Appreciations
View(s):M.A.A. Fernando
His capabilities were immense and his integrity unquestionable
Mr. M.A.A. Fernando (Athula) joined the Health Department in October 1953. He won a Colombo Plan Scholarship to U.K. in 1954, and having qualified as a member of the Chartered Society of Physiotherapy (MCSP) returned to the Orthopaedic Clinic, General Hospital, Colombo as Senior Physiotherapist of the Department of Physical Medicine (Special ) in 1958.
I had the privilege of working with him when I joined as physiotherapist in December 1960.
He was a dedicated and conscientious worker of the old school type whose work was ‘service’ and not for mere gain. We used to call him Maa because his initials were MAA, but he really fitted the character as he was ‘Maa’ or ‘mama’ to all of us younger physiotherapists. He was soft spoken and never raised his voice even when he was angry. Latterly he had a slight impediment-shortness of hearing. I remember once when I spoke to him loudly because I thought he would hear better, he corrected me and asked me to speak softly because then he could hear better. Although he was senior he never threw his weight about to show his authority. He almost always had a smile on his face and had good relationships, both with his patients and colleagues.
He was a patriotic citizen and served in Sri Lanka right through his career. Just before he retired in 1978 he set-up a physiotherapy department at ‘Glass House’ and worked there for about 15 years. Thereafter he had a practice at his home in Nawala where he continued treating patients for another seven years dedicating almost his whole life to the service of physiotherapy. At his demise he was 91 years of age.
His capabilities were immense and his integrity unquestionable. He was truly a gentle gentleman.
-A Colleague
Dr. Gunapala Dharmasiri
A Buddhist scholar, teacher and lifelong friend
On May 8, 2015, we lost a great teacher and I lost a life-long friend and mentor. Dr. Gunapala Dharmasiri, retired chair of the Philosophy Department at the University at Peradeniya, was affectionately known as “Dharme” to his many students in Sri Lanka and around the world. The soft-spoken philosopher was one of Sri Lanka’s foremost Buddhist scholars. Over the course of his career he integrated his profound understanding of the Theravadan tradition with the Mahayanan and Vajrayanan paths to enlightenment. Fluent in Sinhalese, Pali, Sanskrit and English, Dharme’s books, translations and lectures were infused with his remarkable understanding of the Buddha’s teachings and with his thorough comprehension of Eastern and Western philosophies.
Once, over tea and the inevitable cigarette, Dharme told me he had always felt it was his good karma to be born a Buddhist in Sri Lanka. Even when he travelled abroad, Dharme maintained a strong national pride. He often waxed lyrical about Sri Lanka’s beauty and peacefulness. He called it “a paradise” and often told me that village life, in particular, was the ideal.
Dharme had been eight years old when Sri Lanka won its independence from Great Britain. Throughout his life he maintained an awareness of the colonial lie of white superiority. He was skeptical of Western ideas being inherently superior (although he did have a fondness for gadgets). After careful study of the ideas of the major Western philosophies, Dharme concluded that Buddha’s teachings were far wiser and pointed us to direct experience of Ultimate Truth.
He earned his doctorate at the University of Lancaster under Dr. Ninan Smart, who had established the first secular department of religious studies in the U.K. Dharme’s dissertation, A Buddhist Critique of the Christian Concept of God (1974), was considered revolutionary. While Western academics had long been in the habit of critiquing non-Western religions, few Eastern academics had returned the favour. In his endorsement of Dharme’s book, Dr. Smart wrote, “…An excellent book, and one which breaks new ground. It is, as far as I know, the first full length and systematic account of the Buddhist critique of theism.”
After completing his studies in England, Dharme joined the faculty of the Philosophy Department at the Peradeniya campus and soon was invited to teach abroad. I met him in 1981, when he came to the U.S. on a Fulbright Fellowship to Swarthmore College in Pennsylvania. He taught a course called “Buddhist Ethics in Contemporary Perspective,” and for me, at age 17, it was life-changing. He suggested I come to Peradeniya to study the following year, and that began a three-decade friendship with this extraordinary teacher and his wonderful family.
While he was in the U.S. that first time, his impact on his students was so profound that Swarthmore College offered him the Julian Cornell Visiting Professor Fellowship so he could teach for an additional semester. He presented a lecture series which he then turned into a book, published in 1986, called Fundamentals of Buddhist Ethics.
Dharme’s books became quite popular in Singapore and he was invited to teach there on many occasions. He felt a deep affinity for the Boddhisatva ideal of Mahayana Buddhism. He returned home from one of his trips with a three-foot statue of Kuan Yin, which graced his dining room table for years after.
I returned to Sri Lanka in 1986, to do research on Sri Lankan nuns (Bhikkshunis). Dharme was delighted with the project. His own mother had become a nun and he had the highest respect for Bhikkshunis. At that time, Dharme had been reading extensively in the field of women and religion and considered himself a feminist. In 1987, he formed the Bhikkshuni Foundation to support the education of Sri Lanka’s Buddhist nuns so they could achieve Higher Ordination. He raised funds to send several nuns abroad to Mahayana countries where Bhikkshunis had already received Higher Ordination. His hope was that Sri Lanka could revive its Bhikkshuni sangha. Articles about the Bhikkshuni Foundation were published in the feminist Ms. magazine as well as Tricycle, which is a prominent magazine for Western Buddhists.
By this time Dharme was well into his great work, with colleague and friend W.M. Gunathilake (Professor of Sinhala at Peradeniya), to translate and publish the Mahayana sutras from English into Sinhalese. His translation work continued until illness in his later years made it too difficult for him to see. But for more than 30 years, Dharme translated dozens of important works so that Sri Lankans would have access to these profound teachings of the Buddha. Dharme considered himself a Mahayana Buddhist. He criticised the Theravadan Sangha for being “dehydrated,” by which he meant they had lost the key point that enlightenment cannot be achieved without both wisdom and compassion. He encouraged all his students to contemplate the importance of compassionate understanding.
In 1993, Dharme returned to the U.S. as a visiting professor at Bowdoin College in Maine. He was already connected to the college through the ISLE (Inter-Collegiate Sri Lankan Education) program, which is still active today. Dharme was a key figure in the program for decades. At Bowdoin, he had time to write his next book, The Nature of Medicine (1997). He had become passionately interested in Sri Lanka’s Ayurvedic tradition and was a strong advocate for preserving Sri Lanka’s medicinal plants. Dharme believed that reliance on Western medicine was a mistake when Ayurveda was so beneficial, affordable, and local. The Nature of Medicine was an appeal to Sri Lankans to preserve and value their own medical tradition. In those years and for many years after, a meal with Dharme included mini-lectures on the valuable healing properties of the various ingredients in the curries!
Dharme retired as chair of Peradeniya’s Philosophy Department, but continued to work on his writing and translations until his health would not allow. I visited him for the last time in 2014, and he handed me two unpublished manuscripts. A Packet of Gods is a collection of short stories he wrote in 1967, as a graduate student living in the U.K. It was published a week before his death. The second manuscript, Buddhism and Sex, is forthcoming.
One of our last conversations will stay with me forever.
“I have figured it out,” he told me. “You just have to extinguish thought (naroda) and experience pure Being. The secret to Nirvana is ridiculously simply: pure Being with no thought!”
“But how can we extinguish thought?” I asked. Extinguishing thought didn’t sound simple to me, and I have been practising vipassana for decades.
“Read my Ethics book, fourth edition,” he told me sternly. “There is a whole chapter on it.”
In the end, Dharme’s great gift to us is his constant reminder in every book, translation, lecture and conversation: the reminder that enlightenment is possible for each one of us in this lifetime.
“The Buddha’s eternal plea is for you to become a Buddha, and He showed, in a clearly rational way, that each and every one of us has the perfect potentiality and capacity to attain that ideal.”
- Gunapala Dharmasiri in A Buddhist Critique of the Christian Concept of God
- Laura Markowitz
DR. KAMALA JAYAPALI PEIRIS
A great source of inspiration
‘She was a great source of inspiration to all who knew her’. Thus wrote Prof. Angela Little (Emeritus Professor of the University of London) in a sympathy note from the British Isles to the bereaved family. “I had the privilege of meeting Kamala first in 1976 and of working with her closely from 1983 up in Bandarawela where we stayed at rooms 1 and 2 of the Rest House and worked long hours into the night. I will miss her knowledge, her wisdom and her counsel greatly”.
Much water has passed under the bridge since the passing away of Dr. (Ms) Kamala Peiris on the 5th ultimo after a brief illness.
“Guru Niwasa’, Gorakapola, Panadura where she started life in the true sense of the word was a house full of teachers. Her mother and father as well as the three children (all girls) were teachers. Kamala remained unmarried – her two sisters both married teachers.
Kamala had her secondary education at St. John’s College, Panadura, where she was a Denham Scholarship holder throughout her secondary school career (1938-1948 English medium). Under this scholarship, the State provided monetary assistance to one student from each province per year and Kamala enjoyed the scholarship and bursary throughout having succeeded in subsequent selection tests and ended up with a first division pass at the Senior School Certificate in 1945. She graduated from the University of London in 1949. Kamala held two Masters- one from Cornell University of Ithaca, New York, USA having won a prestigious Fulbright Scholarship in 1967/68 to do her Master of Science and the other, a Master of Public Administration from New Delhi, India in 1972.
She started her career as an Asst. Teacher and had the unique distinction of being selected as an Officer to the District Inspectorate of Education Service in 1961 and subsequently as Director of Primary Education in 1971. She retired in 1981 on her own accord.
She was passionate about education to the end and the enviable positions she held speak of her dedication, commitment capacity and capability to handle any given situation. She was National Consultant on Primary Education to SIDA (1983 to 1993), National Consultant Primary Education (2002/2003) World Bank funded programme, Consultant in development issues to UNESCO, UNICEF, Commonwealth Secretariat, UNDP, to name a few. She had conducted workshops, training programmes, seminars and given lectures nationally and in countries such as Pakistan, India, Canada, Maldives, Nepal, Western Samoa, Barbados, Vietnam, Zimbabwe, China, Netherlands, United Kingdom, USA, Myanmar, Bangladesh, Nigeria, Tunisia, Iran.
In the context of the UNESCO Education For All (EFA) initiative, Kamala was a member of the Steering Committee of the World Forum 2000, and member of the UNESCO Drafting Committee of the Global framework for Action for the 21st century.
She indeed made a grand contribution towards the success of many conferences, workshops through her ability to gather together the undercurrents in the discussion and clarify the issues with a wonderful story – verbal snapshot – that left everyone both refreshed and informed.
It is no exaggeration if I were to say that she had a second home in Laiden, Netherland where she had so many close friends like Prof. Carla Reseeuw, Prof. Els Postel, Prof. Peter Kloos and Prof. Joke Schrijvers. She finalized a publication titled “Participation – a Point of View” working as a guest researcher of InDRA (Institution of Development and Research Amsterdam, University of Amsterdam – 1993. This was later published as a book titled “Weaving Our Future Together” (1997). Kamala eagerly waited for Sundays for her regular telephone call from Carla for they were so close.
Many may not have had the opportunity of reading Kamala’s book “Tiny sapling – Sturdy tree”, Oslo, Norway 1983 (The inside story of primary education reforms of the 1970s in Sri Lanka). Carla was instrumental in many ways to get the book expedited but nothing happened until one fine day a burst of temper “get the damn book out” did it all.
She received the Presidential Award – “Sri Lanka Sikhamani” (2005), Honorary Award from Child Protection Authority, Sri Lanka (2007), and a Honorary Doctorate from the Open University of Sri Lanka (2007)
We sadly miss her down-to-earth simple character and ever-present innocent smile. Kamala, you will be remembered here and abroad as a devoted teacher, a mentor, a scholarly academic and researcher, a good decision-maker, writer, radical thinker and open critic of injustice in behaviour and action.
May you attain the bliss of Nibbana!
-Abey Wickramasinghe