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• Religious weirdoes prowl the bleak Paradise the Gods forsook
  

Perhaps, it’s the poverty, a pathological sense of utter despair prevailing in the land that has made countless Lankans renounce their ancestral faith and blindly follow a crop of religious fakirs, living Buddhas and miracle prophets that have suddenly mushroomed in the island.

If that was not enough to cater to this exploitable lot’s demand, then the last gasp of the old year and the first fresh breath of the new, witnessed the advent of two more: One, a secret suicidal cult leader who preached his fatalistic creed and, true to his word, made his quick exit; and the other, with pretensions to be no less than the future Maithree Buddha, Avalokiteshvara, who claimed he had touched down in Lanka to open the door of Nirvana to all beings on earth.

This shocking claim is as abhorrent to Buddhists as it would be to Christians if some religious crank appeared from seemingly nowhere and proclaimed: ‘I am Jesus. And this is my second advent.’

First the sad disturbing story of the suicide cult’s leader. On December 28, a man was found dead in a Malabe house where he lived with his wife and three children. He had taken poison and committed suicide inside his room. His funeral was held the following day. Two days after his death, his wife and their two sons, aged 9 and 8, and daughter aged 6, consumed poison and died. Their bodies were found in the early hours of December 31.

Police initially believed that the depressed state of the woman’s mind following her husband’s suicide led to the family’s own tragic end. But when news reached that two others, who had attended the man’s funeral, had also committed suicide, the police began to probe the mystery deaths deeper.

The deaths of a 21-year-old girl, university aspirant Dinithi Mandakani, found dead at her home in Yakkala after consuming poison and a 35-year-old  man, Moris Mohan Preadeepkumara, a resident of Ambalangoda, found dead at a motel in Maharagama, after consuming cyanide revealed a common link to Ruwan Prasanna Gunaratne. They had not only been present at his burial but were also followers of his death cult.

CULT LEADER: Ruwan Gunaratne

On January 3, the attempted suicide of another cult member — again by consuming poison –prompted the Police to issue a nationwide caution to families whose members may have attended the cult leader’s meetings. The families were asked to keep close watch on the behaviour of such members. Police Media Spokesman SSP Nihal Thalduwa said that the 27-year-old married businessman from Polonnaruwa, had admitted to the police of being a disciple of Gunaratne for the past eight years.

Investigations soon revealed that the 46-year-old man whose death on December 28 had sparked mass suicide, had recently sold his properties in Polonnaruwa and moved with his family to a rented house in Malabe.  He had been a preacher and was known by the name of Ruwan Prasanna Gunaratne.

For the past ten years or so, he had been holding religious meetings at social centres and temples in Anuradhapura, Kurunegala and Galle. He had also released his videos on Facebook to spread his extreme message, advocating suicide as the best and quickest way to escape the rigours of this life and gain a more joyous existence in the next.

In what is held to be the last video he had posted on Facebook, Gunaratne, who claimed he had attained the state of ‘sovan’ – the first rung in the ladder to reach enlightenment – is seen expounding his gospel of death management. He tells his gathered disciples: ‘All of us are born and we die, we are born again and again and to die again and again. That’s the reality of life. Everyone has to die. Today we die most unexpectedly, troubled, rush rushed, without a plan. That’s why time managing the last moment of your life is most important to gain a better birth. Or else who will come to save us?’

Two days after delivering his extreme message, he committed suicide. At least he showed he was no charlatan but one who genuinely practised what he preached. Through his extreme sermons to his credulous audience, he led them up the garden path to the promised graves of redemption and became the first to jump into his own that he himself had dug, well in advance. Before ten days had lapsed, six graves had closed upon six more, and had nearly claimed a seventh.

If such a gloomy morbid message of suicide as the quick-fire solution to end suffering could still muster a number of people to attend the death cult leader’s meetings and to make some follow him to their graves, how much more tempting would the dangled bait of redemption to all whilst still alive, be to the gullible?

DEATH CULT VICTIM: 21-year-old Dinithi

This was the attractive message a Balangoda man carried with him when he touched down on Lankan soil on New Year morn.  As the man, clad in white clothes, stepped out of the airport terminal, a welcoming committee greeted his advent with a garland of orchids and rolled out the red carpet strewing it with fresh flowers to scent his each new step. At one point, the man paused, waiting for the worship he expected. And it came with unrestrained zeal. Women and men, all dressed in immaculate white, fell prostrate at his feet as did an unidentified person in saffron robes.

At the end of his measured and affected walk, he hopped into a white stretched Bently limousine before an airport sign that read, ‘Welcome to Sri Lanka’, and was whisked off. He left, leaving mystified spectators at the airport to wonder ‘who the heck is that?’.

The new phenomenon in town soon reveals the answer at his first stop: Kelaniya Temple.  Here at this hallowed site, where legend holds the Buddha trod, the man arrives to be met by another nauseating bout of adulatory worship. A throng of women, young and old, wait patiently in line to go down on their knees before his feet. A middle aged woman, dressed in white blouse and blue trousers, seems quite incapable of stopping her frenzied worship until the mystery preacher places his assuring hand over her head and beckons her to rise.

In the shadow of the paddy heap shape Kelanie dagoba, the self-anointed one sits on a chair, and surrounded by his mesmerised flock sets the wheel of his message in motion. He says he should not be misunderstood as a political gimmick, here for the elections but regarded as one come down from one’s sever-year sting of meditations in Egypt, solely to rectify the distortions that have been made by ordained monks. He has come to reveal the true meaning of the Buddha’s Dhamma and the true path to gain enlightenment.

He then declares he is no less than the future Maithree Buddha, he is the deeply compassionate Maha Bodhisathwa, Avalokiteshvara. He has come to open the door to Nirvana for all beings on earth. And he himself will not seek to attain Nirvana until all beings have been redeemed first. He will be the last.

DEATH CULT VICTIM: 35-year-old Pradeepkumara

Halfway into his monologue, a member of his retinue interrupts at a convenient pause to offer him a folded white cloth, placed upon a folded red cloth, which in turn has been placed upon a yellow cloth. The messiah takes the folded white cloth and, in a series of slow affected gestures, mops the few drops of sweat that seems to have appeared upon his brow.

He regains his cool and continues. He recalls how he, in one of his countless samsaric births, had, as the Maha Bodhisathwa, preached his doctrine, and — pointing out certain people in the congregation — says, ‘you, too, were present that day.’ He further recounts how he, in one of his past births, had in a supreme act of selfless sacrifice consigned his body to the flames and gifted his ‘athma’ — his soul — to the Buddha.

What’s more, in one of his many videos released on his YouTube Channel ‘180’, he speaks of his ‘great renunciation’. He claims he molested a child to make his wife so disgusted of him that he could do naught but renounce home life. And he warns the police, the Attorney General and anyone else that if they dare to raise a finger against him, the wrath of nature’s unseen forces will be unleashed against them.

On Friday, following a complaint lodged at CID headquarters by a monk, the Attorney General filed action against him. The Senior Deputy Solicitor General Dilipa Peiris, who appeared for the AG, told the Fort Magistrate that the activities of Mahinda Kodithuwakku who posed as the Maha Bodhisathwa was a serious threat to Buddhism. The Magistrate slapped a travel ban on the controversial figure.

Another monk, the well-known venerable Balangoda Kassapa — who runs a one-monk campaign again the proliferation of living Buddhas like Umangdawe’s Samanthabadra,  Vishva Buddhas, Pus Buddhas and host of others who freely preach an alien Mahayana version and mock, ridicule and distort the pristine ideals of Theravada Buddhism — questioned if a sinister organisation existed behind these monks and financed them to achieve a secret agenda to traduce the Buddha and to destroy the high esteem in which the Dhamma has been held by the people of Lanka for over two thousand years. He called for a deep probe into these monks alleged activities.

The Buddha didn’t condone suicide. Instead, his teachings held: ‘It’s a delusion to believe that suffering will end with suicide.’ But masquerading in a cloak of Buddhist thought, death cult leader Gunaratne had inadvertently or advertently distorted the Buddha’s philosophy and had held suicide as the door to Nirvana. Neither did the Buddha expound self-immolation and pledging one’s soul to the Buddha as the sure-fire route to attain the bliss of Nirvana as propounded by the Maha Bodhisathwa pretender.

But often the courts are impotent to contain this evil menace. Faith cannot be tested in court. But even those who claim to be living Buddhas need a flock to preach their devious message. It has been the failure of the Buddhist high command to counter permissive Buddhist views with far more persuasive Buddhist views to wean away the gullible from the clutches of   satanic messiahs. Deny them their credulous flock and they will die a natural death.

GROVELLING WORSHIP: Bodhisathwa claimant greeted at Kelani Temple

In this respect, the Mahanayakes have maintained a studious silence. They have, instead, chosen to observe a passive, apathetic response to the sinister internal threat posed to Theravada Buddhism. No wonder in that void of silence, insufferable cranks with claims to Buddhahood have a field day playing havoc with the pristine Theravada doctrine which the Sinhala race has preserved unsullied, undiluted ever since its advent 2300 years ago in Lanka. Protecting the Dhamma in its pristine form has been hailed as Sri Lanka’s greatest gift to mankind.

Clearly the reverend custodians of the Buddha Dhamma have failed in their duty. They have failed to address the spiritual needs of the people, content to stay robed in complacency. They have contently chosen to remain in their temples wrapped in conducting rites and rituals and preaching nothing more than the untold karmic merits earned by giving generously to monks and observing the five precepts.

These precepts are but the five basic laws to maintain a peaceful society and predate the Buddha who only subscribed to the five precepts as being the necessary foundation on which to build all else. Except for these cliched sermons, repeated ad nauseam to a Buddhist kindergarten, they have failed to expound the true Dhamma to sate the spiritual needs of a generation more troubled, more confused, more desperate to seek refuge in a saviour, however warped the message may be.

By their miserable failure to unlock the shell containing the pristine, glistening pearls of Buddhism, they have allowed a new despicable breed of unscrupulous false messiahs to claim they have prized it open and present their own fake jewels — cut according to their perverse creed and fashioned to meet their earthly desires – as the sublime three gems of Buddhism.