Letters to the Editor
View(s):Using cloth bags at supermarkets to save time and environment
You go to the supermarket to buy a few things needed for the house. You take out of the boot of your car, a few cloth bags that you keep specifically for use at these supermarkets. These cloth bags can easily be kept folded in the boot and don’t take up any space.
You enter the supermarket and do your shopping. You wheel your trolley to where the cashiers are. Then what do you find? About five cashiers billing what the customers have bought. At each cashier, there is a very long queue. The queues are moving very very slowly. You wonder why.
Then you see the reason. Even though seven out of 10 customers who patronise supermarkets arrive in their cars, none of them has had the presence of mind or the concern for the environment, to bring their own bags with them, cloth or otherwise. They have wheeled a trolley containing about 40 different items to the cashier point. Now what does the cashier do? She puts each of the 40 or so items in the trolley into separate plastic bags. This just consumes valuable time.
Strangely, these consumers don’t mind wasting theirs and other people’s time like this. However, it is a different story when they are out on the road. If a pedestrian is at a crossing, they can’t wait 20 seconds to allow the pedestrian to cross. Inexplicably, they have the patience to wait five – seven minutes while the cashier packs their items into separate plastic bags. Most supermarkets have these cloth bags to be sold to customers at a very nominal price.
When it comes to your turn, you just hand over the bags you have thoughtfully brought with you to the cashier. Then instead of waiting for her, you go ahead and pack the items which she has billed, into your cloth bags the way you want. In next to no time the job is done. You are then on your way from the supermarket with the satisfaction that you have not contributed to the pollution of this beautiful country by using these plastic bags .
There is no excuse for anybody who comes to a supermarket in their cars, not to be able to bring their own bags with them as they can easily be kept folded in the boot of the car to be used when necessary.
D.K. Via email
Let us lay people push to give due place to Bhikkhuni order
We strongly feel that it is high time that we as lay people took up the question of Bhikkhus not recognising the Bhikkhuni Order and addressing them as Mehenin vahansa. We are aware that Bhikkhunis lead a much more orderly life and are practising the principles of Buddhism to preserve it for posterity.
If we are not mistaken, about 20 years ago, a Bhikkhuni called Khema took upasampada in a foreign country with the assistance of a well known Bhikkhu who was also well recognised for his artistic talents. Similarly whenever there was no proper Bhikkhu order in Sri Lanka, groups of Bhikkhus went to countries like Burma and got ordained and that is how different nikayas came into being here. So isn’t it high time that we take action to correct the situation and afford due dignity to the Bhikkhuni Order?
This question of not giving a due place to the Bhikkhuni order has to be corrected. To begin with, even if the Bhikkhus do not recognise them as Bhikkhunis, we as lay people should address and recognise them as Bhikkhunis and give them the respect they deserve and their rightful place in society.
In fact when Buddhism was first introduced to Sri Lanka, the great Arahat Mahinda Thera, at the request of the then king of Lanka, Devanampiyatissa, sent a message to his father Emperor Ashoka, through his compatriot Bhikkhu Sumana requesting his sister Maha Theri Sangamitta to visit Sri Lanka. Thus the Bhikkhuni Sasana was established by Maha Theri Sangamitta by ordaining Queen Anula and 500 of her friends as the first members of the Bhikkuni Order of Sri Lanka.
If necessary support is given, Bhikkhunis can play a major role in helping the battered women in our villages. Bhikkhunis should be encouraged to have a close link by visiting them regularly and giving timely advice to keep the family intact. Bhikkhunis can also help erase the stigma attached to victims of rape and convince society that they should protect and safeguard their daughters at this crucial stage without abandoning them. This would also prevent the victims from seeking outside support for their survival.
If we give the bhikkhunis the recognition they deserve, we should be able to organise an islandwide pindapatha on Sangamitta Day. Though the Bhikkhuni Order is not recognised by the Bhikkhus they cannot deny that the Bo sapling was brought to Sri Lanka by Maha Theri Sangamitta and similarly the Buddha’s Tooth Relic was also brought from India by Princess Hemamali accompanied by Prince Danta.
Therefore it is grossly unfair that Bhikkhunis are not issued a Bhikkuni identity card and this should be taken up at the highest court in Sri Lanka. Isn’t it strange that though many of our Bhikkhus violate the Buddhist Vinaya, they are not punished and allowed to retain their Bhikkhu identity cards?
We should rise to the occasion to correct the situation by giving the Bhikkuni Order its rightful place to safeguard Buddhism. Let us begin our campaign by addressing Meheni as Bhikkunis from this day onwards and build public opinion against this unfair discrimination.
Indra and Ruvini Wijayatilake Kandy
Is privatisation the answer to make CEB perform?
I was somewhat disturbed by the proposed “break up” of the CEB, though I am in no doubt that the CEB needs restructuring as I have had firsthand experience when I was the engineer in charge of the installation of the first three gas turbines at KPS.
Whilst carrying out this project I saw the best and worst of the CEB. It had produced committed engineers like J.A.S. Perera whom I worked closely with but it also had more than its fair share of hangers-on.
I also have firsthand experience of what happened when the U.K. privatised the generation and distribution of electricity, which has ended up in total disaster. Before privatisation there was a coordinated planning and procurement strategy by the three government owned utilities. After privatisation all this was lost which has resulted in an unstable grid with inadequate spinning spare capacity leading to power failures and the destruction of great companies like GEC / Brush Electrical Machines which relied on joint R&D done with the utilities.
By looking at the state of the generation and distribution of the CEB, it hasn’t performed but is “privatisation” the answer to making organisations like the CEB perform? Margaret Thatcher’s privatisation programme which was used to contain the power of the unions, ended up in destroying the industries she privatised.
The fundamental problem in Sri Lanka is corruption and privatisation doesn’t solve it, it actually enhances it.
Arumadura Harith Kulasinghe Batagama Estate Ja-Ela
Bandarawela is no better than Nuwara Eliya
Your informative letter, “Rid Nuwara Eliya of these eyesores” applies to once salubrious Bandarawela as well!
It is strange that President Ranil Wickremesinghe notes that Nuwara Eliya is an “ugly town”. Is he helpless to do anything about it?
Throughout Bandarawela you will see lorries and buses, billowing out clouds of black exhaust fumes causing dreadful pollution of the hill country. The Police do nothing. The town itself is more congested than Pettah.
The beautiful view from the Bandarawela Rest House is obstructed by water storage tanks and construction.
In the evening the Rest House is taken over by various people apparently conducting private meetings which seem to be political.
The charges for food at the Rest House are unreasonably high and there is no menu stating the prices.
Jay Via email
The bowl and acts of giving and receiving according to Buddhism
In the contemporary world, the way it is organised through nation states, and the way history has shaped social strata within these states, it is undoubted that human behaviour, negligent or corrupt, is much responsible for poverty. There are other reasons too for poverty. The efforts to rectify poverty through international and internal expertise is necessary.
Help for those in need and the process of giving, by those who have to those who have not, between states or between social strata within, should not create a feeling of sympathetic generosity and abjectness in the two sides of this process. Particularly within Sri Lanka because it is Buddhist, mostly.
Buddhist thought on this applies to non-Buddhists equally, as in the Bible story of the feeding of the 5,000 by Christ where spirituality enveloped the giving and the taking in hunger, both on the side of Christ, who was still a human, and the hungry people.
While the meaning of charity is complex ranging from generosity and helpfulness towards the needy poor to the implications of Saint Paul’s thoughts in the Bible, the Buddhist position is closer to Oscar Wilde:“it is much more easy to have sympathy with suffering than it is to have sympathy with thought”. In Buddhism giving food to those who do not have is not considered charity but a way for people to connect to their spirituality. In Thailand, for example, the monks actually hide their faces in order to cover their identity, not out of shame for what is commonly called begging, but rather to ensure anonymity in both parties. Those who have can give and those who don’t have can take. Neither ego in the giver nor abjectness in the receiver should enter into the transaction. It is a law of nature in Buddhism, conceived in philosophical thought, not an affair of good conscience.
A brief extract from my play “A statue for Manimekali”– recently published in Colombo, is relevant.
Mekhalai : Something I never thought about. When we think of Lord Buddha we think of his teachings like the Four Noble Truths. We do not see his teachings in the things he did without big sermons. What Lord Buddha taught was also what he did, and which people saw.
Sutamati : Tell me
Mekhalai : The Bowl
Sutamati: So?
Mekhalai: When Lord Buddha took up the Bowl, He was teaching us that if the body of a person is hungry, because that person is poor, then to give that person a sermon on the Four Noble Truths is foolish, without feeling, and cruel, because the Truths are for the mind to take in and understand and the mind is for the time of a person’s life moving with that person’s body. If that body is starving, not only will that mind be unfit to take in the Truths, but it is very sad to see people suffering because they are poor.
Ernest Macintyre Australia
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