Plus

Plus

The death of reverence?

By Carlton Samarajiwa
Ehemayi swamini, those two little words - innocent and reverent - that form the Buddhist laity's unquestioning response to the words of wisdom of the venerable Buddhist clergy, are under threat or are likely to fall into disuse.

Also likely to pass into oblivion is the gesture of obeisance that Buddhists make in the presence of Buddhist monks – bending low with palms together, kneeling and touching their feet and even prostrating themselves in an act of reverence, in an appeal for a blessing. Is this custom, is this ceremony – hallowed and time-honoured – on the way out? This is the distressing thought that passed through our mind as we listened late into the other Monday (April 26) night to young Chamunditha Samarawickrema's Jana Handa on the TNL channel and thought of W. B. Yeats' memorable question:

"How but in custom and ceremony

Are innocence and beauty born?"

The debate that threw custom and ceremony to the winds as it grew in intensity that night was mainly on the subject of the election of the Honourable W. J. M. Lokubandara as Speaker of the thirteenth (unlucky number?) Parliament of Sri Lanka, amidst a whole day's cacophony, clumsiness and cussedness. Communist Party veteran, the Honourable Dew Gunasekera, who was the ruling UPFA's nominee for the important post in the country's supreme legislature, lost by a hair's breadth, and thus the event turned out to be a subject of bitter controversy.

The participants in the Jana Handa talk show were Sripathi Sooriyaaratchi (UPFA), Champika Ranawaka (JHU) and Hemakumara Nanayakkara (UNF).

The acrimonious tone, smacking of sheer disrespect and even scorn for the Maha Sangha, that characterized the words that came out of the mouth of Sripathi Sooriyaaratchi, a name that suggests equanimity, serenity and shanthi in its alliterative appeal, is what made the aforesaid sad thought and the Yeatsian question occur to us.

Mr. Sooriyaaratchi's responses to the comments that were being made by JHU monks, Venerable Athureliye Rathana and Venerable Uduwe Dhammaloka, who joined in the debate on the telephone, were ominous. Aggressive and vituperative were his words; a far cry from ehemayi swamini. Belligerent and cantankerous were his gestures; not palms clasped together reverentially but index finger (also known as the dabara angilla) and clenched fist pointing threateningly at the monks in their quiet temples.

It was a mini one-man version of the scene in Parliament on April 22, when the JHU's MP monks were haplessly placed at the receiving end of insults and brickbats, not of obeisance and benediction. It was not a House of Parliament but a "House of Horrors" (as Rajpal Abeynayake described it in his Political Sketchbook) that these venerable members of the Sangha had dared to enter, wittingly or unwittingly as kingmakers in a situation where the mainline parties found themselves in a dead heat. The ugly scenes that were seen and the rude words that were heard both in the supreme legislature and on the TV programme – watched by millions – sounded as if the death of the age of innocence and reverence was close at hand.

Musaa vaada veramani sikkha padam samaadhiyaami (Thou shalt not utter falsehoods), one of the five precepts in pansil that Buddhist monks chant so movingly before their bana or in other religious rites, also took on a new dimension, when the newly appointed honourable legislator accused the monks of uttering musaa vaada. The two monks in turn pleaded with the legislator not to tell lies. The fiery retorts he hurled at the soft-spoken monks gave us the trembling fear that the ennobling and exalting words of pansil, or at least of one of its five precepts, is being subjected to "new visions and revisions", new interpretations and reinterpretations.

On an earlier occasion too in a TV talk show on election eve, we heard JVP Propaganda Secretary Wimal Weerawansa, referred to by the JHU as a Janatha Vimukthi Peramune puthek, accusing the Venerable Uduwe Dhammaloka of violating the third precept.

The context in which this accusation was made was, of course, different: it related to the pre-election death threats on JHU monks. In his demagogic style and in a vicious turn of phrase and without a trace of either metta or muditha, he declared that the heluva (nudity) of the Hela Urumaya was being exposed, the Honourable Weerawansa (whom Gunadasa Amarasekera in a recent article praised as "a brilliant young mind") ridiculed the whole idea of a Dharma Rajya based on righteousness.

For ordinary mortals like us, therefore, things are getting curiouser and curiouser as "things (seem to) fall apart and the centre cannot hold". That centre, we thought, was the Triple Gem - Buddha, Dhamma, Sanga, which over 70 per cent of our people seek refuge in.

Back to Plus