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Anagarika Dharmapala
(1864 - 1933)

"The Blessed One made no distinction of Bhikkhus and Bhikkhunis, upasakas and upasikas. They were all to learn the Pali Dhamma and study it and proclaim it for the welfare of others. The consummation of the Brahmachariya life was not only for the Bhikkhus and the Bhikkhunis, but also for upasakas and upasikas. The door to Nibbana is open to all."

The purpose of the Anagarika Dharmapala Archive is to honour this Sinhalese Buddhist activist who contributed so greatly to the revival of Theravada Buddhism in the latter part of the nineteenth and the early part of the twentieth century. His passion for maintaining the purity of the Dhamma and for ensuring its effective dissemination remains an inspiration for Buddhists of today. Anagarika Dharmapala's written legacy has not been widely available outside of Sri Lanka. This site hopes to rectify this by making his essays and speeches more widely available. It is a long term project and new material will be added as it is sourced and formatted.

• An Introduction to Buddhism
• What is Buddhism?
• What Buddhism is Not
• The Religion of the Householder
• The Duty of the Bhikkhus and Laymen
• Why we should take the Buddha as our Example and Guide
• The Religion of Religions
• The Foundation of the Empire of Truth
• The Constructive Optimism of Buddhism
• Our Duty to the Peoples of the West
• The Development of Spiritual Emotions

The Anagarika Dharmapala Archive is a Vipassana Fellowship project. For Free Distribution Only. Please acknowledge this site when using its material. We acknowledge our debt to Ananda Guruge's earlier work in sourcing these texts and to the staff of the British Library for their help in locating original documents in the Library's collection. The spelling, grammar and names used in the original printed texts have normally been retained. These do not always accord with modern usage.