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FACE TO FACE | EASTERN HORIZON 25
Who is the Buddha?
By Venerable S Dhammika
Bhante Dhammika was born in Australia and
became a Buddhist monk in India in 1976. After
moving to Sri Lanka he studied at Srilanka
Vidyalaya monastic collage and Kelaniya
University’s Post-graduate Institute of Pali
and Buddhist Studies and later became one of
the founders of the now well-known Nilambe
Meditation Centre. After moving to Singapore
founded one of the republic’s more dynamic
Buddhist centres and in his years there he
published more than twenty books on Buddhism
and related subjects. In 2017 Bhante returned
to Australia and now lives in semi-retirement.
With the launch of his latest book Footprints in
the Dust, Benny Liow took the opportunity to ask
Bhante about the reasons behind his publication,
what he found most fascinating about the
Buddha’s life, what we can learn from the
Buddha’s life, and whether the Buddha was truly
omniscient or just an ordinary human being.
Benny: There are already many books about the
Buddha’s life. What was it that made you decide to
write Footprints in the Dust?
Dhammika: You’re right. I was able to find nearly 700
biographies of the Buddha published since 1860,
and that’s just in English, and that’s not counting
the thousands of magazine articles, monographs,
encyclopaedia entries, and so on. However, all these
are a mixture of a few details from the Pali Tipitaka, the
oldest record we have on the Buddha, and legends that
only appeared centuries after the Buddha died. My book
uses only the information found in the Pāli Tipiṭaka and
in that sense the book is unique.
Your book is nearly 300 pages long and filled with
all sort of information, quite a lot I did not know and
which I found of great interest. How long did it take
to write and how did you go about it?
Well of course, I have been reading about Buddhism
for over forty years so I was already very familiar
with the Pāli Tipiṭaka. But for this book I started by
reading everything I could about the society during the
Buddha’s time so I could get a good background of his
life and know what things may have influenced him and
helped form his character. Then I read the whole of the
Tipiṭaka from beginning to end, making careful notes
of everything it says about the Buddha. I have read the
Tipiṭaka regularly many times before but mainly for
the information it gives about the Dhamma, not about
the Buddha. Then I asked myself questions about the
Buddha which are not often, or perhaps never, asked.
What did he eat? How long did he meditate for? How
come he was married for perhaps fifteen years but
only has one child? From beginning to end, the whole
project took five years and during that time I learned a
lot I didn’t know.