Scholar monk’s erudite voice of ‘Satyam Shivam Sundaram’ stilled
Temple tusker Myan Kumara flays the venerable hand that fed it; and shrouds the nation in a veil of mourning
All life dances on a razor blade. And for Venerable Bellanwilla Wimalaratana Thera, death came from the most unexpected quarter last Friday: from his own Bellanwilla temple’s temperamental teenage tusker’s trunk.
Seven years ago with the death of the then temple’s tusker which had majestically borne for long the sacred relics at the annual Bellanwilla perehera, Wimalaratana Thera embarked upon a search to find a suitable tusker to replace the fallen. His search led him to Myanmar in 2012,
The Myanmar Government offered him the opportunity to select one from its pool of young tuskers still in their teething years. It was not a simple process of selecting one with tusks beautiful. The one fit to bear the sacred relics had to fit the traditional requirements. To be eligible it had to be from the Siddhantha caste of elephants.
The trunk had to be of perfect length, not only touching the ground but coiling up. Its countenance, its natural gait, its ability to keep its head held high had to be gauged before final selection. From the trunk to the tail, the body should be in perfect proportion. And most important of all, the plateau on his back should be broad and flat enough to bear the casket enshrining the sacred relics of the Buddha. Nothing else would do.
When presented with the choice host of young tuskers for selection, the venerable monk’s eyes fixed on one: the decision was made. And with the munificence of the Myanmar government, arrangements were made to transport the young tusker to Lanka’s shores to be the future temple tusker to carry aloft on his back, the symbol of a nation’s worship. On June 4, 2013, the tusker was formally handed over to the Bellanwilla Raja Maha Viharaya and named Myan Kumara by Bellanwilla Wimalaratana Thera as the tusker in waiting to bear the casket in the years to come.
Little did the venerable monk know that he had personally chosen the ‘Mara’ of his own demise and invited him in to his temple domain to strike when the hour comes to one, even as it comes to all. That inevitable tryst with fate -- even as Arahant Moggalana, one of the two chief Arahants from which the Buddha’s Sangha descends, kept his rendezvous with the consequences of a past karma done in a previous birth even after attaining Arahantship -- is the common lot of all.
Past karmic action did not even spare the Buddha. For doesn’t the Buddhist text relate not only the story of how the tusker Nalagiri sent drunk by the Buddha’s cousin Devadatta to kill him, knelt down in worship before the Enlightened One’s beneficence but also tell of the story of how a splinter of a rock hurled by the same cousin Devadatta, struck the Buddha’s big toe and caused it to bleed due to the unforgivable action of once having insulted Paccheke Buddha in a previous birth?
That is the Buddhist philosophical explanation for the monk’s untimely death. No need for any cover up as some attempted to do to conceal the truth in the first hours of the tragedy that the venerable monk had been struck down by the temple’s tusker and thought fit to attribute to an incident at the temple.
Men in this present birth and existence can live exemplary lives and still meet tragic ends. The modern saint of the Twentieth Century Mohandas Gandhi was shot. Two thousand years ago, Jesus Christ died crucified on the cross. Does the manner of their deaths deny Gandhi his sainthood or Christ his position as the son of God? Even as Jesus said on the cross, “Father forgive them, for they know not what they do,” perhaps it was ignorance that prompted the venerable monk’s acolytes to take that path, not forgetting, of course, the shock they would have suffered learning of the revered monk’s sudden demise. As the late venerable monk would have been the first to exclaim “why fear truth”.
Especially when his life was based on that one guiding tenet: to speak the truth regardless of the consequences. As Keats’s put it in his Ode on a Grecian urn ‘ beauty is truth, truth beauty’. And in Sanskrit as the Indian sages of old held, ‘Satyam Shivam Sundaram’: Truth is God and it’s beautiful. And that was all, the venerable monk needed to know to embrace it as his personal credo to launch his worldly crusade to gain justice for the people of Lanka.
And that is why, tens of thousands came from all corners of the island to pay their last respects and bid final farewell to the mortal remains of the monk who had fearlessly spoken out on their behalf without fearing the backlash of Lanka’s political masters.
He had become the guardian deity of the people’s rights. And his temple lay in the Bellanwila Raja Maha Viharaya. And his scholarly background gave him the intellectual prowess to become a formidable crusader and defender of the democratic faith.
He read for a doctorate in philosophy in 1980 at the University of Lancaster, United Kingdom. He served as professor, associate professor, lecturer and visiting lecturer of the Sri Jayewardenepura University and in 2000 was appointed as its chancellor. He was also a visiting professor at the School of Oriental and African Studies, University of London, United Kingdom.
And unlike others who draped themselves with the saffron robe and raised the lion flag of chauvinism to attack other communities and their religious creeds, the venerable Bellanwila Thera used the inherent power of the robe to promote national harmony and reconciliation.
If the late Venerable Maduluwawe Sobitha Thera had been in recent years the moral voice of the nation, the erudite Venerable Bellanwila Thera had been its intellectual counterpart. Both monks had one common trait. Both were fearless and both attacked wrongs and injustices no matter from which political camp it emanated. Both kept check on politicians. They did not speak or act for any personal gain or privileges nor did they have a political agenda. Whether the alms came in duty free limousines of the rich and powerful to court their favour or whether it was brought on foot by the poor with shraddha in their hearts to gain merit to transfer the same to their beloved dead, they viewed both with equanimity. To have lost them within a period of less than two and a half years is a national tragedy. It has left a vacuum that cannot be filled.
His untimely death reveals the fickleness of life: That even the bright flame that illumines the dark night can be snuffed with one small gust of wind. It should serve as an illustration to politicians who speak and act and strut on the political stage as they were immortals that all life dances on a razor blade. Without a safety net.
May the most Venerable Bellanwilla Wimalaratana Thera attain the Supreme Bliss of Nirvana.