Bhante Kusala, MDiv ’17

“I have seen a divine spark in each human being that I’ve met at HDS. Each has their own values, theological understanding, and ways of connecting with their own spiritual network. Some people are more religious than others, but the more I’ve connected with people, the more they purify my inner being and my own understanding about Buddhist teachings.”

Wishing to Become a Monk

People call me Bhante Kusala, because Bhante is like “father” when they talk to monks. I’m 29 years old, and I grew up as a Buddhist child in Sri Lanka. I became a Buddhist monk when I was 16. I was interested in becoming a monk when I was 12, but my father didn’t want that to happen. He thought he could support my studies and send me to good schools and find better places for me, rather than me becoming a monk and studying and getting a monastic (pirivena) education—like seminary education. But it was a deep-rooted wish I had that I should become a monk and live the peaceful life that I see in monks.

Experiencing Suffering

I grew up with four siblings, and in my part of Sri Lanka we had a famine for at least half the year. No water, no rain, so it’s hard on agricultural farming. That is part of the reason why my father wanted to live in the area—to do vegetable gardening and farming—but he could never make a lot of money from it.

My father was a very religious person who would chant for an hour every day, but bad things kept happening one after the other, and my mum was still not totally recovered from a depression she was going through.

I studied well, and when I was 16, I became angry with my father because he was treating my mum badly at times. I had to work hard to support my own studies. One day when my father was fighting with my mum, I said, “You should stop that. If you don’t, I’m going to leave this house and I will not study anymore. I will just find work and live a life of my own.” And he said, “Do it.” And that was the call for me, the green light, and I left home, and that’s how the road to me becoming a monk actually happened.

A Change of Heart

I had been giving retreats to people and giving Dharma talks, and I was also giving radio talks, and my father had heard some of those and he had thought that I was doing really well as a monk. So, he had slowly started changing his attitude towards my change. He was sick when I visited him, but he didn’t talk to me directly. He tried to avoid me, but there were relatives who said to him, “Just talk to him. He’s a very nice monk. He just wants to visit you.”

So then he talked to me, and I spent the night. I was talking to him about the value of being a monk, and I told him that he had taught us children a lot and that he had been through a lot of difficulties. I told him that there are so many blessings of letting go of this kind of life and having freedom and having a spiritual network. From then he slowly understood.

My Ministerial Identity

Navigating through faith traditions that were present within a non-Buddhist, mostly Christian/Catholic hospital during my summer CPE training, I learned to appreciate the nuances of prayer, the subtleties of divinity, and whatever I considered foreign to Buddhism. These things have now become part of my ministerial identity.

Although I was born into a Buddhist family and grew up in a Buddhist culture and eventually became a monk when I was called for service, I always took the freedom to question Buddhism and follow what I felt was right. I understand that universal qualities such as compassion and loving kindness are not any person’s property. Compassion and loving kindness come to us and heal us whenever we cultivate a mind that invites such qualities. In the past, I openly rejected many age-old rituals within cultural Buddhism, but now I allow such rituals to be there without personally engaging in or promoting them. I recognize that rituals unite people, and they should be left undamaged for unity in diversity for everyone to participate in and learn from.

Miracles in Chaplaincy

An unforgettable experience of a miracle lingers in my mind every now and then. I was at Noon Service at Brigham and Women’s Hospital when my pager beeped. I went to the patient room, and I saw a gray-haired man rubbing the feet of a woman lying in bed. They had been married for over 40 years, and their daughter was sitting in a chair by the window. They had just heard that the wife would need to undergo surgery for 8 hours and chances of her survival were not known. They were wondering whether that day was the last day that they would spend together. Without hesitating, I offered to pray for them. They happily agreed. We all held hands and I started the prayer.

I heard the husband sobbing as I continued. He was squeezing my hand, and his tears wet my hands.

The husband, the daughter, and the wife thanked me and their words revealed a spark of hope for the next few hours. I did not get to see them in my follow-up visit the next day. A week later, I came down the elevator and after the doors opened, suddenly a man came running behind me and he stood in front of me speechless. The only words he told me were: “Now I believe in miracles.” His wife survived the surgery. I felt so happy hearing the good news. They asked me to follow up with them throughout their hospital stay.

Continuing to Learn at HDS

Growing up in my family, education was the primary goal. My father put a lot of pressure on me to do well in my studies. I still have an educational heart, which is why, being a monk, I am still interested in studying and I keep going, which is something very nice in my life—that I can be a monk and also study at the same time.

One crucial element of my learning here at HDS is that I have been constantly validating my understanding of Buddhism through my encounters with students and faculty at the School. I have seen a divine spark in each human being that I’ve met at HDS. Each has their own values, theological understanding, and ways of connecting with their own spiritual network. Some people are more religious than others, but the more I’ve connected with people, the more they purify my inner spirit and my own understanding about Buddhist teachings. Some encounters with people have touched the softest corner in my heart.

My perspective has slowly changed throughout my time at HDS. Before I began my life as a Buddhist monk, my thoughts were located in a dark and undefined corner in my heart. As concerns about my growth as a spiritual person away from the traditional grounds evolved in my mind, I did not know how I would adopt my life into a school outside of my home country. As the first consistent sunny summer days began, I noticed that buds started to appear in the trees, along with a lot of green foliage and wind to welcome the new buds. This was new hope for me. If the new buds were my educational and spiritual hopes, the green foliage and wind were my friends who were always ready to welcome me and encourage me to bloom as a complete flower.

Why was I so fascinated with the flowers? I observed that, even among my school friends and fellow CPE student trainees, I have met people who are from various faith backgrounds, and their diversity strengthened me and added beauty into my world. I have felt a natural sense of humanness that erased all the dogmatic religious ideas, changing my thoughts from “this must be the only way” to “there are many ways” and “there is meaning and value in all those ways.” This transformation gave me nothing but joy.

At school and in chaplaincy work, I have shared my life with humanists, Presbyterians, Korean-American Buddhists, Muslims, Christian ministers, religious nones (those who have no specific religion), Catholic priests, atheists, and Gnostics. I have learned to find my own pace of work and maintain my discipline, energy, and transparency with my fellow students. It has been so important to learn how each and every one of us is responsible to each other’s growth.