Appreciations
View(s):A life dedicated to the Dhamma
Ven. Ayya Mie Vimala
The picture that led her to Sri Lanka. Ven. Nyanaponika Thera in his office at the Forest Hermitage in the early 1970s.
On January 3rd, I received an email from Ken and Visakha Kawasaki, an American couple living in Kandy, informing me that my long-time friend, Ven. Ayya Mie Vimala, had passed away in a Kandy hospital. Though she had been suffering from cancer of the pancreas, she had not expected her end to come so soon.
I had known Ayya Vimala years before her ordination as a dasa sil mata. I first met her at the Forest Hermitage in Kandy, I think in late 1985, when she had come to visit the German elder, Ven. Nyanaponika Mahathera (1901–94). Before her ordination, I knew her as Michiko Tokue. Her passport has a different name, Mie Margarete Kurbjeweit. She had retained “Mie” in her monastic name, but I had never come across the other two parts of her name. I can only speculate that “Margarete” is the name her mother gave her and “Michiko” a name she adopted out of respect for her Japanese ancestry.
Ayya Vimala was born on August 17, 1943, two years before the end of World War II in Königsberg, on the Baltic Sea, now an enclave of Russia known as Kaliningrad. Her father was Japanese and her mother German. It seems she grew up solely with her mother in a single-parent home.
In childhood, she suffered from the hunger and poverty that afflicted many Germans before post-war reconstruction revived the German economy. Years later, when she reached young adulthood, she had a professional career as an opera singer. This gave her great happiness, but not complete satisfaction. Despite her success, she always felt that something was missing in her life.
In her 30s she developed an interest in Buddhism, which she first pursued through the practice of Zen meditation, perhaps because it corresponded most closely with her Japanese heritage, making several visits to Japan.
Soon after her fortieth birthday, her life underwent a dramatic change. She had read an article in a German cultural magazine on Ven. Nyanaponika that included a photograph of him sitting at his desk in the Forest Hermitage in Udawattakele. The article – and especially the photograph of the Mahathera – made a strong impact on her, and she was determined to meet him. Widely regarded as one of the world’s foremost authorities on Theravada Buddhism, Ven. Nyanaponika had lived in Sri Lanka since 1936. Since he was from her home country and had even lived in Königsberg for a time during his youth, she felt a special affinity with him.
She joined a tour group from Germany visiting Sri Lanka during Christmas 1983 and when she finally arrived at the Forest Hermitage, she felt she had finally come home. She immediately recognized Ven. Nyanaponika as her teacher and asked him to accept her as his student. Over the next few years, she returned to Sri Lanka several times to spend time with Ven. Nyanaponika and to immerse herself more deeply in Sri Lanka’s ancient Buddhist heritage.
She would stay for several months at a time, renting a room in Kandy and making frequent visits to the Forest Hermitage. It was during this period that our friendship developed. On one of these visits (most likely the one in 1985, when I first met her), she received from Ven. Nyanaponika the five brahmacariya precepts. These are identical with the standard five precepts (pancasila) of a lay Buddhist except that the third precept is changed from “abstaining from sexual misconduct” to “abstaining from all sexual activity.” Ven. Nyanaponika also gave her the Dhamma name Vimala.
She returned to Sri Lanka in October 1991, this time wearing white robes with her hair closely cropped. Toward the end of her six-month stay, I believe, she asked Ven. Nyanaponika if he would ordain her as a ten-precept nun, but he was apprehensive that she would meet difficulties observing the ten precepts while living independently in the West. But she was determined to fully embrace the homeless life, so perhaps in late March or early April of 1992 she requested a senior monk of the Malwatta Maha Vihara, one Ven. Piyadassi Thera, to ordain her as a ten-precept nun.
After returning to Europe, Ayya Vimala lived as a nun in Germany, the Spanish island of Mallorca, and also in California. However, she felt a strong attraction to Hawaii, and in 1994 or 1995, she moved to Hawaii, and became an active and prominent member of Honolulu’s Buddhist community. She became a lifetime member of the Mahabodhi Society of India and hoped to establish a branch of the society in Honolulu.
Ayya Vimala also pursued her inner life as a meditator, diligent student of Buddhist texts, and writer. One of her hidden talents was poetry, and she privately published a small book of poems, to which I wrote the foreword.
She also published two books on the recollection of death, one privately (Crossing the Realm of Death, 2008) and the other through Lankan publisher, Vijitha Yapa (Marananussati, 2018). During her stay in Hawaii, she became fascinated by the story of Mary Foster, the Hawaiian Buddhist who generously supported the work of the Buddhist revivalist, Anagarika Dharmapala. Her research into the life and work of Mary Foster resulted in Mary Mikahala Foster, The Noble Hawaiian Lady, published in Sri Lanka. She also organized a memorial service for Mary Foster.
In more recent years, she was preparing a book on German scholars in the field of Pali Buddhism and Sanskrit Indology helped by Ken and Visakha Kawasaki. She intended to dedicate the book to the memory of Nyanaponika Mahathera and his teacher, the pioneering German monk Nyanatiloka Mahathera (1878–1957).
She returned to Sri Lanka to spend her final years. Each year, Ayya Vimala and I would exchange birthday cards or email messages
and this past year, as usual, she sent me a birthday greeting.
The email came four days later, on December 14th. She had been diagnosed with pancreatic cancer. On many days, she wrote, she could not eat at all and had lost 10 kilos: “I’m just like a skeleton, extremely weak, and it takes me a lot of time to get up from the chair.”
I proposed that she go stay at a home for elders established by our mutual friend, Raimund Beyerlein, or accept his offer of a ticket back to Germany and medical care. But she was determined to remain in Sri Lanka.
She wrote back to me on December 30th, 2022, telling me that she was staying at the Queens Hotel. In my earlier email, I had quoted the Buddha’s advice to Nakulapita: “Even if my body is ill, my mind shall not be ill.” In response she said: “Since a very long time, I have had the realization, ‘This body is not mine’.” She continued: “Everything is extremely exhausting. I’m shivering even while writing this email.” She ended wishing me a happy new year.
On January 3rd, 2023, I received the sad news.
With this, the end came to the life of a brave woman who had fully dedicated her life to the Buddha’s teachings. Despite all the challenges, her strong faith in the Dhamma and devotion to the monastic ideal led her to renounce the lay life and embrace the discipline of a ten-precept nun. In her endeavours, she was sustained by the “good friendship” (kalyanamittata) she formed with other monastics, especially with Sri Lankan monks around the world.
Having taken on the ochre robes, she pursued her monastic life through study, writing, meditation, and efforts to make the Dhamma known to others. And like all of us, her body (though not her spirit) had to succumb to the inexorable law of impermanence.
May Ayya Mie Vimala attain the supreme goal, Nibbana.
-Ven. Bhikkhu Bodhi
He had an indomitable spirit
Wadood Mohamed Ajmeer
It is with profound sadness that I record the passing away of my longstanding client and friend, Inspector of Police, Wadood Mohamed Ajmeer who passed away on January 13 at his native village of Kalmunai. Popularly known as Ajmeer naana among Tamil political prisoners with whom he spent over a decade in the inhospitable environs of the Magazine Prison, Borella, Ajmeer was arrested around 2010 under the draconian Prevention of Terrorism Act (PTA) allegedly for aiding and abetting the Liberation Tigers of Tamil Eelam (LTTE), while he was serving as Officer in Charge (OIC) of Maligawatta Police Station.
Several charges were levelled against him with three indictments, however, two of those indictments had to be hurriedly withdrawn. In an emblematic case tried by the Special High Court that was set up to hear PTA cases in Colombo, after a gruelling and hard fought Voire Dire inquiry, High Court Judge Piyasena Ranasinghe by his order rejected the confession to be admitted as evidence.
Soon thereafter other cases against Ajmeer were withdrawn.
Ajmeer was a born fighter and as amiable a client as any lawyer would like to have. At the outset when I told him I was not in favour of pleading guilty for a lesser sentence, he supported me to the hilt to challenge the case. His ever-faithful and affectionate brother Rizvi spared no effort in supporting his elder brother’s cause.
Ajmeer got back his Police job after a few months of being pushed from pillar to post. He donned his uniform again with pride being appointed as OIC Moneragala. However his woes had not ended. He was stripped of his post again and charged on disciplinary grounds. Once again Ajmeer came out with flying colours and was on the verge of regaining his position when fate intervened with a fateful massive heart attack.
While we salute the undaunted and indomitable spirit in Ajmeer, we also are mindful of the hardships and tragedies that befell him.
Goodbye gallant warrior. May the turf rest lightly on you.
K.S. Ratnavale
He kept his cool always
Attanayake Deepamani
Our good friend, Atte, as we called him, is no more. He passed away peacefully apparently over a heart issue in the wee hours of 2nd January 2023 at his residence in Minuwangoda – Devalapola. He was 66 plus.
A product of Veyangoda Central and a Maths graduate from Moratuwa and Colombo universities, he initially served as a teacher in Nigeria for a couple of years before returning to Sri Lanka together with his life’s partner Theresa from the Philippines, who too was serving as a teacher at the same school.
It was in 1997 that I met him first on an ambu-lift stretcher at the arrival terminal of BIA returning after a kidney transplant operation done in Chennai, India.
He was my senior and working with him as a Duty Manager at the Airport Management division was both amusing and enlightening for he never was found irritable nor excited, instead remained cool in finding an answer to solve any issue.
Working as a senior manager in charge of Air-side Operations, his contribution was much sought after by the Asian Regional office of the International Civil Aviation Organization (ICAO) when an Airside Audit was carried out together with the Civil Aviation Authority of Sri Lanka.
Atte was blessed to live more than 25 years with a single kidney, donated by a Buddhist monk of a temple in the Horana area.
He did radiate much charisma and friendliness and had a wide circle of friends and certainly, no foes. Atte was a gentleman in the true sense of the word.
He was well cared for by his wife and three children.
Goodbye Machan. Maxie Perera
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