Saffron Days in L.A.: Tales of a Buddhist Monk in America [Paperback]

Bhante Walpola Piyananda (Author), Dalai Lama (Foreword)

Book Description

Publication Date: May 1, 2001

In this delightful memoir, Bhante Walpola Piyananda, a Buddhist monk from Sri Lanka, shares his often amusing, often poignant experiences of life in America. Whether he's reasoning with a group of confrontational punks on Venice Beach, bridging the gap between a rebellious teenager and her traditional parents, explaining to an errant Buddhist that the concept of "non-attachment" does not justify irresponsibility, or dealing with a nude sunbather at a meditation retreat, no situation—no matter how sticky—manages to affect Bhante's unflappable calm or his phenomenal ability to find the right parable for the moment.



Bhante Walpola Piyananda, who is abbot of a Buddhist meditation center in L.A., has met and counseled a wide range of people—the disenfranchised of society, couples dealing with relationship issues, American Buddhists trying to reconcile their practice with their very Western lifestyles, recent immigrants struggling to assimilate but also maintain their traditional values. His stories reveal the complicated, joyous, painful, baffling, and inspiring aspects of the human condition and the power of true compassion.

Editorial Reviews

Amazon.com Review

There is more to being a monk than meditating and walking around in spiffy robes. Just ask Bhante Walpola Piyananda, a Sri Lankan Buddhist monk who has been serving the Los Angeles community for many years. Although one of the highest-ranking Theravadan monks in America, his spiritual generosity brings him to the aid of punks, prostitutes, and destitute immigrants. Saffron Days in L.A. is his story of these colorful encounters. Not only does he help reconcile a teenager with her strict parents, get a drunk off the bottle, and help a psychotic back to normal life, he explains how he does it. Occasionally, it's through chanting exercises or outside help, but mostly this compassionate, erudite monk picks out the perfect teaching from his own experience or from the vast corpus of Buddhist sutras that he seems to have in his head, and that does the trick. So here we get not only stories and stories within stories, but the basics of Buddhism in a form that's easy to digest. Sometimes, Piyananda's successes seem to come a bit too easily, like something from a Buddhist version of Touched by an Angel, but the teachings--about how to get along, be happy, and walk the Middle Path--still hit home. --Brian Bruya

From Publishers Weekly

Piyananda, or Bhante ("spiritual friend"), as he is often called, is a Theravadan Buddhist monk from Sri Lanka who came to Los Angeles almost 25 years ago and established a Buddhist center there. In this pleasant collection of 20 stories about his experiences in the U.S., Bhante weaves narrative, sacred texts and cultural observations into a serviceable whole cloth. For the average American his perspective as a monk is unusual enough, and his recounting moments of insult for wearing the titular yellow robe are touching and inspiring, all the more so because they are told empathetically to a young fellow monk who doubts his own ability to withstand such harassment. Some stories are lighthearted, as when he became known as "Punkie Monkie" to some street kids; others are more troubled, as when he was often mistakenly abused as a Hare Krishna. They all have a wonderful, if sometimes bittersweet, flavor in this East-meets-West compilation. The vignettes are sometimes too pat, and the tacked-on scripture feels stylistically clunky, but the sacred words do make the book's ultimate purpose of interpreting Buddhism to Westerners explicit. This book has value for those who would like to see the world through a foreign monk's eyes or just learn about the cultural friction that arises as Buddhism makes its way in America. Although more advanced students will probably not find much substance here, the Dalai Lama accurately says in the foreword that Piyananda "has created a book to which all readers can relate."

Copyright 2001 Cahners Business Information, Inc.

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Product Details

• Paperback: 208 pages
• Publisher: Shambhala (May 1, 2001)
• Language: English
• ISBN-10: 1570628130
• ISBN-13: 978-1570628139
• Product Dimensions: 5.5 x 0.5 x 8.5 inches
• Shipping Weight: 10.2 ounces (View shipping rates and policies)
• Average Customer Review: 4.2 out of 5 stars  See all reviews (10 customer reviews)
• Amazon Best Sellers Rank: #981,068 in Books (See Top 100 in Books)
  • #41 in Books > Biographies & Memoirs > People, A-Z > ( D ) > Dalai, Lama

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Most Helpful Customer Reviews

7 of 7 people found the following review helpful:

5.0 out of 5 stars Vijja-Carana: The knowledge and the Practice, January 15, 2004

By 

"Lord Bowler" (Washington, DC United States) - See all my reviews

This review is from: Saffron Days in L.A.: Tales of a Buddhist Monk in America (Paperback)

I am writing from a personal bias, because I have known Ven. Piyananda from about age 5 onwards (20 years). Correction: I *thought* I knew Ven. Piyananda before I had read this book. He had taught me all of the fundamentals of Theravada Buddhism, and he even gave great support to me when as a child I was encountering a great amount of prejudice at a Christian missionary school my parents sent me to. Not only did he teach me about Buddhism by word, but his very character struck me as being the essence of what the Buddha taught.

After I read this book, I saw that Ven. Piyananda had many experiences which I had barely knew of. I had no idea he had his own encounters with religious fundamentalists, or that he gave helpful advice to other young people. I see that he had lived a very interesting life beyond my own relatively brief meetings with him. Although I was surprised by some of the experiences he has had, I was *not* really surprised in the way he dealt with them- with the same dignity and intelligence I have always associated with him.

Someone here has complained that the book appeared to be egotistical. Well, the very *purpose* of this book was to describe some of Ven. Piyananda's own personal experiences in the US!!! There are trillions of books on Buddhist doctrine out there written by a wide assortment of characters, from highly respected academics and experienced monastics to the lowest of hacks and frauds. Here is a book about the experiences of a Sri Lankan monk in the US. If you are not interested in this topic, don't buy this book and then complain that it was 'only' about the experiences of a SL monk in the US. However, if you are curious about how a practitioner of the Dhamma has dealt with some of the craziness one can find in Los Angeles, then I could recommend no better book.

7 of 7 people found the following review helpful:

5.0 out of 5 stars Amazing insights, May 7, 2001

By 

Sean Hoade (Las Vegas, Nevada USA) - See all my reviews
(VINE VOICE)   

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This review is from: Saffron Days in L.A.: Tales of a Buddhist Monk in America (Paperback)

Bhante Piyananda takes the hairiest of situations--punks confronting him on the boardwalk, catholic-buddhist marriages in trouble, murders in the monastery--and shines the light of metta and compassion upon them. He is a truly amazing person, and this is a truly amazing book. It will make you more mindful just by reading it, I guarantee!

8 of 9 people found the following review helpful:

3.0 out of 5 stars Chicken Soup for the Buddhist Soul?, January 2, 2002

By 

Sho J. Morimoto "aresdracon" (Washington, DC) - See all my reviews
(REAL NAME)   

This review is from: Saffron Days in L.A.: Tales of a Buddhist Monk in America (Paperback)

An anecdote of many feel-good stories written by an ordained monk of the Theravada school of Buddhism, the book is simply written and contains some canonical discourses relevant to the situation described in each chapter. Try not to read it as a biography or a self-help book; most people who do so will be sorely disappointed. However, it is a comforting work that leaves one feeling a little more hopeful, and perhaps that's what the bhiku is aiming for and nothing more. The collection is not an explanatory work on Theravada Buddhism and does not really cover the "tenets" of that sect per se. However, since Buddhism relies less on vicarous experience than on personal, individual experience, the lack of theology may even be a good thing! I did find the stories to become a bit too formulaic, but none-the-less they were all heart-warming and at times even humorous.