Reform and reconciliation in Sri Lanka

Let me begin by thanking the High Commission here, and the Consuls in Sydney and Melbourne, for inviting me to Australia and hosting my programme. I should also thank all those, in particular the Sri Lankans, Burghers, Muslims, Sinhalese and Tamils, who have come to meet me. I am more appreciative of this because, given distances between places in your towns, and the weather, I think getting out for such meetings requires considerable effort.

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The dimensions of success and failure

Eduardo Galeano is one of my favourite authors. He writes things that can be read over and over again. They are always fresh and they always offer new perspectives. ‘Walking words’ is one that I particularly like. I’ve not read it ‘cover-to-cover’. Some books are not meant to be read like that. I read it random-page by random-page.

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Buddha’s teachings inspire humanistic and universalist politics

The first entails the notion that the West is the preserve of philosophy and the East is the domain of exotic cultures, and that ‘universality’ originated from and flows from West to East. Counter-posed to this Eurocentric vision is its inversion: the Eastern idea of the West as the site of a mechanistic materialism and a tawdry consumerism, whereas the East is the realm of the metaphysical and the spiritual.

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