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.
