Protecting Buddhism in Sri Lanka

Shenali Waduge

If Sri Lanka feels the need to protect & preserve Buddhism, it translates to mean that there are challenges that need to be overcome & issues that need to be addressed without bias. Action plans will not work unless we are able to determine if Buddhism in its conceptual form, in its practice & even in its belief is seeing a decline and if so we need to first return to basics and determine why. Naturally, the present anxiety to preserve & protect Buddhism must be due to external or internal factors or a combination of both.

Let us firstly look at the external factor that many attribute as a singular threat to the decline of Buddhism.

There are 6.4billion people on Earth, of this 2.1billion or 33.1% are Christians of one sort or another. By 2025, world population is likely to hit 7.8billion & total Christian population to rise to 2.6billion. This is certainly a high number considering in 1900 there were only 558million Christians the world over. There are 25.2million new Christians annually (22.7m due to population growth & 2.5m due to conversions)

In India & Africa the situation is alarming. Nagaland has almost emerged as a Christian state with over 90% (1.79m population) of its population being Christian. In Mizoram that number is around 87% (772,000 population), while in Meghalaya it is 70.4% (1.6m population), in Manipur the number is 34% (737,000 population) while in Arunachal Pradesh it is 18.7% (2-5,548 population). Christian growth in Africa is nothing short of astonishing. There were 8.7 million African Christians in 1900; there are 389 million African Christians today & by 2025 there is likely to be 600million African Christians (when Europe Christian population will have fallen to 513million)

How has Christianity become the fastest growing religion both in absolute number of new converts & absolute number of new Christians due to population growth? Christianity has certainly evolved from one Man, to 12 apostles and to 25million presently with the number rising. In answering how Christianity has evolved to such numbers does not & should not deny why other religions cannot similarly spread their faith. It is nevertheless the manner that spread takes place & the motivating factors that have changed the number of converts that is alarming.

We need to all agree that the Christian movements are extremely organized and they are able to quickly galvanize support, they provide charity to the impoverished & the homeless, at times providing employment, aid & finance resources during times of disaster, they have excellent nursing services & spend a lot of time counseling people. Moreover, Christianity has provided equality to women & with Christian women marrying non Christians it has produced secondary conversions of pagan men. Now an important question here is how many of these new Christians are actually free riders benefiting from what the Christian network could supply in terms of national & international focus. These plus points are certainly what draws people away from the philosophically based Buddhism.

Conversions in reality do not happen in the open, they are done in a very subtle way & with a modus operandi that ensures for lack of proof. It is much later on that when counting the numbers the reality prevails. While, we do condone these conversion practices at the same time it merits to ask a very simple question Why are Buddhists in Sri Lanka converting similarly why is there a decline in Buddhism in Sri Lanka?

Tied to the conversions in families that are impoverished & homeless is the ability of the Church to provide for the basic needs of the people ” food, clothing, shelter & at times schooling & employment, for the urban & town dwellers it is the happy go lucky style that is associated Being able to provide basic needs is the basic requirement left to all those that govern or lead and the lack of it makes people go for options.

ƒÆ’-¡ƒ”š‚ Let us see what is happening in Sri Lanka.

There are 300m around the world who follow Buddhism. Its origins date back to 2600. For many, Buddhism is beyond a religion it is a way of life & it is this philosophy that leads to a person leading a moral life, to be mindful & aware of thoughts & actions & to develop wisdom & understanding. Buddhism explains life & provides a code of practice, in a materialistic society, Buddhism essentially has the answers so long as people endeavor to follow neither extremes. Lord Buddha realized at 29 that wealth & luxury did not guarantee happiness & so after much exploration & six years of study & meditation he became enlightened. His teachings are found in the Dhamma or Truth & despite the years Buddhism has become a religion different to other religions. Yet, Buddha is not a God, though idol worship is not part of Buddhism, many Buddhists enjoy paying respect to the statue of Lord Buddha.

It is interesting to note that many Buddhist countries are poor and it links to the Buddhist teachings that wealth does not guarantee happiness & wealth is also impermanent. Buddhism essentially denotes tolerance & does not denounce any of the other religions that prevail. Have there ever been wars fought in the name of Buddhism? Buddhists do not try to preach or convert they only explain if an explanation is sought. The core of Buddhism is fitted into the Four Nobel Truths which can be tested by anyone thus the need to understand more than simply having faith. (life is suffering, suffering is caused by craving & aversions, suffering can be overcome & happiness is possible if we give up useless cravings, & the path is to follow the Nobel Eightfold Path (being moral through what we say, do & how we live). Then there are the 5 precepts that teach us refrain from taking the life of anything living, refrain from taking anything that is not freely given, to abstain from sexual misconduct & sensual overindulgence, to refrain from untrue speech & to abstain from intoxication. Karma in Buddhism teaches us that our actions have results while wisdom is explained that we need compassion and to have the understanding that in reality, all phenomena are incomplete, impermanent & do not constitute a fixed entity. Compassion in Buddhism is sharing, giving comfort, sympathy, caring and concern. What Buddhism essentially teaches us is that the solutions to our problems are within ourselves & not outside.

Buddha asked his followers to first test his teachings & to decide for themselves & thereafter to take responsibility for their own actions. Buddhism is not a fixed package of beliefs to be accepted in its entirety and this is one of the reasons why we see a decline in real Buddhists today.

Before any national programs are implemented, we seriously need to ask ourselves whether Buddhism as seen today is actually what Lord Buddha has depicted in his teachings. My sincerest question is why would there have to be three Nikayas in the first place??? Has this not triggered much of the divisions that prevail?

Unless we are able to put our own house in order, it is unfair to be blaming other religions. Intricately woven to our fear of Buddhism declining is issues related to us as laymen & our Buddhist monks in general.

The question of relationships between the laity & the Sangha is extremely important for this is the factor that certainly is distancing people faith in Buddhism. If craving & desire for material things, the desire for wealth etc are to be abstained knowing its path to suffering, it is prudent to ask why our Sangha live in such luxurious setups the temples and the dayakayas are eternally in competition to make the temple look far better than the neighboring one. Basic amenities are replaced with ultra modern infrastructure. A simple dana today ends up with a menu list sent, some dana often been set up like buffets & to younger & impressionable newcomers watching this it would be impressed upon them that this is what Lord Buddha has preached & where is the moderation!!! Has it not turned up a fad to send ones children to dhamma schools?

If Lord Buddha did not allow money to be collected by monks why is it taking place today? We are finding Buddhist monks as politicians, driving vehicles, engaged in illicit activities etc Is it then the fault of the monks or the dayakayas? Certainly both parties are to blame. For the dayakayas have in their shortcomings paved the way for a common accepted practice to occur & this has spread across the globe especially where there are Buddhist vihara frequented by expatriate Sri Lankans.

Media attention alone cannot bring Buddhists to become Buddhists that is the eternal truth. One must feel it from within & that within realization must come firstly by being truthful unto oneself & accepting one shortcomings.  

ƒÆ’-¡ƒ”š‚ Inner development of character & attitude can to a great extent be nurtured by preaching but those that preach must first be practicing it otherwise that itself creates a negative impact on the person listening. Does no one really wonder why at pirith ceremonies held in urban & town homes, the majority of guests arrive closer to the end of the pirith or end up coming only for the dana!

How far is it likely to increase understanding of Buddhism by putting up posters all over State & other institutions?

We enjoy saying we are Buddhists but do we generate action when Buddhist places have been attacked. How much did the attack in Chennai generate media attention, how many of our politicians came out deploring such was the silence not attributed to not wanting to anger the Indians diplomatically?

Then there is the question of legality of converting. Though conversion & the modus operandi used to convert is unethical, unfair & unjust..eventually it is left to the individual who decides and once that individual asserts his desire it ceases to be a group activity. The only difference is that a person of another religion who decides to shed his/her faith & practice living the Buddhist way can do so without any ramifications. However, anyone born unto other faiths like Catholism, Islam etc end up being treated like outcasts.

One of the areas that we need to request our Buddhist monks to show more empathy towards is their people approach. When Catholic & Christian clergy visit patients in hospitals & homes & offer Gods blessings to them even to non-Buddhists, it would be nice to have pirith being chanted in hospitals & a Buddhist priest come & offer some words of wisdom to the family. When Churches open their doors in times of calamity especially during natural or man-made disorder, it would similarly be nice to know that a dana will never go wasted & thrown to the dustbin where mouths that have not been fed could come & be fed & dayakayas would instead of making temples materialist with all the modern equipment & infrastructure spend that money on feeding the poor & impoverished & finding ways to securing employment to those without, to champion a drive to stop alcohol consumption & to advise men whose alcohol consumption limits know no bounds & end up turning his home upside down! These are very simple & basic things that could actually change the present perceptions of the people. In watching & listening to sermons which are not practiced it is natural for anyone to loose ones faith in Buddhism.

The list of present day blunders taking place for which most of us as laymen must take part responsibility as well as the Buddhist monks in agreeing to receive such wealth & materialistic offerings without denying same will serve to essentially put our house in order.

Everything in moderation essentially demands us to wonder why we would need more than one house we can but live in it at one single time, why we would crave for more cars some of the latest brands we all really go from one place to the next why we would want more money that we can live it out there is a limit to what we can consume!!! Yet for all it is this agonizing desire amongst us that is really making Buddhism decline & unless we set ourselves right it is unfair to be blaming others or setting up plans that would be just nicely worded documents of paper.

Shenali Waduge