Sariuth Hamuduruwo
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Posted by George Delis in Books section |
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"Sariuth Hamuduruwo" a book on Buddhism authored by Gayan Chanuka Vidanepathirana was launched at the Buddhist Assembly Hall, Bauddhaloka Mawatha, Colombo, on June 04, 2002.
Chief guests at this occasion were Most Ven. Akuretiye Amarawansa Maha Nayake Thero, Chief Sangha Nayake, Dhakshina Lanka and Head of Vidyodaya Pirivena, Most Ven. Weweldeniye Medhalankara Maha Nayake Thero of the Sri Lanka Ramangna Niyaka, Most Ven. Madihe Pagnaseeha Maha Nayake Thero of Amarapura Maha Sangha Sabha and Most Ven. Paravahera Pagnananda Maha Nayake Thero, Chief Sangha Nayake of Nava Korale, Colombo. This book is a publication by Dayawansa Jayakody Company.
If you were to examine the values in which you have been nurtured from your childhood, you see that most of them ‘have been forced upon you by society’, by the socio-economic and educational environment in which you have had your early up-bringing. On closer examination you will see that most of these values increases your life’s tensions, anxieties and sufferings rather than to help you resolve them. Why is that? Because most of these values ignore the basic truths and the laws of life and the cosmos which was just mentioned.
Our social values today are sensate, false and changing. They do not touch reality. The true Buddhist may revolt against these perishable, materialistic values that carry him further from happiness and truth. The Buddhist is expected to cultivate these imperishable and eternal values of the heart and mind which bring both social harmony and individual peace.
Better cars, more equipped bathrooms, luxurious conditions of material living, radios, television, films and all these are expected to enhance human happiness. But the tragedy is; they have created new conditions of suffering. Better scientific discoveries mean better and more efficient methods of killing each other, more methodical and destructive wars, more deceptive methods of exploitation and so on.
This situation dominating the technologically advanced west rather than the east, has already opened the eyes of many westerners to the profound truths of life and the cosmos proclaimed by the Buddha. Many westerners are turning to Buddha Dhamma wherein they find the only means of resolving their lives inner and outer tensions caused by an over developed technology.
We have a two fold-duty: one toward himself, the other toward society. Where his individual moral life sanctioned, Buddhist truths conflict with the accepted values of society, he should be able to make a compromise instead of sacrificing his higher nobler emotions and aspirations for social expediency or shallow convention. He could create his own values and stick to them within the social environment he lives in.
Society may place an absolute on perishable things: money, power, wealth and property, name and fame etc. But, the true Buddhist who understands the impermanent and therefore painful character of these changing, sensate material values; should break away from every false pattern of life.
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