It was Swami who introduced me to the mature writings of Ananda Coomaraswamy, Rene Guenon, and Frithjof Schuon. In 1981, when I found myself in the United States with Prime Minster R. Premadasa I abandoned his entourage to meet Schuon who was living in Bloomington, Indiana with Whittal Perry. He rarely granted interviews but his curiosity had been aroused when Rama Coomaraswamy told him that I knew Gauribala Swami whom he had also met.
I made my way to see him delighted at the prospect of meeting the last of these three men who wrote mostly on the Perennial Philosophy. I left my one hour meeting with Schuon, who was dressed as an Arab sheikh, and wired Swami thanking him for having turned me on to this school of thought.
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| "Garden of the Soul”: Swami at Sigiriya in the 1960's. German Swami's research transformed the way scholars interpret Sigiriya |
Swami wired back asking me to return at once to Sri Lanka. When I returned I asked him why. His response was “You need to be turned off from traditionalism.” He then showed me an article by Schuon that was titled ‘The Problem of Sexuality’ and asked “Do you have a problem with sexuality? Is there a problem with sexuality?” He then smiled and stated in Tamil the famous Yogaswami dictum “Oru Pollapum Illai” meaning ‘Not one problem exists’. Years later we are now witnessing the re-branding of the Perennial Philosophy as ‘Traditionalism’ and its adherents as ‘Traditionalists’.
At one time the Ariya Sangha occupied caves in many parts of Sri Lanka. I remember when Islamic Bawas were keeping the flame lit, occupying caves in Jailani or Kuragala. Inscriptions in many parts of Sri Lanka state that caves have been donated by the laity to the ‘Sangha of the four quarters of the world, past, present and yet to come’. The Sangha referred to were not just the Theravada Bhikku Sangha. Knowledge and wisdom defined the Ariya Sangha and enlightened seers did not need robes to set them apart. Culture was apparent everywhere around them. Labels, exclusivity and religion were not in their vocabulary. The Buddha himself was a Maha Siddha in this tradition. Some consider this southern revelation also as Dakshinamurthy which means southern form.
There were once several siddhasthanas in Sri Lanka. Since siddhas chose anonymity these siddhasthanas were originally in dense forests. Swami Gauribala who knew Sri Lanka better than anybody I have met so far took me to a few of these siddhasthanas in various parts of the island. The oral legend was that there were three circles around every siddha. The outer periphery was the Kaela Miniya or the Forest Dweller also called Vedda. This man dealt with the villagers bordering the forest and traded honey and dried meat. He alone had access to the next circle which was normally composed of disciples of the siddha. They grew plants of use and were guardians of the labyrinth that protected the centre from strangers. Beyond the labyrinth there was always an ascent. The horizontal turned into the vertical. Here there was silence and nobody. If fortune permitted it would lead to the siddha who was the embodiment of solitude. The Dhamma revealed itself in silence. Speechlessly spoken wisdom with show of hand (mudra) led to a silence that contained it all. This is how the oral tradition describes this transmission.
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German Swami Gauribala with other swamis at Kataragama in the late 1950's.
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German Swami Gauribala and the late Bhikkhu Sumedha were close friends
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Gauribala Swami like his very German name Schonfeldt was himself a shining field. Even when he was a Buddhist monk for a while at Polgasduwa he was called Nyanakhetto. He like the bitch or ‘Petta Nai’ in season attracted those interested in the chase from the four quarters of the world.
“Drink, puppy, drink!
And let every puppy drink
Who is old enough to lap and to swallow!
Here’s to the fox and here’s to the hound,
And here’s to the chase that we follow!”.
This was his refrain as he walked to the Menik Ganga for his daily ablutions followed by the rest of the puppies Haro Hara Amma had named. The son of the last British Governor General of Ceylon Yannai Kutti, Narri Kutti an Australian Architect, Punnai Kutti or Adrian Snodgrass, currently one of the world’s most respected Buddhist scholars and of course Sam Wickramasinghe, the well known raconteur who was Pulli Kutti.
Gauribala was an iconoclast. His lineage was of iconoclasts. Summa Iru or Nikang Inda was at the core of this dispensation. Thoughtlessly being, empty, nobody, breathing in and breathing out, now here yet nowhere was the experience. It was not in books, not in scriptures, could not be articulated except as the chin mudra in art. Mudra was the teaching method that the Siddhas used where all contradictions were resolved in the present. Time and space converged hence everything was perfected. This language transcended speech and belonged to every traditional race on the planet. Symbols and hand gestures told the whole story that could not be stated otherwise.
Thanks to this lineage a few of us were privileged to glimpse beyond the veil. All suffering being dependent on ignorance was understood for what it was. One automatically began accepting whatever happens as happening right, like a true Muslim accepting always the will of the Divine.
Gauribala acolytes are today everywhere. Rose Collingwood, a girl I introduced to Swamiji in 1971 returned in 1984 and had the privilege of performing the last rites on a man who willed his own death. He was perfectly alright when Rose walked into ‘Summasthan’, his Selvachchanithi Ashram. He greeted her as “Padma” which has the same symbolic meaning as Rose. They had not met in more than a decade. She came in response to a dream not even knowing if Swami was alive.
Having recognized her after so many years his next statement was “Now that you have come I can go”. He attained Maha Samadhi having given her specific instructions on what was to be done thereafter. Rose carried out his wishes in detail.
Her first stop after carrying out the last rites as expressed was to visit the late Bhikku Sumedha, to hand him a small trunk full of books in German. Her second stop was my home. To me was left his note books and life study - the Summa Iruka Suttiram or the art of self naughting – the Mu Copy. I had also been given another copy by Swami himself. This was inscribed from Bala to Bala. I gifted one copy to Patrick Harrigan.
The great error is assuming that Sri Lanka only had a Theravada Buddhist dispensation. Every dispensation that either arose or came to India found its way to Sri Lanka. Mahayana Buddhists, Tantric Buddhists, Hindus, Jains, Sufis, Nestorian Christians were all present in traditional Sri Lanka and this is evident in cultural practices that still exist, as well as in inscriptions, monuments and the oral tradition.
Gauribala Swami who would have been 100 on September 15 had he lived was a living exponent of what the Ariya Sangha stood for. He passed this knowledge in a traditional manner to a few of his acolytes who still revere his name. As for others who did not really know him, like all Siddhas he will be dismissed as a great fraud and trickster, a label he would have enjoyed.
As he lived Swamiji died. He did not want a samadhi built by ignorant lay folk like they did with Yogaswami which in turn became an Army camp. When he decided to die, he spent three days preparing Rose for his departure. She thought it a joke at first as he was in perfect good health. However, after three days of talking when he suddenly turned into an invalid she proceeded to do as she had been instructed. After the life force had left, she got rid of all evidence that there had ever been a Gauribala. A few months later his ashram was bulldozed by the Sri Lankan Army as their Vadamarachchchi campaign went right through his compound. Rubble was all that was left of Summasthan. This is exactly what this Siddha would have wanted since he knew that a great hunter leaves no trail.
He experienced life as Yogaswami had taught him. He told him Virupinapadi Cey – “Do as you please” - there is no further birth for you. To live as a free man he could not have done so in the official robes of a sect with rules. He had been there, done that and wanted no more of it. People around him in both Jaffna and Kataragama held him in great respect, since they were accustomed to Siddhas and their ways. Traditional people were used to a tradition in which Gnanis or Siddhas were permitted anything. They knew that there were multiple meanings in every action; hence they never judged such men.
In this world the only war is internal and victory is liberation from delusion. Thanks to Gauribala Swami I often visited such a world in the Jaffna peninsula considered the bottom of the social structure in 1971-1984. In these traditional communities, bhakti (devotion) and gnanam (wisdom) ruled. Cultivators, fisher folk, toddy-tappers, tom-tom beaters, palanquin bearers and all the little people worship Amma or the Earth Mother. They are summa. Their lifestyle is summa. Summa is a state of being, where tranquility and serenity replace paranoia and fear.
Gauribala Swami was always summa iru as tattooed on his left arm and this was what he left as a legacy. All traditional people are summa or nikkan which explains their detachment and placidity in the midst of chaos. It is this detachment that has permitted charlatans to dominate sometimes since everybody knows that all manifestation is subject to change.
(The Living Heritage website www.kataragama.org is another source of information about Yogaswami, Gauribala Swami and this lineage)
Courtesy: The Sunday Times of 16 September 2007
