Ven. Saddhatissa was born in Hammalawa, a small town in N.W. Sri Lanka in 1914 and ordained as a novice monk there in 1926. In his youth he was active in both the Mahabodhi Society and the work of B.R. Ambedkar. In 1957 he would travel to London at the request of the Mahabodhi Society and would live the rest of his life in the West, including time teaching in Canada.

At the time of his death, "He was the head of the London Buddhist Vihara and the Sanghanayake of the United Kingdom and Europe."

He was posthumously honored in 2005 by Sri Lanka with a postage stamp bearing his image.

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."

Books

Before He Was Buddha: The Life of Siddhartha with Jack Kornfield (2000) ISBN 1569752303

Buddhist Ethics (1970) (1987) and (1997 & 2003) ISBN 0861711246

The Sutta Nipata trans. (1985) ISBN 0700701818 ( Wisdom Books)

A Buddhist's Manual (1976) ASIN: B000YH9HP8

Articles

Dependent Origination (.pdf) (1989)

Reviews

Buddhist Ethics, reviewed by Koller, John M. Philosophy East and West Vol. 50, No. 2 (April 2000) pp. 294—297 [1]