Buddhism in the Balkans: The Odyssey of a Buddhist Monk Snjezana Akpinar This lecture was given on November 24, 1998, as part of the Institute for World Religions Fall Faculty Lecture Series, Walking the Way: Praxis and Gnosis in Religious Experience.
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any of us regard the Balkans as the crossroads of all trouble. Even the word itself has come to mean something ominous and disintegrating. After World War I, the term “Balkanization” was coined to mean “to break up into small, mutually hostile political units.” Coming from the Balkans I could easily expound on such stereotypes. I shall, however, approach the area from a different point of view, connecting two seemingly disparate subjects: Buddhism and the Balkans. How did the two come to meet? I will discuss the contacts between Buddhism and a religious sect, then turn to the life of a Buddhist monk who exemplified that connection. Ever since history can remember, the Balkans have been an area where different cultures met. In the ancient days this area was considered as the north of greater Greece; later it was the east of Imperial Rome. Being mountainous, the Balkans were hard to conquer and easy to hide in, so customs, ideas, philosophies and unfashionable religions persisted, sometimes for the better and sometimes for the worse. The area still forms a buffer between the various understandings of East and West as these evolve through history. It is also a crossroads for trade. The word “Balkan” derives from a Mongol word meaning “mountain chain,” a remainder from the Huns and their more recent relatives, the Bogomils, who made it to the Balkans around the same time as the Slavs. The Bogomils were a Gnostic sect that lived in the Balkans during the Middle Ages. When Christianity came converting most of Europe, the issue 1, june 2001
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Bogomils were not so eager to embrace a new faith, having a developed philosophy of life that functioned quite adequately. Like other Gnostics, Bogomils examined a “supra� knowledge beyond words and constructs. The Bogomils maintained that they had nothing against Christianity, but they refused to accept it when various kings, emperors and popes insisted that they do so. Often, in order to avoid wars, Bogomils would convert and then revert to their earlier way of life once the threat was gone. This kept occurring, particularly in Bosnia, until the fifteenth century and some would argue, even much beyond. Heretics were often forcefully relocated by Byzantine kings to the Balkans so as to consolidate identifiable troublemakers into an isolated location. Gnostic groups such as the Bogomils had something in common with a view of life that is close to Buddhism, and that aspect is worth a closer scrutiny. Although the Bogomils no longer exist, many Bogomil values have survived in the everyday life of the Balkans. Buddhism and Gnosticism What is Buddhism? Primarily it is not a belief in a God, nor gods. Buddhism is a noble path, a lifestyle that ennobles the human mind. Buddhism provides a counterweight to cultural, social, political and religious constructs by gently inviting its adherents to lead an examined life. Let us now turn to a definition of gnosticism. Simply stated, it was an attempt to confront the perennial question, How does a human being know? The Gnostics combined Christianity with Hellenic and Eastern philosophy. Christianity in its initial phases was considered a gnostic path then later felt obliged to define itself in distinction to it. According to the German scholar Hans Jonas: In the gnostic context, knowledge has a supranatural meaning. It was the knowledge of that which is not evident and the path that led one to something that is unknowable. It is transformative, its goal being the perfection of the individual.1 In the wider context of gnosticism, Manicheism is considered to be the only gnostic system which became a broad historical force. It arose in Iran in the third century of the Common Era (CE) and apparently existed in China alongside Buddhism, Taoism and Confucianism until the end of the seventeenth century.2 The prophet Mani, founder of Manicheism, lived and preached in Persia and Central Asia. Mani spread a universal doctrine that bore these gnostic characteristics: 1) at its base stood the concept of
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attaining to the “supra knowledge” as quoted in the text above; and 2) the material world, which includes thoughts and their constructs, represents a gradual thickening and congealing of the pure substance of being. Extricating the pure substance of being from our world of forms is the principal task of humanity. This task could be achieved through an ascetic lifestyle and contemplative exercises. Mani’s system, as opposed to other gnostic systems, was explicitly bereft of esoteric elements, since these would bind it to a specific culture and thus limit its scope. Instead, according to Jonas: [Mani] deliberately fused Buddhist, Zoroastrian and Christian elements with his own teaching. . . . Manicheism stretched from the Atlantic to the Indian Ocean and deep into Central Asia. . . . The doctrine took to expound the “beginning, middle and end” of the total drama of being.3 This last sentence could also easily apply to Buddhism. One of the most conspicuous traits of the Manicheans was their lifestyle. They were strict vegetarians, propagated celibacy and saw monasticism as the best, if not the only, way of cleansing one’s body and mind sufficiently to become able to perceive and experience the “drama of this world.” Like Buddhism, it was a path of detachment from the world in order to experience freedom from an addiction to worldliness and its superficiality. In fact, Buddhism and Manicheism have several points in common: 1. Both are philosophies that ask a core question: How do we acquire an insight into who we really are, and what does it mean to be? This insight need not be linked to a faith in a God or gods. 2. A characteristic of a path to such insights is a capacity to intercept thought constructs. These constructs are seen as ceaselessly besieging the mind and, by extension, the world. Therefore, there is a need for a kind of counterweight to worldliness. 3. This counterweight was a clearly delineated moral code that culminated in monasticism. Both systems equated monasticism with the pinnacle of religiosity. Monks were those rare individuals willing to pursue the path to its furthest limits. The Swiss philosopher Karl Jaspers coined the term “philosophical faith” in the shadow of World War II. This remains the most accurate explanation of a gnostic path, demarcating it not only as something that grew out of ancient Greek wisdom, but as a philosophy that has wider horizons. issue 1, june 2001
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The philosophical faith, the faith of the thinking person, has as its constant characteristic the fact that it only exists in connection with knowing. Man always wants to know . . . and sees himself through this. The philosophical faith will thus clarify itself on its own. . . . By philosophizing I do not simply acquire, I remain unpressured by that what pressures itself upon me. . . . Faith does not know, but it should, by being true to itself, clarify the present for me.4 The supra-knowledge that is beyond words stands in silent opposition to the accepted view of religion commonly seen as a blind faith in gods. The Advent of the Bogomils A closer look at the Bogomils, a Balkan neo-Manichean sect which took root in the seventh century CE, should further unearth the Eastern texture of our Western cultural traditions. The Bogomils thrived in the Balkans on the peripheries of the ancient Greek dominions. The Bogomils were people of Slav and Bulgaro-Tatar origins who gradually migrated to the Balkans from the Russian steppes and Central Asia during the sixth and seventh centuries CE. Their influence was felt in the area throughout the Middle Ages and into the Renaissance. For the Bogomils the ethics of living manifested primarily through: 1) a strict adherence to vegetarianism, practiced explicitly out of compassion for all sentient beings; 2) the acceptance of voluntary poverty; and 3) a categorical refusal to become politicized and “dance attendance to kings.” The Bogomil path culminated in rigorous monastic asceticism, seen as the highest form of morality, to be practiced only by those willing and capable of such rigor. Their ascetic efforts were meant to serve as a beacon to the world around them. Bogomil influence quickly spread throughout the Balkans in the seventh and eighth centuries, in clear distinction from the various earlier gnostic sects popular at the time. What set them apart were their high ethical standards, on which they never compromised. The most notable was a categorical refusal to become a socio-political movement. All this caused the greatest chagrin to the Greek Byzantine authorities, who had a hard time labeling the Bogomils in good faith as heretics, and yet, true Christians they were not. The Bogomils, however, were supported by the Slavic population of the area. Slavic kings, vassals to Byzantium and populace alike, saw them as bearers of “the Old Faith.” The last Balkan kingdom to confess Bogomilism as its state religion was the kingdom of Bosnia, where vegetarianism and nonviolence were legislated by the state.
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There Bogomilism gained strength, apparently spreading “heresy” throughout Europe, particularly Spain and France. The Bogomil Bosnian aristocracy surrendered willingly and peacefully to the Ottoman Turks in 1463. It is believed that at that time many Bogomils converted to Islam finding it an adequate cloak for their gnostic beliefs. However, reasons for Bogomilism’s final decline are as varied as they are mysterious. For centuries the Bogomils had to patiently refute accusations of heresy and dualism, even though they fundamentally opposed dualist teachings, maintaining that the body itself is not evil and can be transformed even in this life.5 Their doctrines were decidedly Manichean, and as such hard to defend or attack since their texts were purposefully syncretic and adaptable. However, according to their inquisitors, who had a hard time proving them as heretics, the Bogomils repudiated the Mosaic Law and the Old Testament, claiming that it is incompatible with the teachings of Christ. What brought the Bogomils closer to a Buddhist view of life is the unflinching adherence to their practice. They paid more attention to the daily run of things, adapting rather to circumstances than to dogma. In this manner they countered Christian orthodoxy not with another orthodoxy, but with an orthopraxy that aimed to be above reproach. Even their fiercest enemies had to admit that the Bogomils were neither a social nor a political movement. They never preached civil disobedience. The Bogomils excelled in providing the counterweight to institutionalized religions without de- Today Bogomilism silently stroying the beneficial aspects of institutions. They attempts to inform the merely questioned the constructs. The Bogomils’ capacity to reverse and diffuse dangerous circumstances has allowed Bogomil traits to more dominant traditions survive even to the present day, albeit as an understated philosophy of life, ever-present as background to reli- of the Balkans. gious and cultural movements. Today Bogomilism may not exist as a tradition in its own right, but it still silently attempts to inform the more dominant traditions of the Balkans: Christianity, Islam and even the contemporary trends of Western philosophy, thanks to the ethics it introduced into the cultural movements that developed in its shadow. Now, to bring the connection between Buddhism and the Bogomils into the present day, I shall turn to the life of Bhikkhu Ñanajivako. From Bosnia to California Bhikkhu Ñanajivako was a Buddhist monk from the former Yugoslavia ordained in Sri Lanka’s Island Hermitage almost thirty-five years ago. He issue 1, june 2001
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was a well-known author and philosopher in his homeland. His life can provide a concrete example of a twentieth-century Buddhist Zeitgeist at work in the Balkans. During Ñanajivako’s childhood in the early twentieth century, “Bogomil” ideas were becoming ever more popular among the educated elite of the Balkans. These ideas provided an identity distinct from the Austrians who were trying to Germanize them, the Turks who wished to Turkify them, the Italians who attempted to Italianize them, and the Russians who wanted to Russify them as empires waxed and waned. Ñanajivako’s family was among those educated in Austria. Some served in the Austrian army, some refused to do so. His father, aided by his family, managed to avoid the honor of becoming a hussar, the elite guard of the Austrian emperor, and decided to become a veterinarian instead. After discovering that a veterinarian must spend most of his time in slaughterhouses, he ran away and finally agreed to study law. All of this happened under the influence of a best friend, a true Bogomil and staunch vegetarian who eventually became an honored member of the Yugoslav Academy of Sciences in Zagreb. His contribution to the cause of Bogomilism was offering tasty vegetarian dinners to friends who were sympathizers but could not actually commit themselves to such asceticisms. As a child Ñanajivako regularly accompanied his family on such visits. This Bogomil “uncle” could be seen as a very conscious embodiment of indigenous ancient virtues. With time he became Ñanajivako’s mentor. It was under these influences that Ñanajivako became a vegetarian and studied philosophy as well as classical languages at the University of Zagreb. His philosophy professor, Pavao Vuk Pavlovic, also subscribed to a kind of Bogomil ethos. The professor awakened in his students an awareness of gnostic values, which he found present, albeit somewhat buried and neglected, throughout Western Europe, particularly in German philosophy. He lived out this ethos and taught it to his students, imparting the idea that one cannot even begin to think a certain philosophy unless one embodies its teachings. With that in mind, Ñanajivako became an active member of the vegetarian society in his early youth, embodying nonviolence throughout a very difficult period in the history of Europe, and became a staunch admirer of Gandhi. In his thirst for wisdom he initially turned to the various prominent and fashionable societies of the day, the Theosophists and the Anthroposophists. But at the beginning of World War II events forced the issue much further. The horror of day-to-day reality required a more direct and focused answer to the way one lives one’s life and thinks one’s thoughts. It was then that Ñanajivako came face to face with more tradi-
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tional Buddhism and embraced it fully. It is ironic that he found Buddhist texts only after the Italian occupation of Dalmatia, where he then lived. Along with Mussolini’s fascism and all its horrors came Italian scholarly books and good translations of the Pali texts. Much later in life, Ñanajivako found his peace as a Buddhist monk in Sri Lanka. Ñanajivako’s Buddhist practice resonated with the Bogomil ethos, which still existed in the background of Balkan life. In simplest terms it could be called nonattachment, one of the basic principles of Buddhism. Nonattachment to worldly purÑanajivako’s Buddhist suits is a counterweight that helps the mind find its balance among its muddled thoughts and constructs. For Ñanajivako, present-day Buddhist monasticism practice resonated with the provided the clearest possibility for living a path of inner peace, clarity of vision and noncontentiousness. Bogomil ethos. That is probably why Ñanajivako left his native country and his position as professor of Eastern Philosophy “to await his death,” as he put it, in the Buddhist Island Hermitage of Sri Lanka. The hermitage was established by his elders, mostly Europeans who came there hoping to clarify their minds by distancing themselves from the constructs of their own civilization. Ñanajivako was ordained as monk in 1967. From Sri Lanka he continued to influence his countrymen, at first through his yearly letters. Some of these letters were published and became very popular among hippies, to Ñanajivako’s amazement since he was anything but a hippie. Nevertheless, he saw that their sentiments were pure and naive. He hoped to turn them away from their aimless and undisciplined life by providing an example of asceticism and discipline. Here is an excerpt from his first letter describing his first visit to the Island Hermitage: Waters on tropical islands, even when completely bereft of scum, are always dark and murky, with no reflections, no shine. Probably due to the dark silt below, rich with life. According to legend, life remains untouched by the muck in which it grows. Some of Ñanajivako’s countrymen came to Sri Lanka to seek him out. Most of them “did not have the talent,” Ñanajivako said, for the discipline needed to moor their thoughts in the still waters underneath the tropical mangroves of the Hermitage. Ñanajivako nevertheless was a good influence on the youth of his country, and his monastic period in Sri Lanka was his most prolific. He translated Buddhist sutras and wrote volumes on the issue of how comparative studies should be conducted. issue 1, june 2001
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Waiting for his “appointment with death” turned out to be lively and very productive and much longer than Ñanajivako could have imagined. When it finally did approach, circumstances in Sri Lanka had deteriorated beyond repair. A civil war broke out. Then Ñanajivako himself started to deteriorate, first his eyesight, then other parts of his body. It was at that time that a copy of the Vajra Bodhi Sea journal somehow landed in his possession. He was attracted to the Venerable Master Hsuan Hua’s vigor and rigor of ascetic practice. Master Hua’s broad, nonsectarian view of Buddhism and inclusion of other paths appealed to Ñanajivako. So he came to the City of Ten Thousand Buddhas in Ukiah, California, the home of Vajra Bodhi Sea and the Venerable Master Hsuan Hua. Ñanajivako was refugeed, as he used to say, yet once again. This he hoped would be the last time, and so it was. The City of Ten Thousand Buddhas was one of the rare places where he could practice his examined lifestyle until the end. When he first arrived, in spite of weak health, he still managed to give a few lectures and attend the ceremonies of the Chinese Buddhists. He liked the chanting, as the gentle melodiousness reminded him of Puccini’s operas and early Christianity. These were the gnosticBogomil echoes of his youth. As his health deteriorated, his life became more and more uncomfortable, but the twinkle in his eyes never left him. Whenever a banal question was asked, he was quick to catch it and turn it around. Even when the power of speech had left him, his visitors could not help but ask, “How are you?” He would attempt to answer with his hands, denoting some form of “bad,” a smile and a twinkle. Unfortunately, Ñanajivako lived long enough to catch the beginning of this most recent civil war in his native country. Often it seemed as if his body was deteriorating at the same pace as the former Yugoslavia. The search for deeper ethical values provided a meaning and a direction to Bhikkhu Ñanajivako as much as it did to the Bogomils. This search can proceed only when one is willing to slow down, reflect upon thoughts that arise in the mind, and moor these thoughts in a safe harbor. For Ñanajivako, the City of Ten Thousand Buddhas provided this harbor when he needed it. Now, after Ñanajivako’s death his friends and colleagues continue to revive the Bogomil ethos that he embodied in an attempt to heal the most recent wounds and offer a counterweight to the dualistic narrowness of militant nationalism. This interview with Dusan Pajin, a student, colleague and friend of Ñanajivako, aired on January 12, 1998, in Belgrade soon after Ñanajivako’s death. At the time Belgrade was considered more or less enemy territory for Croats, which Ñanajivako happened to be. So it is quite admirable that the program was successfully aired so soon after a Serbo-Croat war.
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Interviewer: Cedomil Veljacic, or Bhikkhu Ñanajivako as he called himself for the last thirty-five years, was one of our foremost philosophers of Buddhism. In the sixties he left Yugoslavia. Ñanajivako was the inspiration for many young philosophers. One of them, Dusan Pajin, although much younger, carries on the same work. Mr. Pajin, what can you tell us about Ñanajivako’s influence and relevance to our present situation in the lands of the former Yugoslavia? Pajin: With Ñanajivako’s death a cycle is completed, a circle is closed. The symbolism of the wheel as a circle is poignant here. Ñanajivako got off the wheel of life and death in his eighty-fourth year. In the early sixties, after a short career at the University of Zagreb, he left Zagreb for India. After spending three years there, he then decided to ordain as a Buddhist monk and retreat into a creative isolation by approaching Theravada Buddhism, or the Buddhism of the Pali tradition. He lived in this manner until the nineties and used this time very creatively, perfecting his own character and continuing his scholarly work as well. He dedicated his energies to this. During his stay in Sri Lanka he translated the Songs of the Mendicants: Thera Theri Gatha; wrote his Letters from the Island Hermitage, Crossroads of Asian Philosophies, and Theory of Knowledge in Asian and Western Philosophy; compiled a collection of stories and poems called From Nepal to Ceylon; and authored many essays and articles on comparative philosophy and religion. The last eight or nine years of his life he spent in a Chinese Buddhist monastery, the City of Ten Thousand Buddhas, as his health failed him. Interviewer: In the early sixties and before, such a decision to leave the country and become a Buddhist monk was an unusual one. Had he left after 1968 when things in Yugoslavia were more open and chaotic, it may have been accepted in a different light. In those earlier years it was very ambiguous. In Zagreb, Marxism was the dominant ideology. Only later did it became possible to also discuss and mention things like phenomenology, for example. Also, in those days Eastern philosophy was considered inferior, even nonexistent, a blend of religious mush and weird mysticism, so his subject was regarded with some sort of reservation. Pajin: Unfortunately, that still holds true today, particularly in Belgrade, and I assume that Zagreb is not much different. That is probably why Ñanajivako insisted on the comparative method, stressing that ideas found in the East can also be found in the West, and vice versa. He wanted to legitimize and open the eyes to possibilities and to that which Eastern issue 1, june 2001
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philosophies can offer to the West. That was his work, and he never tired nor relented from it. Even after leaving Yugoslavia he remained in lively contact with students and friends, having a positive impact on all of us and turning our prejudices around. I started corresponding with Ñanajivako some twenty years ago, after my book Other Knowledges was published. Thus began our unique correspondence. The life and humor that emanated from Ñanajivako’s letters was incredible. He joked about the situation in Sri Lanka along with discussing philosophical problems in the same breath. In the nineties it all came to an end. Interviewer: What were his thoughts? Did he know what was brewing here in our part of the world? Pajin: I am afraid that Ñanajivako had a better insight into our situation than myself. I knew in the late eighties that Slovenia had intentions to secede and that it would not take long for the other republics to reach similar conclusions. I was afraid as to how this pie, known as Yugoslavia, would be divided. I conducted an interview with him in 1989 and asked how he saw himself and his role. He answered that throughout his life’s work he considered the rhinoceros as the most important archetype, a creature who moves about alone. Also, his goal was to save whatever could still be saved from the concept of a world culture and universal values. Unfortunately, he said, the rampant nationalism of the twentieth century will remain the death wound already inflicted upon our civilization along with a dialectical onslaught of fascism. Interviewer: Two paradoxes are apparent in Ñanajivako’s life: 1) He left Yugoslavia and Europe at a time when things Eastern came into fashion and his chair at Zagreb University was becoming the gathering point of the hippies. Eastern ideas were seen as the great hope for the future of our country. 2) He chose a country that was not spared from nationalism. In spite of its Buddhism, human aggression seems to dominate in Sri Lanka, too. Pajin: Ñanajivako addressed all that. He hoped that the fire would abate in Sri Lanka. The Tamil Tigers are unfortunately not unlike ourselves. The Tamils are of a different nationality than the Sri Lankans, and of a different religion. Here too the element of a different nationality and a different religion combines to devastate and destroy all in its wake. But Ñanajivako went to Sri Lanka because of his Buddhist community, not because living conditions there were ideal.
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Ñanajivako stressed that one’s existence needs to be linked to deeper ethical values. In the sixties it was fashionable to become a Buddhist or a Hindu, but unfortunately it remained only that, a fashion statement. Please do not confuse fashion by connecting it with much more serious and deeper roots. I am loath to mention Marco Polo, but maybe the Hungarian Sandor Chomekeresh two hundred years ago? These connections have a continuity, while fashion, starting with the Beatles and marijuana, comes and goes. We are talking of a process of mutual understanding between East and West. And I must say, the East is ahead of us in that regard. They are much more knowledgeable about the West. Interviewer: What is Ñanajivako’s significance for us? Pajin: It’s hard to say in a few words, but his greatest gift remains in the domain of establishing a comparative tradition of study. He took it to a higher level and brought the light of Buddhism to bear on existentialism, at that time the West’s foremost philosophical parameter. This is particularly evident in Sartre’s Nausea, for example. Ñanajivako helped us see more clearly both sides of the encounter. Conclusion The Balkans have provided a crossroads for various ethical systems in their East-West encounters. They acted as a testing ground where social and religious constructs could confront each other and nonmainstream ideas could survive and germinate. Interestingly enough, this can also be applied to communism as it took root in post–World War II Yugoslavia. It was a special brand of Marxism that grew independently of the Soviet Union. In 1948 Yugoslavia became the only Eastern European country to successfully separate itself from Stalin and the Warsaw Pact. Yet, it never joined the NATO alliance, and so was not quite a Western country. Thus, while rulers and ideologies change, the people and their worldviews can never be totally replaced, and frontier keepers continue to link civilizations, maintaining the endeavor to integrate ancient impulses, common to all mankind and capable of survival only in isolated parts of the world. ❧ Notes 1
Jonas, Hans, The Gnostic Religion, Boston: Beacon Press, 1964, p. 32. Kurt, Rudolph, Gnosis, San Francisco: Harper & Row, 1983, p. 332. 3 Jonas, pp. 207–209. 2
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Jaspers, Karl, Der Philosophische Glaube, Munich: D. Piper & Co., 1951, p. 13. 5 Obolensky, Vladimir, The Bogomils: A Study in Balkan NeoManicheism, Cambridge: University Press, 1948, p. 254.
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