Anagarika Dharmapala’s Meditation

ABSTRACT Dharmapala was the son of a pious Buddhist family, although educated in missionary schools where he acquired knowledge of English and Christian scripture. English gave him access to Western scholarship on Buddhism and made him a useful member of the Theosophical Society, which arrived in Sri Lanka in 1880. Wanting to be a religious worker, Dharmapala served as Colonel Olcott’s translator, and he soon came to be influenced by Madame Blavatsky’s highly imagined interpretation of Buddhism. The upshot was that Dharmapala’s lifelong practice of meditation was shaped by Theosophical interest in esoteric Buddhism and the moral course of the advanced spiritual seeker.