Obbegoda Dhammatilaka Nayaka Thera (died 2004)

When in the early nineties, exhausted by my fieldwork in Northern India, I relocated to Sri Lanka with the aim of getting first-hand insight into the organisational aspects of historical and Theravada Buddhist communities, little did I know that I would meet up with a teacher of such remarkable qualities that would keep me (on and off) in Serendeep for more than a decade.  Completely alone (or so I thought!), wading through the swampy, leech-infested jungles near Wellawaya, sweating like hell in the unbearable late afternoon heat, on my way to find the 10th century rock carvings at Buduruwagala, it was that I first heard his almost mockingly cheerful voice. It came from behind what turned out to be a distant grove of banana trees and was interrupted by the crees and craas of ahdunnow how many jungle birds and most certainly a terrifying horde of all too interested monkeys, and the maddening buzz of at least a zillion of insects: Be welcome! Please Stay!

Obbegoda Thera had been the incumbent monk at Buduruwagala since 1976. Turned by himself (and mostly his own hands) into a basic hermitage, with a few mud huts and a small brick assembly room, this most wonderful of historical sites in Sri Lanka, with its giant rock-carved Buddha second in size only to the one at Bamiyan, Afghanistan, was now slowly awakening from its one-thousand-year slumber. I stayed. I stayed indeed.

The things I learned from this man! - Although I had come on a quest to learn more of how the Buddhist organisational guidelines, as laid out in the Vinaya, provide the glue to bind communities and teams together (you could call it sangha studies), our focus swiftly turned towards the Suttanipata body of texts, which had come to my attention through an exquisite analysis published shortly before by Anand WP Guruge (in An Agenda for the International Buddhist Community, Colombo 1993), and on which Obbegoda Thera turned out to be an authority. Learn them by heart!, was his first assignment, which I swiftly did, unless I risked to disappoint my host. But the effort surely was more than worth its while: Over and over again we discussed every syllable and every word of the Mangalasutta, the Ratanasutta and the Karaniyamettasutta - steadily revealing the uncomparable aesthetic quality of Pali chanting, the enduring magic of their wordings, but most of all the timeless generic validity of the concepts offered, as relevant as ever for today's intercultural communities in a globalised world. Does it need more to say that Dunya's approach is deeply moulded by what Obbegoda Thera transmitted to me?

But most of all, Obbegoda Thera was great fun to be with. Always in the best of spirits, forever laughing, giggling, full of jest and full of wit, almost childishly collecting trivia (shells, fossils, pieces of wood, birdnests, ...) from the swamps to be presented in his ramshackle little museum, not once foregoing an opportunity to celebrate life to the fullest.

Truly a dhammatilaka he was: a gemstone of the dhamma. Alas he is no more - but he will never be forgotten.

Links:

Buduruwagala (German) -  Lao Xu Yin - Wikipedia - youtube - Anand WP Guruge

- Francis Laleman -