The message of Arhant Mahinda :
The most fortunate gift Sri Lankans received

by

Professor Dhammavihari Thera

http://www.dailynews.lk/2004/06/02/fea60.html

This is the full moon day of the month of June, i.e. the Poson Poya day. Any amongst us Sri Lankans who have a reasonable sense of pride in their heads about their cultural heritage of more than a two and half millennia in this land, should, on a day like this, recollect the historical situation in Sri Lanka prior to the arrival of Buddhism in this country.

Even more important than that is to assess and assimilate the advances in the different phases of human culture that Sri Lanka has gone through as a result of this revolutionising impact that Buddhism had on this newly emerging Sri Lankan community, calling them and the land in which they lived collectively, Sinhalese (as did Fa Hsien, the Chinese traveller monk of the 5th century A.D.) or calling them Helas or whatever else you like as you do now, to be in harmony with the foot-lights on the contemporary stage.

Namo tassa bhagavato arahato samma sambuddhassa

You are well aware that there is now a new breed called the re-writers of ancient history, in Sri Lanka as well as elsewhere, who are no more than political propagandists and vociferous blocks of global cheer crowds, who could be rounded up with promises of cheap bargains. In my sermon today, I wish to speak to those who like to be enlightened on some of these issues of Buddhism and Sri Lanka.

The message of Thera Mahinda turns out to be, measuring by any standards, the most fortunate gift we Sri Lankans received a little over two thousand three hundred years ago.

At that time, during the reign of King Devanampiyatissa, were we Sri Lankans so very highly cultured, or let me put the question differently, not cultured enough, that our pre-Buddhist king of Anuradhapura took to deer hunting as a royal sport, as some of the big ones in the western world did almost until the other day?

King Tissa was a gentleman of deep convictions, but a somewhat spoilt one. Nevertheless, within three days of meeting Thera Mahinda (and resulting from his associations with his unseen good friend Emperor Asoka of India), Tissa pledged to govern the country, submitting himself to the good counsel of governance of the Buddha (sambuddhanaya unto'ham vasissami jutindhara - Mhv. XV. vv. 182 ff.) There was neither pressure nor persuasion on him at that time from anywhere, via religion, political authority or ethnic dominance. His cultural identity was unassailable. Luck would have it, his friendship with Asoka was not a stop-gap alliance.

A turning point in history
The arrival of Thera Mahinda in Sri Lanka, with the Asokan gift of Buddhism, marked a turning point in our history and in world history too. Within a couple of centuries thereafter, we were turned away from hunting, both as a sport as well as a venue for gluttonous eating. Forget not that pre-Buddhist Sri Lanka at the time even had a God-of-the-Hunt or Vyadha - deva whose abode was a palm tree or Tala-rukkha.

It was by royal decree, a few centuries later, that with the ma ghata proclamation, or the ban on slaughter of animals, security to life of bird and beast and fish in this country was introduced.

Our indebtedness as a country or as a nation to the source of this inspiration has to remain incalculable and unassailable for all times. Cultured under the civilising force of Buddhism, and following this tradition of just kingship, kings of Sri Lanka like Amandagamani, Silakala, Aggabodhi IV and Mahinda III, ordered that no animals should be slaughtered (Ma ghatam karayi dipe sabbesam yeva paninam. Mhv. 41. c. 30).

Sanctuaries for animals
Those exemplary rulers set up veterinary hospitals for the treatment of sick animals. Sanctuaries for animals, including safe pools for fish in rivers and lakes, became a common sight in the land. Certainly there were no shameless state sponsored inland fisheries for the gluttons and the ingenious money spinning business tycoons whom the state and the religious leaders had to patronise. But behold the world today.

After more than twenty-three centuries, re-writing of history to serve contemporary needs of religion, politics and ethnicity is seen to be having its disastrous consequences on human life, both here in our native land and elsewhere.

This message of peace of Buddhism is indeed what the whole world today is looking up to, conscious or unconscious of the process of doing so.

It is the message of Sakyamuni the Buddha, given to mankind as a whole, with no thoughts of chosen or selected people, of any land or any race. This is what earns for Buddhism in this millennium its honoured title of the fastest spreading religion in many parts of the world. At the time it was delivered by the Buddha in the Indo-Gangetic valley in Asia, it was by no means meant to be Indocentric.

The guidance and inspiration of Buddhism
Within a very short time, overriding barriers of ethnicity and physical terrain, it reached as far west as the Caspian Sea, over today's warring regions of the Middle East, Afghanistan, Iran etc. In the north, it traversed over deserts along the ancient Silk Route, north and south of the Gobi desert, reaching China as early as 50 A.D. China, Korea and Japan came under its benign influence, reflecting to the world even today, their cultural enrichment under the guidance and inspiration of Buddhism.

Think of Japan's ike bana or the art of flower arrangement of worldwide fame, or its rich heritage of landscape gardening, the tea ceremony etc.

In the message of Buddhism, the world shall find comfort today in the face of threats of violence and disaster both at social and domestic levels, prompted by religio-ethnic fanaticism. It is equally true of rape and brutal murders set in motion by multi-pronged sex excitement, in every segment of the world.

The story is not very different with regard to pathetic devastation today of mankind, at all ages, resulting from Aids, HIV, and STD or sexually transmitted diseases resulting from moral licentiousness, facilitated by different culture levels of the world today.

The much debated problems of abortion, fatherless homes and unmarried mothers, witnessed with lamentable complacency all around us, here and everywhere, could very well be kept at a low ebb, only if sanity prevailed and the words of the Buddha were adequately heeded.

Global seminars seem to bring very little sanity into these areas, when there is very clear evidence that the misdeeds of these agents of evil are being protected by high-ups at global levels in the business world. Misguided charity via world scale institutions and the media, and wagon loads of public sympathy generously invoked would hardly touch the fringe.

The basic code of pancasila
Delivered to the world more than two and a half millennia ago, and to Sri Lanka via Thera Mahinda a few centuries later, the primary concern of Buddhism is the regulation and revitalising of interpersonal relationships within the human community.

Nay even with the plant and animal worlds, including also the biota and the ecosystems. That is where Buddhist religious living well and truly begins. This is why all Buddhist activities, not merely the rituals and ceremonies within and without the temples, which include pujas of all types, to the living and the dead, to the animate and inanimate, begin with the voluntary acceptance and the pledge to keep and fulfil the basic code of pancasila.

Precepts of pancasila embody some of the fundamental human rights of respect for life and respect for property and a great deal more. Read no more and no less than verses 246 and 247 of the Dhammapada to discover the dynamism of this Buddhist approach to social problems.

Answers to these do not lie in prayers to or supplication of forces outside man for favours or forgiveness. But in the total correction of human attitudes and approaches to the rest of the world in which we live. The above verses emphatically assert that maladjusted relationships in society lead both to social disruption as well as to personal deterioration and disaster within ourselves, literally digging out the very roots of our existence - mulam khanati attano.

Why then not be morally good, O men and women of all ranks? On this area of societal considerations or moral goodness in Buddhism, one only needs to be reminded of a very few basic sermons of the Buddha which he appears to have delivered at a very down-to earth congregational level. One is the Veludvareyya sutta or the sermon at the Bamboo Gate, Preached to the lay community of the Veludvara village [SN.V.352-6].

The main theme here is moral goodness and consequent social harmony [sama-cariya and dhamma-cariya]. The main thrust of the Buddha's argument here is 'Why not treat society in the same way you would like society to treat you?' This is called attupanayika-dhamma-pariyaya.

The other is the Saleyyaka Sutta where in the Buddha provides us with an almost perfect legal document with which any Buddhist who wishes to regulate and discipline his life on Buddhist lines could do so without any infringement of the Buddhist rules laid down [MN.I.285-90].

This Sutta discusses in detail the rules relating to the ten offences through thought, word and deed - dasa Kamma patha. We would call upon all those interested in the study of moral considerations in Buddhism as a religion to take a close and careful look in to these two Suttas and see their total implications.

A cosmic harmony
Morality or sila implied therein does not imply a mere negative or exclusively personal purity, unrelated to the world one lives in or in relation to the degree of submissiveness one is willing to offer to a divine source we are required to believe to be in existence beyond our world of day today experience. It is a morality which is integrated to one's community of all that lives which includes man and bird and beast.

It is calculated to achieve, more or less, a cosmic harmony. This and this alone shall be the hope of a changing world today, whether it be the territories of less affluent Asia or the more affluent and equally more devastated areas elsewhere - the so-called industrialised and therefore more developed, in the direction of death and destruction.

In the message delivered in Sri Lanka as far back as twenty-three centuries ago, Thera Mahinda did not lose track of his thesis.
With the assistance of the text of the Culahatthipadopama Sutta [MN.I.175-84], Thera Mahinda placed the Buddha on the highest pedestal he deserves to be on, delineated his greatness as the teacher of gods and men and indicated that his path to salvation led one away from the world of today's over-exaggerated mundane pleasure of women, wine and song. Within a few days this was followed by yet another course of Buddhist instruction. We are told that the Petavatthu and Vimanavatthu provided much material for his sermons to his new converts.

We are particularly interested in his choice of the Petavatthu. It is no indication, as far as we feel, of the lack of intellectual maturity of his Sri Lankan audiences, men or women, elite or rustic. The Petavatthu is more vibrantly eloquent and more convincingly vehement as a warning that the neglect and disregard of the moral instructions issued in Buddhism for decent and good living here and now, could lead one, in one's next life, to a total loss of the prestigious human position which one presently enjoys.

This is the very realistic sense in which the Buddhist concepts of apaya and niraya or the suffering hells are to be viewed. Today's new exponents of the Dhamma seem to witness the existence of these apayas within their own physical bodies.

It is our firm conviction that today, with the expansion of scientific knowledge and development of technology, Buddhism is coming to be more and more correctly understood by a vast majority of non Buddhists all over the world.

This is partly because of their own keen search for truth. Fortunately, good many of them are not misled by digressing and distorting Sri Lankan neo-exponents, monks and laymen of Buddhism today. These latter, they all insist on their freedom of speech and _expression.

Let them have it. Human Rightists everywhere are helplessly driven to concede all these, they themselves having blundered on some of these, sometime, somewhere.

A keener in-depth study
Therefore it is a matter of paramount importance that Buddhists themselves make a keener in-depth study of their own religion. They could not possibly be lured by attractive offers of down to earth make - believe material gains of better health, more wealth and greater success. Or even instant Nirvana.

Cultic attractions in the garb of religion are becoming extremely menacing all over the world. In Sri Lanka, wonder-workers, both monks and lay persons, playing on the super-natural they can generate, are seen robbing spiritual considerations like Parittas of their true worth.

Items like medicines and foods are super-charged with Paritta chanting for greater efficacy. Parittas are now being equally well used by religious leaders to dispossess their opponents of unacceptable decisions.

Religious amalgams and alliances are being made to look more attractive and enticing than cocktails served at the bar. They are amazingly hallucinogenic. The saner world is becoming aware of it, except for feeble and fickle-faith ones who are deeply involved and heavily drugged, even after having seen their disastrous ill-effects.

The lost treasure of the original message
In Sri Lanka today, we feel it is not a day too early to systematically plan and urgently start an honest venture of salvaging this lost treasure of the original message of Buddhism.

The Buddha delivered it to the world as an essentially salvation process of enabling samsaric beings to seriously commence an earnest journey of moving towards liberation in Nirvana. It can make any sense only to people who have been told the truths about Samsara. If there are long arrays of not very expensive hotels and motels all along the high ways of Samara, one would ask us, why not spend a few long week ends en route.

Some times we are told that morally good loving couples can, If they wish, together book and reserve heavenly mansions while still being here.

But Nirvana reaching is not a goal one necessarily reaches after one's physical death in this life. Death in any form, whether as ordinary worldlings or as arhants, does not provide the keys to the gates of Nirvana. One takes charge of them while still living, on becoming arhant, as Buddha Gotama himself did at the age of thirty five. Not on his death at eighty.

This message of Samsara crossing and reaching Nirvana and the way of doing it in earnest seems to have been delivered in Sri Lanka by Thera Mahinda within the first few days of his arrival in the island.

There was nobody here at the time to indicate to him to pull his punches or divert him in other directions. Even his elitist audience at the palace which included like his sister-in-law Anula among others, had also the necessary wisdom to comprehend the whole truth of Samsara to Nirvana.
 
Those women, of yester year, undoubtedly, were qualified to lead the way. They gained the conviction about the truth of samma samkappa or the need to reduce the pursuit of pleasure. Anula, along with five hundred of her friends, decided to renounce the pleasures of the royal household.

They moved out of the palace and lived nobly as renunciation-aspirants, awaiting the arrival of Theri Sanghamitta, illustrious sister of Thera Mahinda.

These are the noble historical models for Sri Lankan women, not to forget and not to lose sight of, if they dare venture into the field, to rescue or salvage Buddhism.

The message of Mahinda is good enough to outlive the lifetime of the world. The fountain from which it has been derived needs no revisionist updating. No authorised or unauthorised emissaries ever need descend to earth to revise the original teachings of Buddhism which are declared as the teaching of all time : esa dhammo sanatano.

Too many future Buddhas on the horizon can be utterly confusing. No new bulletins ever need to be issued advertising the Buddha way. Therefore on this day of the Poson full moon our very kind admonition is Sunatha dharetha caratha dhamme.

Give attention to this teaching. Bear it well in your mind. Live your life in accordance with these for the achievement of your goal.

May all beings be well and happy. May there be peace on earth and goodwill among men.