away from the land.

"Even Mr. Robert Louis Stevenson, that delightful master of delicate and fanciful prose, is tainted with this modern vice, for we know positively no other name for it. There is such a thing as robbing a story of its reality by trying to make it too true, and The Black Arrow is so inartistic as not to contain a single anachronism to boast of, while the transformation of Dr. Jekyll reads dangerously like an experiment out of the Lancet. As for Mr. Rider Haggard, who really has, or had once, the makings of a perfectly magnificent liar, he is now so afraid of being suspected of genius that when he does tell us anything marvellous, he feels bound to invent a personal reminiscence, and to put it into a footnote as a kind of cowardly corroboration. Nor are our other novelists much better. Mr. Henry James writes fiction as if it were a painful duty, and wastes upon mean motives and imperceptible 'points of view' his neat literary style, his felicitous phrases, his swift and caustic satire. Mr. Hall Caine, it is true, aims at the grandiose, but then he writes at the top of his voice. He is so loud that one cannot hear what he says. Mr. James Payn is an adept in the art of concealing what is not worth finding. He hunts down the obvious with the enthusiasm of a shortsighted detective. As one turns over the pages, the suspense of 'the author becomes almost unbearable. The horses of Mr. William Black's phaeton do not soar towards the sun. They merely frighten the sky at evening into violent chromolithographic effects. On seeing them approach, the peasants take refuge in dialect. Mrs. Oliphant prattles pleasantly about curates, lawn-tennis parties, domesticity, and other wearisome things. Mr. Marion Crawford has immolated himself upon the altar of local colour. He is like the lady in the French comedy who keeps talking about 'le beau ciel d'Italie.' Besides, he has fallen into a bad habit of uttering moral platitudes. He is always telling us that to be good is to be good, and that to be bad is to be wicked. At times he is almost edifying. Robert Elsmere is of course a masterpiece -- a masterpiece of the 'genre ennuyeux,' the one form of literature that the English people seem to thoroughly enjoy. A thoughtful young friend of ours once told us that it reminded him of the sort of conversation that goes on at a meat tea in the house of a serious Noncomformist family, and we can quite believe it. Indeed it is only in England that such a book could be produced. England is the home of lost ideas. As for that great and daily increasing school of novelists for whom the sun always rises in the East-End, the only thing that can be said about them is that they find life crude, and leave it raw.

"In France, though nothing so deliberately tedious as Robert Elsmere has been produced, things are not much better. M. Guy de Maupassant, with his keen mordant irony and his hard vivid style, strips life of the few poor rags that still cover her, and shows us foul sore and festering wound. He writes lurid little tragedies in which everybody is ridiculous; bitter comedies at which one cannot laugh for very tears. M. Zola, true to the lofty principle that he lays down in one of his pronunciamientos on literature, ' L'homme de Genie n'a jamais d'esprit,' is determined to show that, if he has not got genius, he can at least be dull. And how well he succeeds! He is not without power. Indeed at times, as in Germinal, there is something almost epic in his work. But his work is entirely wrong from beginning to end, and wrong not on the ground of morals, but on the ground of art. From any ethical standpoint it is just what it should be. The author is perfectly truthful, and describes things exactly as they happen. What more can any moralist desire? We have no sympathy at all with the moral indignation of our time against M. Zola. It is simply the indignation of Tartuffe on being exposed. But from the standpoint of art, what can be said in favour of the author of L'Assommoir, [Vane, and PotBouille? Nothing. Mr. Ruskin once described the characters in George Eliot's novels as being like the sweepings of a Pentonville omnibus, but M. Zola's characters are much worse. They have their dreary vices, and their drearier virtues. The record of their lives is absolutely without interest. Who cares what happens to them? In literature we require distinction, charm, beauty, and imaginative power. We don't want to be harrowed and disgusted with an account of the doings of the lower orders. M. Daudet is better. He has wit, a light touch, and an amusing style. But he has lately committed literary suicide. Nobody can possibly care for Delobelle with his 'II faut lutter pour l'art,' or for Valmajour with his eternal refrain about the nightingale, or for the poet in Jack with his 'moss cruels,' now that we have learned from Vingt Ans de ma Vie Litéraire that these characters were taken directly from life. To us they seem to have suddenly lost all their vitality, all the few qualities they ever possessed. The only real people are the people who never existed, and if a novelist is base enough to go to life for his personages he should at least pretend that they are creations, and not boast of them as copies. The justification of a character in a novel is not that other persons are what they are, but that the author is what he is. Otherwise the novel is not a work of art. As for M Paul Bourget, the master of the 'roman psychologique,' he commits the error of imagining that the men and women of modern life are capable of being infinitely analysed for an innumerable series of chapters. In point of fact what is interesting about people in good society -- and M. Bourget rarely moves out of the Faubourg St. Germain, except to come to London, -- is the mask that each one of them wears, not the reality that lies behind the mask. It is a humiliating confession, but we are all of us made out of the same stuff. In Falstaff there is something of Hamlet, in Hamlet there is not a little of Falstaff. The fat knight has his moods of melancholy, and the young prince his moments of coarse humour. Where we differ from each other is purely in accidentals: in dress, manner, tone of voice, religious opinions, personal appearance, tricks of habit, and the like. The more one analyses people, the more all reasons for analysis disappear. Sooner or later one comes to that dreadful universal thing called human nature. Indeed, as any one who has ever worked among the poor knows only too well, the brotherhood of man is no mere poet's dream, it is a most depressing and humiliating reality; and if a writer insists upon analysing the upper classes, he might just as well write of matchgirls and costermongers at once." However, my dear Cyril, I will not detain you any further just here. I quite admit that modern novels have many good points. All I insist on is that, as a class, they are quite unreadable.

CYRIL. That is certainly a very grave qualification, but I must say that I think you are rather unfair in some of your strictures. I like The Deemster, and The Daughter of Heth, and Le Disciple, and Mr. Isaacs, and as for Robert Elsmere I am quite devoted to it.

Not that I can look upon it as a serious work. As a statement of the problems that confront the earnest Christian it is ridiculous and antiquated. It is simply Arnold's Literature and Dogma with the literature left out. It is as much behind the age as Paley's Evidences, or Colenso's method of Biblical exegesis. Nor could anything be less impressive than the unfortunate hero gravely heralding a dawn that rose long ago, and so completely missing its true significance that he proposes to carry on the business of the old firm under the new name. On the other hand, it contains several clever caricatures, and a heap of delightful quotations, and Green's philosophy very pleasantly sugars the somewhat bitter pill of the author's fiction. I also cannot help expressing my surprise that you have said nothing about the two novelists whom you are always reading, Balzac and George Meredith. Surely they are realists, both of them?

VIVIAN. Ah! Meredith! Who can define him? His style is chaos illumined by flashes of lightning. As a writer he has mastered everything except language: as a novelist he can do everything, except tell a story: as an artist he is everything, except articulate. Somebody in Shakespeare -- Touchstone, I think -- talks about a man who is always breaking his shins over his own wit, and it seems to me that this might serve as the basis for a criticism of Meredith's method. But whatever he is, he is not a realist. Or rather I would say that he is a child of realism who is not on speaking terms with his father. By deliberate choice he has made himself a romanticist. He has refused to bow the knee to Baal, and after all, even if the man's fine spirit did not revolt against the noisy assertions of realism, his style would be quite sufficient of itself to keep life at a respectful distance. By its means he has planted round his garden a hedge full of thorns, and red with wonderful roses. As for Balzac, he was a most wonderful combination of the artistic temperament with the scientific spirit. The latter he bequeathed to his disciples: the former was entirely his own. The difference between such a book as M. Zola's L'Assommoir and Balzac's Illusions Perdues is the difference between unimaginative realism and imaginative reality. "All Balzac's characters," said Baudelaire, "are gifted with the same ardour of life that animated himself. All his fictions are as deeply coloured as dreams. Each mind is a weapon loaded to the muzzle with will. The very scullions have genius." A steady course of Balzac reduces our living friends to shadows, and our acquaintances to the shadows of shades. His characters have a kind of fervent fiery-coloured existence. They dominate us, and defy scepticism. One of the greatest tragedies of my life is the death of Lucien de Rubempre'. It is a grief from which I have never been able to completely rid myself. It haunts me in my moments of pleasure. I remember it when I laugh. But Balzac is no more a realist than Holbein was. He created life, he did not copy it. I admit; however, that he set far too high a value on modernity of form and that, consequently, there is no book of his that, as an artistic masterpiece, can rank with Salammbô or Esmond, or The Cloister and the Hearth, or the Vicomte de Bragelonne.

CYRIL. Do you object to modernity of form, then?

VIVIAN. Yes. It is a huge price to pay for a very poor result. Pure modernity of form is always somewhat vulgarising. It cannot help being so. The public imagine that, because they are interested in their immediate surroundings, Art should be interested in them also, and should take them as her subject matter. But the mere fact that they are interested in these things makes them unsuitable subjects for Art. The only beautiful things, as somebody once said, are the things that do not concern us. As long as a thing is useful or necessary to us, or affects us in any way, either for pain or for pleasure, or appeals strongly to our sympathies, or is a vital part of the environment in which we live, it is outside the proper sphere of art. To art's subject-matter we should be more or less indifferent. We should, at any rate, have no preferences, no prejudices, no partisan feeling of any kind. It is exactly because Hecuba is nothing to us that her sorrows are such an admirable motive for a tragedy. I do not know anything in the whole history of literature sadder than the artistic career of Charles Reade. He wrote one beautiful book, The Cloister and the Hearth, a book as much above Romola as Romola is above Daniel Deronda, and wasted the rest of his life in a foolish attempt to be modern, to draw public attention to the state of our convict prisons, and the management of our private lunatic asylums. Charles Dickens was depressing enough in all conscience when he tried to arouse our sympathy for the victims of the poor-law administration; but Charles Reade, an artist, a scholar, a man with a true sense of beauty, raging and roaring over the abuses of contemporary life like a common pamphleteer or a sensational journalist, is really a sight for the angels to weep over. Believe me, my dear Cyril, modernity of form and modernity of subject matter are entirely and absolutely wrong. We have mistaken the common livery of the age for the vesture of the Muses' and spend our days in the sordid streets and hideous suburbs of our vile cities when we should be out on the hillside with Apollo. Certainly we are a degraded race, and have sold our birthright for a mess of facts.

CYRIL. There is something in what you say, and there is no doubt that whatever amusement we may find in reading a purely modern novel, we have rarely any artistic pleasure in rereading it. And this is perhaps the best rough test of what is literature and what is not. If one cannot enjoy reading a book over and over again, there is no use reading it at all. But what do you say about the return to Life and Nature? This is the panacea that is always being recommended to us.

VIVIAN. I will read you what I say on that subject. The passage comes later on in the article, but I may as well give it to you now: --

"The popular cry of our time is ' Let us return to Life and Nature; they will recreate Art for us, and send the red blood coursing through her veins; they will shoe her feet with swiftness and make her hand strong.' But, alas! we are mistaken in our amiable and weII-meaning efforts. Nature is always behind the age. And as for Life, she is the solvent that breaks up Art, the enemy that lays waste her house."

CYRIL. What do you mean by saying that Nature is always behind the age?

VIVIAN. Well, perhaps that is rather cryptic. What I mean is this. If we take Nature to mean natural simple instinct as opposed to self-conscious culture, the work produced under this influence is always old-fashioned, antiquated, and out of date. One touch of Nature may make the whole world kin, but two touches of Nature will destroy any work of Art. If, on the other hand, we regard Nature as the collection of phenomena external to man, people only discover in her what they bring to her. She has no suggestions of her own. Wordsworth went to the lakes, but he was never a lake poet. He found in stones the sermons he had already hidden there. He went moralizing about the district, but his good work was produced when he returned, not to Nature but to poetry. Poetry gave him Laodamia, and the fine sonnets, and the great Ode, such as it is. Nature gave him Martha Ray and Peter Bell, and the address to Mr. Wilkinson's spade.

CYRIL. I think that view might be questioned. I am rather inclined to believe in the "impulse from a vernal wood," though of course the artistic value of such an impulse depends entirely on the kind of temperament that receives it, so that the return to Nature would come to mean simply the advance to a great personality. You would agree with that, I fancy. However, proceed with your article.

VIVIAN (reading). "Art begins with abstract decoration with purely imaginative and pleasurable work dealing with what is unreal and non existent. This is the first stage. Then Life becomes fascinated with this new wonder, and asks to be admitted into the charmed circle. Art takes life as part of her rough material, recreates it, and refashions it in fresh forms, is absolutely indifferent to fact, invents, imagines, dreams, and keeps between herself and reality the impenetrable barrier of beautiful style, of decorative or ideal treatment. The third stage is when Life gets the upper hand, and drives Art out into the wilderness. This is the true decadence, and it is from this that we are now suffering.

"Take the case of the English drama. At first in the hands of the monks Dramatic Art was abstract, decorative, and mythological. Then she enlisted Life in her service, and using some of life's external forms, she created an entirely new race of beings, whose sorrows were more terrible than any sorrow man has ever felt, whose joys were keener than lover's joys, who had the rage of the Titans and the calm of the gods, who had monstrous and marvellous sins, monstrous and marvellous virtues. To them she gave a language different from that of actual use, a language full of resonant music and sweet rhythm, made stately by solemn cadence, or made delicate by fanciful rhyme, jewelled with wonderful words, and enriched with lofty diction. She clothed her children in strange raiment and gave them masks, and at her bidding the antique world rose from its marble tomb. A new Caesar stalked through the streets of risen Rome, and with purple sail and fluteled oars another Cleopatra passed up the river to Antioch. Old myth and legend and dream took shape and substance. History was entirely rewritten, and there was hardly one of the dramatists who did not recognize that the object of Art is not simple truth but complex beauty. In this they were perfectly right. Art itself is really a form of exaggeration; and selection, which is the very spirit of art, is nothing more than an intensified mode of overemphasis.

"But Life soon shattered the perfection of the form. Even in Shakespeare we can see the beginning of the end. It shows itself by the gradual breaking up of the blank verse in the later plays, by the predominance given to prose, and by the over-importance assigned to characterisation. The passages in Shakespeare -- and they are many -- where the language is uncouth, vulgar, exaggerated, fantastic, obscene even, are entirely due to Life calling for an echo of her own voice, and rejecting the intervention of beautiful style, through which alone should Life be suffered to find expression. Shakespeare is not by any means a flawless artist. He is too fond of going directly to life, and borrowing life's natural utterance. He forgets that when Art surrenders her imaginative medium she surrenders everything Goethe says, somewhere -- In der Beschränkung zeigt sich erst der Meister, 'It is in working within limits that the master reveals himself,' and the limitation, the very condition for of any art is style. However, we need not liege' any longer over Shakespeare's realism. The Tempest is the most perfect of palinodes. All that magnificent work of the Elizabethan and Jacobean artists contained within itself the seeds of its own dissolution, and that, if it drew some of its strength from using life as rough material, it drew all its weakness from using life as an artistic method. As the inevitable result of this substitution of an imitative for a creative medium, this surrender of an imaginative form, we have the modern English melodrama. The characters in these plays talk on the stage exactly as they would talk off it; they have neither aspirations nor aspirates; they are taken directly from life and reproduce its vulgarity down to the smallest detail; they present the gait, manner, costume, and accent of real people; they would pass unnoticed in a third-class railway carriage. And yet how wearisome the plays are! They do not succeed in producing even that impression of reality at which they aim, and which is their only reason for existing. As a method, realism is a complete failure.

"What is true about the drama and the novel is no less true about those arts that we call the decorative arts. The whole history of these arts in Europe is the record of the struggle between Orientalism, with its frank rejection of imitation, its love of artistic convention, its dislike to the actual representation of any object in Nature, and our own imitative spirit. Wherever the former has been paramount, as in Byzantium, Sicily, and Spain, by actual contact, or in the rest of Europe by the influence of the Crusades, we have had beautiful and imaginative work in which the visible things of life are transmuted into artistic conventions, and the things that Life has not are invented and fashioned for her delight. But wherever we have returned to Life and Nature, our work has always become vulgar, common, and uninteresting. Modern tapestry, with its aerial effects, its elaborate perspective, its broad expanses of waste sky, its faithful and laborious realism, has no beauty whatsoever. The pictorial glass of Germany is absolutely detestable. We are beginning to weave possible carpets in England, but only because we have returned to the method and spirit of the East. Our rugs and carpets of twenty years ago, with their solemn depressing truths, their inane worship of Nature, their sordid, reproductions of visible objects, have become, even to the Philistine, a source of laughter. A cultured Mahomedan once remarked to us, 'You Christian are so occupied in misinterpreting the fourth commandment that you have never thought of making an artistic application of the second.' He was perfectly right, and the whole truth of the matter is this: The proper school to learn art in is not Life but Art."

And now let me read you a passage which seems to me to settle the question very completely.

"It was not always thus. We need not say anything about the poets, for they, with the unfortunate exception of Mr. Wordsworth, have been really faithful to their high mission, and are universally recognized as being absolutely unreliable. But in the works of Herodotus, who, in spite of the shallow and ungenerous attempts of modern sciolists to verify his history, may justly be called the 'Father of Lies'; in the published speeches of Cicero and the biographies of Suetonius; in Tacitus at his best; in Pliny's Natural History in Hanno's Periplus; in all the early chronicles; in the Lives of the Saints; in Froissart and Sir Thomas Mallory; in the travels of Marco Polo; in Olaus Magnus, and Aldrovandus, and Conrad Lycosthenes, with his magnificent Prodigiorum et Ostentorum Chronicon; in the autobiography of Benvenuto Cellini; in the memoirs of Casanuova; in Defoe's History of the Plague; in Boswell's Life of Johnson; in Napoleon's despatches, and in the works of our own Carlyle, whose French Revolution is one of the most fascinating historical novels ever written, facts are either kept in their proper subordinate position, or else entirely excluded on the general ground of dulness. Now, everything is changed. Facts are not merely finding a footing-place in history, but they are usurping the domain of Fancy, and have invaded the kingdom of Romance. Their chilling touch is over everything. They are vulgarising mankind. The crude commercialism of America, its materialising spirit, its indifference to the poetical side of things, and its lack of imagination and of high unattainable ideals, are entirely due to that country having adopted for its national hero a man, who according to his own confession, was incapable of telling a lie, and it is not too much to say that the story of George Washington and the cherrytree has done more harm, and in a shorter space of time, than any other moral tale in the whole of literature."

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Part 2 of 2

CYRIL. My dear boy!

VIVIAN. I assure you it is the case, and the amusing part of the whole thing is that the story of the cherrytree is an absolute myth. However, you must not think that I am too despondent about the artistic future either of America or of our own country. Listen to this:--

"That some change will take place before this century has drawn to its close we have no doubt whatsoever. Bored by the tedious and improving conversation of those who have neither the wit to exaggerate nor the genius to romance, tired of the intelligent person whose reminiscences are always based upon memory, whose statements are invariably limited by probability, and who is at any time liable to be corroborated by the merest Philistine who happens to be present, Society sooner or later must return to its lost leader, the cultured and fascinating liar. Who he was who first, without ever having gone out to the rude chase, told the wondering cavemen at sunset how he had dragged the Megatherium from the purple darkness of its jasper cave, or slain the Mammoth in single combat and brought back its gilded tusks, we cannot tell, and not one of our modern anthropologists, for all their much-boasted science, has had the ordinary courage to tell us. Whatever was his name or race, he certainly was the true founder of social intercourse. For the aim of the liar is simply to charm, to delight, to give pleasure. He is the very basis of civilized society, and without him a dinner party, even at the mansions of the great, is as dull as a lecture at the Royal Society, or a debate at the Incorporated Authors, or one of Mr. Burnand's farcical comedies.

"Nor will he be welcomed by society alone. Art, breaking from the prison-house of realism, will run to greet him, and will kiss his false, beautiful lips, knowing that he alone is in possession of the great secret of all her manifestations, the secret that Truth is entirely and absolutely a matter of style; while Life -- poor, probable, uninteresting human life -- tired of repeating herself for the benefit of Mr. Herbert Spencer, scientific historians, and the compilers of statistics in general, will follow meekly after him, and try to reproduce, in her own simple and untutored way, some of the marvels of which he talks.

"No doubt there will always be critics who, like a certain writer in the Saturday Review, will gravely censure the teller of fairy tales for his defective knowledge of natural history, who will measure imaginative work by their own lack of any imaginative faculty, and will hold up their ink-stained hands in horror if some honest gentleman who has never been farther than the yewtrees of his own garden, pens a fascinating book of travels like Sir John Mandeville, or, like great Raleigh, writes a whole history of the world, without knowing anything whatsoever about the past. To excuse themselves they will try end sheller under the shield of him who made Prospero the magician, and gave him Caliban and Ariel as his servants, who heard the Tritons blowing their horns round the coral reefs of the Enchanted Isle, and the fairies singing to each other in a wood near Athens, who led the phantom kings in dim procession across the misty Scottish heath, and hid Hecate in a cave with the weird sister. They will call upon Shakespeare -- they always do -- and will quote that hackneyed passage about Art holding the mirror up to Nature, forgetting that this unfortunate aphorism is deliberately said by Hamlet in order to convince the bystanders of his absolute insanity in all art-matters."

CYRIL. Ahem! Another cigarette, please.

VIVIAN. My dear fellow, whatever you may say, it is merely a dramatic utterance, and no more represents Shakespeare's real views upon art than the speeches of Iago represent his real views upon morals. But let me get to the end of the passage:

"Art finds her own perfection within, and not outside of, herself. She is not to be judged by any external standard of resemblance. She is a veil, rather than a mirror. She has flowers that no forests know of, birds that no woodland possesses. She makes and unmakes many worlds, and can draw the moon from heaven with a scarlet thread. Hers are the 'forms more real than living man,' and hers the great archetypes of which things that have existence are but unfinished copies. Nature has, in her eyes, no laws, no uniformity. She can work miracles at her will, and when she calls monsters from the deep they come. She can bid the almond tree blossom in winter, and send the snow upon the ripe cornfield. At her word the frost lays its silver finger on the burning mouth of June, and the winged lions creep out from the hollows of the Lydian hills. The dryads peer from the thicket as she passes by, and the brown fauns smile strangely at her when she comes near them. She has hawkfaced gods that worship her, and the centaurs gallop at her side."

CYRIL. I like that. I can see it. Is that the end?

VIVIAN. No. There is one more passage, but it is purely practical. It simply suggests some methods by which we could revive this lost art of Lying.

CYRIL. Well, before you read it to me, I should like to ask you a question. What do you mean by saying that life, "poor, probable, uninteresting human life," will try to reproduce the marvels of art? I can quite understand your objection to art being treated as a mirror. You think it would reduce genius to the position of a cracked Iooking-glass. But you don't mean to say that you seriously believe that Life imitates Art, that Life in fact is the mirror, and Art the reality?

VIVIAN. Certainly I do. Paradox though it may seem -- and paradoxes are always dangerous things -- it is none the less true that Life imitates art far more than Art imitates life. We have all seen in our own day in England how a certain curious and fascinating type of beauty, invented and emphasised by two imaginative painters, has so influenced Life that whenever one goes to a private view or to an artistic salon one sees, here the mystic eyes of Rossetti's dream, the long ivory throat, the strange squarecut jaw, the loosened shadowy hair that he so ardently loved, there the sweet maidenhood of The Golden Stair, the blossomlike mouth and weary loveliness of the Laus Amoris, the passionpale face of Andromeda, the thin hands and lithe beauty of the Vivien in Merlin's Dream. And it has always been so. A great artist invents a type, and Life tries to copy it, to reproduce it in a popular form, like an enterprising publisher. Neither Holbein nor Vandyck found in England what they have given us. They brought their types with them, and Life, with her keen imitative faculty, set herself to supply the master with models. The Greeks, with their quick artistic instinct, understood this, and set in the bride's chamber the statue of Hermes or of Apollo, that she might bear children as lovely as the works of art that she looked at in her rapture or her pain. They knew that Life gains from Art not merely spirituality, depth of thought and feeling, soul-turmoil or soul-peace, but that she can form herself on the very lines and colours of art and can reproduce the dignity of Pheidias as well as the grace of Praxiteles. Hence came their objection to realism. They disliked it on purely social grounds. They felt that it inevitably makes people ugly, and they were perfectly right. We try to improve the conditions of the race by means of good air, free sunlight, wholesome water, and hideous bare buildings for the better housing of the lower orders. But these things merely produce health; they do not produce beauty. For this, Art is required, and the true disciples of the great artist are not his studio imitators, but those who become like his works of art, be they plastic as in Greek days, or pictorial as in modern times; in a word, Life is Art's best, Art's only pupil.

As it is with the visible arts, so it is with literature. The most obvious and the vulgarest form in which this is shown is in the case of the silly boys who, after reading the adventures of Jack Sheppard or Dick Turpin, pillage the stalls of unfortunate apple-women, break into sweet shops at night, and alarm old gentlemen who are returning home from the city by leaping out on them in suburban lanes, with black masks and unloaded revolvers. This interesting phenomenon, which always occurs after the appearance of a new edition of either of the books I have alluded to, is usually attributed to the influence of literature on the imagination. But this is a mistake. The imagination is essentially creative and always seeks for new form. The boy burglar is simply the inevitable result of life's imitative instinct. He is Fact, occupied as Fact usually is with trying to reproduce Fiction, and what we see in him is repeated on an extended scale throughout the whole of life. Schopenhauer has analysed the pessimism that characterises modern thought, but Hamlet invented it. The world has become sad because a puppet was once melancholy. The Nihilist, that strange martyr who has no faith, who goes to the stake without enthusiasm, and dies for what he does not believe in, is a purely literary product. He was invented by Tourgenieff, and completed by Dostoieffski. Robespierre came out of the pages of Rousseau as surely as the People's Palace rose out debris of a novel. Literature always anticipates life. It does not copy it, but moulds it to its purpose. The nineteenth century, as we know it, is largely an invention of Balzac. Our Luciens de Rubempre, our Rastignacs, and De Marsays made their first appearance on the stage of the Comedie Humaine. We are merely carrying out, with footnotes and unnecessary additions, the whim or fancy or creative vision of a great novelist. I once asked a lady, who knew Thackeray intimately, whether he had had any model for Becky Sharp. She told me that Becky was an invention, but that the idea of the character had been partly suggested by a governess who lived in the neighbourhood of Kensington Square, and was the companion of a very selfish and rich old woman. I inquired what became of the governess, and she replied that, oddly enough, some years after the appearance of Vanity Fair, she ran away with the nephew of the lady with whom she was living, and for a short time made a great splash in society, quite in Mrs. Rawdon Crawley's style, and entirely by Mrs. Rawdon Crawley's methods. Ultimately she came to grief, disappeared to the Continent, and used to be occasionally seen at Monte Carlo and other gambling-places. The noble gentleman from whom the same great sentimentalist drew Colonel Newcome died, a few months after The Newcomes had reached a fourth edition, with the word "Adsum" on his lips. Shortly after Mr. Stevenson published his curious psychological story of transformation, a friend of mine, called Mr. Hyde, was in the north of London, and being anxious to get to a railway station, took what he thought would be a short cut, lost his way, and found himself in a network of mean, evil-looking streets. Feeling rather nervous he began to walk extremely fast, when suddenly out of an archway ran a child right between his legs. It fell on the pavement, he tripped over it, and trampled upon it. Being of course very much frightened and a little hurt, it began to scream, and in a few seconds the whole street was full of rough people who came pouring out of the houses like ants. They surrounded him, and asked him his name. He was just about to give it when he suddenly remembered the opening incident in Mr. Stevenson's story. He was so filled with horror at having realized in his own person that terrible and well written scene, and at having done accidentally, though in fact, what the Mr. Hyde of fiction had done with deliberate intent, that he ran away as hard as he could go. He was, however, very closely followed, and finally he took refuge in a surgery, the door of which happened to be open, where he explained to a young assistant, who was serving there, exactly what had occurred. The humanitarian crowd were induced to go away on his giving them a small sum of money, and as soon as the coast was quite clear he left. As he passed out, the name on the brass doorplate of the surgery caught his eye. It was "Jekyll." At least it should have been.

Here the imitation, as far as it went, was of course accidental. In the following case the imitation was self-conscious. In the year 1879, just after I had left Oxford, I met at a reception at the house of one of the Foreign Ministers a woman of very curious exotic beauty. We became great friends, and were constantly together. And yet what interested most in her was not her beauty, but her character, her entire vagueness of character. She seemed to have no personality at all, but simply the possibility of many types. Sometimes she would give herself up entirely to art, turn her drawing-room into a studio, and spend two or three days a week at picture galleries or museums. Then she would take to attending race-meetings, wear the most horsey clothes, and talk about nothing but betting. She abandoned religion for mesmerism, mesmerism for politics, and politics for thematic excitements of philanthropy. In fact, she was a kind of Proteus, and as much a failure in all her transformations as was that wondrous sea-god when Odysseus laid hold of him. One day a serial began in one of the French magazines. At that time I used to read serial stories, and I well remember the shock of surprise I felt when I came to the description of the heroine. She was so like my friend that I brought her the magazine, and she recognized herself in it immediately, and seemed fascinated by the resemblance. I should tell you, by the way, that the story was translated from some dead Russian writer, so that the author had not taken his type from my friend. Well, to put the matter briefly, some months afterwards I was in Venice, and finding the magazine in the reading-room of the hotel, I took it up casually to see what had become of the heroine. It was a most piteous tale, as the girl had ended by running away with a man absolutely inferior to her, not merely in social station, but in character and intellect also. I wrote to my friend that evening about my views on John Bellini, and the admirable ices at Florio's, and the artistic value of gondolas, but added a postscript to the effect that her double in the story had behaved in a very silly manner. I don't know why I added that, but I remember I had a sort of dread over me that she might do the same thing. Before my letter had reached her, she had run away with a man who deserted her in six months. I saw her in 1884 in Paris, where she was living with her mother, and I asked her whether the story had had anything to do with her action. She told me that she had felt an absolutely irresistible impulse to follow the heroine step by step in her strange and fatal progress, and that it was with a feeling of real terror that she had looked forward to the last few chapters of the story. When they appeared, it seemed to her that she was compelled to reproduce them in life, and she did so. It was a most clear example of this imitative instinct of which I was speaking, and an extremely tragic one.

However, I do not wish to dwell any further upon individual instances. Personal experience is a most vicious and limited circle. All that I desire to point out is the general principle that Life imitates Art far more than Art imitates Life, and I feel sure that if you think seriously about it you will find that it is true. Life holds the mirror up to Art, and either reproduces some strange type imagined by painter or sculptor, or realizes in fact what has been dreamed in fiction. Scientifically speaking, the basis of life-- the energy of life, as Aristotle would call it -- is simply the desire for expression, and Art is always presenting various forms through which this expression can be attained. Life seizes on them and uses them, even if they be to her own hurt. Young men have committed suicide because Rolla did so, have died by their own hand because by his own hand Werther died. Think of what we owe to the imitation of Christ, of what we owe to the imitation of Caesar.

CYRIL. The theory is certainly a very curious one, but to make it complete you must show that Nature, no less than Life, is an imitation of Art. Are you prepared to prove that?

VIVIAN. My dear fellow, I am prepared to prove anything.

CYRIL. Nature follows the landscape painter then, and takes her effects from him?

VIVIAN. Certainly. Where, if not from the Impressionists, do we get those wonderful brown fogs that come creeping down our streets, blurring the gas-lamps and changing the houses into monstrous shadows? To whom, if not to them and their master, do we owe the lovely silver mists that brood over our river, and turn to faint forms of fading grace curved bridge and swaying barge? The extraordinary change that has taken place in the climate of London during the last ten years is entirely due to this particular school of Art. You smile. Consider the matter from a scientific or a metaphysical point of view, and you will find that I am right. For what is Nature? Nature is no great mother who has borne us. She is our creation. It is in our brain that she quickens to life. Things are because we see them, and what we see, and how we see it, depends on the Arts that have influenced us. To look at a thing is very different from seeing a thing. One does not see anything until one sees its beauty. Then, and then only, does it come into existence. At present, people see fogs, not because there are fogs, but because poets and painters have taught them the mysterious loveliness of such effects. There may have been fogs for centuries in London. I dare say there were. But no one saw them, and so we do not know anything about them. They did not exist till Art had invented them. Now, it must be admitted, fogs are carried to excess. They have become the mere mannerism of a clique, and the exaggerated realism of their method gives dull people bronchitis. Where the cultured catch an effect, the uncultured catch cold. And so, let us be humane, and invite Art to turn her wonderful eyes elsewhere. She has done so already, indeed. That white quivering sunlight that one sees now in France, with its strange blotches of mauve, and its restless violet shadows, is her latest fancy, and, on the whole, Nature reproduces it quite admirably. Where she used to give us Corots and Daubignys, she gives us now exquisite Monets and entrancing Pisaros. Indeed there are moments, rare, it is true, but still to be observed from time to time, when Nature becomes absolutely modern. Of course she is not always to be relied upon. The fact is that she is in this unfortunate position. Art creates an incomparable and unique effect, and, having done so, passes on to other things. Nature, upon the other hand, forgetting that imitation can be made the sincerest form of insult, keeps on repeating this effect until we all become absolutely wearied of it. Nobody of any real culture, for instance, ever talks nowadays about the beauty of a sunset. Sunsets are quite old fashioned. They belong to the time when Turner was the last note in art. To admire them is a distinct sign of provincialism of temperament. Upon the other hand they go on. Yesterday evening Mrs. Arundel insisted on my coming to the window, and looking at the glorious sky, as she called it. Of course I had to look at it. She is one of those absurdly pretty Philistines, to whom one can deny nothing. And what was it? It was simply a very second-rate Turner, a Turner of a bad period, with all the painter's worst faults exaggerated and overemphasized. Of course, I am quite ready to admit that Life very often commits the same error. She produces her false Renes and her sham Vautrins, just as Nature gives us, on one day a doubtful Cuyp, and on another a more than questionable Rousseau. Still, Nature irritates one more when she does things of that kind. It seems so stupid, so obvious, so unnecessary. A false Vautrin might be delightful. A doubtful Cuyp is unbearable. However, I don't want to be too hard on Nature. I wish the Channel, especially at Hastings, did not look quite so often like a Henry Moore, grey pearl with yellow lights, but then, when Art is more varied, Nature will, no doubt, be more varied also. That she imitates Art, I don't think even her worst enemy would deny now. It is the one thing that keeps her in touch with civilized man. But have I proved my theory to your satisfaction?

CYRIL. You have proved it to my dissatisfaction, which is better. But even admitting this strange imitative instinct in Life and Nature, surely you would acknowledge that Art expresses the temper of its age, the spirit of its time, the moral and social conditions that surround it, and under whose influence it is produced.

VIVIAN. Certainly not! Art never expresses anything but itself. This is the principle of my new a aesthetics; and it is this, more than that vital connection between form and substance, on which Mr. Pater dwells, that makes music the type of all the arts. Of course, nations and individuals, with that healthy, natural vanity which is the secret of existence, are always under the impression that it is of them that the Muses are talking, always trying to find in the calm dignity of imaginative art some mirror of their own turbid passions, always forgetting that the singer of Life is not Apollo, but Marsyas. Remote from reality, and with her eyes turned away from the shadows of the cave, Art reveals her own perfection, and the wondering crowd that watches the opening of the marvellous, many-petalled rose fancies that it is its own history that is being told to it, its own spirit that is finding expression in a new form. But it is not so. The highest art rejects the burden of the human spirit, and gains more from a new medium or a fresh material than she does from any enthusiasm for art, or from any lofty passion, or from any great awakening of the human consciousness. She develops purely on her own lines. She is not symbolic of any age. It is the ages that are her symbols.

Even those who hold that Art is representative of time and place and people, cannot help admitting that the more imitative an art is, the less it represents to us the spirit of its age. The evil faces of the Roman emperors look out at us from the foul porphyry and spotted jasper in which the realistic artists of the day delighted to work, and we fancy that in those cruel lips and heavy sensual jaws we can find the secret of the ruin of the Empire. But it was not so. The vices of Tiberius could not destroy that supreme civilization, any more than the virtues of the Antonines could save it. It fell for other, for less interesting reasons. The sibyls and prophets of the Sistine may indeed serve to interpret for some that new birth of the emancipated spirit that we call the Renaissance; but what do the drunken boors and brawling peasants of Dutch art tell us about the great soul of Holland? The more abstract, the more ideal an art is, the more it reveals to us the temper of its age. If we wish to understand a nation by means of its art, let us look at its architecture or its music.

CYRIL. I quite agree with you there. The spirit of an age may be best expressed in the abstract ideal arts, for the spirit itself is abstract arid ideal. Upon the other hand, for the visible aspect of an age, for its look, as the phrase goes, we must of course go to the arts of imitation.

VIVIAN. I don't think so. After all, what the imitative arts really give us are merely the various styles of particular artists, or of certain schools of artists. Surely you don't imagine that the people of the Middle Ages bore any resemblance at all to the figures on mediaeval stained glass or in mediaeval stone and wood carving, or on mediaeval metalwork, or tapestries, or illuminated MSS. They were probabIy very ordinary-looking people, with nothing grotesque, or remarkable, or fantastic in their appearance. The Middle Ages, as we know them in art, are simply a definite form of style, and there is no reason at all why an artist with this style should not be produced in the nineteenth century. No great artist ever sees things as they really are. If he did, he would cease to be an artist. Take an example from our own day. I know that you are fond of Japanese things. Now, do you really imagine that the Japanese people, as they are presented to us in art, have any existence? If you do, you have never understood Japanese art at all. The Japanese people are the deliberate self-conscious creation of certain individual artists. If you set a picture by Hokusai, or Hokkei, or any of the great native painters, beside a real Japanese gentleman or lady, you will see that there is not the slightest resemblance between them. The actual people who live in Japan are not unlike the general run of English people; that is to say, they are extremely commonplace, and have nothing curious or extraordinary about them. In fact the whole of Japan is a pure invention. There is no such country, there are no such people. One of our most charming painters went recently to the Land of the Chrysanthemum in the foolish hope of seeing the Japanese. All he saw, all he had the chance of painting, were a few lanterns and some fans. He was quite unable to discover the inhabitants, as his delightful exhibition at Messrs. Dowdeswell's Gallery showed only too well. He did not know that the Japanese people are, as I have said, simply a mode of style, an exquisite fancy of art. And so, if you desire to see a Japanese effect, you will not behave like a tourist and go to Tokio. On the contrary, you will stay at home, and steep yourself in the work of certain Japanese artists, and then, when you have absorbed the spirit of their style, and caught their imaginative manner of vision, you will go some afternoon and sit in the Park or stroll down Piccadilly, and if you cannot see an absolutely Japanese effect there, you will not see it anywhere. Or, to return again to the past, take as another instance the ancient Greeks. Do you think that Greek art ever tells us what the Greek people were like? Do you believe that the Athenian women were like the stately dignified figures of the Parthenon frieze, or like those marvellous goddesses who sat in the triangular pediments of the same building? If you judge from the art, they certainly were so. But read an authority, like Aristophanes for instance. You will find that the Athenian ladies laced tightly, wore high-heeled shoes, died their hair yellow, painted and rouged their faces, and were exactly like any silly fashionable or fallen creature of our own day. The fact is that we look back on the ages entirely through the medium of Art, and Art, very fortunately, has never once told us the truth.

CYRIL. But modern portraits by English painters, what of them? Surely they are like the people they pretend to represent?

VIVIAN. Quite so. They are so like them that a hundred years from now no one will believe in them. The only portraits in which one believes are portraits where there is very little of the sitter and a very great deal of the artist. Holbein's drawings of the men and women of his time impress us with a sense of their absolute reality. But this is simply because Holbein compelled life to accept his conditions, to restrain itself within his limitations, to reproduce his type, and to appear as he wished it to appear. It is style that makes us believe in a thing -- nothing but style. Most of our modern portrait painters are doomed to absolute oblivion. They never paint what they see. They paint what the public sees, and the public never sees anything.

CYRIL. Well, after that I think I should like to hear the end of your article.

VIVIAN. With pleasure. Whether it will do any good I really cannot say. Ours is certainly the dullest and most prosaic century possible. Why, even Sleep has played us false, and has closed up the gates of ivory, and opened the gates of horn. The dreams of the great middle classes of this country, as recorded in Mr. Myers's two bulky volumes on the subject and in the Transactions of the Psychical Society, are the most depressing things that I have ever read. There is not even a fine nightmare among them. They are commonplace, sordid, and tedious. As for the Church I cannot conceive anything better for the culture of a country than the presence in it of a body of men whose duty it is to believe in the supernatural, to perform daily miracles, and to keep alive that mythopoetic faculty which is so essential for the imagination. But in the English Church a man succeeds, not through his capacity for belief but through his capacity for disbelief. Ours is the only Church where the sceptic stands at the altar, and where St. Thomas is regarded as the ideal apostle. Many a worthy clergyman, who passes his life in admirable works of kindly charity, lives and dies unnoticed and unknown; but it is sufficient for some shallow uneducated passman out of either University to get up in his pulpit and express his doubts about Noah's ark, or Balaam's ass, or Jonah and the whale, for half of London to flock to hear him, and to sit open-mouthed in rapt admiration at his superb intellect. The growth of common sense in the English Church is a thing very much to be regretted. It is really a degrading concession to a low form of realism. It is silly, too. It springs from an entire ignorance of psychology. Man can believe the impossible, but man can never believe the improbable. However, I must read the end of my article:--

"What we have to do, what at any rate it is our duty to do, is to revive this old art of Lying. Much of course may be done, in the way of educating the public, by amateurs in the domestic circle, at literary lunches, and at afternoon teas. But this is merely the light and graceful side of Iying, such as was probably heard at Cretan dinner parties. There are many other forms. Lying for the sake of gaining some immediate personal advantage, for instance -- lying with a moral purpose, as it is usually called -- though of late it has been rather looked down upon, was extremely popular with the antique world. Athena laughs when Odysseus tells her 'his words of sly devising,' as Mr. William Morris phrases it, and the glory of mendacity illumines the pale brow of the stainless hero of Euripidean tragedy, and sets among the noble women of the past the young bride of one of Horace's most exquisite odes. Later on, what at first had been merely a natural instinct was elevated into a self-conscious science. Elaborate rules were laid down for the guidance of mankind, and an important school of literature grew up round the subject. Indeed, when one remembers the excellent philosophical treatise of Sanchez on the whole question one cannot help regretting that no one has ever thought of publishing a cheap and condensed edition of the works of that great casuist. A short primer, 'When to Lie and How,' if brought out in an attractive and not too expensive a form, would no doubt command a large sale, and would prove of real practical service to many earnest and deep-thinking people. Lying for the sake of the improvement of the young, which is the basis of home education, still lingers amongst us, and its advantages are so admirably set forth in the early books of Plato's Republic that it is unnecessary to dwell upon them here. It is a mode of Iying for which all good mothers have peculiar capabilities, but it is capable of still further development, and has been sadly overlooked by the School Board. Lying for the sake of a monthly salary is of course well known in Fleet Street, and the profession of a political leader-writer is not without its advantages. But it is said to be a somewhat dull occupation, and it certainly does not lead to much beyond a kind of ostentatious obscurity. The only form of Iying that is absolutely beyond reproach is Lying for its own sake, and the highest development of this is, as we have already pointed out, Lying in Art. Just as those who do not love Plato more than Truth cannot pass beyond the threshold of the Academe, so those who do not love Beauty more than Truth never know the inmost shrine of Art. The solid stolid British intellect lies in the desert sands like the Sphinx in Flaubert's marvellous tale, and fantasy La Chimere, dances round it, and calls to it with her false, flute-toned voice. It may not hear her now, but surely some day, when we are all bored to death with the commonplace character of modern fiction, it will hearken to her and try to borrow her wings.

"And when that day dawns, or sunset reddens how joyous we shall all be! Facts will be regarded as discreditable, Truth will be found mourning over her fetters, and Romance, with her temper of wonder, will return to the land. The very aspect of the world will change to our startled eyes. Out of the sea will rise Behemoth and Leviathan and sail round the high-pooped galleys, as they do on the delightful maps of those ages when books on geography were actually readable. Dragons will wander about the waste places, and the phoenix will soar from her nest of fire into the air. We shall lay our hands upon the basilisk, and see the jewel in the toad's head. Champing his gilded oats, the Hippogriff will stand in our stalls, and over our heads will float the Blue Bird singing of beautiful and impossible things, of things that are lovely and that never happened, of things that are not and that should be. But before this comes to pass we must cultivate the lost art of Lying."

CYRIL. Then we must certainly cultivate it at once. But in order to avoid making any error I want you to tell me briefly the doctrines of the new aesthetics.

VIVIAN. Briefly, then, they are these. Art never expresses anything but itself. It has an independent life, just as Thought has, and develops purely on its own lines. It is not necessarily realistic in an age of realism, nor spiritual in an age of faith. So far from being the creation of its time, it is usually in direct opposition to it, and the only history that it preserves for us is the history of its own progress. Sometimes it returns upon its footsteps, and revives some antique form, as happened in the archaistic movement of late Greek Art, and in the pre-Raphaelite movement of our own day. At other times it entirely anticipates its age, and produces in one century work that it takes another century to understand, to appreciate, and to enjoy. In no case does it reproduce its age. To pass from the art of a time to the time itself is the great mistake that all historians commit.

The second doctrine is this. All bad art comes from returning to Life and Nature, and elevating them into ideals. Life and Nature may sometimes be used as part of Art's rough material, but before they are of any real service to art they must be translated into artistic conventions. The moment Art surrenders its imaginative medium it surrenders everything. As a method Realism is a complete failure, and the two things that every artist should avoid are modernity of form and modernity of subject-matter. To us, who live in the nineteenth century, any century is a suitable subject for art except our own. The only beautiful things are the things that do not concern us. It is, to have the pleasure of quoting myself, exactly because Hecuba is nothing to us that her sorrows are so suitable a motive for a tragedy. Besides, it is only the modern that ever becomes old-fashioned. M. Zola sits down to give us a picture of the Second Empire. Who cares for the Second Empire now? It is out of date. Life goes faster than Realism, but Romanticism is always in front of Life.

The third doctrine is that Life imitates Art far more than Art imitates Life. This results not merely from Life's imitative instinct, but from the fact that the self-conscious aim of Life is to find expression, and that Art offers it certain beautiful forms through which it may realize that energy. It is a theory that has never been put forward before, but it is extremely fruitful, and throws an entirely new light upon the history of Art.

It follows, as a corollary from this, that external Nature also imitates Art. The only effects that she can show us are effects that we have already seen through poetry, or in paintings. This is the secret of Nature's charm, as well as the explanation of Nature's weakness.

The final revelation is that Lying, the telling of beautiful untrue things, is the proper aim of Art. But of this I think I have spoken at sufficient length. And now let us go out on the terrace, where "droops the milk-white peacock like a ghost," while the evening star "washes the dusk with silver." At twilight nature becomes a wonderfully suggestive effect, and is not without loveliness, though perhaps its chief use is to illustrate quotations from the poets. Come! We have talked long enough.

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Isaline Blew Horner [I.B. Horner]
by Wikipedia
Accessed: 8/9/20

So far as I could make out the trouble had started, as trouble so often does, with gossip, in this case gossip about my relationship with Terry. Dr Edward Conze, who had his own sources of information, later told me that the gossip had originated with 'the old ladies of Kensington', and I had no reason to dispute this. The ladies in question, as I well knew, were a group of some four or five middle-aged women, all of them staunch Theravãdins, who lived in West London and were connected either with the Chiswick Vihara or with the Pali Text Society. Some of them regularly attended the Buddhist Society's annual Summer School, and the gossip seems to have started at the Summer School of 1966, which Terry and I had both attended, and to have reached Walshe not long after our departure for India.

By what means the gossip of the old ladies had reached Walshe, and whether they had gone so far as actually to slander Terry and me, was not clear. What was clear was that Walshe had panicked, as he tended to do in a crisis, that he had called a meeting of the Trust, and that he had proposed that I be dismissed as incumbent of the Hampstead Vihara. Alf Vial and Mike Hookham had, of course, objected to this high-handed and unjust proceeding, and on being out-voted by Walshe, Goulstone, and Marcus, had resigned in protest. Walshe was thus able to assure Humphreys that the trustees had voted for my dismissal unanimously and that, in any case, their action was justified by my behaviour. In these circumstances it was not surprising, perhaps, that Toby [Christmas Humphreys] had agreed, albeit with genuine regret, that it would be better if I did not return to England. Both he and the three remaining trustees evidently assumed that in the absence of any support from either the Sangha Trust or the Buddhist Society, it would be impossible for me to continue my work in England and that I would have no alternative, therefore, but to accept the face-saving formula that Goulstone's letter was shortly to offer me. They assumed, in other words, that I would agree to go quietly, thus enabling the Trust to announce that I had resigned as incumbent of the Hampstead Vihara, and would be staying in the East, without anyone knowing what had really happened.

These tactics having failed, and opposition to my dismissal having steadily grown among members of the Sangha Association, Walshe had dug in his heels, insisting on the Trust's legal right to dismiss me, which was incontestable, and covertly assuring people that I had been dismissed for reasons much more serious than those that had been made public. By the end of the year, however, he had become quite isolated, support for him probably being limited to a few former disciples of Ananda Bodhi. He also seems to have been apprehensive of what might happen once Terry and I were back in England, as we had originally planned. Be that as it may, in January he had agreed to publish in The Buddhist, of which he was now editor, a statement in which the trustees appeared to retract the charges levelled against me in Goulstone's letter. The idea of the statement had originated with Toby, who by this time was ready to dissociate himself from Walshe, and the exact wording had been hammered out in discussions between him and John Hipkin. As published in the February 1967 issue of The Buddhist, shortly before my return to the scene, the statement read as follows:

The Directors of the English Sangha Trust Ltd. wish it to be known that in deciding to replace the Ven. Sthavira Sangharakshita in the office of Chief Incumbent at the Hampstead Buddhist Vihara they are not making any charge of impropriety or misconduct against him. The Directors hope that whatever may have been said to the detriment of his character in the course of recent speculation and gossip may now be withdrawn, and that all concerned may turn their energies to the study and practice of the Dhamma....

Whatever Walshe's reasons may have been for wanting the trustees' statement published, its appearance in the February Buddhist put him and his fellow trustees in a curious position. On the one hand, they denied that in deciding to replace me they were making any charge of impropriety or misconduct against me; on the other, they continued to resist the Sangha Association's demand for my reinstatement. Indeed, within a month of the statement's publication, Walshe was not only insisting, at the EGM, on the Trust's right to dismiss me, but also repeating the old allegations. Why was he so against me? Was it because I was in favour of closer cooperation between the Sangha Association and the Buddhist Society and he was not? Or was it because I had serious reservations about the insight meditation with which, according to Ruth, his whole emotional security was bound up? Then there was my article 'The Meaning of Orthodoxy in Buddhism: A Protest', serialized in the January, February, and March issues of The Buddhist, in which I ventured to criticize an assertion by Miss I.B. [Isaline Blew] Horner, the President of the Pali Text Society, that the Theravãda was 'certainly the most orthodox form of Buddhism.' Were these the reasons why Walshe was so against me, I asked myself, and so opposed to my reinstatement as incumbent of the Hampstead Vihara? And how big a part had they played in my dismissal? Though Walshe had panicked when the gossip of the old ladies reached him, the gossip and the fact that I was out of the country may well have given him and Goulstone the opportunity to do what they had been wanting to do even before my departure. Had there, then, been a conspiracy to replace me with a Thai monk, and had Vichitr, whom Walshe saw regularly, perhaps been a party to that conspiracy? It was not easy to tell. Events had moved rapidly, a number of people had been involved, and men's real motives were in any case difficult to fathom. Perhaps instead of enquiring too closely into motives I should ask, as the lawyers sometimes did when seeking an explanation for a crime, cui bono? To whose benefit was the crime?

Clues were to be found in the January, February, March, and April issues of The Buddhist, especially in Walshe's editorials. His January editorial was entitled New Beginnings. In Hampstead they had started the New Year with a new incumbent, he announced, after a few generalities, and they would be making a new beginning by going back to the fundamentals of Buddhism, in other words, by going back to the Theravãda. Evidently he believed that during the period of my Incumbency there had been a distinct move in the direction of the Mahãyãna and, to that extent, a move away from the Theravãda. In this there was an element of truth. Though I had regularly lectured on the principal Theravãdin teachings, teachings that were in fact common to all forms of Buddhism, I had not lectured on the Theravãda exclusively. I had also spoken on, or referred to, the teachings of some of the Mahãyãna schools, besides once presenting the Buddhist spiritual path in evolutionary terms. In my meditation classes I had confined myself to teaching respiration-mindfulness (ãnãpãna-sati), and the development of loving-kindness (mettã-bhãvanã), both of which were regarded as Theravãdin methods. Only to the Three Musketeers had I taught any distinctively Mahãyãna (Vajrayãna) practices, and Alf, Mike, and even quiet and unobtrusive Jack may well have been among those whom The Buddhist's new editor described as seeking to run before they can walk, or even to fly before they can run. In his February editorial, entitled 'What is the Sangha?', Walshe was concerned to emphasize two things: that apart from the community of 'Noble Ones' the Sangha consisted exclusively of fully-ordained monks (there was no such thing as a 'lay sangha'), and that, basically, the monks were the preceptors of the lay people and the lay people the supporters of the monks. This was, of course, the traditional Theravãdin position, the rigidity of which I had sought to moderate in my February 1965 editorial entitled 'Sangha and Laity,' and Walshe may have had it in mind when writing his own editorial exactly two years later. In any case, he took occasion to remind the reader that according to one of the rules of the Sangha Association, members should honour their obligations to support the Sangha, by which he meant support it financially on a regular basis, which not all those attending my lectures and classes at the Vihara had been doing.

An announcement elsewhere in the March issue drew the readers attention to other rules. The meetings of the Association were to be concerned solely with the Buddhadhamma; speakers had to have the prior authority of the Sangha; meetings and classes, with the exception of those specifically stated to be public meetings, were to be open only to members of the Association, and members had to produce their membership cards when asked to do so. These rules had fallen into abeyance long before my arrival in Hampstead, and it was obvious why Walshe had decided to reinstate them. He wanted to make it clear that members of the Association should regard themselves as being lay people in the traditional Theravãdin sense, that they should be subordinate to the monks, and that the Association itself should be under the control of the Sangha Trust. An article in the April Buddhist suggested that it was 'back to the Theravãda' at the Biddulph meditation centre too. The article was by John Garrie, a Mancunian 'insight meditation' evangelist whom I had met once or twice, and who was now in charge of activities at Old Hall. In recent months, a programme of decoration and alteration had been completed, he declared towards the end of his article, and in fact Biddulph could well have a sign outside its door saying under new management. As Garrie was a former disciple of Ananda Bodhi, like other members of his team of 'Biddulph enthusiasts,' new management naturally meant Theravãdin management. The team, he moreover went on to say, was the management board of a completely new organization which had no connection with any other society or association and was only responsible to the English Sangha Trust. Thus the Sangha Association was now a Theravãda-type lay body, as was Garrie's team at Biddulph.

To whose benefit, then, was my dismissal as incumbent of the Hampstead Vihara? Evidently it was to the benefit of the Theravãda, or rather, to the benefit of the Theravãdins as represented by Walshe, Goulstone, Vichitr, a minority within the Sangha Association and, no doubt, the old ladies of Kensington.

-- Moving Against the Stream: The Birth of a new Buddhist Movement, by Sangharakshita [Dennis Lingwood]

Isaline Blew Horner, OBE
Born: 30 March 1896, Walthamstow, England
Died: 25 April 1981 (aged 85)
Relatives: Ajahn Amaro [Jeremy Charles Horner] (cousin)
Academic background
Alma mater: Newnham College, Cambridge
Academic work
Discipline: Indologist
Main interests: Pali literature

Isaline Blew Horner OBE (30 March 1896 – 25 April 1981), usually cited as I. B. Horner, was an English Indologist, a leading scholar of Pali literature and late president of the Pali Text Society (1959–1981).[1]

Life

On 30 March 1896 Horner was born in Walthamstow in Essex, England. Horner was a first cousin once removed of the British Theravada monk Ajahn Amaro [Jeremy Charles Horner].[2]

Her Majesty the Queen meeting with Ajahn Amaro, abbot of fAmaravati Monastery, the venerable Bogoda Seelawimala, Head of the London Buddhist Vihara and Dr. Desmond Biddulph, President of the Buddhist Society.

-- The 90th Anniversary of The Buddhist Society 1924–2014, by The Buddhist Society

Cambridge years



In 1917, at the University of Cambridge's women's college Newnham College, Horner was awarded the title of a B.A. in moral sciences.[3][4]

After her undergraduate studies, Horner remained at Newnham College, becoming in 1918 an assistant librarian and then, in 1920, acting librarian. In 1921, Horner traveled to Ceylon (Sri Lanka), India and Burma where she was first introduced to Buddhism, its literature and related languages.[5] In 1923, Horner returned to England where she accepted a Fellowship at Newnham College and became its librarian. In 1928, she became the first Sarah Smithson Research Fellow in Pali Studies. In 1930, she published her first book, Women Under Primitive Buddhism. In 1933, she edited her first volume of Pali text, the third volume of the Papancasudani (Majjhima Nikaya commentary). In 1934, Horner was awarded the title of an M.A. from Cambridge. From 1939 to 1949, she served on Cambridge's Governing Body.



From 1926 to 1959, Horner lived and traveled with her companion "Elsie," Dr. Eliza Marian Butler (1885–1959).[6][7][8][9]

Eliza Marian Butler (29 December 1885 – 13 November 1959),who published as E. M. Butler and Elizabeth M. Butler, was an English scholar of German, Schröder Professor of German at the University of Cambridge from 1945. Her most influential book was The Tyranny of Greece over Germany (1935), in which she wrote that Germany has had "too much exposure to Ancient Greek literature and art. The result was that the German mind had succumbed to 'the tyranny of an ideal'. The German worship of Ancient Greece had emboldened the Nazis to remake Europe in their image." It was controversial in Britain and its translation was banned in Germany.

Eliza Butler, known as "Elsie", was born in Bardsea, Lancashire in a family of Irish ancestry. She was educated by a Norwegian governess (from whom she learned German) and subsequently in Hannover from age 11, Paris from age 15, the school of domestic science at Reifenstein Abbey from age 18, and Newnham College, Cambridge from 21. As a teenager, she watched Kaiser Wilhelm II inspect his troops. In the First World War she worked as an interpreter and nurse in Scottish units on the Russian and Macedonian fronts (she had learned Russian from Jane Harrison) and treated the victims of the German assault.

Jane Ellen Harrison (9 September 1850 – 15 April 1928) was a British classical scholar and linguist. Harrison is one of the founders, with Karl Kerenyi and Walter Burkert, of modern studies in Ancient Greek religion and mythology. She applied 19th-century archaeological discoveries to the interpretation of ancient Greek religion in ways that have become standard. She has also been credited with being the first woman to obtain a post in England as a ‘career academic’. Harrison argued for women's suffrage but thought she would never want to vote herself. Ellen Wordsworth Crofts, later second wife of Sir Francis Darwin, was Jane Harrison's best friend from her student days at Newnham, and during the period from 1898 to her death in 1903.

Harrison was born in Cottingham, Yorkshire on 9 September 1850 to Charles and Elizabeth Harrison. Her mother died of puerperal fever shortly after she was born and she was educated by a series of governesses. Her governesses taught her German, Latin, Ancient Greek and Hebrew, but she later expanded her knowledge to about sixteen languages, including Russian.

Harrison spent most of her professional life at Newnham College, the progressive, recently established college for women at Cambridge. At Newnham, one of her students was Eugenie Sellers, the writer and poet, with whom she lived in England and later in Paris and possibly even had a relationship with in the late 1880s. Mary Beard described Harrison as '... the first woman in England to become an academic, in the fully professional sense – an ambitious, full-time, salaried, university researcher and lecturer'.

Between 1880 and 1897 Harrison studied Greek art and archaeology at the British Museum under Sir Charles Newton. Harrison then supported herself lecturing at the museum and at schools (mostly private boy's schools). Her lectures became widely popular and 1,600 people ended up attending her Glasgow lecture on Athenian gravestones. She travelled to Italy and Germany, where she met the scholar from Prague, Wilhelm Klein. Klein introduced her to Wilhelm Dörpfeld who invited her to participate in his archaeological tours in Greece. Her early book The Odyssey in Art and Literature then appeared in 1882. Harrison met the scholar D. S. MacColl, who supposedly asked her to marry him and she declined. Harrison then suffered a severe depression and started to study the more primitive areas of Greek art in an attempt to cure herself.

In 1888 Harrison began to publish in the periodical that Oscar Wilde was editing called The Woman's World on "The Pictures of Sappho." Harrison also ended up translating Mythologie figurée de la Grèce (1883) by Maxime Collignon as well as providing personal commentary to selections of Pausanias, Mythology & Monuments of Ancient Athens by Margaret Verrall in the same year. These two major works caused Harrison to be awarded honorary degrees from the universities of Durham (1897) and Aberdeen (1895)...

She became the central figure of the group known as the Cambridge Ritualists. In 1903 her book Prolegomena on the Study of Greek Religion appeared... She then made a new friendship with Hope Mirrlees, whom she referred to as her "spiritual daughter".

Harrison retired from Newnham in 1922 and then moved to Paris to live with Mirrlees. She and Mirrlees returned to London in 1925 where she was able to publish her memoirs through Leonard and Virginia Woolf's press, The Hogarth Press...

Harrison was an atheist...

Harrison's first monograph, in 1882, drew on the thesis that both Homer's Odyssey and motifs of the Greek vase-painters were drawing upon similar deep sources for mythology, the opinion that had not been common in earlier classical archaeology, that the repertory of vase-painters offered some unusual commentaries on myth and ritual.

Her approach in her great work, Prolegomena to the Study of Greek Religion (1903), was to proceed from the ritual to the myth it inspired: "In theology facts are harder to seek, truth more difficult to formulate than in ritual." Thus she began her book with analyses of the best-known of the Athenian festivals: Anthesteria, harvest festivals Thargelia, Kallynteria [de], Plynteria, and the women's festivals, in which she detected many primitive survivals, Arrophoria, Skirophoria, Stenia and Haloa...

After a socially Darwinian analysis of the origins of religion, Harrison argues that religiosity is anti-intellectual and dogmatic, yet she defended the cultural necessity of religion and mysticism. In her essay The Influence of Darwinism on the Study of Religion (1909), Harrison concluded:

Every dogma religion has hitherto produced is probably false, but for all that the religious or mystical spirit may be the only way of apprehending some things, and these of enormous importance. It may also be that the contents of this mystical apprehension cannot be put into language without being falsified and misstated, that they have rather to be felt and lived than uttered and intellectually analyzed; yet they are somehow true and necessary to life. (176, Alpha and Omega)

-- Jane Ellen Harrison, by Wikipedia

From 1926 to her death Butler lived and travelled with her companion Isaline Blew Horner. After working in hospitals, she taught at Cambridge and in 1936 became a professor at the University of Manchester. Her works include a trilogy on ritual magic and the occult, especially in the Faust legend (1948–1952).

-- Eliza Marian Butler, by Wikipedia

PTS years

In 1936, due to Butler's accepting a position at Manchester University,[8][9] Horner left Newnham to live in Manchester. There, Horner completed the fourth volume of the Papancasudani (published 1937). In 1938, she published the first volume of a translation of the Vinaya Pitaka. (She was to publish a translation of the last Vinaya Pitaka volume in 1966.)

In 1942, Horner became the Honorary Secretary of the Pali Text Society (PTS). In 1943, in response to her parents' needs and greater PTS involvement, Horner moved to London where she lived until her death.[8] In 1959, she became the Society's President[10] and Honorary Treasurer.

Honors

In 1964, in recognition of her contributions to Pali literature, Horner was awarded an honorary Ph.D by Ceylon University.[3][8]

In 1977, Horner received a second honorary Ph.D from Nava Nalanda Mahavihara.[8]

In 1980, Queen Elizabeth II made Horner an Officer of the Order of the British Empire (OBE) for her lifelong contribution to Buddhist literature.[6][8]

Books

Horner's books (ordered by first identified publication date) include:

• Women under primitive Buddhism : laywomen and almswomen (1930/1975)
• Papañcasūdanī: Majjhimanikāyaṭṭhakathā of Buddhaghosâcariya (1933)
• Early Buddhist theory of man perfected: a study of the Arahan concept and of the implications of the aim to perfection in religious life, traced in early canonical and post-canonical Pali literature (1936/1975)
• Book of the discipline (Vinaya-pitaka) (1938), translated by I. B. Horner
• Alice M. Cooke, a memoir (1940)[11]
• Madhuratthavilāsinī nāma Buddhavaṃsaṭṭhakathā of Bhadantâcariya Buddhadatta Mahāthera (1946/1978), ed. by I.B. Horner.
• Living thoughts of Gotama the Buddha (1948/2001), by Ananda K. Coomaraswamy and I.B. Horner
• Collection of the Middle Length Sayings (1954)
• Ten Jātaka stories (1957)
• Early Buddhist poetry (1963)
• Milinda's questions (1963), translated by I. B. Horner
• Buddhist texts through the ages (1964/1990), translated and edited by Edward Conze in collaboration with I.B. Horner, David Snellgrove, Arthur Waley
• Minor anthologies of the Pali Canon (vol. 4): Vimanavatthu and Petavatthu (1974), translated by I. B. Horner
• Minor anthologies of the Pali Canon (vol. 3): Buddhavamsa and Cariyapitaka (1975), translated by I. B. Horner
• Apocryphal birth-stories (Paññāsa Jātaka) (1985), translated by I.B. Horner and Padmanabh S. Jaini

See also

• Pali Text Society

References

1. Olivia, Nona (2014). "Editorial" (PDF). Sati Journal. Sati Center for Buddhist Studies. 2 (1): 3. ISBN 978-1495260049. Retrieved September 12, 2018.
2. Amaro, Ajahn (2014). "I B Horner – Some Biographical Notes" (PDF). Sati Journal. Sati Center for Buddhist Studies. 2 (1): 33–38. ISBN 978-1495260049. Retrieved September 12, 2018.
3. Jayetilleke (2007).
4. At the time, Newnham was one of two women's colleges at Cambridge, the other being Girton College. At Cambridge women were awarded "titles" but not degrees until 1947.
5. Burford 2014, pp. 75-76
6. University of Cambridge (2007).
7. Boucher (2007), p. 121.
8. Burford (2005).
9. Watts (2006).
10. Norman (1982), p. 145
11. Alice M. Cooke. Manchester University Press. 1940.

Sources

• Boucher, Sandy (2007). "Appreciating the Lineage of Buddhist Feminist Scholars", in Rosemary Radford Ruether (ed.) Feminist Theologies (2007). Minneapolis: Fortress Press. ISBN 0-8006-3894-8. Retrieved 2008-08-21 from
• Burford, Grace (2005). "Newnham Biographies: Isaline B. Horner (1896-1981)." Retrieved 2008-08-21 from "Newnham College" at
• Burford, Grace G. (2014). Isaline B. Horner and the Twentieth Century Development of Buddhism in the West. In Todd Lewis (ed), Buddhists: Understanding Buddhism Through the Lives of Practitioners. Wiley. pp. 73–. ISBN 978-1-118-32208-6.
• Jayetilleke, Rohan L. (2007). "The pioneer Pali scholar of the West." Retrieved 2008-08-20 from "Associated Newspapers of Ceylon".
• Norman, K.R. (1982). Isaline Blew Horner (1896-1981) (Obituary), Journal of the International Association of Buddhist Studies 5 (2), 145-149
• University of Cambridge (2007). "Isaline Blew Horner (1896-1981), Pali scholar." Retrieved 2008-08-20.
• Watts, Sheila (2006). "Newnham Biographies: Eliza Marian (Elsie) Butler (1885 – 1959)". Retrieved 2008-08-21

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Edward Conze
by Wikipedia
Accessed: 8/9/20


Edward Conze

Edward Conze, born Eberhard Julius Dietrich Conze (1904–1979), was an eminent scholar of Marxism and Buddhism, known primarily for his commentaries and translations of the Prajñāpāramitā literature.

Biography

Conze's parents, Dr. Ernst Conze (1872–1935) and Adele Louise Charlotte Köttgen (1882–1962), both came from families involved in the textile industry in the region of Langenberg, Germany. Ernst had a doctorate in Law and served in the Foreign Office and later as a judge.[1] Conze was born in London while his father was Vice Consul[2] and thus entitled to British citizenship.

Conze studied in Tübingen, Heidelberg, Kiel, Cologne and Hamburg. In 1928 he published his dissertation, Der Begriff der Metaphysik bei Franciscu Suarez, and was awarded a doctorate in philosophy from Cologne University.[3] He did post-graduate work at several German universities and in 1932 he published Der Satz vom Widerspruch (The Principle of Contradiction) which he considered his master work.[4] Because it was a Marxist work on the theory of dialectical materialism it attracted hostile attention from the Nazis and most copies were publicly burnt in a campaign conducted by the German Student Union in May 1933.[5] In the early 1930s Conze associated with and helped to organize activities for the Communist Party of Germany. When the Nazis came to power in 1933, he fled to Britain.[6][7]

In England, Conze taught German, philosophy, and psychology at evening classes, and later lectured on Buddhism and Prajñāpāramitā at various universities. However, the only permanent academic post he was offered had to be turned down because US immigration officials declined him a work permit on the basis of his past as a Communist.

A midlife crisis in 1941 saw him adopt Buddhism as his religion, having previously been influenced by Theosophy and astrology. He spent a brief period in the New Forest pursuing meditation and an ascetic lifestyle (during which he developed scurvy). At the end of this period he moved to Oxford where he began to work on Sanskrit texts from the Prajñāpāramitā tradition. He continued to work on these texts for the rest of his life.

Conze was married twice: to Dorothea Finkelstein and to Muriel Green. He had one daughter with Dorothea.

In 1979 Conze self-published two volumes of memoirs entitled Memoirs of a Modern Gnostic. Conze produced a third volume which contained material considered to be too inflammatory or libelous to publish while the subjects were alive.[8][9] No copy of the third volume is known to exist. The Memoirs are the principal sources for Conze's biography and reveal much about his personal life and attitudes.

Scholarship

Conze was educated in several German Universities and showed a propensity for languages. He claimed that by twenty-four, he knew fourteen languages.[10]

Conze's first major published work was on the theory of dialectical materialism. This continues to receive attention, with his book The Principle of Contradiction being reprinted in 2016.[11]

Following a mid-life crisis Conze turned to Buddhism and was particularly influenced by D. T. Suzuki. He made his name for his editions and translations of Sanskrit texts of the Buddhist Prajñāpāramitā literature. He published translations of all the principal texts of the genre, including the Aṣṭasāhasrikā (8000 Line), Ratnaguṇasamcayagāthā, Pañcaviṃśatisāhasrikā (25,000 Line), Vajracchedikā, and Prajñāpāramitāhṛdaya. All of these show the explicit influence of Suzuki's Theosophy infused Zen Buddhism.[citation needed]

A glance at a complete bibliography of Conze's oeuvre confirms that he was a man of industry and focus. His contribution to the field of Buddhist Studies, particularly of the Prajñāpāramitā literature, has had a major influence on subsequent generations.

Legacy

In his essay Great Buddhists of the Twentieth Century (Windhorse Publications: 1996), British writer and teacher of Buddhism, and personal friend of Conze's, Sangharakshita writes that "Dr. Conze was a complex figure, and it is not easy to assess his overall significance.... He was a self-confessed élitist, which is usually something people are ashamed of nowadays, but he wasn’t ashamed of it at all.... Nor did he approve of either democracy or feminism, which makes him a veritable ogre of ‘political incorrectness’." Nevertheless, Sangharakshita summarizes Conze's legacy as a scholar of Buddhism as follows:

Dr Conze was one of the great Buddhist translators, comparable with the indefatigable Chinese translators Kumarajiva and Hsuan-tsang of the fifth and seventh centuries respectively. It is especially significant, I think, that as a scholar of Buddhism he also tried to practise it, especially meditation. This was very unusual at the time he started his work, and he was regarded then – in the forties and fifties – as being something of an eccentric. Scholars were not supposed to have any personal involvement in their subject. They were supposed to be ‘objective’. So he was a forerunner of a whole new breed of Western scholars in Buddhism who are actually practising Buddhists.[12]

Ji Yun, Professor of the Buddhist College of Singapore, describes Conze's legacy as follows:

Even to this day, Edward Conze (1904-1979) the German British scholar has to be regarded, not as one of many, but as the most important researcher on Prajñāpāramitā literature. This genius of Buddhist linguist [sic.] and philologist devoted his whole life to the collation, translation and research of Prajñāpāramitā literature in Sanskrit, Tibetan and Chinese – a language relatively neglected by European scholars before him. Although the research of this prolific writer covers well beyond the Prajñāpāramitā category, his works dedicated solely to this, according to an incomplete count by the Japanese scholar Yuyama Akira 汤山明, include 16 books and 46 articles.... In the history of Prajñāpāramitā research Conze can be regarded as a formidable scholar with no comparison, suprpassing [sic.] all past and perhaps even future researchers in his achievement.[13]

Selected bibliography

For a complete bibliography of Conze's works see the website, Conze Memorial http://www.conze.elbrecht.com/

• 1932. Der Satz vom Widerspruch. Hamburg, 1932.
• 1951. Buddhism: Its Essence and Development.
• 1956. Buddhist meditation. London: Ethical & Religious Classics of East & West.
• 1958. Buddhist Wisdom Books: The Diamond Sutra and the Heart Sutra. George Allen & Unwin. Second edition 1976.
• 1959. Buddhist Scriptures. Haremondsworth: Penguin Classics.
• 1960. The Prajñāpāramitā Literature. Mouton. Second Edition: [Bibliographica Philogica Buddhica Series Maior I] The Reiyukai Library: 1978
• 1967. Materials for a Dictionary of the Prajñāpāramitā Literature. Tokyo, Suzuki Research Foundation.
• 1973. The Large Sutra of Perfect Wisdom. University of California Press.
• 1973. The Perfection of Wisdom in Eight Thousand Lines and its Verse Summary. San Francisco: City Lights, 2006.
• 1973. Perfect Wisdom: The Short Prajñāpāramitā Texts. Buddhist Publishing Group.
• 1975. Further Buddhist Studies: Selected Essays. Oxford, Bruno Cassirer

Notes

1. Heine 2016; Langenberger Kulturlexikon.
2. Humphreys 1980, p. 147
3. de Jong 1980, p. 143
4. Conze 1979
5. Heine 2016, xiv
6. Jackson 1981, pp. 103-104
7. Humphreys 1980, p. 147
8. Jackson 1981, p. 102
9. Houston 1980, p.92
10. Conze 1979: I 4
11. Heine 2016
12. Sangharakshita 1996
13. Yun 2017, 9-113

References

• Conze, Edward (1979). Memoirs of a Modern Gnostic. Parts I and II. Privately Published.
• de Jong, J.W. (1980). Edward Conze 1904–1979, Indo-Iranian Journal 22 (2), 143-146. – via JSTOR (subscription required)
• Heine, Holger (2016). 'Aristotle, Marx, Buddha: Edward Conze's Critique of the Principle of Contradiction', in Conze, Edward, The Principle of Contradiction. Lexington Books, pp. xiii–lxiii. First published in German as Der Satz vom Widerspruch. Hamburg, 1932
• Houston, G.W. (1980). Review: The Memoirs of a Modern Gnostic by Edward Conze, The Tibet Journal, 5 (1/2), 91-93. – via JSTOR (subscription required)
• Humphreys, Christmas (1980). Edward Conze, 1904-1979, The Eastern Buddhist (new series), 13 (2), 147-148. – via JSTOR (subscription required)
• Jackson, Roger R. (1981). Review: The Memoirs of a Modern Gnostic, Parts I and II (Edward Conze), Journal of the International Association of Buddhist Studies 4 (2), 102-105
• Langenberger Kulturlexikon: Immaterielles Kulturerbe der UNESCO. http://www.unter-der-muren.de/kulturlexikon.pdf
• Sangharakshita (1996). Great Buddhists of the Twentieth Century, Windhorse Publications
• Yun, Ji . 纪赟 —《心经》疑伪问题再研究, Fuyan Buddhist Studies no. 7 (2012): 115-182. Trans. Chin Shih-Foong, Is the Heart Sūtra an Apocryphal Text? – A Re-examination, Singapore Journal of Buddhist Studies (2017), 4: 9-113.

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Ajahn Amaro [Jeremy Charles Julian Horner]
by Wikipedia
Accessed: 8/9/20


Ajahn Amaro
Ajahn Amaro in Bangkok in June 2019
Personal
Born: Jeremy Charles Julian Horner, 2 September 1956 (age 63), Kent, England
Religion Buddhism
Nationality British/American
School: Theravāda
Lineage: Thai Forest Tradition
Education: Bedford College, London (BSc)
Order: Maha Nikaya
Senior posting
Teacher: Ajahn Chah
Ordination: 1979 (41 years ago)
Previous post: Co-Abbot of Abhayagiri Buddhist Monastery (1996–2010)
Present post: Abbot of Amaravati Buddhist Monastery (since 2010)
Website: amaravati.org

Ajahn Amaro (born 1956)[1] is a Theravāda Buddhist monk and teacher, and abbot of the Amaravati Buddhist Monastery at the eastern end of the Chiltern Hills in South East England.

Amaravati is a Theravada Buddhist monastery at the eastern end of the Chiltern Hills in South East England. Established in 1984 by Ajahn Sumedho as an extension of Chithurst Buddhist Monastery, the monastery has its roots in the Thai Forest Tradition.

Cittaviveka (Pali: 'discerning mind'), commonly known as Chithurst Buddhist Monastery, is an English Theravada Buddhist Monastery in the Thai Forest Tradition. It is situated in West Sussex, England in the hamlet of Chithurst between Midhurst and Petersfield. It was established in 1979 in accordance with the aims of the English Sangha Trust, a charity founded in 1956 to support the ordination and training of Buddhist monks (bhikkhus) in the West. The current abbot, since 2014, is Ajahn Karuniko.

The monastery was established by Ajahn Sumedho under the auspices of his teacher, Ajahn Chah of Wat Pah Pong, Ubon, Thailand. Ajahn Chah visited the monastery at its inception as the first branch monastery of Wat Pah Pong to be established outside of Thailand. Although the style of the monastery has been modified to accommodate Western social and cultural mores, it retains close links with Thailand especially monasteries of the Thai Forest Tradition and is supported by an international community of Asians and Westerners.

"Cittaviveka" is a term used in the Pāli scriptures of Theravada Buddhism. The monastery was so named by Ajahn Sumedho, the first abbot (1979–1984) as a suitable word-play on "Chithurst," the hamlet in which its main house is situated. The title "Chithurst Buddhist Monastery" is also commonly used, although the approximately 175 acres/70 hectares of the monastery’s land extend into the adjacent parish.

Subsequent abbots have been Ajahn Ānando (1984–1992), Ajahn Sucitto (1992-2014) and Ajahn Karuniko (2014-). The monastery is supported by donations, and lay people may visit or stay for a period of time as guests free of charge. Teachings are given on a regular basis, generally on weekends.

-- Chithurst Buddhist Monastery, by Wikipedia

It takes inspiration from the teachings of the community's founder, the late Ajahn Chah. Its chief priorities are the training and support of a resident monastic community, and the facilitation for monastic and lay people alike of the practice of the Buddha's teachings.

It is not to be confused with the ancient Amaravati Stupa in India.

-- Amaravati Buddhist Monastery, by Wikipedia

The centre, in practice as much for ordinary people as for monastics, is inspired by the Thai Forest Tradition and the teachings of the late Ajahn Chah.[1] Its chief priorities are the practice and teaching of Buddhist ethics, together with traditional concentration and insight meditation techniques, as an effective way of dissolving suffering.

Chah Subhaddo (Thai: ชา สุภัทโท, known in English as Ajahn Chah, occasionally with honorific titles Luang Por and Phra) also known by his honorific name "Phra Bodhiñāṇathera" (Thai: พระโพธิญาณเถร, Chao Khun Bodhinyana Thera; 17 June 1918 – 16 January 1992) was a Thai Buddhist monk. He was an influential teacher of the Buddhadhamma and a founder of two major monasteries in the Thai Forest Tradition.

Respected and loved in his own country as a man of great wisdom, he was also instrumental in establishing Theravada Buddhism in the West. Beginning in 1979 with the founding of Cittaviveka (commonly known as Chithurst Buddhist Monastery) in the United Kingdom, the Forest Tradition of Ajahn Chah has spread throughout Europe, the United States and the British Commonwealth. The dhamma talks of Ajahn Chah have been recorded, transcribed and translated into several languages.

More than one million people, including the Thai royal family, attended Ajahn Chah's funeral in January 1993 held a year after his death due to the "hundreds of thousands of people expected to attend". He left behind a legacy of dhamma talks, students, and monasteries.

-- Ajahn Chah, by Wikipedia

Biography

Ajahn Amaro was born J. C. Horner[2] in Kent. He was educated at Sutton Valence School and Bedford College, University of London. Ajahn means teacher. He is a second cousin of I.B. Horner (1896–1981), late President of the Pali Text Society.[3][4]

Apart from a certain interest in the theories of Rudolf Steiner—to which he had been introduced by Trevor Ravenscroft,[2] Amaro's principal enthusiasms on leaving university were, by his own admission, pretty much those standard-issue among sceptical students of the day: sex, drugs and rock'n'roll.

Having completed his honours degree in psychology and physiology,[2] in 1977 he went to Malaysia, Indonesia and Thailand on an undefined "open-ended" spiritual search. He somehow found himself in northeast Thailand, at the forest monastery of Wat Pah Nanachat.

Wat Pah Nanachat (Thai: วัดป่านานาชาติ; Bung Wai International Forest Monastery) is a Thai Theravada Buddhist Monastery in northeast Thailand about 15 kilometres from the city of Ubon Rachathani. It was established in 1975 by Ajahn Chah as a training community for non-Thais according to the norms of the Thai Forest Tradition. Resident monks, novices and postulants include a wide range of nationalities. The primary language of communication and instruction is English.

The monastery was founded in response to increasing international interest, particularly from the United Kingdom, in the Theravadin forest tradition of Thailand. The first abbot of Wat Pah Nanachat was Ajahn Sumedho, an American bhikkhu trained by Ajahn Chah at Wat Nong Pah Pong, the mother house of Wat Pah Nanachat.

Luang Por Sumedho or Ajahn Sumedho (Thai: อาจารย์สุเมโธ) (born Robert Karr Jackman, July 27, 1934) is one of the senior Western representatives of the Thai forest tradition of Theravada Buddhism. He was abbot of Amaravati Buddhist Monastery, UK, from its consecration in 1984 until his retirement in 2010. Luang Por means Venerable Father (หลวงพ่อ), an honorific and term of affection in keeping with Thai custom; ajahn means teacher. A bhikkhu since 1967, Sumedho is considered a seminal figure in the transmission of the Buddha's teachings to the West.

Ajahn Sumedho was born Robert Karr Jackman in Seattle, Washington, in 1934. During the Korean War he served for four years from the age of 18 as a United States navy medic. He then did a BA in Far Eastern studies and graduated in 1963 with an MA in South Asian studies at the University of California, Berkeley. After a year as a Red Cross social worker, Jackman served with the Peace Corps in Borneo from 1964 to 1966 as an English teacher. On break in Singapore, sitting one morning in a sidewalk café, he watched a Buddhist monk walk by and thought to himself, "That looks interesting." In 1966, he became a novice or samanera at Wat Sri Saket in Nong Khai, northeast Thailand. He ordained as a bhikkhu (Buddhist monk) in May the following year.

From 1967-77 at Wat Nong Pah Pong, he trained under Ajahn Chah. He has come to be regarded as the latter's most influential Western disciple. In 1975, he helped to establish and became the first abbot of the International Forest Monastery, Wat Pa Nanachat in northeast Thailand founded by Ajahn Chah for training his non-Thai students. In 1977, Ajahn Sumedho accompanied Ajahn Chah on a visit to England. After observing a keen interest in Buddhism among Westerners, Ajahn Chah encouraged Ajahn Sumedho to remain in England for the purpose of establishing a branch monastery in the UK. This became Cittaviveka Forest Monastery in West Sussex.

Ajahn Sumedho was granted authority to ordain others as monks shortly after he established Cittaviveka Forest Monastery. He then established a ten precept ordination lineage for women, "Siladhara".

Until his retirement, Ajahn Sumedho was the abbot of Amaravati Buddhist Monastery near Hemel Hempstead in England, which was established in 1984. Amaravati is part of the network of monasteries and Buddhist centres in the lineage of Ajahn Chah, which now extends across the world, from Thailand, New Zealand and Australia, to Europe, Canada and the United States. Ajahn Sumedho played an instrumental role in building this international monastic community.

Ajahn Sumedho's imminent retirement was announced in February 2010, and he retired in November of that year. His successor is the English monk Ajahn Amaro, hitherto co-abbot of the Abhayagiri branch monastery in California's Redwood Valley. Ajahn Sumedho now dwells as a "free agent" in Thailand.

-- Ajahn Sumedho, by Wikipedia

Today, as a consequence, students of the Thai forest tradition are found in branch monasteries around the world under the collective label of The Forest Sangha. The largest monastery of this network is Amaravati Monastery, about 30 miles north of London. Its abbot was Ajahn Sumedho, who recently relinquished the post to Ajahn Amaro (ex-co-abbot of Abhayagiri Buddhist Monastery in California).

Buddhist meditation practice of all types is encouraged at Wat Pananachat, though breathing meditation predominates. In the spirit of Ajahn Chah's teachings, vipassanā, or insight, and samatha, or concentration, are regarded as two sides of a coin rather than two distinct categories. Lay visitors are expected to observe the eight precepts version of sila, or the practice of virtue. For monks, strict adherence to the Vinaya, the 2,500-year-old code of discipline, is not only required but is the distinguishing characteristic of the lineage. For lay visitors, no formal meditation teaching is available beyond Dhamma talks and what may be derived from freely available reading matter, the priority being the formal training of the full-time mendicants.

-- Wat Pah Nanachat, by Wikipedia

Ajahn Chah's charismatic impact and the encouragement of the senior American monk Ajahn Pabhakaro were decisive.

Joseph Kappel lived as a Buddhist monk for 20 years as Bhikkhu Pabhakaro, with Ajahn Chah and Ajahn Sumedho in Thailand and Great Britain. His initial interest in Buddhism was inspired by visits to Thailand from Vietnam where he served as a combat helicopter pilot in 1969-70. During his sojourns to Thailand, Joseph was deeply moved by a country and people that were steeped in Buddhist teachings. In short, combat in Vietnam paved the way for him to embrace a way of life that leads us on a path that demonstrates how suffering is created and how to avoid it. In this way, we open our eyes to witness ourselves in others with compassion and understanding.

Since leaving monastic life in 1991, Joseph has taught MBSR (Mindfulness Based Stress Reduction) in Massachusetts’s prisons, received a Masters Degree in Education from Harvard University, and worked with college athletes to facilitate “mental fitness” and the inner game. He has also led meditation courses and retreats in numerous settings in the US, and has co-led retreats with Ajahn Amaro at Amaravati Buddhist Monastery in England. Joseph and his wife Catherine live in Leominster, Massachusetts.

-- Joseph Kappel, by Buddhadasa Indapanno Archives

It changed his life. Having become a lay renunciate, four months later he became a novice and in 1979 he received upasampada from Ajahn Chah and took profession as a Theravadin bhikkhu.[1] He stayed in Thailand for two years. Amaro then went back to England to help Ajahn Sumedho establish Chithurst Monastery in West Sussex.[1] With the blessing of his abbot, in 1983 he moved to Harnham Vihara in Northumberland. He made the entire 830-mile journey on foot, chronicled in his 1984 volume Tudong: The Long Road North.[5][6]

Origins of California's Abhayagiri Monastery


Abhayagiri Monastery

In the early 1990s Amaro made several teaching trips to northern California. Many who attended his meditation retreats became enthusiastic about the possibility of establishing a permanent monastic community in the area.

Amaravati, his mother house back in England, meanwhile received a substantial donation of land in Mendocino County from Chan Master Hsuan Hua, founder of the City of Ten Thousand Buddhas in Talmage. The land was allocated to establish a forest retreat. Since for some years Ajahn Sumedho had venerated the Chinese master, both abbots hoped that, among its other virtues, the center would serve as a symbolic bond between the otherwise distinct Theravāda and Mahayana lineages.

Hsuan Hua (Chinese: 宣化; pinyin: Xuānhuà; lit.: 'proclaim and transform'; April 16, 1918 – June 7, 1995), also known as An Tzu and Tu Lun, was a monk of Chan Buddhism and a contributing figure in bringing Chinese Buddhism to the United States in the 20th century.

Hsuan Hua founded several institutions in the US. The Dharma Realm Buddhist Association[1] (DRBA) is a Buddhist organization with chapters in North America, Australia and Asia.

The Dharma Realm Buddhist Association (shortened to DRBA, Chinese: 法界佛教總會, PY: Fajie Fuojiao Zonghui, formerly known as the Sino-American Buddhist Association) is an international, non-profit Buddhist organization founded by the Venerable Master Hsuan Hua in 1959 to bring the orthodox teachings of the Buddha to the entire world. DRBA has branch monasteries in many countries and cities, including San Francisco, Los Angeles, Seattle, and Vancouver, as well as in Malaysia, Taiwan, Hong Kong, and Australia.

The Sino-American Buddhist Association was founded in San Francisco, California in 1959. A small temple, the Buddhist Lecture Hall was started. The Venerable Master Hsuan Hua came over from Hong Kong in 1962 by plane, stopping over at Japan and Hawaii before arriving at San Francisco.

From 1962 to 1968 the Venerable Master lectured on the Lotus Sutra, the Diamond Sutra, and the Amitabha Sutra among many other Buddhist sutras and texts. Many of his Dharma talks and line-by-line explanations of sacred Buddhist texts have been published in book form by the Buddhist Text Translation Society, both in the original Chinese and in English translation. See TfM [failed verification]

The Buddhist Text Translation Society (BTTS) is dedicated to making the principles of the Buddhadharma available to Western readers in a form that can be directly applied to practice. Since 1972, the Society has been publishing English translations of sutras, instructional handbooks on meditation and moral conduct, and biographies. Most of the Society’s sutra translations are accompanied by contemporary commentary, based on lectures spoken by Tripitaka Master Hsuan Hua.

The accurate and faithful translation of the Buddhist Canon into English and other Western languages is one of the primary objectives of the Dharma Realm Buddhist Association (DRBA), the parent organization of the Buddhist Text Translation Society. Translators, bilingual reviewers, English editors, and bilingual certifiers are anonymous members of BTTS.

When Buddhism first came to China from India, one of the most important tasks required for its establishment was the translation of the Buddhist scriptures from Sanskrit into Chinese. This work involved a great many people, such as the renowned monk National Master Kumarajiva (fifth century), who led an assembly of over 800 people to work on the translation of the Tripitaka (Buddhist canon) for over a decade. Because of the work of individuals such as these, nearly the entire Buddhist Tripitaka of over a thousand texts exists to the present day in Chinese.

Now the banner of the Buddha’s Teachings is being firmly planted in Western soil, and the same translation work is being done from Chinese into English. Since 1970, the Buddhist Text Translation Society has been making a paramount contribution toward this goal. Aware that the Buddhist Tripitaka is a work of such magnitude that its translation could never be entrusted to a single person, the BTTS, emulating the translation assemblies of ancient times, does not publish a work until it has passed through four committees for primary translation, revision, editing, and certification. The leaders of these committees are Bhikshus (monks) and Bhikshunis (nuns) who have devoted their lives to the study and practice of the Buddha’s teachings. For that reason, all of the works of the BTTS emphasize the application of the Buddha’s teachings in terms of actual practice.

-- About the Buddhist Text Translation Society, by Buddhist Text Translation Society

In June 1968 he began a 96-day intensive Study and Practice Summer Session for students and faculty from the University of Washington in Seattle. After the session had concluded, many of the participants remained in San Francisco to continue their studies with the Venerable Master. In that year five Americans (three Bhikshus, two Bhikshunis) were ordained, marking the beginning of the Sangha in the United States.

In 1970 Gold Mountain Monastery, one of the first Chinese Buddhist temples in the United States was founded in San Francisco, and a Hundred Day Chan Session was begun. Vajra Bodhi Sea, a monthly journal of DRBA about Buddhist topics and teachings, was also founded in 1970.

In 1972 the first Threefold Ordination Ceremony for the transmission of the complete precepts was held at Gold Mountain Monastery.

In 1973 the Institute for the Translation of Buddhist Texts and Instilling Goodness Elementary School were founded in San Francisco. In the same year, Bhikshus Heng Ju and Heng Yo began a Three Steps One Bow pilgrimage from San Francisco to Seattle to pray for world peace - a hard journey over 1,000 miles. This was the first such pilgrimage in the history of American Buddhism.

The site of the City of Ten Thousand Buddhas was purchased in 1974, and in November of that year the Venerable Master Hsuan Hua led a delegation to propagate the Dharma in Hong Kong, India, Singapore, Vietnam, Taiwan and other places. The delegation lasted for three months, ending on January 12, 1975.

The Dharma Realm Buddhist Association purchased the City of Ten Thousand Buddhas site in 1974 and established an international center there by 1976. In 1979, the Third Threefold Ordination Ceremony at the City of Ten Thousand Buddhas was held, in which monks from China, Vietnam, Sri Lanka and the US transmitted the precepts. It was considered unique, as it represented both the Mahayana and Theravada traditions.

Originally the site housed the Mendocino State Asylum for the Insane (later renamed the Mendocino State Hospital), founded in 1889. There were over seventy large buildings, over two thousand rooms of various sizes, three gymnasiums, a fire station, a swimming pool, a refuse incinerator, fire hydrants, and various other facilities. A paved road wound its way through the complex, lined with tall street lamps and trees planted during the asylum's initial construction. The connections for electricity and pipes for water, heating, and air conditioning were all underground, but centrally controlled.

Considering the natural surroundings to be ideal for cultivation, Hsuan Hua visited the valley three times and negotiated with the seller many times. He wanted to establish a center for propagating the Buddhadharma throughout the world and for introducing the Buddhist teachings, which originated in the East, to the Western world. Hsuan Hua planned to create a major center for world Buddhism, and an international orthodox monastery for the purpose of elevating moral standards and raising people's awareness.

The city comprises 488 acres (197 hectares) of land, of which 80 acres (32 hectares) are developed. The rest of the land includes meadows, orchards, and forests. Large institutional buildings and smaller residential houses are scattered over the west side of the campus. The main Buddha hall, monastic facilities, educational institutes, administrative offices, the main kitchen and dining hall, Jyun Kang Vegetarian Restaurant, and supporting structures are all located in this complex.

-- City of Ten Thousand Buddhas, by Wikipedia

Gold Wheel Monastery was founded in Los Angeles in 1975.

In 1976 the City of Ten Thousand Buddhas completed the second Threefold Ordination Ceremony. Developing Virtue Secondary Schools and Dharma Realm Buddhist University were also founded. The next year Dharma Masters Heng Sure[2] and Heng Chau began a second Three Steps, One Bow pilgrimage from Gold Wheel Monastery to the City of Ten Thousand Buddhas.

-- Dharma Realm Buddhist Association, by Wikipedia

The City of Ten Thousand Buddhas (CTTB) in Ukiah, California, is one of the first Chan Buddhist monasteries in America. Venerable Master Hsuan Hua founded Dharma Realm Buddhist University at CTTB. The Buddhist Text Translation Society works on the phonetics and translation of Buddhist scriptures from Chinese into English, Vietnamese, Spanish, and many other languages.

-- Hsuan Hua, by Wikipedia

Care for what became Abhayagiri was placed in the hands of a group of lay practitioners, the Sanghapala Foundation.[6]

Abhayagiri, or Fearless Mountain in the canonical language of Pali, is a Theravadin Buddhist monastery of the Thai Forest Tradition in Redwood Valley, California. Its chief priorities are the teaching of Buddhist ethics, together with traditional concentration and insight meditation (also known as the Noble Eightfold Path), as an effective way of completely uprooting suffering and discontent.

About 16 miles (26 km) north of Ukiah, the monastery has its origins in the 1980s when the UK-based Ajahn Sumedho, foremost western disciple of the Thai meditation master Ajahn Chah, started getting requests to teach in California. Visits by Ajahn Sumedho, as well as other senior monks and nuns, resulted in the Sanghapala Foundation being set up in 1988. The monastery's first 120 acres (0.49 km2) were given to the foundation by the devotees of Chan Master Hsuan Hua, founder of the City of Ten Thousand Buddhas in Talmage, before he died in 1995. Currently, the monastery rests on 280 acres (1.1 km2) of mountainous forest land.

Six months after the monastery was settled by Ajahn Amaro, Ajahn Pasanno arrived to join him as co-abbot. They served together in this role until July, 2010, when Ajahn Amaro departed to take up the invitation to serve as abbot of Amaravati Buddhist Monastery in England. Ajahn Pasanno was the sole abbot of Abhayagiri between July, 2010 and July, 2018.[4]

Abhayagiri Monastery developed significantly under Ajahn Pasanno's and Ajahn Amaro's leadership and guidance, along with the support of the monastic and lay community, and more specifically, the Abhayagiri Building Committee. Over 25 kutis, monastic huts, were built in the mountainous monastery forest during their time as co-abbots as well as when Ajahn Pasanno was the lone abbot. In addition, during the early years, the co-abbots converted both current and new buildings into a Dhamma Hall, kitchen, office spaces, a room for disabled visitors, a laundry room and bathrooms/showers for lay women and men, along with monastery infrastructure and extensive creation of forest paths and roads.

The co-abbots also contributed to the building of the Bhikkhu Commons, more affectionately know to the residents as the MUB: Monks' Utility Building, a 1600 square foot complex located in the upper forest of the monastery. The MUB offers monks access to bathrooms, showers, a multipurpose meeting room, a large sewing room, a laundry room, a small kitchenette and a large storage room below. The MUB was dedicated and officially opened on July 4, 2010...

As of July 2018, there were two abbots (co-abbots), a total of 13 fully ordained bhikkhus (Buddhist monks), two samaneras (novices), and 4 anagarikas (postulants) and a long term female monastic resident. Men and women live in separate locations in the monastery following guidelines of formal celibacy. Male residents live in small huts nestled in the forest. Female residents live in a house and a couple of huts on an adjoining property which was separately donated for the purpose of housing women at the monastery. Guest teachers come from forest monasteries in Thailand, England, as well as other countries in Europe and Australia. Visitors come to the monastery regularly for day visits, and can also stay as overnight guests.

The daily schedule, in keeping with tradition, is rigorous. Most residents (monastics and lay visitors) rise well before sunrise. Morning puja begins at 5:00 am and lasts an hour and a half. It includes chanting in both Pali and English, as well as an hour of silent meditation. This is followed by a half-hour chore period and a simple oatmeal breakfast. At 7:30 am, there is a meeting where a short Dhamma reflection is given and work assignments for the morning period are announced. A three-hour work period follows this meeting, ending with a meal around 11:00 am, which has to be consumed before midday. All lay residents follow the 8 precepts which include not eating food after noon until dawn the next day. Around 1:00 pm, after the post-meal cleanup, the schedule is open for individual practice of sitting and walking meditation as well as Dhamma study. It is at this time that monks, in addition to their meditation and study practice, care for their personal requisites like the huts they live in and the robes they wear. One can also walk around the extensive network of trails that wind about the mountainside. At 5:30 pm, tea is served in the kitchen and on most days one of the Ajahns is available in the Dhamma Hall for questions and answers. Tea time is followed by the evening puja beginning at 7:00 pm, which includes chanting in Pali and another hour of silent meditation. Formal Dhamma talks are offered on Saturday evening and lunar observance days during evening puja just after the period for silent meditation. On lunar observance days, which mark the four moon quarters, sitting and walking meditation continue until 3:00 am the next morning, followed by a morning puja.

-- Abhayagiri Buddhist Monastery, by Wikipedia

Mission: To foster and promote the teachings of the Buddha by supporting a resident community of Buddhist monks.

Program 1: Operate Buddhist monastery where 15 to 20 monastics reside at any one time. Provide training in the Buddhist religion to monastery residents and guests. Hold regular religious services at the monastery. Provide conditions suitable for extended meditation and contemplation for residents and guests of the monastery. Provide teachings by senior monastics throughout Northern California and around the world. Maintain website which includes teachings and recorded talks.

Expenses: $339,987

Revenue: $0

Ruling Year: 1996

Principal Officer: MARK A SPONSELLER

Main Address: 16201 Tomki Rd
Redwood Valley, CA 95470

EIN: 94-3212705

-- Sanghapala Foundation, by guidestar.org

Ajahn Pasanno was appointed founding co-abbot of Abhayagiri with Ajahn Amaro. The latter announced on 8 February 2010 that he would be leaving Abhayagiri and returning to England, having accepted a request from Ajahn Sumedho to succeed him as abbot at Amaravati.[7]

Thai honorific ranks

• 5 December 2015 – Phra Videsabuddhiguṇa (พระวิเทศพุทธิคุณ)[8]
• 28 July 2019 – Phra Raj Buddhivaraguṇa Vipulasasanakiccadara Mahaganissara Pavarasangharama Gamavasi (พระราชพุทธิวรคุณ วิบูลศาสนกิจจาทร มหาคณิสสร บวรสังฆาราม คามวาสี)[9][10]

Bibliography

• Tudong: The Long Road North (1984, English Sangha Trust)
• Silent Rain (1994, Amaravati Publications)
• Words of Calm and Friendship – by Ajahn Pasanno & Ajahn Amaro (1999, Abhayagiri Monastery)
• The Pilgrim Kamanita: A Legendary Romance – by Karl Gjellerup, Ajahn Amaro ed. (1999, Amaravati Publications)
• The Dhamma and the Real World – by Ajahn Pasanno & Ajahn Amaro (2000, Abhayagiri Monastery)
• Broad View, Boundless Heart – by Ajahn Pasanno & Ajahn Amaro (2001, Abhayagiri Monastery)
• Food for the Heart – by Ven. Ajahn Chah; Introduction by Ajahn Amaro (2002, Wisdom Publications)
• Small Boat, Great Mountain: Theravadin Reflections on the Natural Great Perfection (2003, Abhayagiri Monastery)
• Who Will Feed the Mice? (2004, Abhayagiri Monastery)
• The Sound of Silence – by Ven. Ajahn Sumedho; Introduction by Ajahn Amaro (2007, Wisdom Publications)
• Rugged Interdependency (2007, Abhayagiri Monastery)
• Like a River – by Ajahn Pasanno, Ajahn Amaro et al. (2008, Patriya Tansuhaj)
• The Island: An Anthology of the Buddha's Teachings on Nibbāna (2009, Abhayagiri Monastery) – by Ajahn Pasanno & Ajahn Amaro
• Rain on the Nile (2009, Abhayagiri Monastery)
• The Long Road has Many a Turn – by Nick Scott with Ajahn Amaro (2013, Amaravati Publications)


Ajahn Amaro at the City of Ten Thousand Buddhas in September 2007


Ajahn Amaro in California with Franklyn, organiser of the 2007 Buddhist Bicycle Pilgrimage

References

1. "Ajahn Amaro". Spirit Rock Meditation Center. Retrieved 10 September 2019.
2. Talbot, Mary (Winter 1998). "Just Another Thing in the Forest". Tricycle: The Buddhist Review. Retrieved 10 September 2019.
3. "Ajahn Amaro: "Buddhism and Mindfulness in the West: Where are They Headed and What Challenges Do They Face?"". The Ho Center for Buddhist Studies. Retrieved 10 September 2019.
4. Amaro, Ajahn (2014). "I B Horner – Some Biographical Notes" (PDF). Sati Journal. Sati Center for Buddhist Studies. 2 (1): 33–38. ISBN 978-1495260049. Retrieved 10 September 2019.
5. Kiely, Robert, His Holiness the Dalai Lama (1996). The Good Heart: A Buddhist Perspective on the Teachings of Jesus. Wisdom Publications. p. 205. ISBN 0-86171-114-9.
6. Seager, Richard Hughes (2000). Buddhism in America. Columbia University Press. p. 155. ISBN 0-231-10868-0.
7. Amaro announces departure from Abayagiri
8. ราชกิจจานุเบกษา, ประกาศสํานักนายกรัฐมนตรี เรื่อง พระราชทานสัญญาบัตรตั้งสมณศักดิ์พระสงฆ์ในต่างประเทศ, เล่ม 132, ตอนที่ 33 ข, 4 ธันวาคม 2558, หน้า 56
9. ราชกิจจานุเบกษา, พระบรมราชโองการประกาศ เรื่อง พระราชทานสัญญาบัตรตั้งสมณศักดิ์, เล่ม 136, ตอนที่ 40 ข, 28 กรกฎาคม 2562 , หน้า 13
10. Dibdin, Cara (14 August 2019). "Thai King Bestows High Honor on Western Buddhists". Tricycle: The Buddhist Review. Retrieved 22 August 2019.

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Ajahn Chah [Phra Bodhiñānathera (Chah Subaddho)] [ Luang Por Chah] [Luang Pu Chah] [Chao Khun Bodhinyana Thera] [Subhaddo]
by Wikipedia
Accessed: 8/9/20


Phra Bodhiñānathera (Chah Subaddho)
Title Phra Bodhiñanathera (1973)[1]
Other names Luang Por Chah, Luang Pu Chah, Ajahn Chah, Chao Khun Bodhinyana Thera[2]
Personal
Born: Chah Chotchuang, 17 June 1918, Ubon, Thailand
Died: 16 January 1992 (aged 73), Ubon, Thailand
Religion: Buddhism
Nationality: Thai
School: Theravada, Maha Nikaya
Other names: Luang Por Chah, Luang Pu Chah, Ajahn Chah,Chao Khun Bodhinyana Thera[2]
Dharma names: Subhaddo
Occupation: Buddhist monk
Senior posting
Teacher: Ven. Ajahn Mun Bhuridatta, Ven. Ajahn Thongrat, Ven. Ajahn Kinaree
Students: Ajahn Brahm, Ajahn Sumedho
Website ajahnchah.org; watnongpahpong.org; watpahnanachat.org

Chah Subhaddo (Thai: ชา สุภัทโท, known in English as Ajahn Chah, occasionally with honorific titles Luang Por and Phra) also known by his honorific name "Phra Bodhiñāṇathera" (Thai: พระโพธิญาณเถร,[1] Chao Khun Bodhinyana Thera;[2] 17 June 1918 – 16 January 1992[3]) was a Thai Buddhist monk. He was an influential teacher of the Buddhadhamma and a founder of two major monasteries in the Thai Forest Tradition.

Respected and loved in his own country as a man of great wisdom, he was also instrumental in establishing Theravada Buddhism in the West. Beginning in 1979 with the founding of Cittaviveka (commonly known as Chithurst Buddhist Monastery)[4] in the United Kingdom, the Forest Tradition of Ajahn Chah has spread throughout Europe, the United States and the British Commonwealth. The dhamma talks of Ajahn Chah have been recorded, transcribed and translated into several languages.

More than one million people, including the Thai royal family, attended Ajahn Chah's funeral in January 1993[5] held a year after his death due to the "hundreds of thousands of people expected to attend".[3] He left behind a legacy of dhamma talks, students, and monasteries.

Early life

Ajahn Chah was born on 17 June 1918 near Ubon Ratchathani in the Isan region of northeast Thailand. His family were subsistence farmers. As is traditional, Ajahn Chah entered the monastery as a novice at the age of nine, where, during a three-year stay, he learned to read and write. The definitive 2017 biography of Ajahn Chah Stillness Flowing [6] states that Ajahn Chah took his novice vows in March 1931 and that his first teacher as a novice was Ajahn Lang. He left the monastery to help his family on the farm, but later returned to monastic life on 16 April 1939, seeking ordination as a Theravadan monk (or bhikkhu).[7] According to the book Food for the Heart: The Collected Writings of Ajahn Chah, he chose to leave the settled monastic life in 1946 and became a wandering ascetic after the death of his father.[7] He walked across Thailand, taking teachings at various monasteries. Among his teachers at this time was Ajahn Mun, a renowned meditation master in the Forest Tradition. Ajahn Chah lived in caves and forests while learning from the meditation monks of the Forest Tradition. A website devoted to Ajahn Chah describes this period of his life:

For the next seven years Ajahn Chah practiced in the style of an ascetic monk in the austere Forest Tradition, spending his time in forests, caves and cremation grounds. He wandered through the countryside in quest of quiet and secluded places for developing meditation. He lived in tiger and cobra infested jungles, using reflections on death to penetrate to the true meaning of life.[7]

Thai forest tradition

During the early part of the twentieth century Theravada Buddhism underwent a revival in Thailand under the leadership of outstanding teachers whose intentions were to raise the standards of Buddhist practise throughout the country. One of these teachers was the Venerable Ajahn Mun Bhuridatta. Ajahn Chah continued Ajahn Mun's high standards of practice when he became a teacher.[8]

The monks of this tradition keep very strictly to the original monastic rule laid down by the Buddha known as the vinaya. The early major schisms in the Buddhist sangha were largely due to disagreements over how strictly the training rules should be applied. Some opted for a degree of flexibility (some would argue liberality), whereas others took a conservative view believing that the rules should be kept just as the Buddha had framed them. The Theravada tradition is the heir to the latter view. An example of the strictness of the discipline might be the rule regarding eating: they uphold the rule to only eat between dawn and noon. In the Thai Forest Tradition, monks and nuns go further and observe the 'one eaters practice', whereby they only eat one meal during the morning. This special practice is one of the thirteen dhutanga, optional ascetic practices permitted by the Buddha that are used on an occasional or regular basis to deepen meditation practice and promote contentment with subsistence. Other examples of these practices are sleeping outside under a tree, or dwelling in secluded forests or graveyards.

Monasteries founded

[x]
Ajahn Chah welcoming as a novice a New Zealander, later to become Ajahn Munindo, abbot of a monastery in the north of England

After years of wandering, Ajahn Chah decided to plant roots in an uninhabited grove near his birthplace. In 1954, Wat Nong Pah Pong monastery was established, where Ajahn Chah could teach his simple, practice-based form of meditation. He attracted a wide variety of disciples, which included, in 1966, the first Westerner, Venerable Ajahn Sumedho.[7] Wat Nong Pah Pong [9] includes over 250 branches throughout Thailand, as well as over 15 associated monasteries and ten lay practice centers around the world.[7]

In 1975, Wat Pah Nanachat (International Forest Monastery) was founded with Ajahn Sumedho as the abbot. Wat Pah Nanachat was the first monastery in Thailand specifically geared towards training English-speaking Westerners in the monastic Vinaya, as well as the first run by a Westerner.

In 1977, Ajahn Chah and Ajahn Sumedho were invited to visit the United Kingdom by the English Sangha Trust who wanted to form a residential sangha.[10] 1979 saw the founding of Cittaviveka (commonly known as Chithurst Buddhist Monastery due to its location in the small hamlet of Chithurst) with Ajahn Sumedho as its head. Several of Ajahn Chah's Western students have since established monasteries throughout the world.

Later life

By the early 1980s, Ajahn Chah's health was in decline due to diabetes. He was taken to Bangkok for surgery to relieve paralysis caused by the diabetes, but it was to little effect. Ajahn Chah used his ill health as a teaching point, emphasizing that it was "a living example of the impermanence of all things...(and) reminded people to endeavor to find a true refuge within themselves, since he would not be able to teach for very much longer".[7] Ajahn Chah would remain bedridden and ultimately unable to speak for ten years, until his death on January 16, 1992, at the age of 73.[11]

Notable Western students

• Ajahn Sumedho, former abbot of Amaravati Buddhist Monastery, Hemel Hempstead, Hertfordshire England
• Ajahn Viradhammo, abbot of Tisarana Buddhist Monastery in Perth, Ontario, Canada
• Ajahn Khemadhammo, abbot of The Forest Hermitage, Warwickshire, England
• Ajahn Pasanno, abbot of Abhayagiri Monastery, Redwood Valley, California, USA
• Ajahn Amaro, abbot of Amaravati Monastery, Amaravati Buddhist Monastery, Hemel Hempstead, Hertfordshire England
• Ajahn Brahm, abbot of Bodhinyana Monastery, Western Australia
• Ajahn Jayasaro, author of Stillness Flowing, the biography of Ajahn Chah, and former abbot of Wat Pah Nanachat
• Jack Kornfield, co-founder of Insight Meditation Society, Barre, Massachusetts, USA and Spirit Rock Meditation Center in Woodacre, California, USA

Bibliography

• Still Flowing Water: Eight Dhamma Talks (Thanissaro Bhikkhu, ed.). Metta Forest Monastery (2007).
• A Still Forest Pool: The Insight Meditation of Achaan Chah (Jack Kornfield ed.). Theosophical Publishing House (1985). ISBN 0-8356-0597-3.
• Being Dharma: The Essence of the Buddha's Teachings. Shambahla Press (2001). ISBN 1-57062-808-4.
• Food for the Heart (Ajahn Amaro, ed.). Boston: Wisdom Publications, 2002. ISBN 0-86171-323-0.

References

1. "แจ้งความสำนักนายกรัฐมนตรี เรื่อง พระราชทานสัญญาบัตรตั้งสมณศักดิ์", 24 ธันวาคม 2516. ราชกิจจานุเบกษา. ฉบับพิเศษ เล่มที่ 90 ตอนที่ 177, หน้า 8
2. Breiter, Paul (2004). Venerable Father. Paraview Special Editions. p. xi. ISBN 1-931044-81-3.
3. "Ajahn Chah Passes Away". Forest Sangha Newsletter. April 1992. Retrieved March 18, 2016.
4. Website of Chithurst Buddhist Monastery
5. "The State Funeral of Luang Por Chah". Ajahn Sucitto. Retrieved March 18, 2016.
6. Jayasaro, Ajahn (2017). Stillness Flowing: The life and teachings of Ajahn Chah. Panyaprateep Foundation. ISBN 978-616-7930-09-1.
7. "Biography of Ajahn Chah". Wat Nong Pah Pong. Retrieved March 18, 2016.
8. Wat Nong Pah Pong. "A Collection of Dhammatalks by Ajahn Chah". Everything Is Teaching Us. Retrieved 30 December2013.
9. "Website of Wat Nong Pah Pong". Archived from the original on March 24, 2016. Retrieved March 18, 2016.
10. "Ajahn Sumedho (1934-)". BuddhaNet. Retrieved March 18, 2016.
11. "Ajahn Chah: biography". Forest Sangha. Retrieved March 18, 2016.

External links

• Short biography and picture
• Video: detailed biography of Ajahn Chah
• Website of Wat Nong Pah Pong
• International branch monasteries of Wat Nong Pah Pong
• Ajahn Chah website – in English and other languages, with useful links and info
• PDF ebook: Recollections of Ajahn Chah, by various authors
• Ajahn Pasanno. Recollections of Ajahn Chah, Part 1 First of a series of 3 talks about Ajahn Chah, mp3 format
• Website of the Memorial to Ajahn Chah in Thai

Teachings

• PDF ebook: The Teachings of Ajahn Chah – main collection of Dhamma talks
• Dhamma talks by Ajahn Chah
• MP3 Dhamma talks by Ajahn Chah
• Ajahn Chah's talks in English and other languages
• Dhamma talks in MP3 audio format, with English translation
• Portal of the Ajahn Chah Sangha, including MP3s
• The Memorial to Ajahn Chah: Teachings in English and other languages

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Ajahn Sumedho [Robert Karr Jackman] [Luang Por Sumedho] [Tan Chao Khun Thep Nyanavithet]
by Wikipedia
Accessed: 8/9/20


Ajahn Sumedho
Born: Robert Karr Jackman, July 27, 1934 (age 86), Seattle, Washington, USA
Other names: Luang Por Sumedho, Tan Chao Khun Thep Nyanavithet
Occupation: Buddhist teacher
Title: Ajahn Sumedho
Predecessor: Ajahn Chah

Luang Por Sumedho or Ajahn Sumedho (Thai: อาจารย์สุเมโธ) (born Robert Karr Jackman, July 27, 1934) is one of the senior Western representatives of the Thai forest tradition of Theravada Buddhism. He was abbot of Amaravati Buddhist Monastery, UK, from its consecration in 1984 until his retirement in 2010. Luang Por means Venerable Father (หลวงพ่อ), an honorific and term of affection in keeping with Thai custom; ajahn means teacher. A bhikkhu since 1967, Sumedho is considered a seminal figure in the transmission of the Buddha's teachings to the West.

Biography

Ajahn Sumedho was born Robert Karr Jackman in Seattle, Washington, in 1934.[1][2] During the Korean War he served for four years from the age of 18 as a United States navy medic. He then did a BA in Far Eastern studies and graduated in 1963 with an MA in South Asian studies at the University of California, Berkeley. After a year as a Red Cross social worker, Jackman served with the Peace Corps in Borneo from 1964 to 1966 as an English teacher. On break in Singapore, sitting one morning in a sidewalk café, he watched a Buddhist monk walk by and thought to himself, "That looks interesting." In 1966, he became a novice or samanera at Wat Sri Saket in Nong Khai, northeast Thailand. He ordained as a bhikkhu (Buddhist monk) in May the following year.

From 1967-77 at Wat Nong Pah Pong, he trained under Ajahn Chah. He has come to be regarded as the latter's most influential Western disciple. In 1975, he helped to establish and became the first abbot of the International Forest Monastery, Wat Pa Nanachat in northeast Thailand founded by Ajahn Chah for training his non-Thai students. In 1977, Ajahn Sumedho accompanied Ajahn Chah on a visit to England. After observing a keen interest in Buddhism among Westerners, Ajahn Chah encouraged Ajahn Sumedho to remain in England for the purpose of establishing a branch monastery in the UK. This became Cittaviveka Forest Monastery in West Sussex.

Ajahn Sumedho was granted authority to ordain others as monks shortly after he established Cittaviveka Forest Monastery. He then established a ten precept ordination lineage for women, "Siladhara".

Until his retirement, Ajahn Sumedho was the abbot of Amaravati Buddhist Monastery near Hemel Hempstead in England, which was established in 1984. Amaravati is part of the network of monasteries and Buddhist centres in the lineage of Ajahn Chah, which now extends across the world, from Thailand, New Zealand and Australia, to Europe, Canada and the United States. Ajahn Sumedho played an instrumental role in building this international monastic community.

Ajahn Sumedho's imminent retirement was announced in February 2010, and he retired in November of that year. His successor is the English monk Ajahn Amaro, hitherto co-abbot of the Abhayagiri branch monastery in California's Redwood Valley. Ajahn Sumedho now dwells as a "free agent" in Thailand.

Teachings


Ajahn Sumedho (left) with a visiting Thai monk (Phra Root Chumdermpadetsuk).


Ajahn Sumedho (seated beneath the shrine) in conversation with a bhikkhu, just before Amaravati's daily meal

Ajahn Sumedho is a prominent figure in the Thai Forest Tradition. His teachings are very direct, practical, simple, and down to earth. In his talks and sermons he stresses the quality of immediate intuitive awareness and the integration of this kind of awareness into daily life. Like most teachers in the Forest Tradition, Ajahn Sumedho tends to avoid intellectual abstractions of the Buddhist teachings and focuses almost exclusively on their practical applications, that is, developing awareness and wisdom in daily life. His most consistent advice can be paraphrased as to see things the way that they actually are rather than the way that we want or don't want them to be ("Right now, it's like this..."). He is known for his engaging and witty communication style, in which he challenges his listeners to practice and see for themselves. Students have noted that he engages his hearers with an infectious sense of humor, suffused with much loving kindness, often weaving amusing anecdotes from his experiences as a monk into his talks on meditation practice and how to experience life ("Everything belongs").[3]

Sound of Silence

A meditation technique taught and used by Ajahn Sumedho involves resting in what he calls "the sound of silence".[4] He talks at length about this technique in one of his books titled The Way It Is.[5] Ajahn Sumedho said that he was directly influenced by Edward Salim Michael's book, The Way of Inner Vigilance (republished in 2010 with the new title, The Law of Attention, Nada Yoga and the Way of Inner Vigilance and for which Ajahn Sumedho wrote a preface).

The Sound of Silence is also the title of one of Ajahn Sumedho's books (published by Wisdom Publications in 2007).[6]

Thai honorific ranks

• 5 December 1992 - Phra Sumedhacarya (พระสุเมธาจารย์)[7]
• 12 August 2004 - Phra Rajasumedhajahn Pisanbhavanakit Mahakanisorn Bovornsangaram Kamavasi (พระราชสุเมธาจารย์ พิศาลภาวนากิจ มหาคณิสสร บวรสังฆาราม คามวาสี)[8]
• 28 July 2019 - Phra Thep Nyanavithet Visethbodhidhammakhun Viboonbhavananusit Mahakanisorn Bovornsangaram Kamavasi (พระเทพญาณวิเทศ วิเศษโพธิธรรมคุณ วิบูลภาวนานุสิฐ มหาคณิสสร บวรสังฆาราม คามวาสี)[9]

See also

• Thai Forest Tradition
• Ajahn Chah

References

1. Ajahn Sumedho on Amaravati's Sangha Page
2. Ajahn Sumedho on Buddhanet
3. "Ajahn Sumedho - teachings". forestsangha.org. Retrieved 18 January 2016.
4. "The Sound of Silence" (PDF). abhayagiri.org. Retrieved 28 September 2016.
5. "The Way It Is". amaravati.org. Retrieved 18 January 2016.
6. "The Sound of Silence". Wisdom Publications. Retrieved 18 January 2016.
7. ราชกิจจานุเบกษา, ประกาศสำนักนายกรัฐมนตรี เรื่อง พระราชทานสัญญาบัตรตั้งสมณศักดิ์, เล่ม 109, ตอนที่ 155 ง ฉบับพิเศษ, 5 ธันวาคม 2535, หน้า 17
8. ราชกิจจานุเบกษา, ประกาศสำนักนายกรัฐมนตรี เรื่อง พระราชทานสัญญาบัตรตั้งสมณศักดิ์พระสงฆ์ไทยในต่างประเทศ, เล่ม 121, ตอนที่ 17 ข, 15 กันยายน 2547, หน้า 15
9. ราชกิจจานุเบกษา, พระบรมราชโองการประกาศ เรื่อง พระราชทานสัญญาบัตรตั้งสมณศักดิ์, เล่ม 136, ตอนที่ 40 ข, 28 กรกฎาคม 2562 , หน้า 11

External links

• BuddhaNet entry on Ajahn Sumedho
• Biography of Ajahn Sumedho at Amaravati Buddhist monastery.
• Compilation of 108 mp3 talks or reflections given by Luang Por Sumedho from 1978 until 2010.
• Collection of 1,298 mp3 talks or the entire collection of Dhamma talks given by Luang Por Sumedho until 2014.
• Books by Ajahn Sumedho (online, in epub, mobi or pdf format)
• Mp3 talks by Ajahn Sumedho at dharmaseed.org
• Video of interview on YouTube English with Portuguese sub titles.
• Ajahn Sumedho's eBooks in English and other Languages.
• Ajahn Sumedho Interviewed

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Chithurst Buddhist Monastery
by Wikipedia
Accessed: 8/9/20


Cittaviveka Buddhist Monastery
The main building at Chithurst Buddhist monastery
Religion
Affiliation: Thai Forest Tradition
Location: Cittaviveka
Chithurst Buddhist Monastery Chithurst (W. Sussex), Petersfield, Hampshire GU31 5EU, United Kingdom
Architecture
Founder: Venerable Ajahn Sumedho Mahathera
Website: cittaviveka.org

Cittaviveka (Pali: 'discerning mind'), commonly known as Chithurst Buddhist Monastery, is an English Theravada Buddhist Monastery in the Thai Forest Tradition. It is situated in West Sussex, England in the hamlet of Chithurst between Midhurst and Petersfield. It was established in 1979 in accordance with the aims of the English Sangha Trust, a charity founded in 1956 to support the ordination and training of Buddhist monks (bhikkhus) in the West. The current abbot, since 2014, is Ajahn Karuniko.

The monastery was established by Ajahn Sumedho under the auspices of his teacher, Ajahn Chah of Wat Pah Pong, Ubon, Thailand. Ajahn Chah visited the monastery at its inception as the first branch monastery of Wat Pah Pong to be established outside of Thailand. Although the style of the monastery has been modified to accommodate Western social and cultural mores, it retains close links with Thailand especially monasteries of the Thai Forest Tradition and is supported by an international community of Asians and Westerners.[1][2]

"Cittaviveka" is a term used in the Pāli scriptures of Theravada Buddhism. The monastery was so named by Ajahn Sumedho, the first abbot (1979–1984) as a suitable word-play on "Chithurst," the hamlet in which its main house is situated. The title "Chithurst Buddhist Monastery" is also commonly used, although the approximately 175 acres/70 hectares of the monastery’s land extend into the adjacent parish.

Subsequent abbots have been Ajahn Ānando (1984–1992), Ajahn Sucitto (1992-2014) and Ajahn Karuniko (2014-). The monastery is supported by donations, and lay people may visit or stay for a period of time as guests free of charge. Teachings are given on a regular basis, generally on weekends.[3]

History


Photo from the Dhamma hall at Chithurst Buddhist Monastery

Foundation (1979-1984)

Cittaviveka is a "Forest Monastery" in the lineage of Ajahn Chah, where the emphasis is on training in terms of the precepts and renunciation established by the Vinaya (the Buddhist Monastic Code), and on a communal lifestyle. The monastery is mostly made up of woodland and heath (Hammer Wood) which has a few kutīs (huts [Thai]) for monks and nuns, but communal activities, teaching and guest accommodation are situated in two adjacent houses – Chithurst House (for men) and Āloka Cottage (for women). Hammer Wood was given to the Sangha in 1978-9, an act which precipitated the purchase of the semi-derelict Chithurst House which stood nearby. Later in 1979, another nearby cottage was purchased. This was renamed Āloka Cottage.

A small group of bhikkhus took up residence on 22 June 1979, along with samaneras (novices) and anagārikas ["homeless ones" that is men living under the Eight Precepts.] They were soon joined by four women who took up the training as eight-precept nuns (mae-chee ["spiritual mothers"-Thai]) and who in 1983 became the first four sīladharā, ten-precept nuns.[4] [The term means "those who uphold virtue" in Pāli.] The initial priority of the community was the repair of Chithurst House, which took about five years. Along with this was the reafforestation of Hammer Wood (which had been turned into commercial coppice after the First World War), a project which continues to this day.

In the more specifically monastic aspect of the monastery’s development was the establishment of an ordination precinct (sīma) by Ven. Ānandamaitreya Mahanayaka of Sri Lanka in 3rd. June 1981. This coincided with the conferring of Preceptorship (Upajjhāya) on Ajahn Sumedho. This gave Ajahn Sumedho the authority to grant bhikkhu ordination (upasampadā) and accordingly the first three candidates were ordained on 16 July 1981. Although bhikkhu ordinations had taken place in Britain before, they had taken place on temporary sīmas; the first established sīma was at Chithurst.

Ordinations took place at Cittaviveka on a yearly basis throughout the eighties, including the first sīladharā ordination in 1983, but, as the sīma is just a square on the lawn bounded by stones, when other indoor sīmas were subsequently established at Harnham (Aruna Ratanagiri) and Amaravati, these weatherproof areas were favoured. Cittaviveka will in the future establish a new sīma inside its main meditation hall.

On 1 August 1984, Ajahn Sumedho left Cittaviveka to establish Amaravati Buddhist Monastery in Hertfordshire. This was because of a felt need to provide more accommodation for the growing Orders of bhikkhus and sīladharā and also of lay people who wished to study and train under his guidance. Taking half the bhikkhu community and all the sīladharā to Amaravati, he left Ajahn Ānando, one of the original founders, to supervise Cittaviveka as Abbot.

Development (1984-1992)

Teaching meditation retreats for lay people was a key feature of Ajahn Sumedho’s practice, a duty which took him away from the monastery for long periods. Ajahn Ānando also taught retreats, but also put energy into continuing the rebuilding of the monastery and training junior bhikkhus. With much of the major repairs completed by 1984, more attention was given to reafforestation; bhikkhus would also spend time on retreat in the Hammer Wood in tents and tepees or in one of two kutis that had been erected there.

A small group of sīladharā returned to Cittaviveka in 1986, and with changes in personnel, nuns have been a feature of the monastery ever since. During this period, the monastery also became more integrated into the local landscape, with the bhikkhus and sīladharā going out on alms-round on a daily basis.

Later years (1992- )


Ajahn Sucitto, abbot of Chithurst Buddhist monastery 1992-2014.

Ajahn Sucitto, another one of the original founders, became Abbot on 7 June 1992. Work on developing the monastery continued with further kutis in Hammer Wood, and then the construction of a large meditation hall (Dhamma Hall) on the site of a ruined coachhouse in the grounds of Chithurst House (1998–2004). Ajahn Sucitto stepped down in 2014 and Ajahn Karuniko was invited to take over the position of Abbot.

In 2006, the English Sangha Trust purchased another house for nuns, situated opposite to Āloka and now called Rocana Vihāra. The nuns live there largely autonomous from the male monastic community.

Two or three members of the community currently go to the local towns on alms-rounds (pindapāda) for their daily meal on a couple of days of each week. The traditional wayfaring practice (tudong [Thai from Pāli "dhutanga" – "austere") of walking cross-country for several weeks, living on alms and sleeping out is also an established voluntary practice during the warmer months of the year.[5]

Related monasteries in the UK

The monastery is one of the five monasteries in the same tradition, located in England; The others being: Amaravati Buddhist Monastery, Aruna Ratanagiri (Harnham Buddhist Monastery); Hartridge Buddhist Monastery; and The Forest Hermitage (Santidhamma & Bhavanadhamma)

See also

• List of current places of worship in Chichester (district)

External links

• Chithurst Buddhist Monastery Website
• The Story of Cittaviveka
• Portal page for all the branch monasteries of Ajahn Chah

References

1. Much of the information for this article, along with samples of Ajahn Sumedho’s teachings, can be found in the book, "Cittaviveka: teachings from the silent mind". This book and others can be obtained on the Forest Sangha website http://www.forestsangha.org under ‘Publications
2. Ajahn Chah’s Forest Monasteries can visited via http://www.forestsangha.org
3. See the monastery’s website http://www.cittaviveka.org for details.
4. For an account of the establishment of the sīladharā Order see http://fsnewsletter.amaravati.org/html/81/order.htm Archived 17 January 2011 at the Wayback Machine
5. For accounts of tudong, see "Walking Dhutanga in Britain" by Bhikkhu Sucitto, Bodhi Leaf/Wheel Publications. Also http://blisteredfeet-blissfulmind.net Archived 3 February 2011 at the Wayback Machine which has a range of tudong stories. "The Long Road North" by Amaro Bhikkhu can be downloaded from http://www.abhayagiri.org Also see "Rude Awakenings" by Ajahn Sucitto and Nick Scott, Wisdom Publications, and its sequel "Great Patient One", both available on the Forest Sangha website http://www.forestsangha.org

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Amaravati Buddhist Monastery
by Wikipedia
Accessed: 8/9/20

-- The English Sangha Trust: History, by Amaravati.org

Amaravati Buddhist Monastery
A stupa amid the frost of late dawn
Religion
Affiliation: Thai Forest Tradition
Leadership: Ajahn Amaro (abbot)
Location: St Margarets Lane, Great Gaddesden, Hemel Hempstead, Hertfordshire, England HP1 3BZ, United Kingdom
Founder: disciples of Luang Por Chah [Ajahn Chah]
Completed: 1984
Website: http://www.amaravati.org

Amaravati is a Theravada Buddhist monastery at the eastern end of the Chiltern Hills in South East England. Established in 1984 by Ajahn Sumedho as an extension of Chithurst Buddhist Monastery, the monastery has its roots in the Thai Forest Tradition. It takes inspiration from the teachings of the community's founder, the late Ajahn Chah. Its chief priorities are the training and support of a resident monastic community, and the facilitation for monastic and lay people alike of the practice of the Buddha's teachings.

It is not to be confused with the ancient Amaravati Stupa in India.

Community

The resident community consists of monks (bhikkhus), nuns (siladhara), and male and female postulants who live in accordance with strict traditional codes of celibacy, together with a volunteer support staff and visitors. According to the monastery website, regarding the male monastic community, "Usually, there are between 15 and 25 bhikkhus and samaneras in residence, living a contemplative, celibate, mendicant life according to the Vinaya and Dhamma. [...] The community also consists of anagārikas, or white-robed postulants on the eight precepts, who after a year or two may be given samanera ordination."[1] The monastery's order of siladhara, or ten-precept nuns, dates from 1983; there are 10 or so members and a number of female postulants at Amaravati and at Chithurst Buddhist Monastery in West Sussex.[2]


Inside Amravati Buddhist Monastery

Origins

Amaravati formally opened in 1985, the site having been purchased from Buckinghamshire County Council by the English Sangha Trust the year before. Its configuration of several large huts of Canadian cedar, built in extensive grounds for military purposes during World War II, had formerly been a residential school. A purpose-built temple was officially opened on 4 July 1999 by Princess Galyani Vadhana, sister of the King of Thailand. The monastery's founder and abbot for most of its existence has been Ajahn Sumedho, Ajahn Chah's foremost disciple in the West. In Autumn 2010 he handed over to the English monk Ajahn Amaro, who for the preceding 15 years had been co-abbot of Abhayagiri Monastery in Redwood Valley, California.[3]


Beyond all coming and going: the Tathagata


Temple of Amaravati Monastery UK seen from within cloister


Main temple building seen from rear car park


Amaravati Monastery Cloister outside wall and temple in background


Main Stupa and trees in bloom at Amaravati Monastery UK

Outreach

Amaravati has sister monasteries in England – in Devon, Northumberland and West Sussex – as well as monasteries in New Zealand, Italy, Switzerland and North America, which were likewise founded by Ajahn Sumedho. These exist among other Western branches of Ajahn Chah's community, in addition to those in Thailand (see list below). A new vihara in Portugal, called Sumedharama, has been founded north west of Lisbon, near Ericeira.[4] Amaravati's retreat centre provides meditation courses for lay people from April to December. A meditation workshop for lay visitors happens each Saturday from 2-4pm, and there are family and other practice and teaching events happening at the monastery regularly.

In accordance with the principle of dāna established by the Buddha, the monastery and the retreat centre are run entirely on donations. Amaravati is near the Hertfordshire village of Great Gaddesden. The nearest towns are Hemel Hempstead and Berkhamsted. The mediaeval convent of St Margaret's, abolished by Henry VIII during the Dissolution of the Monasteries, was for centuries just 400 yards along the lane. Amaravati in the ancient Buddhist language of Pali means "deathless realm."

Retreat Centre

The monastery includes a retreat centre offering monastic and lay retreats most of the year.

Long Term Plans

In 2013, plans were unveiled, to update the buildings to a more eco-friendly design, replacing some of the old wooden buildings. So far the following have been completed

• Aroga Kuti: Nursing cottage for elderly monks, completed in Nov 2017.
• Heartwood House: Increased accommodation for the Nuns community.
• Re-Building of the nuns residence at Amaravati.

See also

• Buddhism in the West
• Buddhism in the United Kingdom
• Buddhism in Europe
• Aruna Ratanagiri
• Chithurst Buddhist Monastery, UK
• Wat Pah Pong, Thailand
• Wat Pah Nanachat, Thailand
• Abhayagiri Buddhist Monastery, USA
• Bodhinyana Monastery, Australia

References

1. Amaravati website Archived 19 October 2010 at the Wayback Machine
2. Amaravati website Archived 11 April 2009 at the Wayback Machine
3. Amaravati website Archived 26 October 2010 at the Wayback Machine
4. Sumedharama Website

External links

• Official website
• Amaravati on Vimeo
• Forest Sangha website
• Forest Sangha newsletter