Introduction and ToC
The following posts are transcribed from four type-written books I recently found amongst my materials. Most of what is posted here is a verbatim copy of the books, with only some small editing to add in titles, to break them up into smaller sections, and to correct spelling, punctuation, etc. I have also added in some place names in square brackets [].
The first book was entitled Contemplating Creation (1992-1993) and comprised three main chapters:
3 Sri Lanka (Back in the Hills)
The second book was called Out of the Silence (May 1993 – May 1994):
A collection of sermons on The Eremetic Life I gave to the Missionary of Charity sisters in Kandy were in another (undated) book.
And a collection of short sayings or Reflections (1994) on the meditative life were in another book.
I have included basic navigation for ease of progress through the material.
The Christian background is obvious, and I had converted around 1990 to Catholicism under Fr. Bede Griffiths at Shantivanam.
But I was also very much under the influence of the person who became my main meditation teacher, Acarya Godwin Samarartne, and he in turn was influenced by Jiddu Krishnamurti.
The two journals especially show the latter’s influence I think, being similar in structure to Krishnamurti’s Commentaries on Living Series, but with, of course, my own ideas and observations.
Two other main influences were the Bible itself, which I sometimes quoted from, and the Sayings of the Desert Fathers, which influenced the structure of the Reflections.
The thing that strikes me now is how much of my mature thinking about meditation and the monastic life were already formed during these years, though the expression took another, and rather different, form at that time.