Pure Inspiration

Ayoma Wickramsinghe – 27
At a later date, he said: ‘..but not in a scholarly way of studying’ and
he said: ‘It is high time you actually achieved something’. I was then
sixty-four years old. He said: ‘Go away into solitude for six months
and save yourself’. When I thought to myself: ‘Ha, he thinks I can do it
in six months – what an achievement!’ He caught my thought and said:
‘No, not six months, but one year’.
Once, in private he said to me: ‘You have now understood dukkha (the
noble truth of suffering)’; ‘At this time there is nothing more to say as
advice to you’; ‘One should have pīti (joy) all the time’. Then I said
‘All the time, Sir?’ He said: ‘Of course, it is like planting a seed, one
has to foster it and wait till it grows – it cannot mature in a hurry.’
One experience of his which he related to me was this: Soon after the
war, alcohol was naturally very rare. One night some bottles were
available in a bar. While some men were drinking, a fire broke out in
the building. Other people screamed ‘run out, run out, the building is
about to fall’, but so great was their attachment that the men continued
to drink and all of them perished in the fire – so dreadful is the power
and pull of desire.
Once, when he was walking for a long time in forest terrain, he was
overwhelmed with hunger and wondered where he would next be
offered food. No one was around for miles and miles. Suddenly, he
came across a little hut and an old devotee (upāsikā) came forward
carrying a tray laden with food and offered it to him. He asked how
she knew he was coming and she replied: ‘When I was offering
flowers that morning, a voice said ‘a bhikkhu is coming this way,
please prepare food and offer it’ ’.