The Quiet Gaze – Remembering My First Dharma Teacher
There are moments in life that lie tucked away, like the quiet rustle of leaves in the corner of memory—but when stirred, they carry the weight of sacred beginnings. One such memory returned to me recently, unexpectedly, as I was reflecting on the practice of bare attention. The name Nyanaponika Thera surfaced like a breath rising to consciousness. And with it, a wave of recognition.
I believe he was my first Dharma teacher—a German-born monk who had come to the Mahindarama Buddhist Temple in Penang in the 1940s or early 1950s. I was just a young boy then, drawn to the calm, otherworldly presence of these saffron-robed men who lived and taught among the incense, marble Buddhas, and soft morning chants.
Nyanaponika Thera, born Siegmund Feniger, would later become widely known as the author of The Heart of Buddhist Meditation—a pivotal text that introduced the practice of mindfulness (sati) to the West long before it entered popular vocabulary. But to me, back then, he was simply a gentle, clear-eyed presence—someone who seemed to see the world without judgment, like gazing through water that had never been stirred.
His teachings were never dramatic, nor did he demand devotion. He simply pointed to the breath, the body, the moment. He offered the gift of bare attention: to see without distortion, to observe without clinging or pushing away. It was the first time I had encountered the idea that we could relate to experience as it is, without filters or resistance.
“Bare attention is the clear and single-minded awareness of what actually happens to us and in us at the successive moments of perception.”
— Nyanaponika Thera
I didn’t know then how deeply those words would settle in me, like seeds buried beneath the dust of wandering, rebellion, and forgetting. But they were there. They stayed.
Years later, through my journey across Zen monasteries, sweat lodges in North America, fishing boats in Alaska, organic farms in Kedah, and solitary nights under open skies, it was bare attention—this silent, watchful gaze—that became my true companion. I have tested the Dharma with my own skin, through grief, through psychedelic visions, through silence and suffering. And each time, I returned not to belief, but to this seeing.
From the Eye of Shiva to the Watchful Mind
It occurs to me now how seeing with the Eye of Shiva—that inner vision which burns through illusion—is not separate from watching with bare attention. One blazes through delusion, the other watches it dissolve. Both invite us to stand naked before reality, without masks, without fear.
Both taught me to trust in awareness itself.
And so, dear reader, if you’ve ever stood before a teacher in your youth and didn’t yet realize the blessing you were being given, perhaps this is your reminder. Not all awakenings arrive with thunder and lightning. Some come quietly, in the form of a kind monk in Penang, pointing to the breath, the moment, and the way things are.
If you sit still long enough, perhaps you’ll hear his voice too, soft, clear, and steady like a bell echoing through time:
“Just see. Just watch. Let things be as they are.”
Thank you, Venerable Nyanaponika Thera.
Your gaze lives on in mine.
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