BUDDHISMS BETRAYED - I
The Talebans have destroyed the Bhamian Buddha statues with a history of more than one thousand five hundred years. They have told the united nations that it is futile to request them to protect the Buddha statues as they have already demolished them. The "whole world" could not prevent the destruction of the statues and the sovereignty of Afghanistan has been respected. In that sense it is a triumph of the national states though Buddhisms world over have been betrayed. Unlike in the case of former Yugoslavia, the Blair doctrine which proclaims that the so-called international community should intervene in the affairs of nation states in the name of human rights has not been put into practise in Afghanistan. It may be that the destruction of Buddha statues or bombing of Dalada Maligawa has nothing to do with human rights as "idols" and not human beings are involved in these cases. In any event the human rights are defined by the politicians, political scientists and others in the west and not by the Diyavanna Oya parliament and the academics in the universities and so-called research institutes in Sri Lanka.
The academics in our universities do not define anything. They only teach the definitions given by their western masters, while I doubt whether our parliamentarians could explain what is meant by definition. This reminds me of an incident that happened about forty years ago. When the whole class could not satisfactorily define an acid my Chemistry teacher in the fourth form, according to the former British way of thinking or year 9 according to the present western practice, asked the class to explain definition. When he did not get any response he wanted us to define explanation! I did not learn any Chemistry from him but neither did I depart and he, though a Christian, more than anybody else has helped me later in life to see through the mask of the linear systems of knowledge starting with undefined elements, (modeled on an undefined God), western Mathematics being the "queen" of all such systems, and get interested in the cyclic or sansaric systems of knowledge, as I call them, through his penetrating questions and comments. With respect to western knowledge systems two suitable mottoes for the Asians, at least for the Buddhists, would be (i) neither learn nor depart, (ii) learn and depart. It defies either or type logic of Aristotle but is in harmony with "chatuskotika" or four valued logic. Incidentally according to the definition of human rights of the western academics, politicians and the human rights groups, the poor Sinhala Buddhist villagers in places like Wahalkade do not have any rights human or otherwise.
The Talebans are considered to be fundamentalists by the westerners. However it was the westerners who promoted the Talebans against the former Soviet Union. Though there is supposed to be a civil war that has the "blessings" of the western powers, the Talebans continue to rule the country. The western powers did not do much to prevent the destruction of the Buddha statues. They were very much "concerned" and issued statements and made appeals to the Talebans but very democratically respected the sovereignty of the Afghanistan government. I wonder how they would have reacted if Christian artefacts were destroyed in some non Christian country. If they have even a fraction of that respect for the sovereignty of Sri Lanka it would go a long way towards solving the Tamil racist problem.
Instead, the Sinhala Buddhists are branded as Chauvinists who are ill treating the Tamils in the country. The ambassadors and the high commissioners go to town defining the problem and offering solutions. The definitions are neither satisfactory nor consistent with facts, and my Chemistry teacher would have asked them to explain what is meant by a definition. In their enthusiasm they go to Jaffna town, in particular, and declare that the Tamils are not treated equally in this country. Coming from ambassadors and high commissioners in countries where English is the only official language, though there are many other communities that speak languages other than English, I begin to suspect that the word equal has multiple uneven meanings depending on the sense in which concepts such as multi-racial, multi-religious, multi-cultural are used. For example though English is the only official language of USA which is supposed to be a multi-racial, multi-cultural country, the Spanish speaking USAites are supposed to be treated equally. However, in Sri Lanka it is said that the Tamils are not treated equally, though Tamil is an official language of the country. It would not be a bad idea to request these ambassadors and high commissioners to define the term equal.
Sinhala Buddhists are supposed to have betrayed Buddhism. Sometime ago Prof. Thambiah wrote a book entitled Buddhism Betrayed. Recently another book has been written by another western sociologist Dr. H. L. Seneviratne, that has been reviewed favourably by Bhikku Bodhi, an authority on Theravada Buddhism according to scholars on Buddhistic studies and a non Sri Lankan by birth. The general idea behind all these is that the Sinhala Buddhists are not practising the Dhamma preached by the Buddha. The Sinhala Bhikkus are interested and take part in political activities and are supposed to be anti Tamil. Though I am neither a sociologist nor an expert on Buddhistic studies , there are number of questions that come to my mind, on the positions taken by these scholars. I do not want to deal with all of them but let me discuss just one of them in relation to the demolition of the Buddha statues by the Talebans. The Talebans have said number of times that their action is within their religion. In other words Islam justifies the destruction of the Buddha statues, according to them. However there are other Muslims who are of the opinion that Islam does not approve such activities. With these contradictory positions taken up by different groups of Muslims I am sure that my Chemistry teacher would have asked them first to define Islam. The moment one tries to define Islam or Buddhism or Christianity for that matter, one comes across many problems. As everybody knows there are two prominent sects of Muslims and not to be outdone Buddhism can be classified under number of headings. What does one mean by Buddhism? Is it a religion? Does one imply by Buddhism the Dhamma preached by the Buddha? If that is so then is it the Dhamma according to the Theravadins, Sauthranthikas, Madhyamikas, Vinnanavadins, Pudgalavadins or some other sect?
There may be number of definitions of religion but a religion can exist only if there are people following or associated with it. A religion is not merely the Dhamma or the doctrine of the founder(s). If one understands by religion the Dhamma or the doctrine then a religion can exist in the libraries and/or the museums of the world without a set of followers. A religion is centered around the Dhamma or the doctrine but it is much more than that. Even if one understands by the word religion the preaching of the founder(s) it is not something "objective" in the sense that the books or the diskettes containing the Dhamma or the doctrine are independent of the observers or the readers of those works. Unless somebody reads these works they have no meaning and a reader has to go through them in order to understand or give an interpretation to what is found in the books or the diskettes. As we know the readers give different interpretations and in that sense there is not one Dhamma or doctrine but many Dhammas or doctrines. One can say that only one of these interpretations, readings or understandings (they all mean the same, as by understanding something, one means creating an interpretation) is correct and that is the interpretation given by the founder(s). However it is not possible to find out the interpretation given by the founder(s) and to make it worse, in certain cases, we do not know whether the founder(s) actually preached some of the sections found in the books. We may be able to analyse the material and find out whether they are internally and externally consistent but not all would agree with the conclusions. Even if one considers by religion the Dhamma or the doctrine or the preaching of the founder(s) one finds that there are many religions and not just one "objective" religion. In that sense there are many Buddhisms, Christianities, Hinduisms and Islams.
However a religion is not only the Dhamma or the doctrine and is associated with a culture of the people. In many cultures a religion plays a very significant part and the cultures themselves modify the religions. A religion devoid of a culture and confined to the libraries and museums, including open museums as in Egypt (pyramids) and Afghanistan (Buddha statues), could be referred to as a dead religion or a religion that belongs to history. As mentioned earlier even these dead religions could give rise to different interpretations with respect to the readers (observers). The Pharaohs when living probably had a vibrant culture associated with a religion. However as far as the whole world is concerned, at present it is a dead religion symbolised by the pyramids. I do not think that there are any practicing Afghan Buddhists and as far as Afghanistan is concerned Buddhism is a dead religion. Until recently the dead Afghan Buddhism was symbolised by the Buddha statues and some other artefacts. Even that is gone now and we can only read of dead Afghan Buddhism in the books available in the libraries around the world. A living religion or a religion for short is associated with a living culture that has given its own interpretation to the religion. Thus we have Sinhala Buddhism associated with the Sinhala Buddhist culture. Sinhala Buddhism like anything else is evolving and is not a static body of knowledge and rites.
When the Sociologists and the learned Bhikkus make statements to the effect that the Sinhala Buddhists, especially the Sinhala Bhikkus have betrayed Buddhism, they make the assumption that there is only one Buddhism, which is objective and independent of the observers (readers and the followers). They imagine (interpret) a corpus of knowledge to be Buddhism and then compare the actions of others, say the Sinhala Buddhists, with the Buddhism that they had created (interpreted) in their minds. What they fail to understand is that they are comparing the actions of the Sinhala Buddhists with "their" Buddhism and not with the Buddhism of the Sinhala Buddhists. They consider their Buddhism to be the only Buddhism, and in the tradition of the western academics their Buddhism is presented as the "objective Buddhism". Who gave the power to these so-called authorities to take their Buddhism as the yardstick to pronounce judgement on the actions of the Sinhala Buddhists? The authority they have emanates from their degrees from the western Christian universities (that includes Peradeniya as well) and the so-called research they carry out and recognised again by the same western Christian universities. When these so-called experts declare that the Sinhala Buddhists have betrayed Buddhism they mean that the actions and activities of the Sinhala Buddhists are not in agreement with their brand of dead Buddhism that they are supposed to have come across (given an interpretation) in their libraries and laptops.
(To be continued)
Professor Nalin de Silva
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