Pure Inspiration

Ven. Bhikkhu Bodhi – 41
this ideal. Both were able to combine a meditative life with dedicated
service to the Dhamma and the task of teaching both fellow monastics
and lay people.
I see Ven. Ñāṇavimala, especially during the early years of my
acquaintance with him, as fitting into the former of these two models.
In his teachings to Western monks, he placed an almost exclusive
emphasis on personal development, discouraging involvement with
others and engagement even in activities intended to promote the
Dhamma. He sometimes expressed views that I thought were
excessively pessimistic. For instance, he would say that there is no
point in writing about the Dhamma since there are already enough
materials available for those with sufficient interest, and no point in
distributing literature on the Dhamma since few people have vision
clear enough to accept the teachings. While the amount of literature
available on Buddhism today may indeed be excessive, I do believe
that the efforts of organizations like the Buddhist Publication Society,
the Pali Text Society, and now (via the internet) various Buddhist
websites have contributed enormously to the spread of the Dhamma in
ways that Ven. Ñāṇavimala had trouble grasping.
As the doctrine of impermanence implies, people do not have fixed
and unvarying characters but can change over time, and this seemed
to occur with Ven. Ñāṇavimala as well. Despite his emphasis on the
solitary life, he was gifted with a unique eloquence and self-assurance
that drove the teachings deep into the hearts of those who approached
him for guidance. In his later years he came to share the teachings
abundantly with others, and this engagement seemed to soften the
hard stance that he had often displayed in earlier years. In the late
1990s I encountered Ven. Ñāṇavimala only infrequently, since I was