Nyanavira on solitude

Excerpt from [L. 94] - 1 May 1964

Now the question of Colombo. It is clear from Ananda’s letter that he thoroughly disapproves my living in solitude: ‘I think you are taking life, and yourself, a little too seriously. This talk of suicide also is significant. Maybe you have been alone too much. Solitude is good, but a man needs friends, needs contacts with equals. Otherwise he loses his sense of proportion.’ I want to make clear to you my own view of this matter, so I shall discuss it at some length. When this kuṭi was first built, some people from Colombo came and visited me. Soon after, my dāyaka came to me in tears and said that he had received a letter from my visitors strongly criticizing him for having built the kuṭi in such a remote place. This, of course, was quite unfair, since it was I myself who had chosen the site. But I have found, right from the beginning, that there has been strong resentment by people living in Colombo about my living in solitude. I mentioned this fact once to the late Ven. Ñāṇamoli Thera, and he simply said ‘Are you surprised?’ It is not that Colombo-dwelling monks feel that I am an example that puts them to shame (since this would not account for the laymen’s resentment), but rather that people find it scandalous (though they cannot say so openly) that anyone should take the Buddha’s Teaching so seriously as actually to be willing to ‘lose his sense of proportion’ by living in solitude, and perhaps also to lose his life. People want their Dhamma on easier terms, and they dislike it when they are shown that they must pay a heavier price—and they are frightened, too, when they see something they don’t understand: they regard it as morbid, and their one concern (unconscious, no doubt) is to bring things back to healthy, reassuring, normality. So they want to bring me back to Colombo to set their own minds at rest. And now, of course, when there is the risk of a really public scandal (a suicide), this anxiety is multiplied a hundredfold. But, as I told you before, suicides—with the attainment of arahatta, too—were fairly common amongst bhikkhus in the Buddha’s day. Now, however, things have come to such a pass that, though a suicide for the sake of the Buddha’s Teaching would be bad enough, the real scandal would be if it became known that some person or other still living had reached one of the stages. People do not, in their heart of hearts, like to think it possible—the shock to their comfortable conventional ideas would be intolerable (I am not thinking here of the village people, who do not, after all, have so many comfortable ideas). All this, perhaps you will say, may or may not be true; but what has it to do with the advisability or not of my spending some months in Colombo (I mean apart from medical treatment)? It has this to do with it: that I am obliged to ask why there is all this insistence on my staying in Colombo—do people say I should because it would really be to my benefit? or for the sake of their own peace of mind? One thing is quite likely: if I were to stay in Colombo, there would be less risk of my deciding on suicide (at least while I was there). In this matter, Ananda’s instinct is not mistaken—if I have contacts and company, the thought of suicide recedes—; and it might be concluded that, in this way, both I should be benefitted, and other people’s minds would be set at rest. But the trouble is this: the more I get into company, and the closer I get to Colombo, the more insistent become my lustful thoughts. I stated this quite clearly in my letter to the Colombo Thera, saying that even at the Hermitage I have little peace from such thoughts, and that it is only here, where I am quite cut off from all disturbing contacts and I do sometimes manage to compose my mind (as in the last few days, oddly enough), that I have periods of freedom in which I can, to some extent at least, practise the Dhamma. But Ananda has chosen to ignore this part of my letter completely, no doubt because it is inconvenient. The fact is, then, that thoughts of suicide can be reduced at the cost of increasing lustful thoughts (and I know from experience that even before this trouble when I had simply the intestinal disorder, most of my time in Colombo was devoted to lustful thoughts—what it would be like now, I hesitate to think). In other words, as the risk of suicide decreases so the risk of disrobing ncreases. I wish to emphasize this point, since as things are at present this consideration must take first place. And whatever anybody else may think about it, if I have to choose between the two evils, I choose suicide rather than disrobing. The fact that suicide would create a scandal and that disrobing would not, cannot under any circumstances whatsoever be made a reason (in my case, at least) for preferring the latter course. So, if I fear disrobing more than I fear suicide, then I fear Colombo more than I fear Bundala. (I make no mention of the misery of living in Colombo even at the best of times.) Possibly this obstinacy will meet with your disapproval, possibly not; but at least I want you to know that I shall not easily be dislodged from this position. (I do not think that you will press the matter, but you may meet people who are more determined upon it, and you will be able to make my position—whether it is right or wrong—clear to them.) So much for that.