20 LOTUS May 2014

Mahasi Sayadaw continued on to the Netherlands and

Switzerland with Bhante to translate for him. On his sec-

ond visit to Oakenholt in 1981, a Mahasi Vipassana

Association was set up with Dr Rewata Dhamma as its

principal. His vihara was then counted among the affili-

ated Mahasi Meditation Centres.

Next year Oakenholt was to host a further event in

which Bhante played a principal part, aided by yet an-

other acquaintance he had first made in India; this was a

Czech professor of Psychology named Mirko Fryba, then

living in Swiss exile. At the time Dr Fryba was visiting

Oxford University and took part in an International Con-

ference of Buddhist Studies which was attended also by

the Sinhalese scholars Ven. Walpola Rahula and Dr Sad-

dhatissa. These he persuaded to participate in an Abhid-

hamma Seminar in Oakenholt, to which Dr. Rewata

Dhamma had invited the Burmese scholar U Thittila

Sayadaw as chief guest. Also attending was his old friend

U Nyanissara, known as the Sitagu Sayadaw, and the vet-

eran Sinhalese Mahanayaka Balangoda Ananda Maitreya,

who was visiting England that year. The seminar contin-

ued for five half-days. Each was devoted to a particular

theme, introduced by Bhante and followed by a panel

discussion and questions from participants. After the first

general lecture by U Thittila, Dr Fryba gave a report on

teaching the Abhidhamma to Western psychologists,

which opened a sort of East-West encounter on the psy-

chotherapeutic use of mind-process analysis that was ob-

viously enjoyed by all the Western academicians

attending. Dr Rewata Dhamma’s other contribution to the

seminar was a lecture on ‘The Fundamental Forces of the

Mind‘.

Even using Oakenholt for seminars and well attended

meditation retreats, the premises in Carlyle Road had

grown too small for those living there and in 1981 Dr

Rewata Dhamma set up the Birmingham Buddhist

Vihara a few doors down the road. From there he jour-

neyed to lead retreats and teach Buddhism at a growing

number of centres in Europe. A Karma Kagyu centre run

by Shamar Tulku first invited him to Switzerland to lead

meditation retreats. In that country he connected with

Mirko Fryba, a fellow disciple of Mahasi Sayadaw, who

had set up the Swiss Dhamma Group and now began

inviting Bhante to lead regular retreats. Eventually

Matthias Barth (a nephew of the respected theologian

Karl Barth) took over the organisation of these retreats

and began a 25-year association with Dr Rewata

Dhamma.

Much the same sequence of events happened in Bel-

gium. Bhante was originally invited to lead a retreat in

Brussels by disciples of Akong Rimpoche. There he con-

tacted those interested specifically in Insight Meditation

who at first came to his ten-day retreats in Birmingham.

Eventually he encouraged Marie-Cécile Forget to found

Dhamma Group Brussels in 1986 and led two or three re-

treats there a year. But it was Mirko Fryba who brought

him to Central Europe after the downfall of Communism.

At his invitation he led several meditation retreats in the

Czech Republic and became the spiritual patron of the

International Buddhist Foundation in Prague, an institu-

tion that looks after more than ten local groups in Central

Europe and co-ordinates the activities of the Ayukusala

Sangha in Austria, the Czech Republic, Germany, Slova-

kia and Switzerland. In 2003 this culminated in Bhante

acting as Preceptor to four Czechs who took higher ordi-

nation in the Mahasi Sasana Monastery in Yangon.

Another country that Bhante visited frequently was the

Netherlands, where he led retreats at the Thai Vihara in

Amsterdam. He often mentioned two Dutch people he

knew in particular. One was a retired Roman Catholic

Bishop who lived in a simple room with no furniture but

cushions and matting. On one wall there was a crucifix,

on the other a statue of Buddha on a shelf. ‘Both are im-

portant,’ he explained; ‘the one taught us how to face suf-

fering, the other how to overcome it.’ Among Bhante’s

meditation students was a former nun who had con-

verted to Buddhism. She was the youngest in the convent

and eventually they asked her to return to look after the

aged sisters. ‘But I’ve become a Buddhist now,’ she ex-

plained. ‘That’s all right,’ she was assured. ‘You can carry

on your Buddhist practice - just so long as you keep the

convent going.’

Bhante was invited to the heart of Catholicism himself

and led a meditation retreat for Franciscan monks at their

headquarters in Assisi. Asked how he viewed their foun -

der, he replied, ‘A saint is a saint, whatever religion he

professes.’ Afterwards he went on to Rome and was

intro duced to Pope Paul VI. Another friend of his living

in Italy was Lama Gangchen Rimpoche, whom he had

known for ten years in India. A further link between them

was that Gangchen came from a long line of healers, as

had Bhante’s own father. Now he had taken Italian na-

tionality and it was with him that Bhante stayed in Milan

when the UN Buddha Relics were displayed in that city

in 2002.

In the United States Dr Rewata Dhamma had several

contacts who invited him over. Jack Kornfeld and Joseph

1979 Mahasi Sayadaw and

Dr Rewata Dhamma