{"id":132955,"date":"2023-03-14T17:09:39","date_gmt":"2023-03-15T00:09:39","guid":{"rendered":"https:\/\/www.lankaweb.com\/news\/items\/?p=132955"},"modified":"2023-03-14T17:10:29","modified_gmt":"2023-03-15T00:10:29","slug":"the-greek-buddhist-monk-from-serres-to-sri-lanka","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/www.lankaweb.com\/news\/items\/2023\/03\/14\/the-greek-buddhist-monk-from-serres-to-sri-lanka\/","title":{"rendered":"The Greek Buddhist Monk: From Serres to Sri Lanka"},"content":{"rendered":"
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By <\/span>Tasos Kokkinidis Courtesy Greek Reporter<\/a><\/em><\/span><\/h2>\n<\/div>\n<\/div>\n\n\n
\"Greek
Nanyadasana was born in 1959 as Ioannis Tselios in Serres, northern Greece<\/a>. Credit: theravada.gr<\/figcaption><\/figure>\n\n\n\n

The Greek Buddhist monk Nyanadassana has been a senior monk of the ancient Buddhist Theravada tradition for 37 years in Sri Lanka.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

Nanyadasana was born in 1959 as Ioannis Tselios in Serres, northern Greece. At the age of 64, after an unusual life, he has become an important Buddhist monk and scholar with many books to his credit, international acclaim and deep experience in meditation.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

He is called Bhante\u201d, a respectful title used to address Buddhist monks and superiors. No other modern Greek has a similar long course in traditional Buddhist monasticism.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

The Sinhalese feel great pride when a foreigner is interested in becoming a Buddhist monk in their own country. They really appreciate it. There are currently about 100 foreign Buddhist monks in Sri Lanka.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

As far as I know from the relevant records and other information, there is no other Greek Buddhist monk before me in Sri Lanka, Myanmar, Thailand or any other country with Theravada Buddhism,\u201d he tells the Athens-Macedonia News Agency<\/em> (AMNA).<\/p>\n\n\n\n

He finished secondary school in Thessaloniki and studied sociology at Goethe University in Frankfurt, Germany.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

As a teenager in Thessaloniki, he was an excellent student with a penchant for physics and mathematics, especially atomic-nuclear physics. He devoured\u201d relevant books and dreamed of working for the American Space Agency (NASA).<\/p>\n\n\n\n

But along the way, he discovered psychology and then sociology. So he studied sociology at the Goethe University in Frankfurt for two years, but found his studies disappointing and did not complete them.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

At the same time, he declared himself an atheist. How is it possible,\u201d he wondered, that the all-good and all-powerful God allows the evil that is so common in the world? How can something so pure come out of something so evil?\u201d, he recalled, speaking to AMNA<\/em>.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

The Greek man follows steps to become a Buddhist monk<\/h3>\n\n\n\n

It was the late 1970s and early 1980s, and Tselios, with long hair and a beard, lived like many other restless youths in Europe, read books voraciously, traveled adventurously to several European countries and searched for the meaning of life.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

In 1981, aged 22, a trip to India was the turning point in his life: while looking at a tourist brochure, he read this memorable Buddha quote: This is my last birth. I have crossed the ocean of existence.\u201d<\/p>\n\n\n\n

I arrived in New Delhi carrying only a bag of books and a sleeping bag. I found it disgusting that everyone, even the gurus, smoked hashish. I didn\u2019t find anything substantial there, something spiritual,\u201d he tells AMNA<\/em>. For many months he traveled alone from the Himalayas in the north to the south, often on the roofs of trains, among Western hippies and local religious fanatics.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

Heading to Sri Lanka Buddhist monasteries<\/h3>\n\n\n\n

He visited Kusinara, the place where the Buddha reached his final rest. It was there that, under the guidance of an older Indian Buddhist monk who was the Director of the Museum of Kusinara, Ioannis Tselios was not only trained in meditation, but he also read about Buddhism. More interested than ever, he decided to look for the original and authentic teachings of Buddha, thus traveling to Sri Lanka.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

At one point,\u201d he says, I had bought a return ticket to Greece, to find a quiet place to meditate. But finally, I burned the ticket and decided to stay in Sri Lanka and become a monk. No one influenced me to become a monk,\u201d he tells AMNA<\/em>.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

In Buddhism, you have to knock on their door and then they will give you information. They themselves do not come to tell you \u2018you must become a Buddhist\u2019. I never met a convert to Buddhism. Even the teachers were telling me how to learn to meditate, not how to become a Buddhist,\u201d he adds.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

In 1982, aged 23, he was ordained by Ka\u1e11avedduve Shr\u012b Jinava\u1e43sa Mah\u0101thera, a scholar recognized by the state as a teacher-inspector, and he embraced the monastic life in order to study and practice.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

\"GReek
The monastery at Nissara\u1e47a Vanaya, Sri Lanka. Credit: Nissarana<\/figcaption><\/figure>\n\n\n\n

He practiced for four years at the renowned meditation monastery Nissara\u1e47a Vanaya <\/a>in Sri Lanka.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

In 1986, he received the higher ordination as a teacher inspector. He then studied the ancient Indian language Pali and the Three Baskets of Sacred Buddhist Texts, along with the Explanations and Commentaries, at the monastery Gn\u0101n\u0101r\u0101ma Dharm\u0101yatanaya,  where he stayed for 16 years.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

In 1997, following a written and oral exam, he received the title of Vinay\u0101cariya (Professor of Monastic Education).<\/p>\n\n\n\n

Encouraged by his teacher, he began teaching while writing over ten books. From 2003 to 2007, he trained in meditation at the meditation centre in Myanmar before returning to Sri Lanka. He has been repeatedly invited to Singapore, Indonesia, Malaysia and Taiwan to give lectures and courses on the Teachings of  Buddha and meditation.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

Greek Buddhist monk returns to Athens<\/h3>\n\n\n\n

He is a writer and translator of more than ten Buddhist books in German, English, Sinhalese and Pali, and he has a lot of experience in giving lectures in English and Sinhalese (the official language of Sri Lanka).<\/p>\n\n\n\n

In April 2019, he returned to Greece, where he is teaching Buddhism at the cultural association of Sri Lanka (which covers the needs of the approximately 850 Sinhalese in Greece).<\/p>\n\n\n\n

When I came to Greece, I didn\u2019t know what I would find,\u201d he says. However, I saw that there is interest in Buddhism and meditation. The Greeks always talked about \u2018know thyself\u2019, but they didn\u2019t know a method for it,\u201d he tells AMNA<\/em>.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

Greek philosophers such as Socrates and Heraclitus had dealt with such issues, so Buddhism, which teaches how to analyze yourself, overcome your emotions and concentrate your mind, is not something foreign,\u201d he adds.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

What Buddhism can offer a modern Greek is self-awareness, knowledge of the workings of the mind, to turn inward and not outward. The goal of Buddhism is to understand our passions, drives, fantasies, delusions and how much we suffer because of them, how self-created our pain is. The Buddha gives the instructions for an inward journey,\u201d Nyanadassana or Ioannis Tselios says.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

Related<\/strong>: The Influence of Ancient Greece on Buddhism<\/a><\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"

By Tasos Kokkinidis Courtesy Greek Reporter The Greek Buddhist monk Nyanadassana has been a senior monk of the ancient Buddhist Theravada tradition for 37 years in Sri Lanka. Nanyadasana was born in 1959 as Ioannis Tselios in Serres, northern Greece. At the age of 64, after an unusual life, he has become an important Buddhist […]<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":1,"featured_media":0,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"","sticky":true,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[11],"tags":[],"class_list":["post-132955","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","hentry","category-buddhism"],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.lankaweb.com\/news\/items\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/132955","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.lankaweb.com\/news\/items\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.lankaweb.com\/news\/items\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.lankaweb.com\/news\/items\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/1"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.lankaweb.com\/news\/items\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=132955"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/www.lankaweb.com\/news\/items\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/132955\/revisions"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.lankaweb.com\/news\/items\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=132955"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.lankaweb.com\/news\/items\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=132955"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.lankaweb.com\/news\/items\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=132955"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}