Spending years at SOAS, the University of London, Saddhatissa developed a sensitivity to Western philosophical discourse. He thus developed his thought, specifically in Buddhist ethics, with both traditional training and Western thought in mind. His primary Western influence (in
Buddhist Ethics at least) appears to be Th. Stcherbatsky, followed by the French philologist La Vallée Poussin.
His main interest was in staying close to the 'lived expression' of Buddhism as opposed to abstract academic theorizing.
"Unlike other expositors of Buddhism -- for example, some representatives of the Cha'n and Zen traditions, who sometimes regard moral practice as a kind of preliminary to the meditational practice of mindfulness, and who take enlightenment to be a kind of epistemological transformation, a new and holistic way of seeing reality -- Saddhatissa regards moral practice and the practice of mindfulness as a seamless whole."