Letter 4.40

(Shortly after Bob's death in Nepal, a Sri Lankan journalist, Maureen Seneviratne, published an article about him: COMPUTER MONK REMEMBERED. -- Hūm)

'...Ven. Bodhesako will no more walk the roads and paths of Ambegoda, a village near Bandarawela on the Welimada Road. Every morning the monk descended from the hillock where he lived on his round to collect his alms-food for the day. He walked the gravel roads barefoot, his begging bowl in a sling... Still, American remained the Samanera till his last days. You could see it from his gait. His feet carried his stocky body at a speed higher than an Asian monk on his begging tour ever would develop. So he returned with his bowl carefully but efficiently carried. For who has an eye for it, even the way he wore the monk's garb was not fully Eastern. A misfit in a Sinhalese village? Had the villagers known that the only piece of furniture in the monk's room, apart from bed, bookshelf, table and chair, was a word-processor, they might have been stingy with their alms!...

I had a long interview with him on the spacious verandah of the hundred years old bungalow of Hubert and Connie Congreave at Wye Estate...

Once, he said, he had possessed everything (in a material sense) he had wanted and had never been satisfied. It was for 'layman's reasons' he had 'gone forth' and thus he had found out the 'monk's reasons' for being a monk. He had had like many others to shed 'all romantic and flowery ideas' of being a monk and face and understand the 'true reasons'. He had used the Teachings as 'the raft for crossing a river' as the Buddha had said. Now he was still learning to use the 'raft'...

'Peace can only start with and within the individual,' I remember he told me, adding that Buddhism was not out to change the world, but the individual -- give him right knowledge and understanding -- and every individual transformed goes to make a better world, he said. Self-understanding alone would lead him to the inner peace that can exist for an individual even in the midst of strife and conflict...

...Ven. Bodhesako died in Nepal, close to his favorite temple, on a meditation pilgrimage, shortly before he would have attended the 80th anniversary celebration of his father in California. I imagine that Robert Smith -- for that was his name from birth in Detroit, Michigan US.A. -- had grown his hair and donned civilian clothes fitting the California climate for the occasion. But perhaps also he would not have done so. What does it matter? Would he have gone a-begging in California?... One can take for granted that such musings were thought unnecessary and even irrelevant by Sadhu, as the monk was called at Wye Estate...

..This computer-word processor was Sadhu's pride and worry. If anything in his life has been illustrative of the basic truth -- not only of Buddhism -- that all is transient and therefore needs to be handled properly, it was this electronic machine.

It took Sadhu almost the time he needed to learn how to meditate to find out the refinements he could utilize to print his book. Or was this his way to meditate? Surely he should not be considered to be a Western Buddhist for the sole fact that he worked a word-processor. For him it was nothing more than the stylus monks at Aluvihara near Dambulla cave temple even today use to print the ancient texts onto ola leaves. They also need ink. Who thinks of a word-processor as a higher being should never buy a newspaper either. For Sadhu probably handling this machine was of the same quality as being aware of one's breath in meditation.

And how it tested his patience! Not only because finding out its skills and moods was almost as volatile an exercise as scrutinising one's subconscience. It also liked breaking down...

...No, Robert Smith was not a Western Buddhist because he handled this intricate machine nor was he a Sinhala Buddhist because he walked Ambegoda's gravel roads barefoot. He remained American to the hilt. American stamped by the revolutionary 60's and the meditative 70's. His way of Buddhism was as contemporary as that of the Buddha himself in his days. For everybody has to go it on his own or her own, here and now.

Then why stayed Sadhu in Sri Lanka and why on Wye Estate? Because he found his Sangha there. Hospitality received from Hubert and Connie Congreave in an annex of their own house was their permanent dāna to him and his computer. Connie provided him with tea, gently placed outside his normally closed door. Sadhu had his perfect solitude woven into a relaxed but intimate relationship with the elderly couple. Would Robert Smith have found such a setting in his home country? The sensitivity for each other's privacy and need for communication developed in the 'Wye Hermitage' can be called unmatched and reason for Sadhu to settle down there. For though he died in Nepal on his way to America, Hubert Congreave meanwhile was doing up Sadhu's simple abode to have it ready for his return. For days they could hardly believe that he would never return. They would have believed any villager saying that he had been seen on his swift morning round. However, that is what Robert Smith would never do... He was a man of consequence. Someone who can handle a computer in a contemplative way also knows how to switch off.

A Western Buddhist by historic conditioning, lives among Christians. Different from what Eastern Buddhists might think, that can be an inspiration. Both ways, of course. That is what made Wye Estate Sadhu's Sangha. All inhabitants are Christians. To their company the Buddhist monk Robert Smith wanted to return. Not for high-flown discussions, since there were none. Simply for the living, leaving each other alone but not lonely. Is not that a perfect definition of a monastery?...a mirror of what humanity as a whole is or should be.

Clearing the Path, the writings of his teacher, the Ven. Ñāṇavīra Thera, was really Samanera Bodhesako's magnum opus... There is no name of the editor -- in the great tradition he chose to follow. It is notable that in his foreword he claimed the book 'is meant to be lived rather than read and set aside'. It is what he himself endeavoured and achieved in the way of life he adopted as his own...