The Wisdom of the Aryas (given as lectures in 1919-1920, published in 1923)
Selected Essays of Allan Bennett, Bhikkhu Ananda Metteyya - (Volume 2 of Allan Bennett, Bhikkhu Ananda Metteyya: Biography and Collected Writings) - Elizabeth J. Harris
Allan Bennett [+]
Description
This book was published shortly before Allan Bennett/Metteyya’s death in 1923 and brings together the lectures he gave in the studio of the writer and broadcaster, Clifford Bax (1886-1962) in the winter of 1919-1920, plus an extra lecture that he gave to the Buddhist Society on rebirth. As a lay person again, Allan Bennett or Ananda M as he continued to call himself, carefully sequenced his lectures in line with the needs of his audience, which probably included Theosophists, freethinkers, artists and those interested in but not committed to Buddhism. At the beginning, he attempts to convey the emotive impact of the Buddha’s teaching, again stressing that it was not a dry philosophy but something that lived and breathed in the lives of Buddhists. Doctrine and practice follow. The third lecture explains non-self (anattā) in depth. The fourth outlines the Four Noble Truths and the fifth examines mental culture. The lectures show Bennett, in a western context, continuing to engage with theism, Theosophy, science and Buddhist modernism.