Sri Lankan Buddhist monk to study at Oxford after 105 years
December 5, 2024 04:51 pm
Venerable Wadigala Samitharathana Thero has become the first Sri Lankan Buddhist monk to study at Britain’s prestigious University of Oxford in 105 years.
He is currently reading for an MPhil in Buddhist Studies as a Glorisun Scholar at St Cross College, University of Oxford.
He studied oriental languages (Sinhala, Pāli, and Sanskrit) and other co-related literature (philology, etymology, grammar, semantics, metrics and prosody, logic and reasoning, ethics, epistemology, metaphysics, etc.) at Siri Sunanda Pirivena, Beliatta and Mahāvihāra Maha Pirivena, Kandy in Sri Lanka.
The Venerable Thero was awarded the ‘National First Prize’ (with a Korean Government Scholarship) for the highest marks in the Buddhist Religious Final Examination in 2013 and the academic honour of ‘Royal Paṇḍita’ remarking the successful completion of oriental studies in Ceylon in 2016.
He had started reading for a BA (Hons) in Philosophy at the University of Peradeniya in 2019, whilst studying the Pāli canon, exegetical commentaries, Vedic, non-Vedic, and Buddhist Sanskrit texts.
Further, in recognition of his exceptional achievements in Buddhist studies, the International Buddhist College in Thailand offered him the ‘Outstanding Young Buddhist Scholar Award’ in 2017.
He also received an offer from Oxford Brookes University, along with an International Student Scholarship Award to complete the final two years of the current programme.
Accordingly, he took the opportunity and earned a BA (Hons) in Philosophy in submitting a dissertation titled ‘Aristotle and Buddhism: A Comparative Study between the Aristotelian Concept of Eudaimonia and the Buddhist Perspective of Nibbāna’ in 2023.
The Thero received the Tibet Foundation Award, whereby he pursued an MA in Buddhist Studies at SOAS University of London in 2024. Therein, he carried out a breakthrough study on ‘Buddhaghosa’s Critique of Meditation (Visuddhimagga): An Emphasis on Ethics, Epistemology, and Metaphysics in Buddhist Meditation’.
Ven. Samitharathana Thero has given several paper presentations at International Research Conferences worldwide held in Zürich, Paris, Oxford, Cambridge, Madrid, Berlin, New York, Colombo, and Kandy, over the past years.
He founded the Oxford Buddhist Society to preserve Theravāda Buddhism for the sake of human well-being, and is now playing a vital role as the Founding President.
In Michaelmas Term 2024, Ven. Samitharathana Thero matriculated to the University of Oxford (alongside the membership at St Cross College) as a Glorisun Scholar - since he was awarded the Glorisun Graduate Scholarship towards the MPhil in Buddhist Studies this year.
In history, Venerable Suriyagoda Sumangala was the first-ever Sri Lankan Buddhist monk to earn a scholarship at Oxford. In Michaelmas Term 1919, he enrolled as a ‘non-collegiate’ student, and then studied for a BLitt at Harris Manchester College, University of Oxford.
