Fourth national conference on Buddhist studies

Groping towards a specific programme?

Padma Edirisinghe

The fourth national conference on Buddhist studies concluded recently. Conferences come in galore and are nothing new to the island nor to any country in the world today and were one to give the standard facts of this gathering, these are the basic:

1.It was organised by the Buddhist and Pali University of Sri Lanka in association with the Buddhist Times Trust and Bodu Sahana Aramudala

2.It was held from August 30-31 in the All Ceylon Women’s Buddhist Congress Hall.

3.It was variegated enough content-wise to avert monotony.

Despite this variety of topics presented, one could feel a difference, at first rather elusive to comprehend.

Then one could sense the groping of several speakers towards a common goal, which if one were to put it rather naively, was to bring in the Buddha’s teachings into the mainstream of not only healing many a desperate situation that has been triggered by present times and climes but also in regulating and guiding one’s day-to-day thoughts and movements. And ‘that one’ needs not necessarily be a Buddhist.

In fact the stage for the approach was set by a non-Buddhist medical doctor specialising in neurosurgery who had come all the way from Kolhapur off Mumbai (capital of Maharashtra). His topic was ‘The concept of compassion in Buddhist philosophy and its neurological basis’, the presentation revolving around the noble eight-fold path.

He picked on Samma ditthi (right view) and Upekkha (equanimity) as two examples that extol the virtues of compassion. What is the connection between Buddha’s teachings on compassion and neurosurgery? It was heartening to learn in this age resonant with cries of man’s cruelty that the highest evolved living beings, that is, the Homo sapiens are equipped with tools of compassion in their brains.

May be these tools have withdrawn into a backseat at present pressurised by counter forces of competition, hatred, malice etc. Mirror neurons that the speaker harped on provide the connecting link between these tools and man’s reactions.

“Answers to questions like why we feel better with practice of compassion and why this would be useful in an individual’s life can be obtained by exploring neuronal co-relates of our conscious experience.”

While the good doctor is experimenting with connecting the Buddha’s Noble Eight-Fold path to improving individual mental health and collective mental health of society, here at home, the panel demonstrated, were several moving their way towards the same end.

Actually they were attempting a task long overdue in the Eastern part of the world where lived and preached the world’s greatest philosopher whose memory got eclipsed for centuries by the dark cloak of colonialism.

In fact the writer herself, a mute participant at this conference was once questioned by a talkative and curious student at an educational institute she headed as to this contradictory situation during an education philosophy lecture that had been preceded by a sermon delivered at the morning assembly on The world’s greatest philosopher and psychologist, the Buddha’ by Ven.

Kotakadeniya Gnananda of Gampola Dharmasramaya. This student had been devouring L. Hewage’s Adyapana Manovidyava’, the only supplementary reader available for contemporary teacher trainee students on philosophy and psychology.

“How is that if the Buddha was the most pre-eminent in the field of philosophy and psychology that he does not find mention in that book or any of the lectures delivered in the College?” was her query.

“To give a complete answer to her question one has to elaborate on the broad sweep of the resurgence of the West in the 15th and 16th centuries unaccompanied by any spiritual development that made them avaricious land grabbers of other continents.

Many of these races were further suffering from the misguided notion that they were Christ’s chosen pioneers to expand his faith. Europe and Christianity had got inexorably intertwined and East and its great religions found themselves hounded and submerged.

But now the tide seems to be changing and conferences as this open avenues for accelerating the change by providing a stage not only to Indian doctors as Prabhu but to experiments and programmes carried out by our own men and women. Here earns mention, “University students perception on an informal education programme based on the noble eight fold path for personal development conducted by a segment of the academic staff of the Faculty of Medicine, University of Colombo”.

It has been certainly a novel experiment carried out without specific mention of the Arya Astangika Marga among students of a new batch with the prime objective of introducing a mind purifying technique to help every day living in the university.

The themes of the talks included attitudes, how to differentiate wrong attitudes from right attitudes and the difference between outer and inner happiness. Results of the experiment had demonstrated the students admitting to achieving mental calm conducive to carrying out their day-to-day activities better. A student from Bhutan had benefitted so much that he is prepared to carry this mind exercise back home to North of India, close to the icy glaciers.

Contributing to the same approach was Dr. Priyanjali de Zoysa’s presentation on ‘Vipassana Meditation as a technique of psychotherapy’ who brings in the notion that the majority of psychotherapeutic techniques used in the world are today based on Western (Judeo-Christian) psychological theories and research.

Hence the time has come to incorporate Buddhist practices into standard Western psychotherapeutic techniques. The technique MBCT (mindful based cognitive therapy) based on the technique of Vipassana meditation is today gaining ground in the West especially in the treatment of depression and psychological distress associated with chronic physical illness.

The speaker however makes a strange admission, that it has not been reported to have been practised here except on a 29-year-old female, diagnosed with a depressive and borderline personality and successfully too.

The cultural acceptance of meditation as a treatment for a psychological condition seems necessary as a prelude to the acceptance and prevalence of this technique.

Anyway qualified mental health professionals who themselves have had training in psychological assessment and are themselves Vipassana meditators have to guide the distressed.