What appeal could this book have had for an officer of the Allied forces advancing through Italy as part of a campaign to overthrow a regime based on notions of aryan supremacy? Yet Captain Musson immediately set about translating The Doctrine of Awakening into English, a task he completed three years later. In his brief foreword he offers no apology for the author's extreme views, but simply asserts that Evola had "recaptured the spirit of Buddhism in its original form." The book cleared away "some of the woolly ideas that have gathered around ... Prince Siddhartha and the doctrine he disclosed." But its "real significance" was to be found in "its encouragement of a practical application of the doctrine it discusses."³¹

      If one ignores Evola's suprematist and militaristic views, The Doctrine of Awakening offers a clear and often thoughtful account of early Buddhist doctrine. Evola proudly recalls that the English edition "received the official approbation of the Pali [Text] Society," through their "recognition of the value of my study." ³² It is nonetheless curious that in 1951, so shortly after the war, the book would be published in London by a reputable Orientalist publisher (Luzac) without any reference to the author's extreme right-wing views.

      By the time The Doctrine of Awakening appeared in print, Musson had followed the book's advice and was already a bhikkhu in Ceylon. "I think the war hastened my decision," he later told Robin Maugham in the course of their conversation. "Though it was inevitable, I think, in any case. But the war forced maturity on me." ³³ Since Harold Musson, like Larry Darrell (and probably Julius Evola), had a private income, he did not have to seek work upon leaving the army. He settled in London. With time and money on his hands, he leisurely worked on his translation of Evola and "tried to get as much pleasure out of life as I could." ³⁴ Then one evening, in a bar, he ran into Osbert Moore, an old army friend who had shared his enthusiasm for The Doctrine of Awakening while in Italy. They began comparing notes. "Gradually we came to the conclusion that the lives we were leading at present were utterly pointless. We shared the belief that the whole of this existence as we saw it was a farce."³⁵ By the time the bar closed, they had resolved to go to Ceylon and become bhikkhus.

      They left England in November 1948 and were ordained as novices in an open glade at the Island Hermitage by Nyanatiloka, then an old man of seventy-one, on April 24, 1949. Moore was given the name "Nanamoli," and Musson "Nanavira." In 1950 they both received bhikkhu ordination in Colombo.

      For the next year Nanavira devoted himself "fairly continuously" to the practice of meditative absorption (jhana, samadhi), the attainment of which, he later declared, had been his motive in coming to Ceylon. A few months before Maugham's visit he had explained to a Singhalese friend that it was "the desire for some definite non-mystical form of practice that first turned my thoughts to the East:"

Western thinking ... seemed to me to oscillate between the extremes of mysticism and rationalism, both of which were distasteful to me, and the yoga practices - in a general sense - of India offered themselves as a possible solution.³⁶

This is what he had seen as the "real significance" of Evola's book and, as he confirmed sixteen years later, the point on which "Eastern thought is at its greatest distance from Western."³⁷ But after a year's practice he contracted typhoid, which left him with chronic indigestion so severe that at times he would "roll about on [his] bed with the pain."³⁸ It also prevented him from attaining anything more than the "low-level results of [the] practice." ³⁹

      Unable to pursue the jhanas he turned his linguistic skills to the study of Pali, which he soon mastered, and set about reading the Buddha's discourses and their Singhalese commentaries. His analytical bent led him to assume that "it was possible to include all that the [Buddha] said in a single system - preferrably portrayed diagrammatically on one very large sheet of paper."⁴⁰ But the more he read, the more he realised that this approach was "sterile" and incapable of leading to understanding. And the more he probed the discourses, the more he came to doubt the validity of the commentaries, which, "in those innocent days," he had accepted as authoritative. His friend Nanamoli, meanwhile, had likewise mastered Pali and was preparing to translate the greatest Commentary of them all: Buddhaghosa's Visuddi Magga.

      Over the following months and years Nanavira became increasingly independent in his views, both challenging the accepted orthodoxy and refining his own understanding. Temperamentally, he acknowledged a tendency to stand apart from others. "I am quite unable," he wrote in 1963, "to identify myself with any organised body or cause (even if it is a body of opposition or a lost cause). I am a born blackleg." ⁴¹ Having renounced a life of comfort in England and all the values it stood for, he now rejected the prevailing orthodoxy of Singhalese Buddhism. But he did not turn against the Buddha's word: "It was, and is, my attitude towards the [Buddha's discourses] that, if I find anything in them that is against my own view, they are right, and I am wrong."⁴² He came to view only two of the three "Baskets" (Pitaka) of the Canon as authentic: those containing the discourses and the monastic rule. "No other Pali books whatsoever," he insisted, "should be taken as authoritative; and ignorance of them (and particularly of the traditional Commentaries) may be counted a positive advantage, as leaving less to be unlearned." ⁴³

      This radical tendency towards isolation led him in 1954 to leave the Island Hermitage for the physical solitude of his hut in the jungle. "Aren't you lonely?" inquired Maugham. "After a bit," he replied, "you find you simply don't want other people. You've got your centre of gravity within yourself ... You become self-contained."⁴⁴ Two years earlier he had confessed: "I am one of those people who think of other people as 'they,' not as 'we.'" ⁴⁵ Despite persistent ill-health, his study and practice of mindfulness continued with increasing intensity.

      Then, on the evening of June 27, 1959, something happened that radically changed the course of his life. He recorded the event in Pali in a private journal:

HOMAGE TO THE AUSPICIOUS ONE, WORTHY, FULLY AWAKENED. - At one time the monk Nanavira was staying in a forest hut near Bundala village. It was during that time, as he was walking up and down in the first watch of the night, that the monk Nanavira made his mind quite pure of constraining things, and kept thinking and pondering and reflexively observing the Dhamma as he had heard and learnt it, the clear and stainless Eye of the Dhamma arose in him: "Whatever has the nature of arising, all that has the nature of ceasing." Having been a teaching-follower for a month, he became one attained to right view.⁴⁶

      The Buddha used the term "arya" to refer to those who had achieved a direct experiential insight into the nature of the four truths (suffering, its origins, its cessation and the way to its cessation). For such people these truths are no longer beliefs or theories, but realities. When someone comes to know them as such, he or she is said to have "entered the stream" which culminates, within a maximum of seven further lifetimes either as a human or a god, in arahat -hood, i.e. the final attainment of Nirvana. While the Buddha used this term in a purely spiritual sense, he maintained a distinction between an arya and an "ordinary person" (puthujjana), i.e. one who had not yet had the experience of stream-entry. The experience, however, is available to anyone , irrespective of their social position, sex or racial origins. By offering this radical redefinition of "nobility," the Buddha introduced into caste-bound India a spiritual tradition able to transcend the limits of the indigenous culture. Yet in the final analysis, concluded Nanavira, "the Buddha's Teaching is for a privileged class - those who are fortunate enough to have the intelligence to grasp it..., and they are most certainly not the majority!" ⁴⁷

      Up to this point Nanavira had maintained a continuous correspondence with his friend Nanamoli (Moore). Now he stopped it, because "there was no longer anything for me to discuss with him, since the former relationship of parity between us regarding the Dhamma had suddenly come to an end." ⁴⁸ And it was never to be resumed, for eight months later, on March 8, 1960, Nanamoli Thera died suddenly of a heart attack in a remote village while on a walking tour. He left behind some of the finest English translations from Pali of key Theravada texts. Added to this loss had been the death three years earlier of Nanavira's first preceptor, Nyanatiloka, on May 28, 1957.

In the year following his stream-entry (1960) Nanavira began writing a series of "notes." By the summer of 1961 he had finished two such notes, one on "Paticcasamuppada" (conditionality) and one on "Paramattha sacca" (higher truth). In July of the same year, a German Buddhist nun called Vajira (Hannelore Wolf), who had been in Ceylon since 1955 and since 1959 had been living as a hermit, called on Nanavira for advice. He subsequently sent her a copy of the two notes he had just finished typing. These had a tremendous impact on her. "Your notes on vinnana-namarupa," (consciousness-name/form) she wrote, "have led me away from the abyss into which I have been staring for more than twelve years." And added: "I do not know ... by what miraculous skill you have guided me to a safe place where at last I can breathe freely."⁴⁹ The correspondence and one further day-long meeting resulted in Vajira likewise "entering the stream," in late January 1962. Vajira underwent an ecstatic but turbulent transformation from an ordinary person (puthujjana) to an arya, the validity of which Nanavira did "not see any reason to doubt." ⁵⁰ Vajira, from her side, now regarded Nanavira as an arahat. But the rapidity and intensity of the change provoked a kind of nervous breakdown and the Ceylonese authorities deported her to Germany (on February 22, 1962). On her return she ceased to have any contact with her former Buddhist friends in Hamburg. This, commented Nanavira, was "a good sign, not a bad one - when one has got what one wants, one stops making a fuss about it and sits down quietly." ⁵¹

      Four months after Vajira's departure, Nanavira's chronic indigestion (amoebiasis) was further aggravated by satyriasis - a devastatingly inappropriate malady for a celibate hermit. Satyriasis - "the overpowering need on the part of a man to seduce a never-ending succession of women" (Britannica) - is the male equivalent to nymphomania in women. "Under the pressure of this affliction," he noted on December 11, "I am oscillating between two poles. If I indulge the sensual images that offer themselves, my thought turns towards the state of a layman; if I resist them, my thought turns towards suicide. Wife or knife, one might say." ⁵² In fact, the previous month he had already made an unsuccessful attempt to end his life. Although he realised that the erotic stimulation could be overcome by meditative absorption, such practice was prevented by his chronic indigestion. By November 1963, he had "given up all hope of making any further progress for myself in this life"⁵³ and had also resolved not to disrobe. It was simply a question of how long he could "stand the strain."⁵⁴

      While for the ordinary person (puthujjana ) suicide is ethically equivalent to murder, for an arya it is acceptable under circumstances that prevent further spiritual practice. For the arya is no longer bound to the craving that drives the endless cycle of death and rebirth, his or her liberation being guaranteed within a finite period of time. Nanavira cites instances from the Canon of arya bhikkhus at the time of the Buddha who had taken their lives and become arahats in the process. He does not seem to have been driven by the conventional motives for suicide: resentment, remorse, despair, grief. He writes openly of his dilemma to friends with droll understatement and black humour:

All the melancholy farewell letters are written (they have to be amended and brought up to date from time to time, as the weeks pass and my throat is still uncut); the note for the coroner is prepared (carefully refraining from any witty remarks that might spoil the solemn moment at the inquest when the note is read out aloud); and the mind is peaceful and concentrated.⁵⁵

      His friends responded with a mixture of concern, bewilderment and alarm. "People want their Dhamma on easier terms," he reflected, "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 concern (unconscious, no doubt) is to bring things back to healthy, reassuring, normality." ⁵⁶

      Most of 1963 was taken up with preparing his notes for publication, something he would have considered "an intolerable disturbance"⁵⁷ had his health not prevented him from practice. Despite such disclaimers, one has the strong impression that he wished to communicate his vision of the Dhamma to a wider public. (Maugham records him as saying: "I'm hoping to find an English publisher for [them]."⁵⁸ ) Through the help of the Ceylonese Judge Lionel Samaratunga a limited edition of 250 cyclostyled copies of Notes on Dhamma (1960-1963) was produced towards the end of the year and distributed to leading Buddhist figures of the time and various libraries and institutions. The response was largely one of polite incomprehension.

When Robin Maugham entered the tiny hut at the beginning of 1965, Nanavira had largely completed the revisions to his Notes on Dhamma. "I looked round the room with its faded blue walls," Maugham recalls. "There was a table made from a packing-case with an oil-lamp on it, a chair, a chest and a bookcase. There were two straw brooms and two umbrellas - and his plank bed and the straw mat I was sitting on."⁵⁹ But he was quite unaware of Nanavira's work. The questions he asked as he squatted uncomfortably on the floor were typical of those a sympathetic but uninformed European would still make today. Maugham's principal interest was to understand Nanavira's character. To this end he asked at length about his relations with his family, the reasons why he became a monk, if he felt lonely and whether he missed the West.

      Maugham left the first meeting with a positive impression"I liked his diffident smile and I admired his courage," he reflected. "But I still wondered if he was completely sincere." ⁶⁰ During the second meeting his doubts were put to rest. Nanavira explained how his mother had come out to Ceylon and tried to persuade her only child to return home. When he refused she suffered a heart-attack. As soon as she recovered she went back to England and died. "His voice was quite impassive as he spoke," explained Maugham. "I find it hard to describe the tone of his voice. Yet if I don't I shall miss the whole point of the man I'd travelled so far to see. There was no harshness in his tone. There was no coldness. There was understanding and gentleness. And it was only these two qualities that made his next remark bearable."

'My mother's death didn't worry me,' he said. 'Even now, during this life, every moment we are born and die. But we continue. We take some other shape or form in another life.'

Nanavira fell silent. He was visibly tired. Then he added: "The whole point of Buddhism is to bring an end to this farcical existence. The whole point of our present existence is to reach Nirvana - complete understanding of natural phenomena - thereby ending the chain of re-birth." ⁶¹

      In Nanavira's account of the meeting, however, it is Robin Maugham's sincerity that is put into question. "The visitors I spoke of in my postcard," he wrote in a letter two days later,

came and talked and took photographs and notes for several hours on the afternoon of the eighth. The older one is Robin Maugham, a nephew of the celebrated Somerset Maugham. He is a novelist (third-rate, I suspect) and a writer of travel books. Although they both seemed interested in the Dhamma, I rather think that their principal reason for visiting me was to obtain material for their writings. I had a slightly uncomfortable feeling of being exploited; but, unfortunately, once I start talking, I like going on, without proper regard for the repercussions later on. So probably, in about a year's time, there will be a new travel book with a chapter (complete with photographs) devoted to yours truly, and the romantic life he is leading in the jungle.⁶²

      Contrary to his own version, Maugham was not alone. Thus the dramatic encounter between two tormented souls - the man of the world and the hermit - is compromised by the presence of a third man - probably Maugham's secretary and assistant. Nanavira's prediction about the outcome of the visit proved entirely accurate except in the timing. Maugham's sensational account of the meeting was published in the People newspaper of September 26, 1965, but it took ten years before the travel book (Search for Nirvana, 1975) appeared. This book devotes most of its pages to Maugham's search for Nirvana in the arms of dusky-skinned youths, but a chapter (complete with photographs) is given to his meeting with Nanavira.

      At root, though, Maugham seems sincere. As they were parting, he had the strong impression that Nanavira still wanted to tell him something "of such importance that it would change my whole life." But the monk abruptly averted his "mellow gaze" and simply said goodbye. Maugham and his companion walked away towards the path that led from the jungle glade to the village. Then he turned back: "His lean gaunt figure in a saffron robe was standing motionless on the verandah. Perhaps he knew a truth that would make the existence of millions of men a happier thing. Perhaps he knew the answer. Perhaps he had found the secret of life. But I would never know." ⁶³

      The revision of his Notes completed, Nanavira returned to his simple routine of meditation, correspondence and daily chores. His chronic indigestion continued to be aggravated by satyriasis. Six months (Maugham, presumably for dramatic effect, says two weeks) after their meeting, on the afternoon of July 7, 1965, Nanavira ended his life by putting his head into a cellophane bag containing drops of chloroform. Only a month earlier his letters had been exploring the meaning of humour.

      The memory of the English monk from Aldershot continued to haunt Robin Maugham. In 1968 he published The Second Window , an autobiographical novel about a journalist who becomes entangled in a child sex-abuse scandal in Kenya. As a digression from the main theme, the protagonist visits Ceylon to track down a certain Leslie Edwin Fletcher who is rumoured to be living there as a Buddhist hermit. While clearly based on Maugham's encounter with Nanavira, the fictionalised version turns him into a gloomy, confused and pathetic figure. A radio-play (A Question of Retreat ) followed in a similar vein.

      Shortly afterwards, in 1972, Julius Evola published his autobiography. Towards the end of the war Evola had been injured by a bomb in Vienna and for the remainder of his life was partially paralysed. He returned to Italy and became a focal figure for the far right, receiving in his apartment a steady trickle of those who still admired the values he espoused. Although he died in 1974, he has been resurrected recently as a hero of resurgent neo-fascist groups in Italy.

      Recalling The Doctrine of Awakening , he wrote in his autobiography: "The person who translated the work [into English], a certain Mutton (sic), found in it an incitant to leave Europe and withdraw to the Orient in the hope of finding there a centre where one still cultivated the disciplines that I recommended; unfortunately, I have had no further news of him." ⁶⁴ Evola also confessed that he himself was not a Buddhist and his study was intended to balance his earlier work on the Hindu tantras. He saw Buddhism as the "'dry' and intellectual path of pure detachment" as opposed to that of the tantras which taught "affirmation, engagement, the utilisation and transformation of immanent forces liberated through the awakening of the Shakti, i.e. the root power of all vital energy, particularly that of sex."⁶⁵ The only other work of Evola's to have been translated into English was The Metaphysics of Sex (London, 1983).

NOTES

31. ---. "recaptured the spirit of Buddhism...": Evola (1), ix.

32. ---. "received the official approbation...": Evola (2), 142 (Tr.).

33. ---. "I think the war hastened...": Robin Maugham (1), 190.

34. ---. "tried to get as much pleasure...": Robin Maugham (1), 189.

35. ---. "Gradually we came to the conclusion...": Robin Maugham (1), 190.

36. ---. "the desire for some definite...": Anon., 368.

37. ---. "Eastern thought is at its greatest distance...": Anon., 367.

38. ---. "roll about on [his] bed...": Robin Maugham (1), 198.

39. ---. "low-level results of [the] practice...": Anon., 440.

40. ---. "it was possible to include...": Anon., 485.

41. ---. "I am quite unable,...": Anon., 310.

42. ---. "It was, and is, my attitude...": Anon., 305.

43. ---. "No other Pali books whatsoever...": Anon., 5.

44. ---. "Aren't you lonely?...": Robin Maugham (1), 194.

45. ---. "I am one of those people...": Anon., 223.

46. ---. "HOMAGE TO THE AUSPICIOUS ONE...": Anon., 495.

47. ---. "the Buddha's Teaching is for...": Anon., 396-7.

48. ---. "there was no longer anything...": Anon., 386.

49. ---. "Your notes on vinnana-namarupa,... ": Anon., 529.

50. ---. "not see any reason to doubt...": Anon., 386.

51. ---. "a good sign, not a bad one...": Anon., 386.

52. ---. "I am oscillating between two poles...": Anon., 216.

53. ---. "given up all hope...": Anon., 241.

54. ---. "stand the strain...": Anon., 276.

55. ---. "All the melancholy farewell...": Anon., 238.

56. ---. "People want their Dhamma...": Anon., 376.

57. ---. "an intolerable disturbance...": Anon., 253.

58. ---. "I'm hoping to find an English publisher...": Robin Maugham (1), 198.

59. ---. "I looked round the room...": Robin Maugham (1), 197-8.

60. ---. "I liked his diffident smile...": Robin Maugham (1), 192.

61. ---. "His voice was quite impassive...": Robin Maugham (1), 200.

62. ---. "The visitors I spoke of...": Anon., 403.

63. ---. "of such importance that...": Robin Maugham (1), 202.

64. ---. "The person who translated...": Evola (2), 142 (Tr.).

65. ---. "'dry' and intellectual...": Evola (2), 143 (Tr.)

BIBLIOGRAPHY

Anon. [Samanera Bodhesako] (ed.) Clearing the Path: Writings of Nanavira Thera (1960-1965) . Colombo: Path Press, 1987.

Evola, Julius. Tr. Harold Musson. (1) The Doctrine of Awakening: A Study on the Buddhist Ascesis . London: Luzac, 1951.

------. (2) Le Chemin du Cinabre . Milan: Arché-Arktos, 1982.

Maugham, Robin. (1) Search for Nirvana . London: W.H. Allen, 1975.

------. (2) The Second Window . London: Heinemann, 1968.

Maugham, W. Somerset. The Razor's Edge . London: Mandarin, 1990. [First published by Heinemann, 1944.]

Nanavira Thera. The Tragic, the Comic and the Personal . The Wheel Publication no. 339/341. Kandy: Buddhist Publication Society, 1987. [This is comprised of 29 letters, 27 of which are included in Clearing the Path. ]

Rawlinson, Andrew. Western Gurus and Enlightened Masters. La Salle, Illinois: Open Court, forthcoming.

Waterfield, R. "Baron Julius Evola and the Hermetic Tradition," Gnosis, no. 14, Winter 1989-90.

Wettimuny, R. G. de S. The Buddha's Teaching: Its Essential Meaning . Sri Lanka: Private edition, 1990. [First published, 1969. Wettimuny was one of Nanavira's correspondents, to whom he dedicated this book. It is regarded by some as a systematic presentation of Nanavira's views.]