A travesty of what the Buddha taught

The recent violence in Digana should be an eye-opener to the Government. I recently saw a video of an inflammatory address by a young bhikkhu urging the Sinhalese community to attack Muslims.

This is shocking because Buddhist bhikkhus should be preaching calm rather than violence. The blame for the decline of Buddhism in this country must be placed on our politicians who made the initial mistake of giving it a pre-eminent place in our Constitution above all other religions. From a governance angle we would have been better off as a secular state. The form of Buddhism practised here today would have grieved the Buddha. It is such a travesty of what he taught. Much of it is ritualism with a liberal admixture of superstition. Many of our Buddhist citizenry believe in balderdash like cursing their enemies by dashing coconuts, hiring shamans and witchdoctors to cast charms on their enemies, placing their faith in astrologers and auspicious times for important events. Our politicians encourage such folly by their utterances and behaviour that newspapers shamelessly publicize. One of our prominent newspapers devotes a whole page to Astrology. Instead of pandering to superstition it should be doing a public service by giving such space to a weekly page on developments in scientific knowledge and thinking.

Bhikkhus should be urged to devote their energies to preaching on the value of good behaviour instead of involving themselves in economics and politics. Our leaders should stop treating them as pundits. They should be confined to spiritual activities. From the daily reports of cruelty and crime one would be led to believe that our masses are completely uninfluenced by the tenets of Buddhism. Why is it that our Mahanayakes are not vehemently and continuously condemning the violence against Muslims whether it takes the form of retaliation or not? Chari de Silva Colombo 3