“In theories based in Sinhala Buddhist Chinthanaya, I (mind) is important and it is not determined by the other(s). It is the mind that creates all knowledge and one’s mind is created by that mind and not by any other mind. I, as a conventional truth or entity created by my mind, am responsible for what I do and not the "other". Even to have a concept of the "other" there should be "something" capable of identifying, recognizing that other, and that something is the mind.”
___________________
by Prof. Nalin de Silva
(July 23, Colombo, Sri Lanka Guardian) On Friday the 18th The Island on page 2 of World View carried a news item under the heading "France denies citizenship to Muslim woman in full-body veil, says she’s not assimilated". Apparently this Muslim lady is not considered to be a French citizen as she has failed to assimilate the so called secular French culture and dress or undress like the French citizens of the feminine gender. Now how does one grasp this secularist decision from the French justice system? It is not clear from the news item, but could this be applied in the case of Sri Lankan, Indian, Pakistani and Bangladeshi and other South Asian females (let us assume that these identities exist at least going by the passports they carry) wearing saris? Is sari a secular dress or not? What is a secular dress and what is a religious dress?
If somebody in the French judicial system were to define a sari as a Hindu dress and not a secular dress what would happen to all those sari clad ladies in France? If that Muslim lady appears in jeans or in a so-called dress, would she be given the French citizenship? Incidentally why is that the so-called dresses worn by ladies in Europe are called dresses? I am not sure of the etymology of the word but it sounds as if the so-called dress is the standard dress for the ladies whereas the other "dresses" worm by the ladies are not dresses. Are we to define those ladies not wearing the so-called dress as undressed?
Whatever the reason may be the so-called dress of the Europeans has evolved and got accepted in the western Christian culture as the dress of the females and there is nothing secular about it. It belongs to the western Judaic Christian culture in which the Christian religion was born. I have argued in the Vidusara articles that religions are born in cultures and not the other way round. The word secular is a word that has come into the usage to hide the Christian nature of a dress, a government or knowledge system in general. The western governments are not secular though they are called so, but Christian in and out. It is Christian values that are upheld in those societies in the guise of secularism. It is not for nothing that the English or the British national anthem wants the God to save their queen who is the defender of the faith. She cannot be the queen of the Buddhists or the Muslims or the Hindus living in Britain as she does not defend their faiths. However, as most of these people are supposed to be citizens of Britain or UK she is their queen by definition. SAARC heads meeting in Colombo will ignore these issues but at least some people in their innocence would have expected the Universities in the region to address these matters. What they would not have realised is that the Universities world over are not secular but Christian in culture, with the Vice Chancellors, Deans, Professors and other academics wearing cloaks in different colours resembling the hierarchical structure of the Pope, the Cardinals, Bishops and other clergy. What is taught under the name of Science is also Christian in culture and the whole of Science from the Big Bang to a liberal or communist paradise through Darwinian evolution is nothing but the Chapters Genesis and Exodus in the Old Testament rewritten using a different terminology. RMBS can refer to the articles expounding these ideas in the kalaya website maintained by the Chinthana Parshadaya.
What I am trying to say is that all these are mere definitions and countries have defined citizenship to suit the western Judaic Christian culture. Even the concept of citizenship is Christian and belongs to Greek Judaic Christian (GJC) Chinthanaya. Citizens of countries are still called citizens following the Romans as for Romans the countrymen were not citizens. There are certain criteria that have to be satisfied by a person who wants to be a citizen of a country (what a contradictory usage of terms- The Sinhala imitators would translate it as rataka puravwsiya when there is a better word ratavesiya that can be used if they want to cling to this concept) and if those criteria, that includes the dress worn by a female in France and the knowledge of American history as formulated by the white historians in USA, are satisfied then that person can become a citizen of that particular country. The intellectual grasping of the concept of citizenship is merely a case of satisfying certain dry criteria very often without any feeling. I am not trying to say that feeling or experiencing is "more" real than satisfying criteria, for as a Sinhala Theravada Buddhist I "know" that experiencing is not devoid of concepts, and I would only say that if experiencing is first order primary humbug then intellectual grasping is second order sophisticated humbug. In Mage Lokaya I have argued that there are no sensations without concepts and all concepts including of course, that of citizenship are creations of the mind. It has to be emphasized that even the mind is a creation of the mind itself and if RMBS is interested he would find an article on "Sinhala Bauddha Manasa" in the website referred to above. If RMBS cannot understand what is said in these articles, then it is not my fault but that of the human western tradition that has inherited at home, schools and the universities not to mention the civil service established by the British.
RMBS refers to the concept of we verses they, and pontificates that for Sinhala Buddhist revival the identifiable enemy was the Christians. I will quote him verbatim to avoid any possible misinterpretations. "Ethno-religious nationalism or for that any type of territorially based nationalism fashioned out of diverse social group sentiments requires an identifiable enemy- an 'other' for the "we" versus "they" polarization. Garibaldi who unified Italy said that having formed Italy his next task is to make Italians out of the various groups whose popular identity was as Florentines, Milanese, and Sicilians etc. A similar unification of Germany by browbeating the different German states required the identification of France as the enemy."
There are number of assumptions in what RMBS has to say on this "we – other concept". The western Classics graduate and the former civil servant has borrowed the concept "I – other" or "we - other" from the western sociologists and may be some philosophers. Like any other western concept it is based in the Judaic Christian culture and the reference to the other can be found in the Bible. The western social scientists seem to believe that one is determined by one’s other and many imitators in Sinhala use this concept as if it is the objective truth. They would refer to the "aneka" as if it is profound truth. For the Sinhala Theravada Buddhists such as me there is no objective world and western knowledge whether it is Physics or Sociology is not the last word, and it is one corpus of knowledge created in the GJC Chinthanaya". What all these social scientists do not realise is that these concepts have been used in western Physics for centuries, and that they are a failure epistemologically though they work within limits. Even in Newtonian Physics the so called external forces play the most important role as exemplified by Newton’s laws of motion. The laws imply that the motion of a particle or an object is determined by external forces. Even the internal forces referred to in Newtonian mechanics end up as external forces as within a body as far as one particle of the object is concerned the forces acting on that particle due to the other particles of the body become external forces. In Newtonian Physics the force exerted by a particle on itself is ignored. I make it a point to expose this hypocrisy to my students though only a very few are interested in such epistemological problems.
In theories based in Sinhala Buddhist Chinthanaya, I (mind) is important and it is not determined by the other(s). It is the mind that creates all knowledge and one’s mind is created by that mind and not by any other mind. I, as a conventional truth or entity created by my mind, am responsible for what I do and not the "other". Even to have a concept of the "other" there should be "something" capable of identifying, recognizing that other, and that something is the mind. In GJC Chinthanaya there is an external God that existed even before the beginning of the world and this OTHER is the most important factor in western knowledge reflected in the external forces in Newtonian Physics and the concept of smaller "others" in western sociology. The OTHER has created everything and following this the intellectuals in the western Christian societies and their imitators look for smaller others that create or determine a person or a nation or an ethnic group. RMBS as a devout Catholic may be preoccupied with the "OTHER" and the smaller others but a Sinhala Buddhist does not have to do so unless he or she is an incorrigible imitator.
The other assumption that RMBS and those of his ilk make is that we in Sri Lanka has to build a nation the way Garibaldi did in Italy. It is well known that the concept of a nation was formed in Europe only after the advent of Capitalism, and the German nation was created only towards the end of the nineteenth century. Before the establishment of the nation states there were no nations in Europe and even the concept of state was not formulated as the boundaries of the "states" could change with matrimonial relationships between kings and queens. Some western social scientists believe that tribe is a pre-state social formation and that nation was possible only after the industrial revolution that made the printed books available for people to read and understand that there were commonalties between people who have and will never see each other. They think that a Sinhala person in Panama whom I have never seen is considered to be a Sinhalaya by me through some kind of interaction that has taken place through books. These people do not understand that within a culture there are interactions that need not take place through books. Some others argue that after capitalism was established it was necessary to have states in order that the capitalists could engage in production and distribution of what are called commodities.
Now this is western knowledge and RMBS like many others attempt to impose that knowledge on us, and those who have been trained by the western Christian education imparted have been brainwashed to assume that there is an objective truth and that truth is nothing but the so called scientific knowledge emanating from the west. We have referred to this as part of cultural colonialism and Dr. V. Ramakrishnan refers to it as knowledge imperialism in his article that appeared in "The Island" on 16th July. The humanist western tradition of RMBS is such that it imposes its knowledge on the others without explicitly or implicitly claiming that it is their knowledge. They pretend that it is the so called objective universal knowledge. It is the same in the other fields as well. The Law that is practiced is Roman Dutch Law, and not the Sinhala Law though the British agreed to rule the country according to the Sinhala Law when they signed the Sinhala British agreement referred to as the Kandyan convention by the British. I referred to the Christian ethos that have been imposed on us in Part I of this series of articles and there are many more examples that can be given to illustrate my point.
There is no necessity to build a nation from scratch in Sri Lanka. Though not the same, something similar to what Garibaldi did in Italy was done by a not so famous man called Pandukabhaya in Sri Lanka some two thousand four hundred years ago. There were gothras such as Nagas, Yakshas and what I call Ardha Vedic and it was left to Pandukabhaya to unite these gothras that had states and hence cannot be tribes according to the definitions of tribes by the western social scientists, and to establish the Sinhala nation, and Pandukabhaya did not have an external other to consider as an enemy in order to unite the gothras. RMBS cannot sell the ideas of western intellectuals to me as I know their capabilities, and also the culture and the chinthanaya in which they create their concepts and theories.
(To be continued)
- Sri Lanka Guardian
___________________
by Prof. Nalin de Silva
(July 23, Colombo, Sri Lanka Guardian) On Friday the 18th The Island on page 2 of World View carried a news item under the heading "France denies citizenship to Muslim woman in full-body veil, says she’s not assimilated". Apparently this Muslim lady is not considered to be a French citizen as she has failed to assimilate the so called secular French culture and dress or undress like the French citizens of the feminine gender. Now how does one grasp this secularist decision from the French justice system? It is not clear from the news item, but could this be applied in the case of Sri Lankan, Indian, Pakistani and Bangladeshi and other South Asian females (let us assume that these identities exist at least going by the passports they carry) wearing saris? Is sari a secular dress or not? What is a secular dress and what is a religious dress?
If somebody in the French judicial system were to define a sari as a Hindu dress and not a secular dress what would happen to all those sari clad ladies in France? If that Muslim lady appears in jeans or in a so-called dress, would she be given the French citizenship? Incidentally why is that the so-called dresses worn by ladies in Europe are called dresses? I am not sure of the etymology of the word but it sounds as if the so-called dress is the standard dress for the ladies whereas the other "dresses" worm by the ladies are not dresses. Are we to define those ladies not wearing the so-called dress as undressed?
Whatever the reason may be the so-called dress of the Europeans has evolved and got accepted in the western Christian culture as the dress of the females and there is nothing secular about it. It belongs to the western Judaic Christian culture in which the Christian religion was born. I have argued in the Vidusara articles that religions are born in cultures and not the other way round. The word secular is a word that has come into the usage to hide the Christian nature of a dress, a government or knowledge system in general. The western governments are not secular though they are called so, but Christian in and out. It is Christian values that are upheld in those societies in the guise of secularism. It is not for nothing that the English or the British national anthem wants the God to save their queen who is the defender of the faith. She cannot be the queen of the Buddhists or the Muslims or the Hindus living in Britain as she does not defend their faiths. However, as most of these people are supposed to be citizens of Britain or UK she is their queen by definition. SAARC heads meeting in Colombo will ignore these issues but at least some people in their innocence would have expected the Universities in the region to address these matters. What they would not have realised is that the Universities world over are not secular but Christian in culture, with the Vice Chancellors, Deans, Professors and other academics wearing cloaks in different colours resembling the hierarchical structure of the Pope, the Cardinals, Bishops and other clergy. What is taught under the name of Science is also Christian in culture and the whole of Science from the Big Bang to a liberal or communist paradise through Darwinian evolution is nothing but the Chapters Genesis and Exodus in the Old Testament rewritten using a different terminology. RMBS can refer to the articles expounding these ideas in the kalaya website maintained by the Chinthana Parshadaya.
What I am trying to say is that all these are mere definitions and countries have defined citizenship to suit the western Judaic Christian culture. Even the concept of citizenship is Christian and belongs to Greek Judaic Christian (GJC) Chinthanaya. Citizens of countries are still called citizens following the Romans as for Romans the countrymen were not citizens. There are certain criteria that have to be satisfied by a person who wants to be a citizen of a country (what a contradictory usage of terms- The Sinhala imitators would translate it as rataka puravwsiya when there is a better word ratavesiya that can be used if they want to cling to this concept) and if those criteria, that includes the dress worn by a female in France and the knowledge of American history as formulated by the white historians in USA, are satisfied then that person can become a citizen of that particular country. The intellectual grasping of the concept of citizenship is merely a case of satisfying certain dry criteria very often without any feeling. I am not trying to say that feeling or experiencing is "more" real than satisfying criteria, for as a Sinhala Theravada Buddhist I "know" that experiencing is not devoid of concepts, and I would only say that if experiencing is first order primary humbug then intellectual grasping is second order sophisticated humbug. In Mage Lokaya I have argued that there are no sensations without concepts and all concepts including of course, that of citizenship are creations of the mind. It has to be emphasized that even the mind is a creation of the mind itself and if RMBS is interested he would find an article on "Sinhala Bauddha Manasa" in the website referred to above. If RMBS cannot understand what is said in these articles, then it is not my fault but that of the human western tradition that has inherited at home, schools and the universities not to mention the civil service established by the British.
RMBS refers to the concept of we verses they, and pontificates that for Sinhala Buddhist revival the identifiable enemy was the Christians. I will quote him verbatim to avoid any possible misinterpretations. "Ethno-religious nationalism or for that any type of territorially based nationalism fashioned out of diverse social group sentiments requires an identifiable enemy- an 'other' for the "we" versus "they" polarization. Garibaldi who unified Italy said that having formed Italy his next task is to make Italians out of the various groups whose popular identity was as Florentines, Milanese, and Sicilians etc. A similar unification of Germany by browbeating the different German states required the identification of France as the enemy."
There are number of assumptions in what RMBS has to say on this "we – other concept". The western Classics graduate and the former civil servant has borrowed the concept "I – other" or "we - other" from the western sociologists and may be some philosophers. Like any other western concept it is based in the Judaic Christian culture and the reference to the other can be found in the Bible. The western social scientists seem to believe that one is determined by one’s other and many imitators in Sinhala use this concept as if it is the objective truth. They would refer to the "aneka" as if it is profound truth. For the Sinhala Theravada Buddhists such as me there is no objective world and western knowledge whether it is Physics or Sociology is not the last word, and it is one corpus of knowledge created in the GJC Chinthanaya". What all these social scientists do not realise is that these concepts have been used in western Physics for centuries, and that they are a failure epistemologically though they work within limits. Even in Newtonian Physics the so called external forces play the most important role as exemplified by Newton’s laws of motion. The laws imply that the motion of a particle or an object is determined by external forces. Even the internal forces referred to in Newtonian mechanics end up as external forces as within a body as far as one particle of the object is concerned the forces acting on that particle due to the other particles of the body become external forces. In Newtonian Physics the force exerted by a particle on itself is ignored. I make it a point to expose this hypocrisy to my students though only a very few are interested in such epistemological problems.
In theories based in Sinhala Buddhist Chinthanaya, I (mind) is important and it is not determined by the other(s). It is the mind that creates all knowledge and one’s mind is created by that mind and not by any other mind. I, as a conventional truth or entity created by my mind, am responsible for what I do and not the "other". Even to have a concept of the "other" there should be "something" capable of identifying, recognizing that other, and that something is the mind. In GJC Chinthanaya there is an external God that existed even before the beginning of the world and this OTHER is the most important factor in western knowledge reflected in the external forces in Newtonian Physics and the concept of smaller "others" in western sociology. The OTHER has created everything and following this the intellectuals in the western Christian societies and their imitators look for smaller others that create or determine a person or a nation or an ethnic group. RMBS as a devout Catholic may be preoccupied with the "OTHER" and the smaller others but a Sinhala Buddhist does not have to do so unless he or she is an incorrigible imitator.
The other assumption that RMBS and those of his ilk make is that we in Sri Lanka has to build a nation the way Garibaldi did in Italy. It is well known that the concept of a nation was formed in Europe only after the advent of Capitalism, and the German nation was created only towards the end of the nineteenth century. Before the establishment of the nation states there were no nations in Europe and even the concept of state was not formulated as the boundaries of the "states" could change with matrimonial relationships between kings and queens. Some western social scientists believe that tribe is a pre-state social formation and that nation was possible only after the industrial revolution that made the printed books available for people to read and understand that there were commonalties between people who have and will never see each other. They think that a Sinhala person in Panama whom I have never seen is considered to be a Sinhalaya by me through some kind of interaction that has taken place through books. These people do not understand that within a culture there are interactions that need not take place through books. Some others argue that after capitalism was established it was necessary to have states in order that the capitalists could engage in production and distribution of what are called commodities.
Now this is western knowledge and RMBS like many others attempt to impose that knowledge on us, and those who have been trained by the western Christian education imparted have been brainwashed to assume that there is an objective truth and that truth is nothing but the so called scientific knowledge emanating from the west. We have referred to this as part of cultural colonialism and Dr. V. Ramakrishnan refers to it as knowledge imperialism in his article that appeared in "The Island" on 16th July. The humanist western tradition of RMBS is such that it imposes its knowledge on the others without explicitly or implicitly claiming that it is their knowledge. They pretend that it is the so called objective universal knowledge. It is the same in the other fields as well. The Law that is practiced is Roman Dutch Law, and not the Sinhala Law though the British agreed to rule the country according to the Sinhala Law when they signed the Sinhala British agreement referred to as the Kandyan convention by the British. I referred to the Christian ethos that have been imposed on us in Part I of this series of articles and there are many more examples that can be given to illustrate my point.
There is no necessity to build a nation from scratch in Sri Lanka. Though not the same, something similar to what Garibaldi did in Italy was done by a not so famous man called Pandukabhaya in Sri Lanka some two thousand four hundred years ago. There were gothras such as Nagas, Yakshas and what I call Ardha Vedic and it was left to Pandukabhaya to unite these gothras that had states and hence cannot be tribes according to the definitions of tribes by the western social scientists, and to establish the Sinhala nation, and Pandukabhaya did not have an external other to consider as an enemy in order to unite the gothras. RMBS cannot sell the ideas of western intellectuals to me as I know their capabilities, and also the culture and the chinthanaya in which they create their concepts and theories.
(To be continued)
- Sri Lanka Guardian
 is important and it is not determined by the other(s). It is the mind that crea...){kind=link}
It seems to me that Nalin S. and RMB S. are two faces of the same coin!!
At the moment, what matters for the people of Sri Lanka is to form a united front to eliminate the threat posed by the LTTE. We have no luxury to bicker over differences. Only mentally blind can’t see the beauty in diversity.
Also, Nalin S. equation MIND = I is least Buddhist and most Cartesian!
To have a real grasp of Buddhism, one must delve deep into Anathma concept, which says that there is nowhere any entity capable of existing by itself. Thus, mind is a process, which depends on infinity of other processes. It is a function of itself, air, water, heat, light, vision, touch, respiration, transpiration, heart beat, health, ……, friends, enemies, brothers, sisters, teachers, parents, ….
THERE IS THINKING BUT THERE IS NO THINKER.
Reflection on Anathma can liberate our people from the current “thuttu dekee” egoist mentality towards a golden big heart mentality: the progress of one is the progress of all and vice-versa.
pop history to pop sociology to pop religion to pop physics -- a natural combination!
Karl
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