Warriers of Buddhism, Buddhism and politics in Sri Lanka
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By: Chandrarathna Bandara.
Translated by: Kithsiri Dissanayake.
Buddhism in Sri Lanka cannot be identified only as a religion of the society but also has brought many cultural values to the country over the centuries. In spite of the peaceful nature and teachings of Buddhism, it has contributed in a great deal to improve the humanity among the nation. The Buddha statues, giant stupas and frescoes were drawn on ancient temples is unique to Sri Lanka comparing to many other nations and able to deliver a beautiful message that anyone can appreciate. The historical and cultural magnificence in Sri Lanka is appreciated by many religious and ethnic groups in the country.
Buddhism thoroughly refuses the greed, hatred and delusion. During the Lord Buddha’s time, there were hundreds of followers who participated in discussions with him in Madya Pradesh, India where Buddha was resided at a time. Before he became enlightened, Bodhisathwa, went to see two monks, Alarakalama and Uddakarama to study two different perspectives of dhamma from them. In addition he learned dhamma from “paswaga mahanun”. At the end Bodhisathwa realized that many aspects of the Buddhism he learned from others are not quite the “middle path” and finally decided to stay on the “middle path” and gain a complete understanding about the life and world and earned the enlightenment.
During the Lord Buddha’s time, another great religious leader named Jaina Maha Weera was preaching about peace and harmony and he also had a number of followers who believed in him even as of today in India. Jaina Maha Weera was born in to the Koliya cast while lord buddha born to Shakya cast and Jaina Maha Weera was preached the religion with a deeper meaning just as Lord Budhda.
One of the greatest preaching of Lord Buddha’s was to respect one another. Even though Jaina Maha Weera’s preaching and religion was different from Buddhism, Lord Buddha had a great respect for him. Lord Buddha was proceeding to Kimbulwathpura with his followers on a narrow road in a rural area and encountered Jaina Maha Weera heading towards him with his followers on the same road. At their meeting on this narrow road, the Lord Buddha’s prime follower Ven. Ananda Thero (Before he has gained the Arahath status)suggested his crowd not to move aside from the road giving space to Jaina maha Weera to pass along. But Lord Buddha requested his followers to move to a side of the road enhancing Jaina Maha weera to proceed explaining the value of Jaina Maha Weera’s calmness and splendor teachings. Therefore it was clearly understood that Lord Buddha had concessionary and patience as well as a great respect towards others. Also in another occasion, Jaina Maha weera came to Jethawanaramaya temple to meet Lord Buddha and Lord Buddha came out to welcome Jaina Maha Weera instead of sitting inside and waiting for him. At the end of their friendly discussion Lord Buddha walked with Jaina Maha Weera and escorted him to the temple gate.
Though Lord Buddha had many faithful followers, whole countrymen in India did not become Buddhists; there were followers of many religious leaders were available around all parts of India. A great characteristic of Lord Buddha was that he never criticized other religions and requested people to believe only if they can really understand the certainty of his teachings.
In a different occasion Lord Buddha was on the way to Kosolwatha ( another kingdom in Inda) and Kalama from the village Kesaputta, asked Lord Buddha,
There are many other priests from various teachings who visit Kesaputta always trying to boast and explain the value of their own religion and thoroughly criticize other religions, therefore we have a doubt which priest tell truth and which one is not?”.
Lord Buddha simply explained to them saying,” Kalama its normal for you to have doubts about which is right and which is wrong. You don’t want to believe things because you were born with certain family traditions ,or your ancestors and family followed a particular religion for generations, or because of those teachings were in sacred books.
Also you don’t want to believe things in respect of your teachers. Once you, yourself understand the rights and wrongs, its your own responsibility to follow the right path.”
Buddhism is a philosophy based on teachings of peace and calmness and its crucial to understand it logically.Hence anyone can follow it in free spirtied mind should recognize as a philosophy instead of a principle.
Lord Buddha has spent all his life spreading his teaching to his followers, to Bhikku society.He involved the Bikkhus in his broad discussions about the Buddhism.
According to preliminary Buddhist sources, Lord Buddha has never visited any other country or he never left Madhya Pradesh. Literature of early history has never mentioned about his visit to any other countries away from India. Archeologist Dr.Senarath paranawitharana has explained that there are no evidence to prove that Lord Buddha has visited Sri Lanka. But many nationalist movements of Sri Lanka always try to state that Lord Buddha has visited Sri Lanka three times during his life time. They further say that during his three visits Lord Buddha has devoted Buddhism to Sinhala community.
Unfortunately, the nationalism in Sri Lanka was based on this myth, therefore nationalists tend to say that Sri Lanka belongs only to Sinhala community and other ethnic groups should not be in the country.
Understanding the life of Bodhisattva explains that he was born with all luxurious materials and he had close connections with universal kings. He had no requirement or desire to donate his religion to any country or his own country India where he was born, enlightened and beatitude. Therefore its understandable that he did not present the Buddhism to Sri Lanka which he had no connections at all. In addition, no where in Thripitakaya ( Cannon) has mentioned about Lord Buddha’s visitation and any discourse done in Sri Lanka. These factors should be studied carefully and take into consideration carefully by the people who has concerns about these issues.
Majority of the Sri Lanka’s population is Buddhist and political leaders are who are in power try to safeguard their political powers and greed by disseminating that they are devoted to protect their religion and the community. It’s a pure delusion created by the politicians to mislead their own country people and these leaders are actually follow and practice exorcism acts based on Hinduism.
Its unfortunate that there are no genuine politicians or leaders in Sri Lanka today who can address the people with knowledge and facts instead of addressing their hearts. Because of this reason country’s culture and religion has been destroyed unaccountably with many misinterpretations.
The brutality and corruption of Sri Lankan politicians has increased without control for many decades. They get their soiled hands on
every sacred components in the country and do not respect every religion sacredly. That behavior plundered the great Buddhism in Sri Lanka.
Interference of politics and religion in ruling a country devastated the Christianity during the Medial era and has been well understood by those particular nations. They realized that establishments of National governments will never allow the combination of politics and religion. The proverb “Things belongs to Julius are for Julius and Things of God are for God” created thereafter.
This separation is one of the evident factors in the development of Western countries and still controls the internal governance in affirmative manner.
India follows this model and the Indian government completely avoids religious interference with politics. They determined this theme since there freedom struggle and truthfully attend to explore it to the whole nation.
The victory of Freedom struggle was based on the cooperation of the people from various nations and religions. There were Hindus , Muslims, Brahmas who have vast differences and opinions in many aspects but joined hands to win as under Flag of revolution to create one country.
Mahatma Gandhi used the combination of nations and religions to develop the Indian nation incorporating Jawaharlal Nehru’s modern thinking. Indian leaders had an expanded knowledge for forecasting the new India after Independence.
As such, India has not only gained the victory from the colonialism but also the victory from conservative suffering they had in the past.
They developed the constitution to avoid previously persisted uncountable cast and religious dissimilarities. Hon. Ambedagar was from the lowest cast named by Indians was the creator of this constitution.
All Indian leaders who played a great role in freedom struggle strongly recognized the religious and cast based problems and the modern development. And same leaders began to rule the regime after freedom. Therefore India became non religious government.
Comparatively, India is a great nation which created religious leaders such as Lord Buddha or Jaina Maha Weera , Rama, Laxman who were great to Hindus and many other spiritual leaders were believed by Indians. Even with a great religious impact in the country the political leaders were able to create the constitution without any religion focused acts. It explains that the government would not focus to develop religions.
Even today there are many spiritual leaders exist in India and they also have millions of followers as well. The government does not donate or encourage them and they are not supported by public properties to carry on their religious acts. But in an event of any conflict occurred within any religion or between different religions, the government takes measures to activate law and order to control those.
In 1991 a Mosque called Babri Masjid situated in Ayodhya-Uttara Pradesh has been demolished by Hindu extremists. They were influenced by the leading political party Bharathieya janatha party. The explained reason for demolish was that Hindu extremists believe that there was a Hindu Rama temple was existed in the same place long before the Mosque was built.
Immediately after this incident, prime minister Narasimha Rao addressed the nation and said,” I am a Hindu follower and majority of Indians are also Hindus. But India as a government is unbiased and do not favor any religion. Therefore, this incident is not accepted though they are Hindus. Therefore the legal actions will be taken against the team who destroyed the Mosque”.
Similar incident occurred in Sri Lanka during this year and in the past year as well. There was a ceremony of goat immolate in a Kali Amma Kovil in Chilaw which has been practiced for centuries as a tradition. Unlike Prime Minister of India Sri Lankan Buddhist political party and Minister Dr. Mervyn Silva involved in this religious event and sabotaged the ceremony. There we can consider that situation separately.
This kind of immolate ceremonies are not accepted and appreciated in Buddhist philosophy or by Buddhists. But according to Hindu religion they don’t believe its wrong or as a sin. Therefore in the perspective of Buddhists they see these traditions are immoral. Buddhist political party (Hela Urumaya) and prominent cracker of whip in Political Buddhism believe that in Sri Lanka these Hindu traditions shouldn’t be practiced.
In Canada and other countries where Hindus live have Kali Kovils (temples) as Sri Lanka, but they do not practice immolating ceremonies because those governments have announced firm regulations and acts to avoid hurting or killing animals. Therefore, the people who practice animal torture in the name of religion or any other purpose are identified as criminals and are punished by the law. These governments do not cater or favor any religion differently and do not interfere with the religions as well. Those governments’ best interest is their own community and given the priority for the welfare of their own residents.
There is a Kovil (Vishnu temple) situated nearby London and a sacred bull was there as thousands of Hindu devotees visit there often to worship this bull because it represented the transport (vehicle) of Lord Vishnu. Devotees had believed that this bull is a possession of God. Unfortunately even with its super powers the bull got sick with kind of anthrax which is a communicable disease for cattle. Therefore, the Municipal Council of London was preparing to kill the bull to avoid spread of the disease. Against the Municipal Council’s decision, board of control of the Kovil attends to legal action to protect their sacred bull from getting killed. The protesters view of point was that by killing the bull, the country’s freedom to follow any religion will be destroyed. Against the temple’s protest, the Supreme Court of London ordered to kill the bull and the court report was 1778 pages long. According the report, it states that by killing the diseased the bull, the freedom to follow a religion will not be ruined.
Goat immolate ceremony in Munneshwaram Temple is not accepted by most developed communities. Therefore the government should create regulations and acts to protect the animals as a animal welfare fact instead of connecting the Buddhism to this matter.
Truth in any religion is comparative. Its comparison exists in individuals in each and other religion. Therefore, governments cannot follow those religious regulations as it has to cater every person in the country equally as humans.
The Sri Lankan government is run with the people’s tax money and loans from the IMF, World Bank and funds from other developed countries. The funds should be invested to develop the country instead of spending on one particular religion. The taxes are collected from everyone in the country in spite of what ethnicity or religion they practice.
During the Medial era government and religion were bonded together and it was the most brutal chapter of political autonomy of such countries. Many murders were taken place among the people from same religious believers and also between different religions. These killings were completely contradictory with Lord Buddha’s teachings of spreading peace and harmony among the humans, but people use it as an example of creating discipline among the society. For centuries these acts were being practiced but at the end of two wars and many social conflicts, religion and government were separated from each other.
From that transformation value of the person has been converted from faithful person to common person.
The main responsibility of the government is the welfare of its own people. It is exclusive and cannot be transferred to
any institute or to any person. Otherwise it shows that the government has failed its duties.
When Buddhist extremists demolish a mosque which innocent Muslims go an attend to their religious matters disturbing the peace definitely characterizes a failed government.
Animals collected for a religious donation were taken forcefully by a cabinet minister and no one in the cabinet questions about it is a clear state of a failed government. If a government do not take actions to implement rules and regulations to stop animal violence for the sake of respectable peoples’ positive attitudes against violence, that government is a failure.
If we consider the damage occurred to Sri Lanka due to amalgamation of the Buddhism with government and political matters it is obvious that it has created a negative environment in the whole country.
Historical stories, fictions and tales mixed with real history were told and retold by many nations to garnish their history. Seuz, the Greek God of the Sky who carries the world, God of Water, God of Fire and God who can travel with time were mentioned in the Greek history. Those stories bring a beauty to the particular culture and nation and are accepted only as fictions and are enjoyed by today’s modern world because of the fascinating feature of these fictions. At the same time its not necessary and should not conduct any serious research about those stories by anyone.
King Dutugemunu was one of the most powerful historical kings in Sri Lanka and renowned for defeating King Elara who was a Tamil prince.
When the King Elara and his warriors were killed by Dutugemunu during war, he felt sad. Arahath monks told him that he should not worry because he killed only “one and half men”. Which means, one person followed only Three Refuges of Buddha and he is a “half person” and another one who followed Three Refuges and Five Precepts is “one person’. Therefore King Dutugemunu killed only one and a half person during that war and the rest of the people were killed are similar to animals. All the other who died from him are similar to animals.
A person who gained Arahath has given up the love for existence and reached to the highest level of non-violence hence someone at that state accepting the killings of people were hard to believe.
Its believed that Mahawansa ,the manuscript of history of Sri Lanka has been documented by a monk who was devoted to Buddhism. Therefore we can understand as a monk his level of knowledge about Buddhism is weak.
These kinds of stories should be come under fallacy stories- myths and do not bring any splendor to country’s history besides bringing up the brutality of a nation.
Other nations do not accept these stories as a part of their history. But what we Sinhala people do? We use these mythical incidents to hurt Tamils and create ethnic problems which were really developed due to political and economical constraints. Presenting Buddhism to Sinhala nation to take care of Buddhism by Lord Buddha is also similar to this myth.
In many chapters of Mahawansa we can find that many kings who ruled Sri Lanka had given priority and contributed to Buddhism. It can be truthful because during those days it was a dominant character of many societies in the world and was the situation in the world during that era. But when the development emerged, freedom of humans and public benefaction were understood as essential for people the combined ruling power of religion and political sector had been heaved away.
Higher-ordination of monks was assumed as a great achievement during regaining of Sri Lankan Buddhism, and restated in Kandiyan era. This program was done by Reverend Welivita Sri Saranangkara under patronage of Kandyan king Sri Wickrama Rajasinghe. Reverend Saranankara brought higher –ordination from Thailand (Siam). In the past many followers of Buddhism from various casts were accepted to be ordained as Buddhist monks. But after restructuring the Higher-ordination, the situation had been changed. Most Buddhists who were from Farmesr cast (govi-kula) who were biased to King Keerthi Sri Rajasinghe and his officers were recommended to get higher-ordination. Rev. Welivita Saranankara and all Siam chapter Buddhist priests followed king’s orders.
Lord Buddha accepted low cast children who suffered from social troubles and allowed them to be monks and leading their way to arahath, but in Sri Lanka in the year 1746 it has only been provided to Buddhists from the Govigama cast.
People from other casts who were developing in sociologically and economically wanted to be ordained in Sri Lanka. But were frustrated with the above situation. Therefore they decided to go to Myanmar ( Burma) and got ordained and initiated the Amarapura Nikaya ( Amarapura Chapter) in Sri Lanka.
Eventually within the Amarapura Nikaya there were partitions as Durawe, Karawe and Salagama casts.
Thereafter these three casts originated three sub chapters as Maha Dharma Rakshitha, Sadhdhamma Wangika and Sadhdhamma Yukthika.
There were so many conflicts among these groups and they avoided participating religious occasions together.
Most of the regimental powers of kingdom was given to the Siam chapter and accepted as the chapter of the king.
In 1815 when British invaded the country they got control of two divisions of Siam chapter which were Asgiri and Malwathu subdivisions. Therefore Siam hierarchy was tactful enough to get the prominent support from British rulers. With that support Siam chapter was capable to control Buddhist places and institutions of Sri Lanka. Temple of Tooth Relic is the most prominent among temple among them.
If a monk from Siam chapter wanted to get Higher-ordination he had to promise that if he get to know that if they heard about any development against government, they will not join and will be responsible to report that to the committee.
Professor Walpola Rahula who was against this contract was not able to get Higher-ordination from Siam until amended and had to get Higher-ordination in his mid age. This incident appeared as the most prominent incident which British rulers got under control of Buddhism in Sri Lanka.
Because of the innocence nature of poor people in Sri Lanka they always had a respect for the religion which mixed with some sort of fear. Rulers who were insufficient in their capacities to rule the country used the religion to protect their leaderships. In Middle Eastern countries the politicians use the Islam as their weapon; hence it reduces the freedom facts in the Islamic religion.
In the constitution crated by Dr.Colvin R. de Silva also added that protecting the Buddhism in Sri Lanka is a major responsibility of the government. Government buildings, schools and foreign services offices displayed the Buddha statues because rulers and majority of the Sri Lankans were Buddhists and its not considered as a must Dr. Colvin R de Silva’s statement in the constitution. But in the long run these happenings created some unpleasant mentality among the people who are non Buddhists, feeling that they do not have similar human rights in the country as Buddhists.
I accept the fact that Buddhist monks should have political rights in the country, but if they use political powers inappropriately its not acceptable. It’s definite that Buddhism plays a main role in beautifying the Sri Lankan culture. In addition monks played a major role in developing the Sinhala language, native medicine field and artistry in the country. Also in the past, the innocent people who were suffered from the government acts were protected by the Bikhkhus providing the needed education and strength for the poor. During that era they were living in the temples and served their own people’s welfare instead of getting their foot in the parliament or government.
Unfortunately lately the political leaders tried to own the monks and use them inappropriately in governing the country. The services done to the people by monks have become minimum today and delivering effortless Dhamma talks have become their main service and mainly involved in national politics. There are only handful numbers of monks who are devoted completely to the religion and they are well respected.
Majority of the Sri Lankans belong to the Govigama Cast and they were represented by Malwathu Asgiri chapter. For the politicians it’s important to get there blessings, therefore they worship these monks with expensive gifts as Benz cars. Also the leaders provide the necessary protections for the temple properties. During the recent election of selecting the Chief Monk for the Adam’s Peak temple, the whole government supported a particular monk and flabbergasted and threatened his opponent. These incidents are very common and many Buddhist facilities were run and maintained by the supporters of government political leaders.
Its time to think and consider about the distance between the current situation in the country and the preliminary era of Buddhsim….
The real Buddhists have become agitated about the situation and have come to an intolerable state not only because of the political party represented by monks, also because of the sarcasm and the irony monks receive from the public.
Recently I had the opportunity to attend a stage drama called” Balloth ekka Baa” and there were two strong characters in the storyline who disguised as monks for their own protection; their lack of knowledge about Buddhism was exposed throughout the drama and the whole audience was entertained tremendously.
My honest opinion was that this storyline led down and ridiculed the entire Bikhkhuhood in Sri Lanka. In the past the public were against and condemned the entertainers who sarcastically talked about the Buddhist monks as a respect to the monks. But certainly and unfortunately the public was not against the drama ” Balloth Ekka Baa” because people in Sri Lanka has lost their faith in the monks who are involved in politics.
It shows the pathetic situation of Buddhism in current Sri Lank.
This is the complete copy of the lecture discoursed by Chandrarathna Bandara on 27th September 2012 at N.M.Perera Centre organized by Socialist Educational Circle for their monthly Leftist pact chaired by Mr. Kumar David.
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Source by Kithsiri Dissanayake
