Moneypura sect’s new refuge: ‘Salli Saranang Gatchchami’
Politicians use monks to make temple tills go mobile in the vilest exploitation of the robe of renunciation
noble order of the Sangha wished, they were free to abolish or alter ‘minor’ rules after his passing away.
But, alas, he did not say, what rules were minor, and what rules were major’ and when the First Buddhist Council met a few months after the Buddha’s death, the members admonished the Arahat Ananda for not clarifying from the Buddha what the Buddha meant by minor rules. In the absence of that, the Sangha gathered thereat unanimously decided not to lay down new rules and not to annul any existing rule but to follow rules that had already been laid down by the Buddha.
From that day forth not a single vinaya rule has been officially changed. Neither has any new rule been added. But of course, it does not mean that all monks strictly adhere to all the rules especially when force of circumstances compels them to make a compromise and adapt to changing times. For instance, the rule that monks should not handle money cannot be adhered to in today’s commercial world though monks could have easily followed it as monks who have taken to forests hermitages or atop rocks like Kudumbigala off Arugam Bay easily do. But what are the circumstances that force monks take to the streets demanding money be dropped in their begging bowl, if not the dictates of Lanka’s corrupt politics, promoted by monks with a political bent?
And thus it came to pass last Friday that groups of misguided monks took their positions at selected locations in the city to go from street to street, from office to office with their begging bowls demanding to be filled not with food to nourish and sustain their physical self to pursue their spiritual goal but crying instead to be stacked with money, ostensibly to pay the fine a court had ordered two public servants to pay for misappropriating public funds on the orders of their political master to advance his own political fortunes. If the sight of monks begging for money was bad enough what made it uglier was that the retinue was accompanied by t- shirt clad women – cheerleaders of the new fraternity, of the new Moneypura Nikaya – shouting in the most unseemly way for the public to put their money in the monks’ ‘pin kata’ that had gone mobile. To say that it was unbecoming of a Buddhist monk wearing the saffron robe to put himself in that position is an understatement.
Like beggar mudalalies collect poor from the slums and drop them each morning at selected locations to beg on the streets and pick them up in vans extracting a commission on their daily takings, these monks, members of the Noble Order of the Sangha were walking city streets and suburbs to beg for money - like common beggars on the street - last week in a three day marathon to raise from the public with no receipts issued for money received.
But unlike most of the common beggars who are carefully chosen for their disabilities or wounds which may elicit sympathy and move a soul to drop a dime into their bowl, these men were carefully targeted by their political controllers not for any disability but for the distinct advantage of being draped in the sacred saffron shroud which serve to evoke ready reverence and move the heart and impel the hand to reach for the purse and fill the mobile temple till on the street in return for intangible merit and a better birth in the afterlife.
The saffron robe has been the designer wear of the mendicant. It predates the Buddha. Prince Siddhartha followed the fashion of his times when he renounced his palace pleasures and material wealth and used the white shroud that wrapped a corpse as his lifelong attire - of course, after disinfecting it with saffron, the antiseptic herb of India which gave the robe its name. It was symbol of the truth seeker, one who had renounced all to gain all that was worth gaining: enlightenment.,
But sad to say that in recent times in Lanka, the unscrupulous have found many uses for this robe for all reasons. Like wolves in sheep’s clothing, every mascot of every street protest is draped in one. And demands to be respected, to be treated with deference and considers it to be a shield of immunity. Like a catholic priest holding a cross to ward of the devil, street protesters believe that the mere adorning the robe of the Sasana will keep the law enforcing authorities at bay and that to mess around with it, even to lay a finger upon it tantamount to sacrilege. What is not realised is that every time the robe is used in this way and cheapened in this fashion, it loses the respect it possesses. And last week, the robe hit the nadir when it was squeezed to the extreme to wring, even from it, a few coppers to fill their coffers.
And the robe for all reasons has been found to be used for many foul reasons except for one: to be the symbolic garb of the truth seeker which automatically demands and receives the public’s reverence, worship and alms.