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CONTENTS

PREFACE

GOING FORTH (Pabbajja)

FIVE LETTERS ABOUT BUDDHISM

APPENDIX:

1. REMINISCENCES OF SUMANO by Dr. Ph. Derval
2. FROM A LETTER BY THE GERMAN BHIKKHU ROND ANNO

PREFACE

          The essay that forms the first part of this booklet, bears in its German original the title Pabbajja which, in Pali, the language of the Buddhist texts, means Going Forth, namely from the household life to the homelessness of a Buddhist monk. The Pali word Pabbajja is also the term for the first ordination bestowed for entry into the Buddhist monastic Order (Sangha) by which the candidate becomes a Novice or Samanera like the author of the writings presented here, whose illness and premature death deprived him of taking higher ordination.

          Fritze Stange, the lay name of our author, was a German by birth, and received his novice ordination in 1906 at Matara (Ceylon), under the nestor of the German Buddhist monks, the Ven’ble NyanatilokaThera (d. 1957). Together with Sumano, a Dutchman, called Bergendahl, was ordained as the Samanera Sunno. They were the first two pupils of the Venerable Nyanatiloka who, on his part, had received novice ordination in 1903 and higher ordination in 1904, both in Burma. As related in the Appendix of this booklet, illness obliged Sumano to go back to Germany, but in the same year he returned again to Ceylon, together with the Vene­rable Nyanatiloka who had paid a short visit to Germany, He took ordination again and then lived in the undulating, grassy hillocks of Bandarawela, in Ceylon’s up-country — a landscape of ascetical bareness, breathing seclusion and quiet­ude. There he died and was cremated in January 1910. A spout just by the spot where he lived, still bears in the Sinhala language the name “German Phihilla” (German spout).

          Sumano was held in great reverance by the people for his deep piety. He was of an unassuming nature; but his bearing emanated an atmosphere of saintliness and detachment, of maturity and gentle firmness which obviously must have set him apart from the multitude.

          The same atmosphere of the true ascetic’s sincere and forceful simplicity radiates from the pages of his little book Pabbajja. Its first publication in Germany, in the year 1910, deeply impressed and inspired the members of the small circles of German Buddhists. An English version by Bhikkhu Silacãra appeared in Ceylon the same year. This has been fully revised for the present edition, after comparison with the German original.

          Sumano’s letters first appeared in print in a German Buddhist magazine “Die Buddhistische Warte”, and are published here for the first time in an English version prepared by the Venerable Nyanaponika Thera.

          Both, essays and letters, served first to justify and explain Sumano’s unusual step of entering Buddhist monk­hood in the East. There is, however, nothing apologetic in his words, no diffident defence; they are rather a stirring call to kindred minds for proceeding on that hard but incomparably rewarding road towards the “unshakable deliverance of mind”. In the same spirit they are offered here to the reader, as a companion to another booklet in this series of Buddhist publications, The Ascetic Ideal by Ronald Fussell (The Wheel Publication No. 23).

BUDDHIST PUBLICATION SOCIETY

Forest Hermitage

Kandy, Ceylon

February 1961

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