Buddhism as a positive force

The last two or three decades have produced a spate of books, monographs and research papers dealing with the role of Buddhism in contemporary Sri Lankan society. Many of these have been written by anthropologists, sociologists, historians and political scientists both Sri Lankan-born and not. These works deal with such issues as the ways in which Buddhism has been influenced by spirit cults, the politics of Buddhist monks, the transfiguration of Buddhism as it meet contemporary middle-class needs, Buddhism and political violence, the departure of Buddhist leaders from the essential teachings of the Buddha, Buddhism as a factor in ethno-nationalism and so on.

While there is much substance to the assertions made in the books and papers referred to above, many of them only tell one side of the story. If a reader unfamiliar with Sri Lanka were to read these works, the take-home message would be that Buddhism is a negative force. It is important to keep in mind that Buddhism, like all other living religions, has been contaminated and hybridized and faces numerous problems as it seeks to adapt and respond to complex pressures of modernity. It would be startling, if it were otherwise. What is needed is to restore the balance, and point out instances where Buddhism has also been a constructive force in modern Sri Lanka. This is indeed the central theme of my new book that I am currently working on. In my earlier book, 'Enabling Traditions', I hinted at this desideratum.

The bulk of the books and papers I referred to earlier are based on a simplistic binary. Buddhism is a great religion and modern-day leaders, as well as the generality of the populace, have tragically departed from the essence of this noble religion; they have ignored the vital reference points enunciated by it, hence the accusation of the betrayal of Buddhism. This is, I suppose, true so far as it goes; but it does not illuminate much. This is an argument that can be legitimately made against most practitioners of all religions.

What is interesting is the way in which this particular object of study is discursively constructed by these writers. One does not have to be a strong Foucaldian to endorse the fact the objects of study are analytically produced by the analysts. Scholars such as Donald MacKenzie have pointed out that even in disciplines like economics and finance, the models employed by analysts rather than neatly encapsulating the essence of an approach act as paradigms that guide research and become self-fulfilling prophesies. As I stated earlier, much of the social scientific writing on Buddhism and Sri Lankan society is premised on an easy binary. This contrast of scriptural Buddhism with Buddhism as a living social force fails to take into consideration the politics of religion as an institution. Buddhism, like all other religions, was from the inception imbricated with politics. If we see the ups and downs of Buddhism in India, or Sri Lanka or China or Japan, we will appreciate this fact. This indeed would be a more fruitful path of inquiry.

This is not to suggest that various scholars have not sought to explicate Buddhism as a positive social force. This body of writing, undertaken by philosophers and scholars of religion, by and large, focus on the positive; however, they deal with classical scriptural Buddhism. While recognizing the significance of these forays, it is important to stress the fact that Buddhism as a positive contemporary force has to be increasingly stressed. In my new project, I have selected the three most brilliant Sinhala writers of the twentieth century" Martin Wickremasinghe, Ediriweera Sarachchandra and Gunadasa Amarasekera" and I have sought to examine how their works reflect the power of Buddhism as a creative force.

Let us, first take Martin Wickremasinghe's writings. Both in his creative and critical works, he was clearly guided by a Buddhist critical humanism. He has, while recognizing the importance of rationality, also delineated its limitedness; he has stressed the importance of supplementing it with intuition and capacity for empathy. Even so sympathetic a reader of Wickremasinghe's work like Joseph Needham failed to appreciate the full force of this optic. It was Wickremasinghe's aim to push back the discursive horizons of rationality by focusing on the importance of human intuition and sympathy.

Wickremasinghe, in his critical writings, sought to construct a frame of intelligibility, a set of evaluative norms, based on Buddhist humanism. The privileged and valorized terms in his critical lexicon are simplicity "humility" "austerity" self restraint " compassion. All these concepts emerge from the teachings of the Buddha. This is, of course, not to suggest that he was always on target. This is clearly not the case. For example, in my judgment, he tended to under-value the literary powers of the two works 'Buthsarana' and 'Kav Silumina' as he was excessively tethered to this approach. However, Wickremasinghe's approach to literary criticism is highly original, insightful and displayed an animating pulsation of Buddhist thought. Through his writings, he has inflected the thinking and imagination of thousands and thousands of readers. This is a clear instantiation of the power of Buddhism as a positive force in modern society.

Let us consider the plays of Ediriweera Sarachchandra, who is indubitably, the greatest Sinhala playwright of the twentieth-century. The shaping power of Buddhist thought is clearly in evidence in his works written for the stage. In many of his plays, the basic narrative discourse is derived from Buddhist works of literature; even in those works where a direct line of transmission is not discernible, the pervasive ethos is one that is close to the heart-beat of Buddhism. The vision of society and human beings inscribed in his plays was clearly one inspired by Buddhism. For example, when he was working on the 'Vessantara', he wrote to me in Hawaii asking for certain texts that were not available in Sri Lanka that dealt with this story from other cultural perspectives because he was keen to extract the full plenitude of human meaning contained in the narrative.

An aspect of his writings that has as yet not received adequate attention is the Buddhist imagery that courses through the poetry in his plays. For those readers familiar with Pali literature, it would become apparent that some of the most moving lyrics contained in Sinhabahu "Pemato Jayati Soko" "Vessantara", were clearly inspired by Pali texts. The way Sarachchandra's dramatic texts bear the vital imprint of Buddhist culture and thought points to the way that Buddhism has acted as a positive force in contemporary society. Sarachchandra's plays and the exquisite lyricism and the exuberant poetical energy that animate them, have influenced the literary sensibility of vast numbers of theatre-goers and readers.

Similarly, the creative writings of Gunadasa Amarasekera, both prose and verse, bespeak the impact of a Buddhist sensibility through different sights and locations of engagement. For example, one should consider the mutually nurturing way in which he brings reason and emotion face to face in his writings.

It is evident that emotions constitute a vital force in the social landscape. But they should not be dismissed as examples of mere physical energy and which have no connection to intelligence and modes of evaluation. What Amarasekera has demonstrated is the fact that emotions should be regarded as deeply discriminating engagements with what is of significance and profoundly valued in social life. While exploring, in his poetry as well as fiction, the various emotions such as love and fear and compassion and revulsion, he is also demonstrating their intersections with reason and evaluation. This attitude to emotion and reason grows out of his deeply Buddhist convictions.

The concept of suffering " emotional, intellectual, social, cultural " is centered in his writings in important ways. Needless to say, this concept has deep resonances in Buddhist thinking. As Buddhism clearly points out, emotions constitute an integral part of ethical imagination. And, when one reads Amarasekera's writings carefully and sensitively, one realizes the veracity of this proposition. There is a deeper layer of significance to this theme. He is keen to anatomize the mendacities of society. To do that effectively, he has to uncover the muffled duplicities of language as well. The interplay of emotion and reason is central to this effort.

Another area of Buddhist thinking that can be productively tracked down in Guandasa Amarasekera's writings is the understanding of history. According to Piyadasa, the protagonist of his eight novels, one of the traumas of contemporary living is being reduced to a rootless stranger to history. For him, this is a predicament that needs to be averted at any cost. In his chain of novels, he addresses this issue of understanding contemporary social history and the intricate fabric of society. As Amarasekera scans the leading edge of social vectors of the past six decades, he points to the multi-dimensional conditions of possibility of history; the ways in which economics, politics, culture, ideology interpenetrate to constitute a nexus of determinacy. This is a line of thinking that finds a ready echo in the Buddhist notion of causality ('patichcha samuppada').

There are, then, different terrains of inquiry that would illustrate the fact that Buddhism has been a positive force in the writings of Wickremasinghe, Sarachchandra and Amarasekera. So the moral of it is that there is another story that needs to be told about Buddhism and modern Sri Lankan society that is different from monochromatic doom and gloom narrative that is constantly foisted on us.