THE SAMURAI WAY
Do the Japanese have a special path of "development" or even survival? A book by a Japanese Mathematician Masahiko Fujiwara has apparently reignited the debate on whether there are especially "Asian" values, according to an American Professor of History and International Affairs, who thinks that the book may contribute to a mistake that Voltaire made by making religion purely instrumental. The book by the Japanese has still not been translated into any other Language, but the American is already trying to kill the ideas contained in the book.
Having not read the book it is difficult to know what the author has stated there in. In any event most probably we would never know what the author says as we construct or write our own book in the process, or even in the guise of reading it. It is not a case of death of author as such but the recognition of millions of authors. Each reader creates his own text, and it is relative to his mind, sense organs and the culture. However, having acknowledged that each reader is a creator our formal and informal systems of education, with or without group activities in so called creative environments force us to imitate the westerners and their values, including their literary criticism. I am not surprised at all to find that even before the book by Fujiwara is translated into other languages an American Professor is trying to devalue it in the "best" of the western tradition.
For the last twenty years I myself have been trying to educate the masses on the politics of education and systems of knowledge. Most of my writings are in Sinhala, in which neither the westerners nor the westernized Sri Lankans are interested in, as they think as a corollary to the infamous statement by Jennings that Sri Lanka is a cultural desert, that nothing worth is created in Sinhala. It is through knowledge more than any thing else that the westerners continue to rule us, and any knowledge is based on a chinthanaya that incorporates arts, science, culture, politics, music, literature and what not into a single whole.
It appears that Fujiwara has argued for a different economics that suits the Japanese. In fact I would argue that the western Christian modernity is not suitable to anybody that includes the westerners. Professor Harold James, the American Professor who has written a review of the book by Fujiwara, wants us to believe that western capitalism is independent of Christianity. It is true that as James states that Max Weber who wrote on Capitalism and Protestant Ethics went wrong in trying to find the roots of Capitalism in the Protestant religion. However, it is not the religion that is important here but the embedding culture and the chinthanaya. Not only capitalism but western science and Mathematics, their arts, literature and everything else are all Christian (Protestant) in culture. The Protestant culture was born before the Protestant religion and it could be said that Martin Luther and John Calvin whom James has referred to are products of Protestant culture which was born with the so called Renaissance in Southern Europe more than five hundred years ago. Luther, Calvin and others were the religious expressions of a movement that changed an entire chinthanaya, and the ethics of Capitalism were not brought by Protestantism as such but were in built in the system that gave rise to western science as well. We identify the Chinthanaya that incorporates all these as Greek Judaic Christian (GJC) Chinthanaya, which has become the Jathika Chinthanaya of the western countries. It is unfortunate that the westerners are trying to impose their Jathika Chinthanaya on the others including the Sinhalas and the Japanese, and it is good to know that there are at least few Japanese who have realised what is happening under the GJC Chinthanaya.
Just as much Protestant religion was born in the GJC Chinthanaya, Catholic religion was born in the medieval feudal European Chinthanaya. Similarly Buddhism was born in the ancient Pre Vedic Chinthanaya of Eastern Dambadiva before it became part of Bharath under the Vedic Chinthanaya. When Prince Siddhartha was born, Vedic Chinthanaya had not spread completely to the eastern parts of Dambadiva, and there were areas in which the ancient Shramana tradition of pre Vedic cultures prevailed. However a few centuries after the PariNibbana of Buddha, Vedic Culture was able to nullify the Pre Vedic cultures, incorporating some aspects of Buddhism (and Jainism) and creating a new religion in the form of Hinduism. In Sri Lanka the Vedic culture and chinthanaya did not take root, as the people living in the country and even those who came from Dambadiva belonged to the pre Vedic cultures or at most a partial (ardha) Vedic culture. Thus when Buddhism was introduced to Sri Lanka or Sinhale from Dambadiva it took root as a duck taking to water, as Buddhism itself was born in a pre Vedic culture. (This does not mean that a culture or a chinthanaya does not change. Any product of a chinthanaya will have an effect, however small it may be, on chinthanaya) The Sinhala Buddhists even today go on pilgrimage to Dambadiva and not to Bharath that was created by the Vedics nor to India which is a creation mainly of the British. Buddha, Arhant Mahinda and King Ashoka were from Dambadiva and not from Bharath or India. The Sinhalas had cordial relationships with Dambadiva and ancient China which belonged to a zone with similar chinthanayas if not the same chinthanaya. The Sinhala people could not be "Vedicised" or brought under the Vedic culture, and both Bharath and India have not forgotten or forgiven us on this count. The present day Indian ministers such as Narayanan who wants Sri Lanka not only to buy arms from India and not from China, but to buy arms only for defence, and Mukhergiee who asks the question as to why Sri Lanka should go to others when India is ready to help us, are third rate Kautilyans who are only continuing with the Vedic tradition. Any school boy who is interested in politics knows how much India has helped us to defeat the LTTE!
Coming back to Catholic Chinthanaya and GJC chinthanaya the main differences are in the concrete thinking of the former as against the abstract thinking of the latter, and in the collectiveness and the individualness. The GJC Chinthanaya promoted the individual against the collectiveness and Luther was a champion of the new chinthanaya, who took those ideas into the new religion he helped to create. Contrary to what James and the other western intellectuals who want show that Luther was against capitalism, it could be seen that without the individual being freed from the "collective" society, capitalism would not have arisen. When Marx claims that the individual was freed from the bonds to the land by capitalism he is only reversing the order of events. It is necessary to make Marx standing on his head to see that individualisation took place in Europe before capitalism. It can be seen that the paintings and sculpture of Europe during the Renaissance reflect this emerging trend. The statue of David in Pirenzi (Florence to the English) erected more than five hundred years ago could be considered as a work that represents the triumph of David the individual against Goliath the society. The word Catholic itself means wholeness and it was this wholeness that was being challenged in Italy during the Renaissance. It was left to Newton Descartes and Kant, the English, French and the German to formalise and express intellectually the process that began in Italy some five hundred years ago.
It is necessary for the Sinhalas, Japanese and the others not only to have their own economies and paths of development but to create their own systems of knowledge at least for the sake of theirs as well as others' survival. There is a talk of humanising capitalism with the ethics of Buddhism or some other religion but it is not going to work. Those who think along those lines are invariably Newtonians Cartesians and Kantians who think in terms of separate entities (categories). For Newton a system was not a system as such but a collection of parts. Thus any part of a system could be replaced by a similar part and this Newtonism is reflected in western Medicine in the transplant of organs. Similarly some western Economists in Sri Lanka want to replace the Protestant (as a culture) ethic by some other ethic. It will only end up in disaster as our experience in Sri Lanka in the recent past has indicated. These economists are only following the western tradition, and Weber who said that capitalism is driven by an ethic (Protestant) that operates outside of economics was a Newtonian. As far as Weber was concerned the ethics was not part and parcel of the economic system. However, it is not so and the Protestant ethics can be found not only in capitalist economics but even in western Physics and Mathematics. The whole system acts as one interconnected system and it is not possible to replace the existing ethics by a different ethics.
We have to create a new economics in a Sinhala Buddhist Chinthanaya considering the system as a whole and let the Japanese create their economics based on a Samurai Chinthanaya. Those who try to find a Buddhist economics and a political science in some Suttas of Buddha, such as Sigalovada Sutta and Chakkavatti Sihanada Sutta are only collecting points for their academic promotions and/or improving their bio data. An economy based on Sinhala Buddhist Chinthanaya would inherit its own ethics in Sinhala Buddhism. We have to seriously think on how such a knowledge system could be created and in this respect we are not attempting to go back in history being nostalgic, though we have to learn from the Chinthanaya of that period. In this regard we have to be careful of "Disney intellectuals" discussing the ape kama very shallowly over the electronic media with exaggerations, and misleading the general public.
Professor Nalin de Silva
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