Full moon over our cloud cuckoo land
View(s):I can feel it coming in the air. The nostalgic feeling one has done all this before. That sense of déjà vu which would be nirvana itself if not for those undeniable sensations of being anchored to samsara.
A sense of unutterable peace has descended in our neighbourhood and also around most of our nation. Or so we felt this week as our community prepared itself for the forthcoming poya. After the time-honoured full-moon holiday in May, the peace of Vesak has spilled over tranquilly into the weekend. The usual carillon of traffic was stilled. Our avenues are still festooned with five-coloured flags as far as the eye can see. And even the storms of the weeknights before have abated; having laundered buildings, streets, and trees of a week’s dust.
But is it a false peace? Somewhere in the restless state, the memorabilia of a deadly internecine conflicted was being staged only a week ago. The war once raged. That war is still being waged. Now we pay with coin and commonsense to commemorate it. One sailor paid with his life for the cost of a victory-memorial. Behind masks, potentially explosive evil is reportedly being plotted in the name of a cause – or so our political leadership cautions us in its scandal sheets. And the hearts of many people are burdened – and not merely because living in the blessed isle today is so dear… in every sense of the word…
On the one hand, dear because peace has descended. On the other, dear because some of its beneficiaries are still paying a price for it. In a month in which a majority of our citizens mark – among two other events – the enlightenment achieved by a man of peace over two and a half millennia ago, it is an irony that the darkness in our society continues to engulf us all.
All of this brings to mind a sterling facet that characterises the island-nation in which we live and die. To wit, that our country is home to people of a spectrum of faiths, philosophies, and ways of life. (Not forgetting, of course, that there are many atheists and agnostics among us as well.) Hardly a day goes by in Sri Lanka when a temple or a church bell, or a muezzin’s cry from the myriad minarets that adorn the skyline, or the colourful sights and sounds of pooja, don’t serve to remind us of this fact. Worship, religious rituals, and miscellaneous acts of piety are an everyday part of the panoply of many people’s lives.
And the plethora of holidays (or holy days in this case) assigned to the populace – while something of a pestilence to more productivity-minded people in the corporate sector – is a blessing to the adherents of their respective faiths. And yet, we have still managed to have only enough religion to make us intolerant of one another.
Now while it is taboo (and, more to the point, dangerous) to discuss religion – and politics – in polite society, these are desperate times; and these call for desperate remedies. We have tried many other measures in the past to resolve our myriad national issues, have we not? We’ve essayed war, engaged in peace talks, invited the international community to come to our aid, inveigled our friends in the region and beyond to become involved in a dispute of our own making. We’ve invoked politics, socio-economics, cultural theories, rocket science, mumbo-jumbo, communism, socialism, egalitarianism, and a host of other isms in our quest for growth, development, and progress (an all-new GDP of a sort). To say that we’ve not done very well in uniting all our citizens in the cause and disbursing the largesse too well all round would be to damn ourselves with faint praise.
It may be anathema to some – especially as we are sitting on a sectarian powder-keg – but perhaps it is time that true religion played a greater role in the common good. As it is, not nearly enough of our religious leaders act, feel, think or speak out in the national interest. Too many are worldly-wise, and the rare few who preach (and also act out in) aggression as a means to stamping out perceived pseudo-ethno-religious threats are not worthy of the robes they wear.
But rather than focus on the faults of others, perhaps it is time for all truly national-minded citizens to pause for reflection on what they believe in – and how their respective faiths could or should translate into action in the present context. Religion may not make the price of rice any cheaper, but it might make us share our meal with the many starving people in Sri Lanka today. That mother and her children need not have considered ending their lives at the bottom of a well if their temple-haunting, flower-offering friends and family cared a little more… to say nothing of the rest of their fellow-country-folk…
There are a few more formal ways in which genuine religion (and not the ersatz state-enthroning self-serving impostor) can play a larger role in national social life. Meanwhile, in addition to the Theravada philosophy, would it be unconscionably unpatriotic to suggest that other faiths are also constitutionally enshrined? Can the state authorities promote with vigour and protect with valour the many other religious pageants that a gamut of faithful across the length and breadth of our land celebrate?
Shall we add Rama and Sita and Ravana to the pantheon of our island’s tourism’s ill-worshipped deities even if we believe it is no more than myth? Must we mark only majority holidays at state coffers’ expense or can all other fêtes be similarly subsidised? May we make a case for austerity in these measures, though – much like Vesak was observed under the gimlet eye of monks bearing canes to ensure that the devout don’t enjoy themselves inappropriately! May all beings of all faiths in this land be as happy as this, and be permitted to pursue life and liberty under an iron rod!
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