He was born on 9 May 1907 at Walpola, a small village in the Galle district of southern Sri Lanka. At thirteen, he entered the
Sangha. His education covered
Sinhala,
Pali,
Sanskrit, Buddhism, history and philosophy. He studied at the
Vidyalankara Pirivena and at the
University of Ceylon, where he associated with
E. F. C. Ludowyk,
G. P. Malalasekera,
E. W. Adikaram and other scholars. After his period at the Sorbonne, he became Vice-Chancellor of
Vidyodaya University. He was noted not only for his erudition but also for his strong socialist views, as well as his belief that monks have a duty to play a role in guiding the political consciousness of the people. His book
Bhikshuvakage Urumaya (Heritage of the Bhikkhu) was a strong voice in the Buddhist Nationalist movement that led to the 1956 electoral victory of
Solomon Bandaranaike. He left Vidyodaya University in 1969, due to political differences with the government of the day. Thereafter, he returned to the West and worked in many academic institutions in Europe. He returned to Sri Lanka during his last days, and lived in the temple near the New Parliament in Kotte, until his death.
Academic career Rahula Thera attended Ceylon university (now known as the
University of Peradeniya). He obtained a B.A. Honours degree (London), and then earned a Doctorate of Philosophy, having written a thesis on the History of Buddhism in Sri Lanka (Ceylon). Then he went on to study Indian Philosophy at
Calcutta University and later studied
Mahayana at the
Sorbonne. It was during his time at the Sorbonne in the late 1950s that he produced
What the Buddha Taught, a widely read and highly influential introductory text on Buddhism, for which he is best known. Walpola Rahula Thera is the first Buddhist monk to become a professor in a Western University. When he became Professor of History and Literature of Religions there were no Theravada Temples in the United States. He later became a Professor Emeritus at the same university. Rahula also held positions at several other American Universities. He was a visiting lecturer at
Swarthmore College and Regents Lecturer at
UCLA. He became Vice-Chancellor of Vidyoda University (now Sri Jayawardhanapura University) in 1964. He was later instrumental in encouraging the formation of the first Theravada temple in the United States, the Washington Buddhist Vihara, located in Washington, D.C. In 1950, on the recommendation of
Paul Demiéville, a member and professor at the
Collège de France, he was awarded a grant by the French government to study
Mahayana Buddhism as taught by
Asanga, an Indian monk and philosopher from the 4th century AD. Although Walpola Rahula belonged to the "
Way of the elders" (Theravada) tradition, he had expressed the wish to "
learn the practice of Tibetan and Chinese texts in order to broaden his ecumenism". ==Titles==