The Letters of Sister Vajirā

The Letters to Sister Vajirā documents the correspondence of the Ven. Ñāṇavīra Thera with Sister Vajirā (Hannelore Wolf, 1928-1991) between November 1961 and January 1962. The vivid exchange of letters and postcards starts shortly before Sister Vajirā’s second and last encounter with Ñāṇavīra Thera at the Island Hermitage where they spent the whole day discussing Dhamma, and ends with the turbulent effects of a final breakthrough of right view (sammaditthi). In retrospect Ñāṇavīra Thera wrote a few years later to his literary executor: ‘I fully agree with you that the curtain came down on the drama too suddenly. I was hoping for a further letter but was disappointed. And when she was packed off there was no further chance of meeting her and filling in the gaps. But if in fact she really did cease to be a puthujjana (and I see no reason to doubt it), then we are perhaps fortunate in having as much as we do have in the way of a written record of an actual attainment of the magga (and probably also of the phala) as it took place. An account written afterwards from memory would not have the dramatic force of these letters which are so striking.’