Relief assistance fund from Malwatte Mahanayake thero by Cyril Wimalasurendre

KANDY — Most Ven. Mahanayake Thero of Malwatte on Thursday (28), inaugurated a relief assistance fund titled "Malwathu Maha Vihariya Tibbatuwawe Sri Siddhartha Sumnagala Manawa Sahayogitha Padanama."

The ceremonial inauguration was inaugurated at a meeting of leading members of the sangha and laymen at the official Aramaya of the Malwatte Mahanayake Thero.

The objective of the foundation is to assist the poorest of the poor irrespective of their communal differences the Mahanayake Thero said.

The foundation will assist raise the standard of living of the rural under-trodden who suffer without adequate food, lodging and shelter and facilities for education for their children, the prelate said disclosing the objective of the foundation.

The fund will also take measures to help the sangha to find his own requirements and the construction or maintenance of his aramaya as well, the Mahanayake Thero said.

The foundation does not intend to collect from the rich and give the poor. Its aim is to give out to those in need from what it has. Therefore the foundation will not go about collecting funds but will welcome any donations while in service to the unfortunate members of the society, he added.

At the inauguration itself many donors made contributions in millions of rupees.

The Public Trustee Sarath Seneviratne donated from his department a sum of Rs. 1.5 million.

Secretary, Malwatte Chapter Ven. Walgowwagoda Vimalabuddhi Thero made the welcome speech.

Anunayake of Malwatte Ven. Dr. Niyangoda Vijthisiri, Dr. Kolluptiye Mahinda (Chief Incumbent Kelaniya Raja Maha Vihare), Ven. Dr. Aluthwewe Soratha, Ven. Galaboda Gnanissara Thero and Ven. Pannila Ananda, Devalegama Dhammasena, Kandy Mayor Kesara D. Senanayake, Kandy MMC, Raja Pushpakumara, DIG Nimal Mediwake, Basnayake Nilame of Kataragama Thilanga Delabandara, Basnayake Nilames Ranjith Ellegoda and Mohan Panabokke, and D. P. Jayasinghe were among those present to make donations.

The Agriculture, Livestock, Lands and Irrigation Ministry has decided to restore Kandy Lake at a cost of Rs. 65 million.

The Ministry said the restoration work on Kandy Lake, which has been polluted for decades, would begin on 30 October.

A ceremony will be held to mark the commencement of the work. The Mahanayakes of the Asgiriya and Malwatte chapters, the Maha Sangha, and ministers and MPs from the Kandy district including Deputy Minister Bimal Ratnayake will be present. Minister Anura Dissanayake will preside over the ceremony.

King Sri Wickrema Rajasinghe built the lake in 1810

Canada denies its SL mission forced Buddhist monks to strip

OTTAWA , Oct27, (AFP) - Canada vociferously denied charges from Sri Lanka that some Buddhist monks, seeking visas at the Canadian embassy in Colombo, were forced to strip during an anthrax scare.

Police in Colombo said the monks were forced under a shower and disrobed at the Canadian High Commission on Monday after they triggered an anthrax scare.

The three monks, one Sri Lankan and two Thais, had visited the mission to obtain visas, but talcum powder in one passport caused diplomats to panic and seize all three of them, who were forced to disrobe, police said.

But in Ottawa, Kimberly Phillips, a spokeswoman for the Department of Foreign Affairs, insisted: "Reports that the high commission staff forcibly disrobed the monks are completely erroneous. At no time were they forcibly disrobed or forced under a shower.

"They were offered a private changing facility with a private shower stall in the high commission recreational area. New robes were purchased for them so they could leave their potentially contaminated robes behind."

And, before the monks left the diplomatic mission, said Phillips, they were offered medical advice on potential symptoms of anthrax contamination and whatever treatment may be necesary.

According to police in Colombo, the monks told Canadian staff that they had simply used some talcum powder to prevent silverfish attacking a passport.

In Ottawa, Phillips said the results of tests on the white powder were expected Thursday and that the Canadian high commission in Colombo would remain closed until then.

Ethics of Conversion and Survival of Buddhism by Dr. Keerthi Jayasekera

There seems to be a considerable amount of controversy over the Ethics of religious conversions in Sri Lanka. Some Buddhist monks and laymen fear soon Buddhism will become a minority, religion and unethical conversion by other faiths will ruin Buddhist culture and the Sinhala cultural identity.

This leads us to the question, is there a threat to Buddhism in Sri Lanka today? If so by whom? How? and Why? Every practising Buddhist must find the correct answers to these questions and remedy the situations without delay. Sri Lanka is a secular democracy, and the constitution provides the right for an individual to change his or her religious faith or to practice or not practice a religion.

Lord Buddha upon enlightenment, first shared his new found wisdom with the five ascetics, with whom he once practiced asceticism, and gave up that practice as it did not help him to obtain deliverance realising that only the middle path will help attain Nirvana. Conversion through conviction of the five ascetics helped him to start the Buddhist Order. Thereafter conversion of Yasa, a son of a rich treasurer (setthi) of Benares, present day Varanasi in north India, and fifty four of his friends, thus making up sixty one Arhaths in the world, including the Buddha himself.

Thereafter the Buddha sent forth sixty of them with the words: "Go ye now, O monks, and wander, for the gain of the many, for the welfare of the many, out of compassion for the world, for the good, for the gain, and for the welfare of gods and men. Let not two of you go the same way. Preach O monks, the doctrine which is glorious in the beginning, glorious in the middle, glorious in the end, in the spirit and in the letter; proclaim a consummate, perfect and pure life of holiness".

Thus began the first missionary religion in the world.

Detachment and Compassion is a very fundamental principle reflected in the discourses the Buddha preached in the years that followed up to his Mahaparinirvana.

How did the Buddha convert others to Buddhism? It was a habit of the Buddha, due to his compassion for his fellow beings to use his psychic powers to survey the world, and look for those who had the capacity to benefit from the Dhamma. Thereafter he engaged them in discussion about the human predicament and convinced them about the wisdom of the Dhamma. Thus through dialogue and example in his conduct he made them to be the followers of the Ethical Middle Path.

In ancient India, knowledge and wisdom was found in the Vedas or Sacred Texts, such as Rg, yajur, sama veda etc. Access to them was confined to the Brahmin (priestly caste) and Kshatriyas, the warrior caste, to which the Buddha belonged. Hence in early Buddhism it was a majority of Brahmins and a few Kshatriyas who came to the Buddha seeking answers to their Epistemological and Ontological problems prevailing those days. The Buddha explained the Dhamma and invariably convinced them, and made them his disciples. Those who did not have the capacity to understand the Buddha were not satisfied and went back to follow their old faiths. The Buddha left it entirely to the discretion of the individual to understand or misunderstand him. The reason being what the Buddha preached was not Theology as in the Vedas, or Anthropology as in the Upanisads, but pure and simple Psychology. Dhamma was meant for the wise and not for the fool.

Once when the Buddha and his fellow monks were in transit between Nalanda (where the world famous University came up in later times) and Rajagaha, the capital of Maghada (modern day Rajgir in the state of Bihar), at a point one night he preached to the monks the masterpiece of a discourse the "Brahmajala Sutta "(The All-Embracing net of views). In this discourse the Buddha, in the light of his great wisdom analysed and showed the utter unsatisfactory nature of the sixty two views of schools of thought prevalent in India in 6th Century BC. This single act of the Buddha is a classic example of the intellectual tolerance, freedom of thought, freedom of speech, prevalent among the monarchies and the republics in India during the time of the Buddha.

The Buddha’s quest was to seek an answer to the Human predicament, or the very unsatisfactory nature of human life. What the Buddha discovered was the Ethical Middle Path to supreme happiness, Nirvana. Therefore what the Buddha preached was a set of ethics based on human psychology to transform a human being to an ethical being.

Impressed by the ethical conduct of a seven year old novice Buddhist monk Nigroda, and the answers given to questions asked, Emperor Asoka of India embraced the Buddha Dhamma. At this time there were 18 schools of Buddhist thought in India. with more heretics and false monks greater than true believers. The heretics who entered the Order for gain, continued to adhere to their old faiths and practices and preached their doctrines as the doctrines of the Buddha. Emperor Asoka first got rid of the heretics and then was instrumental in holding the third Buddhist Council, at Pataliputra (modern day Patna). Moggaliputta Tissa Thero and Arhath were in overall supervision of the proceedings of the council, and thus helped to purify the Sangha and the Buddhist Cannon.

One of the greatest achievements of this council was the dispatch of Buddhist missionaries to different countries to propagate the Buddha Dhamma. From the Edicts of Asoka we know about the various Buddhist missions sent to far off countries in Asia, Africa and Europe. It is to a large extent due to these missionary activities that Buddhism became the ruling religion of a large part of mankind. Arhath Mahinda the son of Asoka and Theri Sanghamitta, his daughter were entrusted with missionary work in Ceylon.

How did Arhath Mahinda convert people of Ceylon to Buddhism? According to Dr. E. W. Adikaram’s PhD, Thesis "Early History of Buddhism in Ceylon" a masterpiece by any standard, he quotes the Mahavamsa and states: "Mahinda had a conversation with Tissa, during which he gauged the intellectual capacity of the latter. Finding that the King was quick-witted and able to understand the Dhamma, he expounded the Culahatthipadopama Sutta. At the end of the discourse the king and his retinue of 40,000 people embraced the new faith."

In the days that followed he preached eight more discourses to the Royal assembly and others present. Thus helping to converting the people of Anuradhapura to Buddha Dhamma. Sometime thereafter, he ordained Maha Arittha, the nephew of king Devanampiyatissa as the first member of the Sangha. With the holding of the Thuparama Council under his direct supervision, and reciting the Vinaya, or the code of conduct for the monks by Maha Arittha, Arhath Mahinda thus formally introduced Buddhism to Ceylon.

The construction of Mahavihara, in Anuradhapura by king Devanampiyatissa and offering it to Arhath Mahinda, helped to institutionalise Buddhism in Ceylon. In course of time Mahavihara grew into a vast monastic complex, which is supposed to have accommodated hundreds of monks engaged in the study of the Dhamma. This was followed by King Vattagamini Abhaya with the construction of Abhayagiri Monastery in Anuradhapura. This trend continued through Polonnaruwa period to the present times. Notable among them was Mayurapada Pirivena of Dambadeniya period, Vijayaba Pirivena of Thotagamuwa, where among the many languages taught was classical Tamil. Sunethradevi Pirivena, Pepiliyana, Pathmavathi Pirivena at Keragala during the Kotte period, Paramadhammachetiya Pirivena at Ratmalana, Vidyodaya and Vidyalankara Pirivenas (started by two monks from Paramadhammachetiya Pirivena) during the British period.

It is mainly due to the teaching of the Dhamma in these institutions that the monks from the village temple could study and go back after their Pirivena education to educate the people about the Dhamma, and was thus help to preserve and promote Buddhism and keep the Sinhala Buddhist culture alive and fertile. However with the elevation of Vidyodaya and Vidyalankara to University status, monks began pursuing studies related to secular subjects getting a wider view of the secular aspect of social life, some monks become scholars and encouraging laymen to become Buddhist scholars intellectuals resulting in books, journals, periodicals, and research material in Buddhism found in bookshops and libraries and in the Universities. The tendency of some monks to disrobe after university education is a spiritually unhealthy side effect of this that has become a reality to day.

During my nearly 10 years of service in the Sri Lanka Army, treating the battle casualties has shown me that no war could be won if the soldier with the weapon decamps and deserts the theatre of war. This is equally true for the enemy. Possessing sophisticated weapons cannot make one win a war, if the soldier is not trained to and has not the will to use them. This is why motivation and moral is a key factor in warfare.

Some months ago the Buddhist Cultural Centre, Nedimale, Dehiwala advertised for candidates between 18 and 35 years to be Ordained as Buddhist monks to receive training in the Dhamma, after which they to take up residence in those deserted temples and to recommence Dhamma activities to review the fading Buddhist Culture once again.

Upon inquiry from the Chief Incumbent of Buddhist Cultural Centre, Rev. Kirama Wimalajothi Nayaka Thero, I was horrified to learn from him that among the 12000 to 13000 Buddhist temples in the country, over 1500 of them are deserted! Of this amount over 1000 are from the Eastern and North Central Province. Experience tells me, in this tiny island of 1500 troops were to desert, can we ever hope to win a war?

The problem of the village monk and his reasons for deserting has to be found out. This is the first priority, since it is the beginning of a chain reaction. It is well to remember that it is the monk in the temple who in the past, ensured and will in the future ensure the survival of Buddhism in Sri Lanka. If the monk is to look after the welfare of society, society must first look after the monk.

Prof. S. Radhakrishnan says: "Buddhism is a way of life, and not a way of talking". With reference to this saying I see the scholar and the intellectual helping to keep Buddhism as a way of talking! While it is the monk in the temple is there to show us that it is a way of life. The priority today is not to worry about the ethics of others’ actions, for they shall reap what they sow, but to make every effort to preserve, protect and promote Buddhism in society.

The Buddha has shown us the ethical pathway to ultimate happiness. It is up to us to try and follow it, and not try to modify it. Efforts of Emperor Asoka and Arhath Mahinda should inspire us towards achieving this objective. Hence we must try and infuse spiritual life to the over 1500 deserted temples in the island, for failure to do so will ensure the jungle tide swallowing them up like the rest of the ruins of a lost Buddhist Civilization.

Ethics of Conversion and Survival of Buddhism by Dr. Keerthi Jayasekera

There seems to be a considerable amount of controversy over the Ethics of religious conversions in Sri Lanka. Some Buddhist monks and laymen fear soon Buddhism will become a minority, religion and unethical conversion by other faiths will ruin Buddhist culture and the Sinhala cultural identity.

This leads us to the question, is there a threat to Buddhism in Sri Lanka today? If so by whom? How? and Why? Every practising Buddhist must find the correct answers to these questions and remedy the situations without delay. Sri Lanka is a secular democracy, and the constitution provides the right for an individual to change his or her religious faith or to practice or not practice a religion.

Lord Buddha upon enlightenment, first shared his new found wisdom with the five ascetics, with whom he once practiced asceticism, and gave up that practice as it did not help him to obtain deliverance realising that only the middle path will help attain Nirvana. Conversion through conviction of the five ascetics helped him to start the Buddhist Order. Thereafter conversion of Yasa, a son of a rich treasurer (setthi) of Benares, present day Varanasi in north India, and fifty four of his friends, thus making up sixty one Arhaths in the world, including the Buddha himself.

Thereafter the Buddha sent forth sixty of them with the words: "Go ye now, O monks, and wander, for the gain of the many, for the welfare of the many, out of compassion for the world, for the good, for the gain, and for the welfare of gods and men. Let not two of you go the same way. Preach O monks, the doctrine which is glorious in the beginning, glorious in the middle, glorious in the end, in the spirit and in the letter; proclaim a consummate, perfect and pure life of holiness".

Thus began the first missionary religion in the world.

Detachment and Compassion is a very fundamental principle reflected in the discourses the Buddha preached in the years that followed up to his Mahaparinirvana.

How did the Buddha convert others to Buddhism? It was a habit of the Buddha, due to his compassion for his fellow beings to use his psychic powers to survey the world, and look for those who had the capacity to benefit from the Dhamma. Thereafter he engaged them in discussion about the human predicament and convinced them about the wisdom of the Dhamma. Thus through dialogue and example in his conduct he made them to be the followers of the Ethical Middle Path.

In ancient India, knowledge and wisdom was found in the Vedas or Sacred Texts, such as Rg, yajur, sama veda etc. Access to them was confined to the Brahmin (priestly caste) and Kshatriyas, the warrior caste, to which the Buddha belonged. Hence in early Buddhism it was a majority of Brahmins and a few Kshatriyas who came to the Buddha seeking answers to their Epistemological and Ontological problems prevailing those days. The Buddha explained the Dhamma and invariably convinced them, and made them his disciples. Those who did not have the capacity to understand the Buddha were not satisfied and went back to follow their old faiths. The Buddha left it entirely to the discretion of the individual to understand or misunderstand him. The reason being what the Buddha preached was not Theology as in the Vedas, or Anthropology as in the Upanisads, but pure and simple Psychology. Dhamma was meant for the wise and not for the fool.

Once when the Buddha and his fellow monks were in transit between Nalanda (where the world famous University came up in later times) and Rajagaha, the capital of Maghada (modern day Rajgir in the state of Bihar), at a point one night he preached to the monks the masterpiece of a discourse the "Brahmajala Sutta "(The All-Embracing net of views). In this discourse the Buddha, in the light of his great wisdom analysed and showed the utter unsatisfactory nature of the sixty two views of schools of thought prevalent in India in 6th Century BC. This single act of the Buddha is a classic example of the intellectual tolerance, freedom of thought, freedom of speech, prevalent among the monarchies and the republics in India during the time of the Buddha.

The Buddha’s quest was to seek an answer to the Human predicament, or the very unsatisfactory nature of human life. What the Buddha discovered was the Ethical Middle Path to supreme happiness, Nirvana. Therefore what the Buddha preached was a set of ethics based on human psychology to transform a human being to an ethical being.

Impressed by the ethical conduct of a seven year old novice Buddhist monk Nigroda, and the answers given to questions asked, Emperor Asoka of India embraced the Buddha Dhamma. At this time there were 18 schools of Buddhist thought in India. with more heretics and false monks greater than true believers. The heretics who entered the Order for gain, continued to adhere to their old faiths and practices and preached their doctrines as the doctrines of the Buddha. Emperor Asoka first got rid of the heretics and then was instrumental in holding the third Buddhist Council, at Pataliputra (modern day Patna). Moggaliputta Tissa Thero and Arhath were in overall supervision of the proceedings of the council, and thus helped to purify the Sangha and the Buddhist Cannon.

One of the greatest achievements of this council was the dispatch of Buddhist missionaries to different countries to propagate the Buddha Dhamma. From the Edicts of Asoka we know about the various Buddhist missions sent to far off countries in Asia, Africa and Europe. It is to a large extent due to these missionary activities that Buddhism became the ruling religion of a large part of mankind. Arhath Mahinda the son of Asoka and Theri Sanghamitta, his daughter were entrusted with missionary work in Ceylon.

How did Arhath Mahinda convert people of Ceylon to Buddhism? According to Dr. E. W. Adikaram’s PhD, Thesis "Early History of Buddhism in Ceylon" a masterpiece by any standard, he quotes the Mahavamsa and states: "Mahinda had a conversation with Tissa, during which he gauged the intellectual capacity of the latter. Finding that the King was quick-witted and able to understand the Dhamma, he expounded the Culahatthipadopama Sutta. At the end of the discourse the king and his retinue of 40,000 people embraced the new faith."

In the days that followed he preached eight more discourses to the Royal assembly and others present. Thus helping to converting the people of Anuradhapura to Buddha Dhamma. Sometime thereafter, he ordained Maha Arittha, the nephew of king Devanampiyatissa as the first member of the Sangha. With the holding of the Thuparama Council under his direct supervision, and reciting the Vinaya, or the code of conduct for the monks by Maha Arittha, Arhath Mahinda thus formally introduced Buddhism to Ceylon.

The construction of Mahavihara, in Anuradhapura by king Devanampiyatissa and offering it to Arhath Mahinda, helped to institutionalise Buddhism in Ceylon. In course of time Mahavihara grew into a vast monastic complex, which is supposed to have accommodated hundreds of monks engaged in the study of the Dhamma. This was followed by King Vattagamini Abhaya with the construction of Abhayagiri Monastery in Anuradhapura. This trend continued through Polonnaruwa period to the present times. Notable among them was Mayurapada Pirivena of Dambadeniya period, Vijayaba Pirivena of Thotagamuwa, where among the many languages taught was classical Tamil. Sunethradevi Pirivena, Pepiliyana, Pathmavathi Pirivena at Keragala during the Kotte period, Paramadhammachetiya Pirivena at Ratmalana, Vidyodaya and Vidyalankara Pirivenas (started by two monks from Paramadhammachetiya Pirivena) during the British period.

It is mainly due to the teaching of the Dhamma in these institutions that the monks from the village temple could study and go back after their Pirivena education to educate the people about the Dhamma, and was thus help to preserve and promote Buddhism and keep the Sinhala Buddhist culture alive and fertile. However with the elevation of Vidyodaya and Vidyalankara to University status, monks began pursuing studies related to secular subjects getting a wider view of the secular aspect of social life, some monks become scholars and encouraging laymen to become Buddhist scholars intellectuals resulting in books, journals, periodicals, and research material in Buddhism found in bookshops and libraries and in the Universities. The tendency of some monks to disrobe after university education is a spiritually unhealthy side effect of this that has become a reality to day.

During my nearly 10 years of service in the Sri Lanka Army, treating the battle casualties has shown me that no war could be won if the soldier with the weapon decamps and deserts the theatre of war. This is equally true for the enemy. Possessing sophisticated weapons cannot make one win a war, if the soldier is not trained to and has not the will to use them. This is why motivation and moral is a key factor in warfare.

Some months ago the Buddhist Cultural Centre, Nedimale, Dehiwala advertised for candidates between 18 and 35 years to be Ordained as Buddhist monks to receive training in the Dhamma, after which they to take up residence in those deserted temples and to recommence Dhamma activities to review the fading Buddhist Culture once again.

Upon inquiry from the Chief Incumbent of Buddhist Cultural Centre, Rev. Kirama Wimalajothi Nayaka Thero, I was horrified to learn from him that among the 12000 to 13000 Buddhist temples in the country, over 1500 of them are deserted! Of this amount over 1000 are from the Eastern and North Central Province. Experience tells me, in this tiny island of 1500 troops were to desert, can we ever hope to win a war?

The problem of the village monk and his reasons for deserting has to be found out. This is the first priority, since it is the beginning of a chain reaction. It is well to remember that it is the monk in the temple who in the past, ensured and will in the future ensure the survival of Buddhism in Sri Lanka. If the monk is to look after the welfare of society, society must first look after the monk.

Prof. S. Radhakrishnan says: "Buddhism is a way of life, and not a way of talking". With reference to this saying I see the scholar and the intellectual helping to keep Buddhism as a way of talking! While it is the monk in the temple is there to show us that it is a way of life. The priority today is not to worry about the ethics of others’ actions, for they shall reap what they sow, but to make every effort to preserve, protect and promote Buddhism in society.

The Buddha has shown us the ethical pathway to ultimate happiness. It is up to us to try and follow it, and not try to modify it. Efforts of Emperor Asoka and Arhath Mahinda should inspire us towards achieving this objective. Hence we must try and infuse spiritual life to the over 1500 deserted temples in the island, for failure to do so will ensure the jungle tide swallowing them up like the rest of the ruins of a lost Buddhist Civilization.

Buddhism and the Sacraments: A response to Bhikkhu Dhammavihara by Gananath Obeyesekere

Professor of Anthropology, Emeritus Princeton University

In an article published on 19th October in the Island, the Venerable Dhammavihara refers to my discussion of Buddhist ethics regarding marriage as a "criminally serious error." This is an interesting take on Buddhist ethics because the Buddha always referred to an opposing position as micchaditthi ("wrong views") and not criminal acts. I have ignored the Venerable Dhammavihara when, over the last twenty years he has quoted this same statement of mine in periodic newspaper articles. I thought the good monk would over time give up Obeyesekere bashing but unhappily the repressed has returned in his recent article.

I write this response, not just in respect of the monk’s article but because often enough my work has been read in bits and pieces and criticized in local journals in polemical terms. Unfortunately my books for the most part are not available in libraries or bookshops here. Nevertheless, it is an elementary postulate that a scholar’s work has to be read as a totality and in context before any serious criticism can be made. Hence this response even though I believe that the issues the Venerable Dhammavihara raises can best be dealt with in scholarly journals.

Here is the obnoxious Obeyesekere in The Cult of the Goddess Pattini on p. 445: ‘Tor example, virginity and chastity in females is not associated with ethics and doctrine: one consequence of this is that marriage is a secular affair in Buddhist Sri Lanka whereas it is a sacrament according to Brahmanic values." Bhikkhu Dhammavihara finds it "amazing" that a Sri Lankan sociologist should write this. Let me express my counter-amazement at his picking a choice bit from my book but failing to read it in context.

First: the book deals with the Goddess Pattini, the exemplar of wifely chastity who, in spite of her husband’s infidelity, destroyed the city of Madurai and the bad king of Pandya and reinstituted moral righteousness. I describe in detail the complex rituals where Sinhala Buddhists worship Pattini as the ideal wire and extol her virtues and elevate her into a Bodhisattva, the only female Bodhisattva in the popular Sinhala Buddhist pantheon. Second: Bhikkhu Dhammavihara conveniently ignores the next two sentences following the above passage. "Nevertheless, even in Sri Lanka these values are part of a secular ideology; but in so far as these ideals have no religious sanction their practical applications show a great deal of variability. In practical reality they are more the concern of high status groups than of peasants, though they remain ideals for all. "It is these ideals that are celebrated in the rituals of the Pattini cult.

Third: Rev. Dhammavihara ignores the sentence that precedes the quotation that raised his ire: "What I have called the ‘Brahmanic scale of values’ is not, in Buddhist Sri Lanka anchored to a scheme of religious values as in Hindu India." It is in relation to my discussion of Brahmanic values that I made the statement that Rev. Dhammavihara quotes.

We now know that the Buddha was thoroughly familiar with Vedic thought and that early Buddhism carried out an oppositional dialectic with Brahmanism both with regards caste and sacramental religion. "Sacrament" is of course a Christian term originally meaning a vow taken by military personnel in Roman times but later, to quote The Encyclopedia ‘of Religion "was increasingly used to refer to baptism" and the Eucharist, and then was extended by analogy to related ritual actions including confession and penance, confirmation, marriage, ordination and unction." (pp. 502- 03) Indologists quite reasonably apply this term to Vedicrites. For example, one Dharmasutra roughly contemporaneous with Buddhism mentions forty "sacramentary rites" including the following: "Impregnation rite, quickening a male foetus, parting the wife’s hair, birth rite, naming first feeding with solid food, tonsure, and initiation; the four vows associated with Vedic study marrying a helpmate in fulfilling the law" and many more.

It is this rejection of sacramental religion in Buddhist doctrine and ethics that I dealt with in Pattini and in other publications on Buddhism. Rev. Dhammavihara quotes at length the many moral norms that are emphasized in Buddhist texts. He is right; Buddhist texts and Jatakas deal extensively with right and wrong moralities but, as Bhikkhu Dhammavihara himself says they are the values that were appropriate to the societies of the time. In other words these Buddhist texts emphasize the moral codes on which the orderly conduct of social life depends. Rev. Dhammavihara himself admits that no Buddhist monk officiates at marriage ceremonies and that marriage is a civil affair.

Restrained speech

Restrained speech, extolled in Buddhist texts, is not the venerable monk’s forte because his diatribe on abortion is expressed, strangely enough, in language reminiscent of the Christian Right in the US. For example he says: "The only easy and ingenious way out of it which our pig-headed society knows is abortion, i.e., the brutal dragging out of a mother’s womb a human fetus, no matter at what stage of its growth, when pressure and persuasion is brought upon those medical mechanics, accompanied by a gratifying purse large or small. A heartless Satan scores a bulls-eye with the skill of his God given hands. More and more dressed chicken in our supermarkets and more and more aborted babies in the garbage bins of the abortion clinics in the city of Colombo, known and unknown. Glory be to this culture of the day. We know the vulgarity and the brutality of this inhuman act of abortion is publicized worldwide. We have seen with our own eyes in many parts of the world, outside of Sri Lanka."

Is chicken the equivalent of aborted babies in the Venerable Dhammavihara’s conception? It seems as if the good monk not only castigates doctors working in non-existent abortion clinics in Colombo, but he seems to agree with some early Indologists and Theosophists that Buddhism is a Theistic religion, for otherwise one cannot explain a Buddhist monk talking about Satan and Man’s "God given hands," not to mention "glory be" that surely seems to echo "Glory be to God." It is possible, of course, that he is borrowing this language from the Christian right currently campaigning on behalf of George Bush.

Not only does Rev. Dhammavihara ignore the larger context of the Pattini book but he is also unaware of my extensive work on Buddhist ethics found in the Jatakas and in the main doctrinal tradition. Much of the latter work appears in my, recent book, Imagining Karma: Ethical Transformation in Amerindian, Buddhist and Greek Rebirth (University of California Press, 2002). In it I mention that the kinds of proper conduct between husband and wife and so forth that Bhikkhu Dhammavihara recounts is not unique to Buddhism or for that matter Christianity because similar values are found in the simplest of tribal societies the world over, sometimes even more strictly enforced than in the so-called historical religions.

No human society, however small in scale, can function without moral norms that govern human relationships, such as those pertaining to domestic responsibilities and fidelity at marriage. In this recent book I point out that Buddhism is a radically ethical religion such that moral and immoral acts become religiously right or wrong acts, producing bad karma-and affecting one’s rebirth and eventual salvation. This is quite unlike the situation in tribal societies and to some extent in early forms of Greek rebirth where the secular morality is not articulated to a doctrine of salvation. Moreover, Buddhism is not a theistic religion and therefore the moral norms embodied in the Five Precepts are not Coirnandments, injunctions given by God, the violation of which leads to an alienation from Him. Buddhist precepts do not contain a "categorical imperative" of the Kantian variety either; and they are carefully formulated such that "the moral codes of the local community could be incorporated within the percepts and given Buddhist meaning."

"Historically viewed, the Five Precepts showed a Buddhist tolerance for the values of the local community, which could, without too much conflict, be incorporated into the precepts. This in turn led to the spread of Buddhism, among people with different moral codes, such that one found Buddhism existing in easy harmony with, for example, polygyny [multiple wives] and polyandry [multiple husbands]. In some key texts a courtesan like Ambapali is accepted without negative moral criticism or judgment... This did not mean that Buddhist values had no impact on social groups. The injunction on ahimsa, or nonviolence, was particularly effective in the near elimination of animal sacrifices, helping in the long run to absorb hunting communities into pastoralism and agriculture." (p. 141)

If Buddhists want to develop a sacramental form of religion it is up to them to do so and the Venerable Dhammavihara is not alone in this regard. Take the case of marriage. Prior to the colonial period, especially the British advent, marriage was entirely a non-religious, non-sacramental affair. All the sociological evidence suggests that most ordinary people simply took a wife without any religious ceremony whatever, but with the consent of both sides and with much secular feasting. Divorce also was by mutual consent and its frequency has been noted even in modern times among those who opt-for Kandyan marriage or in common law marriage. Among some there was simply engage the ceremony of the poruva; but this too was a simple affair though aristocratic families certainly had elaborate ones.

The poruva is the flat board generally made of jak (a milk oozing tree or kiri gaha) and used in smoothening the paddy field after it has been cleared and ploughed; it is the preparatory act prior to the sowing of the seed. In older poruva ceremonies this very board was used with a cloth placed over it and some paddy sprinkled around it. The rich fertility significance of the sowing of the seed after the marriage is emphasized.

The act of legitimate marriage itself is simple: the bride’s maternal uncle or a stand-in for the uncle, gives away the bride after some very basic and important acts, like the mutual feeding by the bride and groom; the groom giving the bride a cloth, symbolically suggesting his support of her; the right circumambulation of the poruva; the tying of the little fingers of the’ groom and bride by the maternal uncle and a few other richly symbolic acts. None of these acts have the slightest religious significance.

Calvinist values

Several crucial changes in the colonial period transformed the simple meaning of the older marriage. First, there formalization in the Sinhala low country of the ghastly custom of inspecting the wedding sheet for the virginity test. This custom was well known in some southern Mediterranean nations in the 16th century and I suspect that the Sinhala practice was derived from Portuguese influence, but this is only a guess. What we do know is there is not an iota of evidence that this custom existed prior to colonialism; it still is not adopted by those marrying according to Kandyan law.

Second, after the late 19th century several other changes occurred in the low country. There was the implementation of the rigid Roman Dutch law of marriage in the courts, a law that was seeped in Calvinist values and patriarchal authority. The flexibility of the older norms of marriage and divorce was effectively undermined by this time. Along with this there was the challenge of the Christian missions and we now know that the Buddhists, like other colonized people, met this challenge by adopting those very missionary values, particularly those that dealt with sexuality and marriage. There was no way that Buddhists would Christianize their marriage ceremonies but under the missionary challenge they went some ways to "sacramentalize" their marriage by inventing new traditions. One was the introduction of Pali slokas known as mangala ashtakas, very high faluting utterances, giving an aura of profundity to the ceremony. The other was the introduction of the virginal girls, dressed in white reciting in Pali the triumphs of the Buddha, especially those over Mara or Death. This last event has come to stay and, whether we like it or not, it will continue as an intrinsic part of a Buddhist marriage ceremony.

The older mangala ashtakas with their sonorous and high sounding quality are hardly used today. Instead, what we have is an ubiquitous person, a kind of lay officiator (without a designation as yet) who comes in virtually every low country marriage and those marriages performed in hotels and reception halls and where he performs rituals on behalf of the two families. The role of the maternal uncle has become vestigial at best. The new officiators, mostly ex-dancers or exorcists or kapuralas, have taken over a kind of priestly role and it is they who now conduct what seems like a religious ceremony acting very much like an imagined Brahmin. They still utter something they call ashtakas of which neither they nor the audience know the meaning.

Sinhala Buddhist marriage

Often the invocations of the officiators are prefaced with, a statement to say that they are practising an old traditional Sinhala Buddhist marriage ceremony (even though invented only fifty or so years back at most). ‘Almost always the officiator invokes the Buddha; and almost all of them mention the ideal marriage of Prince Siddhartha with Yasodhara, something quite inappropriate to a marriage ceremony since the Buddha left his wife and child for the radical act of renouncing domestic life (and incidentally turning his back on Brahmanic values that gave those values salvific primacy). In several marriage ceremonies I have witnessed some officiators even mention the great penultimate life of the Buddha as Vessantara. Anything more inappropriate to a wedding could scarcely be invented because Vessantara gave away his wife and children to a greedy Brahmin, sacrificing those near and dear to him in order to extol the supreme value of renunciation. It is no accident that this painful and moving episode was sung traditionally ‘not at weddings, but at the funeral wake."

The upshot of the preceding argument is that those augment is that those officiators who are inventing new traditions are not very educated, quite unlike their counterparts in Christianity and Hinduism. I have interviewed several of them and find them thoroughly decent and likeable individuals, trying like most other people to make a legitimate living in changed cultural conditions and difficult economic times. Yet, unless contemporary Buddhist intellectuals wake up and invent joyful ceremonials of marriage consonant with the secular traditions of Buddhism, they are going to be saddled with rites that are sometimes anachronistic,. Sometimes plainly ridiculous. But worse: I have the feeling that monks will eventually displace the not - so — officiators and, adopting the role of Brahmins will in time produce a sacramental Buddhism. I can only hope that this prophecy will turn out to be wrong.

Canada admits ‘unintended offence’ to Buddhist monks

COLOMBO, Oct 30 (AFP) - Canada’s mission in Sri Lanka Saturday said it may have caused "unintended offence" in dealing with an anthrax scare that led to the disrobing and dunking of three Buddhist monks.

"The High Commission deeply regrets that responsible measures taken to ensure the health and safety of all those involved in a potentially hazardous situation may have caused unintended offence," a statement said.

The anthrax scare was sparked following the discovery of powder in a passport of a Buddhist monk who went to the mission Monday in the company of two other monks.

The Sri Lankan government has protested to Canada over the treatment of the monks who said they were forced to disrobe and shower after embassy staff held them inside the diplomatic compound against their will for several hours.

However, the Canadian statement said the monks had "willingly agreed to comply with our security protocols and thus were provided a private changing facility with private shower along with new robes."

The National Heritage Party (NHP), which has nine Buddhist monk legislators in parliament, said the Canadian statement was totally misleading and it tried to make out that the monks had willing subjected them to the "torture."

"This is like saying that a rape victim was a willing partner to the act," NHP spokesman Udaya Gammanpila said.

"The High Commission has also sent us a letter saying that monks agreed to the disrobing and shower, but the three monks concerned have clearly denied that position of the Canadians."

The Canadian statement came as the three monks, one Sri Lankan and two Bangladeshis studying in the island, broke their silence and described their ordeal saying that the two Bangladeshi monks were forced into a pool and deprived of food.

The monks said they told Canadian staff that they had simply sprinkled some "baby talcum powder" to prevent silverfish attacking a passport.

"If they were so suspicious, we were ready to inhale the powder. We were even ready to eat it," a monk said.

Police said the diplomatic mission had held the monks virtually prisoner and denied them access to a telephone, even to inform their colleagues about their plight.

Canadian mission to reopen amid protests over disrobing monks

COLOMBO - Canada’s mission in Sri Lanka is to re-open, a week after an anthrax scare sparked a diplomatic crisis which deepened Friday after Buddhist monks described how they were forced to strip.

The Canadian High Commission told callers that visa applications could be lodged from Monday as three monks broke their silence and said they were forced to strip and bathe at the diplomatic compound.

Sri Lanka’s main opposition United National Party (UNP) Friday joined the chorus of protests against Canada’s treatment of the clergy, accusing the government of not taking action against the diplomats responsible.

`ECThe government must take decisive action to ensure that this sort of thing does not happen again," a party spokesman said.

"We also ask the Canadians to hold an internal inquiry and discipline the officers who mistreated the monks."

Ports, Aviation and Media Minister Mangala Samaraweera said Colombo viewed the incident with serious concern and had lodged a formal protest with the Canadian mission.

The three monks, one Sri Lankan and two Bangladeshis studying in the island, visited the mission Monday to obtain visas. But police said talcum powder in one passport caused diplomats to panic and seize all of them.

The monks had earlier refused to comment on their ordeal and the two foreigners were thought to be Thais.

However, the monks told the Sinhalese language Divaina newspaper that Canadian staff forced them to violate Buddhist traditions by stripping them and forcing them into a bath. Even while bathing monks must have a saffron cloth on them.

The two Bangladeshi monks, identified as Sugathananda and Ajithananda, said embassy staff also prevented them from having their lunch which they are required to take before noon.

"We told them that if we forgo lunch, we cannot have any meal till the next morning, but they were not interested in anything we told them," one of the monks told the paper. "They wanted us to strip and get into a pool."

The monks rejected a statement from the spokeswoman of the Department of Foreign Affairs in Ottawa, Kimberly Phillips, who said they had been offered a separate changing facility with a private shower stall.

"Only the Sri Lankan monk accompanying us was allowed a shower stall while the two of us were humiliated and asked to get into a public pool," the two Bangladeshi monks said, adding that they were forced against their will.

Police said the monks were made to disrobe and the passports and robes were sent for forensic tests which officials here Friday said turned out to be negative.

The monks said they told Canadian staff that they had simply sprinkled some "baby talcum powder" to prevent silverfish attacking a passport.

"If they were so suspicious, we were ready to inhale the powder. We were even ready to eat it," a monk said.

There has been no statement from the Canadian mission here but Phillips insisted that Colombo police reports were "completely erroneous".

"New robes were purchased for them so they could leave their potentially contaminated robes behind," she said.

The National Heritage Party, which has nine Buddhist monk legislators in parliament, said Ottawa’s denial was confirmation of the ordeal the monks were put through.

"We are arranging a demonstration outside the Canadian High Commission," said spokesman Udaya Gammanpila. "We are waiting for them to re-open."

Police said the diplomatic mission had held the monks virtually prisoner and denied them access to a telephone, even to inform their colleagues about their plight.

Bhikkhu’s odyssey on the Buddhist path by Vijaya Jayasuriya

According to Buddhism the journey of being in the vortex of Samsara is full of trials and tribulations. No man’s — or animals’s for that matter – life is devoid of suffering, although we through our abysmal ignorance tend to imagine that we can be happy if we amass material wealth.

‘Thumpanen Americavata’ (From Thumpane to America) — The autobiography of Ven. Dr. Henepola Gunarathana (Ven. H. G.) the chief priest of USA and Canada and the abbot of the West Virginia Meditation Centre is indeed a miniature (though running into a thick volume of 400 odd pages) example of this journey of Samsara, full of misery and despair right from his humble beginnings as a little novice in a village temple up to the present dizzy heights as a spiritual leader of an ever-expanding Buddhist community in the US. The book happens to be an unprecedented kind of chronicle in many ways: The incredible sincerity of narration, amazingly thrilling events and episodes and most of all the extra-orinarily lucid Sinhala diction that can only be expected from a savant with his roots running deep into the rustic backwoods of a Sri Lankan village.

What Ven. H. G. reiterates in the preface to the book is that no end of troubles he has been called upon to undergo were symbolic of our gruelling journey through Samsara. He states that his object in presenting these episodes in this book has been to illustrate how the phenomenon of ‘kamma’ operates in order to bring about either suffering or otherwise of human life. He urges the reader not to misinterpret his expatiating upon many things as an egoistic exercise, yet it turns out as we read on that the tone of the writer has been quite the opposite — that of one nurtured by the edifying influence of Buddhist philosophy who is extremely frank and outspoken and also has no qualms about talking openly of even one’s most ignominious defeats.

An episode towards the end of the volume amply illustrates this. Here the Buddhist elite domiciled in America convenes a meeting at the Washington Buddhist Vihara where Ven. H. G. was the chief priest. The object of the meeting was to register a protest against Ven. HG’s plans to establish the West Virginia meditation centre. A speaker at this meeting severely castigates the priest for allegedly neglecting the Washington Vihara in his preoccupation with the meditation centre.

This half-hour long broadside was enough reason for any human being to erupt into a fury and react violently. Yet the priest’s response to it was quite the opposite — one following the Buddha’s principles. He writes: If I had said something harsh it would have created a row and would have been a stigma on me and the place too. Instead I recalled the Buddha’s dhamma and generated compassion to all.’

Then the chief priest addresses the gathering and recalls all good things done by the former speaker to the temple and without a word of blame gets them to observe the five precepts and follows up with a chanting of ‘Karaneeya Metta Sutta’ which indeed had been meant by the Lord Buddha to be used by monks to spread compassion on evil spirits who had disturbed their meditation in the jungle! (A fitting repartee to those who opposed setting up of a meditation centre!)

Dr. Gunarathana’s odyssey described in this book amounts to a veritable bridge spanning an incredibly wide chasm between his formative years and the present heights achieved in terms of his mission as well as of his own education. He very humbly confesses that he even feels when contemplating this reality whether he is living in America in a dream.

The beginning was so humble that he reveals it in terms of a host of privations suffered by him ‘Being born to an extremely poor family I hadn’t even seen anything like toys nor had I enjoyed other ordinary comforts like good clothes and books. Almost all my ordained life was lived by alms received into the begging bowl, I had no wealthy or educated relations and so spent years without a red cent in hand...; Quite miraculously, just as he attributes it all to past kamma, his subsequent position was the amazing antithesis — ‘I now travel in the first or the business class on planes with expensive computers in hand... There is no luxury car in this world in which I haven’t travelled — Rolls Royce, Mercedes Benz, BMW, Audi, Porche, Jaguar etc. and also I have travelled in helicopters and most elite liners.

Putting down all his initial suffering to alleviation or cessation evil deeds acquired in past lives is the quintessential mark of the whole autobiography. It is from this standpoint that he considers that all those who inflicted pain and suffering on him were not enemies, but his benefactors who made possible that cessation of kamma. He summarizes all those episodes of suffering in a nutshell in his preface thus. ‘My father beat me up until part of my kamma ended. At Malandeniya temple the chief priest there was good enough to do the same by slapping me and hitting me with canes, broom sticks, rocks, the ‘Buddha puja bowl’, slippers and even legs. Some other kamma were spent by suffering from wounds made by bites of leeches, by nearly drowning in water, felling off trees, being chased away from temples, getting blackguarded etc. etc. I now treat all these people as my friends as they helped end my past evil deeds.

Ven. HG’s suffering begins at home with a father whose love for his children was hidden under a gruff exterior and so often beat them up severely only with the intention of bringing them up well.

‘If the father had loved me outwardly as he did thoroughly inside’ says the priest, ‘I wouldn’t have thought of leaving home’. It was the family’s indigence, father’s vehemence and the proximity of the temple that motivated him to leave home which, however, he believes to be due to a great meritorious deed (kusala kamma) which idea is amply corroborated by the eventual heights he was able to reach in his career as a true disciple of the Buddha. A highly prophetic statement he himself made during his early childhood is interesting in this instance — when he was repeating several English words learnt from his elder brother, the elders asked him why he wanted to learn them and his answer was ‘I will learn this language one day and after getting ordained will preach dhamma in that language.’ This indeed turned out to be reality when he became a leading preacher with a great demand in the international sphere, as the book itself reveals.

His suffering did not end by getting ordained, for the chief priest of Malandeniya temple proved to be a great tormentor of this pupil monks as well as other urchins in the temple. The severity of his corporal punishment he describes with a telling metaphor - compared to the priest’s beating, that of his father had been a mere dessert as against a main meal!

The ordeals Ven. HG was compelled to undergo were perhaps the bitterest any monk has ever happened to suffer. He ran away from the temple three times being unable to tolerate the ill-treatment at the hands of his chief priest, the third time being the most excruciating having to trek all the way from Galagedara on the Kandy-Kurunegala road right up to Anuradhapura - more than a hundred miles on foot!

From the following day after ordination at the age of 14 years Ven. HG had to go round the village with the begging bowl. Poverty-stricken as they were the villagers willingly filled his bowl, yet the hungry stray dogs bit him seven times on these treks. It is a strange coincidence that all these seven dogs died within three days of each incident ‘due to some reason I do not know’ says the author. It is indeed yet another indication of the phenomeno beyond human comprehension that has probably to do with powers related to kamma.

The many adversities Ven. HG was compelled to suffer even after embarking on learning were extraordinary and perhaps represent a profile of similar suffering many such novices in temples can be undergoing in silence. It is when he goes to learn at the Bendiyamulla Pirivena in Gampaha that this phase of his misfortunes begins. (It is on his way to this place while waiting for a train for several hours that he nearly drowns in the river and was extricated by an unknown man running a boutique near the railway station).

At Bendiyamulla pirivena he has no place to stay and so manages to improvise a lodging by covering part of a thatched hall with gunny sacks. He finds his meals, as usual in major part of his life, by begging into the bowl precisely the way the Buddha has prescribed for a true recluse leading a homeless existence. He even manages, as there was no means of lighting at night, electricity being quite out of the question, to study by a clay lamp with coconut oil gained again from begging around. Even his higher ordination (upasampada) is marked by this ever haunting poverty of his early life, having no pomp and pageantry that was associated with others who obtained the higher order together on the same day.

The incident connected with the Kohilawatta temple in Kelaniya while studying at Vidyalankara Pirivena is again an antithesis of the honours he was destined to get in later life. After performing a preaching session before a panel of such calibre as Ven. Walpola Rahula and Ven. Siri Seevali, he was stranded on the road late in the evening as the buses did not stop. (The author comments that Sri Lanka’s bus crews are the worst hoodlums in the world!). After walking six miles he arrives at the riverside late night and being woken up unexpectedly the boy in the temple who paddles the canoe blackguards the young priest in filthy language. His travails were not yet over, not for a long time thereafter too.

Abandoning his fitful pirivena studies he joins an English school in Gampaha now determined to pursue his fervour for a missionary career. This he gains with the kind patronage of Ven. Madihe Pannasiha starting with a stint in India and then proceeding to US where his destiny was to flourish. He exerts himself tremendously to build up the Washington Viharaya sometimes even physically carrying building materials on his shoulder to the temple. The troubles, threats, backbiting and let-downs he has had to suffer in his long crusade have been described in this book in gripping detail that makes extremely interesting reading.

‘Thumpanen Amerikavata’ is a landmark book on two counts: One being an entertaining guide to any priest or layman, particularly to novice monks who sometimes lead a life of extreme difficulties, to take life in one’s stride cheerfully whatever the odds obstructing one’s progress. The second and even more important aspect of the book is that it stands as a beacon to both the clergy and the practising Buddhists to take up, or get encouraged if already taken up, the true Buddhist practice - meditation.

From the very outset in his book Ven. Dr. Gunarathana lays ample stress on his attachment to meditation even when there are inhibitions evinced on such practice by other bhikkhus. There is the very heart-rending experience of the writer engaging in an extremely arduous session of pirith-chanting striving to surpass the sound of drums in a burst of youthful adventure and as a consequence losing his voice and memory power too disastrously causing him to fail in his studies as well. It is by engaging in meditation on the sly when others were fast asleep in the night, that he manages to regain his lost powers proving the validity of this age-old practice of self-improvement. This incident is described in vivid detail of how with each step of meditation regaining of new life inside his skull was gradually experienced. It is therefore quite fitting that the book ends with the very successful establishment of the ‘Bhavana Society Forest Monastery in West Virginia, USA and incidentally, his PhD thesis being Critical Analysis of Jhanas in Theravada Buddhist meditation’.

The driving Bhikku and Derrida by Nalin de Silva

Should a Sinhala Bhikku be allowed to drive a motor vehicle? On this Vap full moon day it could be a good question to ponder. If the Bhikkus are allowed to drive very soon we would have Bhikkus driving their vehicles to Bana not only on full moon days but on other days as well. In any event, who has the authority to decide whether a Sinhala Bhikku could drive, the commissioner in charge of registration of motor vehicles, the Mahanayaka Thera and the Karaka Sabha of the respective Nikaya or somebody else?

What are the human rights of a Sinhala Bhikku? Can a Sinhala Bhikku get married either according to Roman Dutch Law and the human rights associated with it or according to the "Kandyan" Law? One knows that a Sinhala Bhikku cannot get married invoking the Muslim Law, as a Sinhala Bhikku is not a Muslim. If he wants to make himself qualified to marry under the Muslim Law he should first become a Muslim. Then he ceases to become a Buddhist, let alone a Bhikku, and in such an eventuality it is not a Sinhala Bhikku who is getting married. Though the Muslim Law is not applicable in the case of Buddhists in general and Bhikkus in particular, the Roman Dutch Law, which cannot be described as a Buddhist Law by any stretch of imagination, is dominating not only the lives of the Buddhists but the Sinhala Bhikkus as well.

Do the Sinhala Buddhists become unbuddhistic and cease to be Buddhists, as in the case of a Sinhala Bhikku marrying under the Muslim Law, when they are forced to marry under the Roman Dutch Law? In general do they become unbuddhistic when they are forced to abide by the Roman Dutch Law?

Are there any absolute human rights?

As we are in the midst of discussing relativity of knowledge we could briefly discuss the question of human rights. Are there any absolute human rights as such? Who is this human referred to in respect of human rights? Is this "human" an abstract man? If it is so why not an abstract woman? Or does the word "human" refer to an abstract human being irrespective of the gender? Is this human a western Christian, a Sinhala Buddhist or an Arab Muslim? Would anybody say that the "human" does not have a religion? Does this human have a culture? Is he/she acultural? Is there an acultural culture and that the so-called aculture is nothing but the western Christian culture or at most the western Catholic culture?

Why not deconstruct the acultural culture and the abstract human being and others associated with it? Do the Sinhala Buddhists also have to deconstruct all these following trendy "philosophies" of the west.

When it is understood that knowledge is relative to the culture, sense organs and the mind it could be easily seen that what goes for deconstruction, a la Dr. Derrida, is only a very special case of the relativity we have been talking. In fact, (It should be remembered that there are no objective facts and that the facts are not sacred. A fact becomes a fact only with respect to a "theory" or a point of view and that the facts, theories etc., are supposed to form a consistent whole.), Dr. Derrida himself has become a "great" philosopher only relative to the Anglo Saxon philosophies and is not considered as a "great" in the Sinhala Buddhist tradition in spite of the so-called postmodernists, writing in Sinhala, who have tried to make a big issue out of his philosophical theories, for the simple reason that the Sinhala Buddhists have much more deeper relativistic epistemologies.

Dr. Derrida is much more recognised in the Anglo Saxon world than even in his French (Algerian or otherwise) culture as the Anglo Saxons who have not produced "great" philosophers-they could only hire philosophers-saw a significant contribution from the philosopher, especially in the field of literary criticism.

Dr. Derrida talks of binary oppositions as if they are absolutes. He has shown that among the binary oppositions one of the pair is considered to be the important member. For example, white is the dominant when compared with black, the same goes for man in respect of woman. However are the binary oppositions absolute? Dr. Derrida though trying to expose the repression in the western societies through binary oppositions with one of the pairs dominating the other, seems to have assumed that binary oppositions have to be considered in deconstructing theories, as if binary oppositions were essential for any culture.

However, what Dr. Derrida assumed is not discussed, or in other words, he himself has to be deconstructed. Dr. Derrida exposed the hierarchial relationship between members of pairs of binary oppositions. It may be that the westerners, especially the Anglo Saxons were not aware of this hierarchial relationship, until Dr. Derrida drew their attention to it and deconstructed.

To the surface...

Dr. Derrida’s deconstruction only brings to the surface certain underlying assumptions in "theories", and knowledge in general. However, this exercise itself does not take place in a vacuum. Dr. Derrida was only improving a theory of knowledge that has an appeal to modernity that began in Europe around the fifteenth century.

If one were to pinpoint the essence of modernity, one could say that modernity emphasised the importance of the "individual" (not the abstract) in a society. However, this is a contradiction in modernity, theories as constructed in an abstract way and hence, in theoretical conceptualisations the abstract individual becomes significant. In terms of binary oppositions it could be said that until about the fifteenth century the society, in the pair of oppositions individual/society, dominated but after that the individual began to come into prominence.

This change from society to individual is essentially a phenomenon associated with modernity and its Chinthanaya, namely the Greek, Judaic Christian (GJC) Chinthanaya. This Chinthanaya itself was created and improved after the fifteenth century. As such the "individual" (abstract) referred to here is not a Sinhala Buddhist or an Arab Muslim but an abstract western Christian. The GJC Chinthanaya is different from the Catholic Chinthanaya that emphasised the importance of the society in the binary relationship or the opposition between the individual and the society.

The deconstructionist, Dr. Derrida was only going along the lines as dictated by modernity. Though he was called a postmodernist, there was no postmodernity in his thinking, for without a postmodernity it is not possible to have postmodernist thinking.

All the so-called postmodernists are modernists with a theory of postmodernism. It is possible to create theories on non-existing phenomena and the postmodernists are only busy constructing (deconstructing) such theories. When the postmodernists say that the author is dead it only implies that there is no author writing for a society as such. There are no passive individuals in a society who try to "understand collectively" what the author has said absolutely.

No absolutism in modernity

There is no absolutism in modernity as in the medieval world associated with the Catholic Chinthanaya. (However, in constructing general theories one cannot avoid absolutes). When one of the greatest minds of modernity, Dr. Einstein said that he has a personal God, he had declared that the God was dead. It is a case of privatising the God and the author, and in the process killing the God and the author, and the individuals themselves interpreting or creating the God and the author for themselves. The individuals interpreting the text create a different text thus they themselves becoming the authors. There is no authour but authors. After all modernity is about privatisation and individual lives, capitalism being its economic mode.

The Anglo Saxons who are the most modern men and women in the world would grab the ideas of Dr. Derrida and others with both hands while the French themselves are not very keen with the so-called postmodernist ideas. In certain ways both the French and the Germans still live in the pre modernist world with a sprinkling of ideas in the Catholic Chinthanaya. The so-called mystic philosophers in Germany, mystic in the eyes of the Anglo Saxon philosophers, are creations of the Catholic Chintanaya and that includes both Hegel and Marx to a large extent.

Dr. Derrida, though French, like the Italian Physicist Galileo, who lived about three hundred years before him, was contributing to the culture of the Anglo Saxons, going against the culture to which he was born. Though some Anglo Saxons have misgivings about "postmodernist" writings, when they realise that postmodernity is nothing but modernity, they would also fall in line with the "postmodernists" in the Anglo Saxon world.

Modernity is an evolving process and for more than five centuries it has been gradually changing. Though Dr. Einstein talked about a personal God, in another context he believed in the pre Christian absolute God of the Jews and the Catholics when he said that "the God does not play dice" referring to the Copenhagen interpretation of Quantum Physics. As we had observed, in constructing general theories which is a hallmark of abstract thinking that goes with GJC Chinthanaya, one has to resort to abstract concepts.

Contradictions unavoidable

Dr. Derrida was on the side of the individual in the individual/society relationship. However, in the final analysis this individual when abstracted becomes the Anglo Saxon Christian individual. This contradiction between the oppositions concrete and abstract is unavoidable in modernity, and what is more Dr. Derrida talked as if the binary oppositions were absolute. We have to remember that binary oppositions arise as a result of Aristotelian logic that was not discarded by Dr. Derrida though he emphasised that the westerners were more or less obsessed with binary oppositions.

Now what is the relevance of the above to the driving Bhikkus? It appears that some people tend to think that it is a human right of an individual to apply and obtain a driving license. However, it is not the case. One may apply for a driving license but it is the commissioner who finally decides, within the ambit of the law that prevails in the country, whether one should be issued with a license or not. In any event who is this individual who has the right to apply for a driving license? It is in general (abstract concept) a person who is a citizen of the country and who is above a certain age. (Non citizens also can apply under certain conditions) It is evident that the kids do not have this right as law has deprived them of the right. This also implies that the "law" can deprive certain rights to certain groups of people.

For example, recently the democratic France decided that the Muslim schoolgirls did not have the right to wear their cultural dress to schools. The French prohibited wearing of all cultural dresses as if there were acultural dresses that people could wear. They forgot that the dress worn by the French women was their cultural outfit and that even wearing nothing was not dissociated from French culture. What is called acultural is the western culture which is the "default" culture.

There are rights decided by groups for members of the groups and what is happening is that the "human" rights as determined by the west have been forced on the other groups also as their rights. When one becomes a Bhikku one has to abide by the responsibilities and duties of the group of Bhikkus as decided by them. A Bhikku has to forego certain rights enjoyed by the other groups and the abstract concept of human rights become meaningless in the society of Bhikkus.

After all, Sangha means a group and the concept of Sangha is not in harmony with the concept of a concrete individual that modernity thinks that it cherishes. In theory modernity cherishes the concept of the concrete individual but in practice it does not, as the theory of an abstract individual goes against the concrete individual.

The rights and duties of the members of one group need not be the same as those of members of another group. There may be groups who do not and do not want to have the concept of the rights. Is it a right of a group of people not to have the concept of right? This question has no answer as it leads to a paradox within Aristotelian logic, but then why should we be obsessed with that logic simply because the westerners cannot escape from it.

No rights, but duties

and responsibilities

In Sinhala Buddhist society there were no rights as such. What we had were duties and responsibilities (yuthukam ha vagakeem) as exemplified in the Sigalovada Suthra. Whether a Bhikku could drive should be decided by the Mahanayake Thera and the Karaka Sabha of the relevant Nikaya and once the Nikaya takes a decision and informs the Commissioner he has to act accordingly.

In the Vinaya Pitaka, one may not find anything on Bhikkus driving motor vehicles as there were no vehicles in Buddha’s time, but I am sure that the present day Nikaya Theras are capable of deciding either in favour or against Bhikkus driving motor vehicles without referring to the so-called human rights which are nothing but the rights of an abstract white Anglo Saxon Protestant male in USA/UK.