In the black and white photographs of my childhood, my sisters and I look pretty smart, standing to attention under the spreading mango tree which Rajaratnam Uncle took every year to record our development for future reference.

But there was one major flaw. We all had hideous black pottus the size of an Orange Barley bottle top on our foreheads. The pottu is to ward off evil-eyes  which could ruin our beauty. But then none of us were Ajantha frescoes but parents being parents obviously thought we were.

Then my father was cleaning the cobwebs in our rather ancient house with two kokkathadis ( two large poles tied together) to reach the ceiling-less roof on a Friday when our neighbour, Mr Jacob, …

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In a pre-Vesak address the Prime Minister and Minister of Buddhasasana and Religious Affairs made known his priority to lead Buddhists on a path, through awareness, to enhance their commitment to develop a high state of morality and consciousness in society.

Mr. Prime Minister, this initiative should be led by the Buddhist leaders in governance, at its inception by appealing to all in society, to place all resources allocated or reserved for Vesak decorations, lighting up streets and buildings, putting up pandals, celebrations, dansala’s and other similar spends, to be channeled towards helping the disadvantaged and unfortunate citizens who recently suffered from rain water led flooding and physical infrastructure damage, as well as those thousands of brothers and sisters and their …

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One of the challenges put forth by The Agnostics camp (myself, SomewhatDisgusted, BalangodaMan, with help from Heshan) to The Believers (Yapa, Wijayapala, Off The Cuff, etc.) in the 1000+ comments discussion/debate that’s taking place in the comments section of the Akon & Buddhism article at Groundviews is: prove, using modern science or math or any other verifiable method available, to non-believers, that karma, reincarnation, nirvana, as described in Buddhism, are real aspects/actual things that exist in this world.

So far, in spite of their strong feeling that karma, reincarnation, & nirvana are real, and in spite of hundreds of comments by them, The Believers have not been able to show that karma, reincarnation and nirvana are in …

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[Editor's note: This article is a rejoinder to “Akon and Buddhism in Sri Lanka – A Monk's Response” by Bhikkhu K. Tanchangya published on the Buddhist Channel website on the 28th of March 2010. Bhikkhu K. Tanchangya's article was a response to the author's original article 'Akon and Buddhism in Sri Lanka'.]

I wrote “Akon and Buddhism in Sri Lanka” exclusively for Groundviews, a prominent citizen journalism website in Sri Lanka. I expressed my opinion on the “Akon issue” as a citizen of Sri Lanka. Groundviews published my article on the 27th of March 2010 and later ‘The Buddhist Channel’ website published it attributing the original article to Groundviews. The Constitution of Sri Lanka guarantees its citizens the …

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The Government on Tuesday (March 23rd) announced its decision to deny an entry visa to singer Akon who was scheduled to perform next month in Colombo with co-singers, J-Sean and Kelly. The basis for the denial of Akon’s visa was a music video of the singer, containing a clip of scantily clad models dancing against the back drop of a Buddhist statue. The Government’s decision has been ratified by the Cabinet. The announcement came soon after the MTV/MBC head office was attacked by a group of armed thugs attached to a notorious politician for organizing the event.

Prior to the attack, a group of Buddhist Monks expressed their dismay over bringing down someone like “Akon” who had insulted Lord Buddha and …

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The other day I was chatting to my dad and told him that sometime in the future I would like to give a Jumma sermon. He shook his head sadly and told me that unfortunately in this country, women cannot give sermons. I asked him why? And he couldn’t really tell me a good reason.

So I am throwing the question out to the rational and reasonable public – Why can’t a woman give a Jumma sermon? I know from my brother and cousin that most of the Jumma sermons are totally irrelevant. Firstly they are given in a language they don’t quite understand – a tip to Imams: try Sinhala or English as a rule please, in Colombo mosques, secondly …

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We turned out of bed
saddened and furious
when we heard
Taliban detonated
the Bamiyan Buddhas:

What savagery,
to destroy testaments
aged over centuries,
to a now effaced history;
but today let us rejoice,

Akon the singer
has been denied
a visa and a chance
to feed the unruly
and sexual minds

of a sold-out
Sri Lankan crowd,
Christians no doubt,
urbane Muslims
certainly, even some

fallen gautamas,
they can’t be trusted
pogo dancing,
and we don’t want
skin exposed

near Lord Buddha.
Yet, I wish to offer
a disclaimer
along with a refusal
to appear before

a court-martial
or an investigative judge
to testify about
the nature of We
to which I belong.

Could it be that the sight of the Buddha statue was a complete turn-off to those who were utterly aroused by the dancing girls, the ‘sexy chicks’, seen in the music video ‘Sexy Bitch’, by David Gruetta, which featured Akon? If not, can such a scene, which in this particular video lasted for not more than two seconds, truly give rise to the kind of intolerance in a Buddhist; which was shown when stones were hurled at the MBC office? A further question that arises is the following: how many more seconds would it have taken, of that or similar kind of scene, for these people to strap a bomb round their bellies and blow themselves up in …

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Two years ago, in a moment of panic, I rushed my young daughter to Colombo’s only children’s hospital. To be honest, I don’t normally turn to our overcrowded government hospitals for healthcare. But a doctor friend had recommended the Lady Ridgeway Hospital as the best place for administering the anti-rabies vaccine.

As with all government hospitals, they first wanted to record the patient’s basic bio data. Fair enough. I provided the child’s name, age and street address. For some reason, the form also asked for the patient’s religion. Before I could say anything, the nurse in charge wrote ‘Buddhist’.

Now, this was both incorrect and highly presumptuous. But when I objected, it sparked off an argument. The formidable woman insisted that …

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Ameena Hussein is one of Sri Lanka’s best known English authors. She is also one half of the Perera Hussein Publishing House, that since 2003 has published some of the best new English writing in the country. The Moon in the Water, Ameena’s first novel, was long-listed for the first Man Asian Literary Award in 2009. Zillij, a collection of short stories I reviewed four years ago, won the State Literary Prize in 2003.

Our discussion touched on Ameena’s tryst with cancer and how this influenced her writing and outlook on life. We also talked about English literature in …

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Sometimes words are used so often and so uncritically that they not only lose communicative value but those who utter them and those who hear them no longer know what they mean.  We really don’t know what ‘democracy’ means, do we?  Decency, anyone?  How about justice?  Love?  There are thousands of such words and terms including ‘people’,  ‘sustainability’, ‘development’ and ‘hegemony’, but I am thinking of a name, an acronym, a term, a phenomenon, a curse and an agent, all rolled into one.  NGO.

Non-Governmental Organization.  I first heard it in May 1988 at the Marga Institute, while engaged in a study of development assistance, its sources and destinations.  It didn’t take long for acronym to comfortably replace term.  And so …

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This article is inspired by a programme called Justice Everywhere – an exhibition and events with Martin Luther King III, son of US Civil Rights leader Martin Luther King Jr. presiding held in Colombo and other parts of Sri Lanka in January 2010.

A young TV journalist asked me whether Martin Luther Kings’ philosophy of non-violence will work in bringing true peace to Sri Lanka ?

I cannot remember how I answered it facing the camera, but I hope I would have said something like this.

Martin Luther King Jr. paid the ultimate price violently driving a non violent campaign to win freedom for African American people who gained their official freedom 100 years earlier.   In my eyes, Martin Luther King Jr. …

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Authors note: I was inspired to write this as we have an election around the corner and saddened to see the way our human values and even human life is sacrificed to gain political power.  I am not a supporter of any particular party or any person.   I want to support a person with integrity and compassion and I am not sure I can see such a person in our political arena.  My wish is to see Sri Lanka become a model of peace and compassion, the way King Dharma Asoka transformed his nation.  History has taught us that religion and dogma have not brought us both – inner and outer peace.  It has only divided us. Yet, we are …

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Last Christmas, together with few friends, we prayed desperately, hoping a bloodbath would be avoided

This Christmas, we prayed and lit candles for the thousands killed and missing during the war, the ones who doesn’t have a grave as their family members had to run over the dead (and sometimes dyeing) bodies to save their own lives.

Last Christmas, we prayed for a stop to political killings, disappearances, forced recruitments, unjust arrests and torture. And for families of those detained, disappeared, killed.

This Christmas, we did the same.

Last Christmas, we prayed for easing of government restrictions on food, medicine, shelter and access for aid agencies to help the people affected by war.

This Christmas, we prayed for those injured & sick – as they …

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In Sri Lanka, the Dhamma preached by the Buddha has gone through many transformations.

First we had the Hinduization, bringing in Hindu deities into our temples, sometimes converting them to ‘Buddhism’.

Next came the Christianization, which led to the coining of the term ‘Protestant Buddhism’. This was influenced more by Christians who turned to Buddhism, than from a direct influence of the Christian church. We saw this with the start of ‘Sunday Schools’ instead of teaching the Buddha Dhamma to the children on poya days. We saw the Bhakti Gee, Wesak Cards, Schools on the lines of the Missionary schools. Saying ‘Theruwan Sarani’ for ‘God Bless’. Even performing marriages in temples, officiated by Buddhist monks, even though there was no legal status …

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“Victory breeds hatred, the defeated lives in pain. Happily the peaceful live, giving up victory and defeat.” — Dhammapada 121)

“A man may plunder, as he will. When others plunder in return, he who is plundered will plunder in return. The Wheel of Deeds turns round and makes the ones who are plundered plunderers.” — Buddha

In November, 2009 I read two notable news stories in the internet.  The first was a news story that appeared on 8 November, on a pro-JVP website: “[U]pon the advice of the astrologers the next presidential election would be disadvantageous to the President and to avoid that the Ministry of Cultural Affairs is in Charge of organizing Island wide religious ceremonies on the 18th November that …

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Vietnam was the first country to be informed by Sri Lanka of its victory over the Tigers. It was from the on the record remarks of a top Vietnamese leader that I learned that. In their separate speeches of welcome, the President, Prime Minister and Secretary General of the ruling Communist party of Vietnam all congratulated the Sri Lankan President for “the country’s historic victory over the LTTE” and promised to cooperate in “the elimination of the remnants of the LTTE”. On the issue of whether or not the Sri Lankan victory over the Tigers was one worth celebrating, the word of leaders who, as young men, actively fought the world’s mightiest superpower and won has an overriding credibility and …

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Every year, when Deepavali rolls around, I feel a twinge of sadness creeping up on me.  I didn’t dwell on it because it seemed indulgent and pointless.  It’s not like we celebrated Deepavali in a big way when I was growing up in Colombo.  And my family, we were not a sentimental lot.  We got on with it, and focused on what mattered – visas, educational degrees, jobs, marriages, family, and more family.  Getting weepy over some abstract loss associated with Deepavali was a luxury we did not indulge in.  But this year felt different. This year I found myself walking around with a barely suppressed sense of tragedy about it.

As I do every year since my oldest daughter started …

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I feel that there is a pressing need to rise to the defense of Buddhism. This is because Buddhism is being degraded and exploited  as a reactionary political ideology by a grade of low class politicians. Their impact is severe and decisive. Their politicized version of Buddhism is being incessantly drilled into the social consciousness of a particular chauvinist political base, with full state patronage, and more fundamentally, as the core program and agenda of the state and the regime.  The impact has been to imbibe a jubilant sense of a dominant, triumphant ego for having vanquished an oppressed nation, a narrowed, distorted and introverted sense of self, based on nurturing arrogance and intolerance against others. The mantle of the …

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I was strongly tempted to write this article after reading an article entitled On woman’s attire: Are we really tempting young boys and priests, by a writer under the pen name “Gypsy Bohemia”. The article was published on Groundviews on July 10 2009. We learn that the writer of the said article is a journalist working for a leading Sri Lankan newspaper. What follows is a ‘salad ball’ of ideas that stemmed from reading Gypsy Bohemia’s article and reader comments.

First of all, as a Sinhala Buddhist and a Sri Lankan, I extend my sincere appreciation of this writer and I my regret on her unpleasant experience. I fully endorse her viewpoint on the issue. To put it in a …

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