“PAVENA PARANDEL” OF WESTERN SCIENCES AND TECHNOLOGIES - VII
Prof. N. A. de S. Amaratunga
seems to be in a great hurry. He has mentioned on October 21st that I
have not clarified certain issues concerning Buddhism. He may be
thinking that I am trying to avoid these issues as I have been cornered
according to him. He seems to be thinking that I have taken up a
position deviating from orthodox Theravada Buddhism and that would
bring my downfall. Sometime ago when I signed the so called interim
report of the All Party Representative Committee a leading nationalist
whom Prof. Amaratunga is fond of imitating in his so called novels as
well, was very happy thinking that it would be the end of me. It is
strange that some of the leading nationalists want to see my back from
their privileged positions in the stage of the Jathika Vyaparaya. Prof.
Amaratunga thanks me for giving publicity to his book Pavena Parandel
which he calls a novel. He may call it anything but not many would
agree that it is a novel in any sense of the word. I doubt very much
many people after reading the series of articles on “Pavena Parandel of
western sciences and technologies” would have rushed to buy copies of
that book. Prof. Amaratunga has raised seven points and in his usual
style he pontificates without either quoting texts or arguing from
fundamentals. It is quite clear that he does not have a clue as to what
Madhyamikavada is all about and calls it sunyavada.
I will respond to the issues
raised by Prof. Amaratunga on Buddhism soon after I finish my account
on Chinthanaya and Jathika Chinthanaya. I know that I am deviating from
orthodox Theravada and I would invite those with some understanding on
Theravada and other “sects” of Buddhism, unlike Prof. Amaratunga who
can only pontificate without understanding to respond to what I have to
say on these matters. Deviating from Orthodox Theravada is not a
pancananthareeya kamma and as a good Buddhist who has been trained even
to question Buddhism I have not hesitated to sweep out any traces of
Athmavada from orthodox Theravada. We at Kelaniya follow the
Vidyalankara tradition, and have modified Einstein’s equations as well
as Copenhagen interpretation of Quantum Mechanics while demonstrating
that wave theory is not valid. The Theravadins faced many questions
from Nagarjuna Thera of Andra Pradesh for which they had no answers.
Nagarjuna Thera’s criticism was mainly on Dhammavada (Theory of Dhamma)
and Kshanavada (Theory of Moments) which amount to an Athmavada. The
teaching of the existence of Dhammas and moments is nothing but
admitting the existence of Dharmathma and I have no hesitation to agree
with Nagarjuna Thera on this issue.
Theravada having no answers
to Nagarjuna Thera and Madhyamikavada gradually disappeared from
Bhararth and I believe that the Theravada Bhikkus in Andra Pradesh and
Sri Lanka got together to protect Theravada without confronting the
Madhyamikavada. The texts were translated to Magadhi Prakrit or some
variant of it that came to be known as Pali language or the language of
texts (Pela) which Mr. Kumaratunga Munidasa thought was a language
created by the Mahavihara Bhikkus, and Theravada Buddhism was preserved
with the Dhammavada and the Kshanavada. I commend the Mahavihara
Bhikkus and the Andra Pradesh Bhikkus such as Venerable Buddhaghosha
Thera for translating the Theravada texts to Magadhi Prakrit or its
variant as otherwise Theravada would have been replaced by
Madhyamikavada which would have given place to Advaitha Vedantha of
Sankaracharya and Hinduism later on as happened in Bharath. When the
Theravadins could not counter the arguments of the Madhyamikavadins no
harm was done by preserving (protecting) the Theravada in its orthodox
form, and in fact if not for this step taken by the Mahavira Bhikkus
around the fifth century Theravada would have been only a Philosophy
found in the libraries and not religion (or a way of life) practised by
the people.
Theravada should be able to
discard the Dhammavada and the Kshanavada, without adopting sunyatva
(not sunya) of Nagarjuna Thera. It was sunyatva that inspired
Sankaracharya to come up with Advaita Brahman (the positive concept as
opposed to the negative concept sunyatva) and people would have
preferred the positive Advaita Brahman to the negative concept of
sunyatva. I will discuss all these in a series of articles I would be
writing in response to Prof. Amaratunga’s two articles on Buddhism. It
is clear that Prof. Amaratunga thinks sunya in Madhyamikavada and
Theravada are different. As usual he proclaims statements to this
effect without either quoting the texts or arguing from some
fundamental principles. In my opinion the mistake of Nagarjuna Thera
was to formulate the concept of sunyatva, a concept expressed by a noun
without leaving it as sunya.
Though the Theravadins of
yesteryear stuck to the Dhammavada and the Kshanavada and thus to
athmavada in the final analysis we do not have to do so now. Bhikku
Bodhi has shown us a way to overcome this problem in his introduction
to the English translation of Abhidharamatha Sangraha without
considering dhammas to be “entities” that exist even for a moment
(kshanaya) in an absolute sense. Uppada, Titi, Bhanga to which dhammas
are subject to, could be interpreted as that take place in the mind and
not independent of the mind. It should be reminded that the
Sauthranthikas, a sect of Hinayana did not have titi thus making a
moment (kshanya) one of zero duration. In other words they made a
kshanaya a shunya. What I am really interested in showing is that by
discarding the Dhammavada and the Kshanavada one can create a theory
(pravada) that cannot be accused of being athmavada.
I do not claim that I have
an open mind on these matters for the simple reason that nobody has a
so called open mind. All the minds are full of concepts and theories
and we cannot see the world without these concepts and theories. All I
want the other Sinhala Buddhists to do is to try to create new concepts
and theories if possible, of course relative to the concepts and
theories already possessed by the mind. That is what the intellectuals
in the west do and naturally they do that relative to their culture.
The Sinhala people who had created knowledge long time ago ceased to do
so after the preservation or protection of Theravada was considered as
the main duty of the Sinhala Buddhists. As I said above it had its
positive effect in keeping Theravada as a living tradition and not as
merely a system of knowledge confined to the books in the libraries.
People like Prof. Amaratunga
pretend that they have a consistent theory without contradictions and
write as if they know what is meant by anithya. The very fact that he
and others translate anithya as impermanence speaks volumes for their
ignorance (avidya). We are in our samsaric journey due to our ignorance
of anicca, dukkha and anatta. If anicca or anithya can be translated as
impermanence then we would know anicca immediately as impermanence is a
concept that could be understood by any person with an average
knowledge of English. However we continue our sansaric journey and we
should be careful not to confuse concepts with non concepts though they
are also expressed in words.
Professor
Nalin de Silva
>
>
>