Buddhist Spectrum

Serenity revisited

Premasara Epasinghe

The Sri Lankan Buddhist devotees in the United Kingdom are fortunate to be associated with Aruna Ratnagiri Buddhist Monastery, No. 2, Harnham Hill Cottages, Harnham, Belsay, Northumberland, NHE 20 OHF, United Kingdom.

This beautiful monastery is situated in a big mountainous farmland. Its environment is soothing, cool, calm and pleasant. The pious, educated monks, who reside here are engaged in meditation. They are like our 'forest Bhikkhus' who reside in places like Salgala Aranya and Mitirigala.

On a sunny Sunday morning, cool, breeze, we drove nearly 250-300 miles to offer alms to the resident monks of Harnham Aruna Ratnagiri Buddhist temple. These monks never use any iniquitous, unjust methods in spreading the Buddhist doctrine. They only wield the weapon of universal love and compassion. We honour and pay our homage and respect to them.

Journeyed through the central highlands of Scotland, we witnessed an inspiring sacred mountain range of Celtic culture – Schiellion. This majestic beautiful rock can be viewed from so many angles.

Between the beautiful blue sky, enveloped in mist, there stands in a serene, silent environment, where sheep and cattle roam, the Buddhist monastery, Aruna Ratnagiri Buddhist Monastery which is situated close to New Castle, United Kingdom. It was one of the most breathtaking sights that I have witnessed.

These, English Buddhist monks follow Theravada Buddhism. Many lay Buddhist devotees from Sri Lanka, China, Japan, South Korea were present on the day to offer alms to these monks, numbering about 10.

They live pious lives in this beautiful temple, surrounded by mountains and valleys. They focus their mind and body in following the practice of insight meditation, as taught within the tradition of Theravada Buddhism.

The Insight meditation is the key factor in the path that the Buddha offered for the welfare of human beings. In Buddhism, there are two kinds of meditation. They are Samatha and Vipassana respectively. These monks are engaged in these forms of meditation.

Samatha meditation helps you concentrate the mind on an object, rather than letting it wonder off to other things.

One chooses an object such as the sensation of breathing and puts full attention on the one sensation of the inhalation and exhalation. This is called the Anapanasathi Bhavana. Here, you are not trying to create any image, but sustain and hold your attention on breathing. When you continuously meditate, the breath becomes more and more refined and you calm down. Samatha meditation is supposed to be good for high blood pressure patients, as it calms the heart, the medical men strongly believe. This is tranquility practice.

The other practice is Vipassana or Insight meditation. With insight meditation you are opening the mind up to everything. You are not choosing any particular object to concentrate or absorb into, but watching in order to be understood the way things are. An sensory experience is impermanent. Everything you see, hear, smell, taste, touch, all mental conditions – your feelings, memories, thoughts, are changing conditions of the mind, which arise and pass away. In Vipassana we take this characteristic of impermanence or change as a way of looking at all sensory experience that we can observe.

These pious monks come out of their rooms only in the mornings and evenings to the beautiful fascinating temple, below the mountain to worship pay homage to Buddha. They recite Pirith daily.

At 11.30, they walk calmly, serenely with their eyes focused down in a highly disciplined orderly manner, in a single file for alms, carrying their bowls. The sight of these kind monks was a soothing balm to all of us. The day, we offered alms to the monks there were about 40 devotees, including some tourists from Japan, China and South Korea.

The Anura Ratnagiri monastery is spotless, pleasant and charming like the resident monks. There were about 10 priests and an Anagarika, a lay man for the dana – alms on that day. He practices the ten precepts. An important feature was that the devotees prepare the meals in the premises itself and lay out the table. Another notable feature of these were, they are all vegetarians. Not like in Sri Lanka, the monks themselves, serve their own meals to their bowls themselves. A junior priests, usually takes the bowl of the high priest and bring the alms to him.

At the end of partaking the alms, the chief priest delivers the Butthanumodana – a short sermon thanking the lay devotees and bless them. Then, the priests in their own inimitable style recite Pirith – Karaniya Metta Sutta. Afer reciting Pirith they retire to their cottages.

These Buddhist monks or the 'Buddhaputras' behaviour patterns, etiquettes, mannerism are touching and exemplary.

Another important feature here is that these monks never appeal for any financial help or assistance from the lay devotees. These educated monks at Harnham Aruna Ratnagiri Buddhist Monastery, have written very valuable books on Buddhism. These books are all free distributions. Some of the books available at Aruna Ratnagiri Monastery are: 'The Island' – an anthology of the Buddha's teachings on Nibbana, written by Ajahn Pasanno and Ajahn Amaro, 'Rude Awakenings' - a book relating to the footsteps in India authored by Ajahn Succitto and Nick Scott. Among the collection available here are valuable books on meditation titled 'Mindfulness – The path to Deathlessness', the meditation teachings of Ajahan Sumedho. Another important book freely available here is a pocket size volume of the 'Treasury of Truth – Dhammapada'.

The Buddhists world over should pay a big bouquet to Harnham Buddhist Monastery Trust, in promoting valuable Buddhist literature to the world. All these publications are distributed freely and available at the temple premises, and for the yeomen service they render to promote Buddhism in the West.

Most of the lay devotees who visit the premises voluntarily donate gifts to the Harnham Buddhist Monastery Trust and fill a Gift Aid Declaration and put their monies in an envelope and put it to a box. The gift and declaration monies go to a registered charity. The programme at the Harnham Aruna Ratnagiri Buddhist Monastery includes the offering of Buddha Pooja, meditation or Dhamma talk, reflections on universal well-being, chanting of Pirith.

These Buddhist monks perform a yeoman service in promoting Buddhism. It is highly appreciated by all devotees who visit this temple premises.

If you are prepared to assist this worthy cause, you can send your worthy contributions to Harnham Buddhist Monastery Trust.

Scientific background of Ira Sevaya

K R Abhayasinghe

Every year, the Sri Pada season begins on Unduvap Full Moon Poya day and the season ends on the Vesak Full Moon Poya Day in the following year.

Even though the Sri Pada pilgrimage is religion related, it also has some educational value as well because all pilgrims joining the ceremony get an opportunity to observe the environment which is usually different from their routine observations in their respective native places. Atmosphere at about two kilometres above sea level, clouds floating below pilgrims, the circular horizon, special varieties of foliage that grow at high altitudes are some of them. The chance of observing the sky without any obstacle is another important thing.

As pilgrims who climb to the top of Samanola hill (or Adams Peak) to worship Buddha's foot print can observe the sky during all hours of the day and night. The most extraordinary sights are the colouration of the eastern sky in the early morning and western sky in the late evening plus the shaking of the early sun in the eastern horizon which is termed as Ira Sevaya by Sri Lankans. This Ira Sevaya is the most expected sight from the Sri Pada.

Many concepts

As many natural events in the environment were not understood by the man during the past, many concepts have been proposed and related to the unexplainable natural events by the philosophers during the old days. With the scientific understanding of the nature, the man started to know the reality (or science) behind many of the natural events which had been explained based on concepts in earlier days.

The scientific understanding has not gone to the all nations in the globe at same speed for many reasons. Therefore the intellectuals still struggle to make the people aware of the reality behind many natural events because many concepts are based on beliefs on gods, ghosts, and many extraordinary unseen powers or super natural powers.

The situation of our own country is pathetic as the understanding of the public about the nature is concerned. Most of natural events have been conveyed to the nation through concepts. Out of the many examples, rainbow, halo, colours of the sky, lightning, glistening spots of the atmosphere represent only a few. The natural event Ira Sevaya also has been accepted by the majority of us as a superstitious event that is special only to Sri Pada (Samanola) mountain.

Knowledgeable people

The inauguration of the Sri Pada season is usually a big function with a number of media personnel (print and electronic) participating with all modern technology with the intension of providing information to the nation. It is a usual thing that the media gets the support of so called knowledgeable people (Buddhist monks and some professors) for describing the activities performed at Sri Pada and the environmental observation from the top of Sri Pada. Many such events end up with fooling many educated people mainly the academics, school teachers and children because most of so called intellectual-assistants do not know the scientific background of many natural events, specially Ira Sevaya, that pilgrims see from Adam's Peak.

The Ira Sevaya (fluctuation of sun's images a few minutes before sun rise) is one of the most beautiful and colourful visual observations one can see in the world. When one observes the sky in the early morning, a few minutes before the sun rise time, from Adam's Peak, the sky over the eastern horizon changes colours so fast that he can observe beautiful designs in the sky and changes of colours.

Different locations

Mixed with all these effects of colouring, the shaking sun (really images of the sun) can be seen above the horizon. It is not a single image, but a multitude. The images are seen in different locations before you see the actual sun above the horizon a little later. One who does not know what is really happening in the eastern sky may believe that the sun moves up and down several times to worship the footprint of the Buddha as it is mentioned in myths about Sri Pada. As it is not an easy thing to count the number of visible images of the sun, most of the pilgrims including some veterans used to give credence to this belief especially since the phenomenon could not be explained in lay language.

A light ray encounters a number of effects when it travels in a media or passes a sharp edge, or travel through a common surface between two transparent media like water and glass or air and glass or even between two air layers with different characteristics. Such behaviour is explained under the terminology of reflection, refraction, diffraction, scattering, diffusion and total internal reflection which differ in meaning one from the other.

Natural events

A student of physics, who has studied these phenomena, can explain the science of the natural events like rainbow, mirage, fluctuation of sun before sun rise, eclipse, halo event and colourful patterns seen in the sky particularly in the North and South Polar areas.

The apparent movement or shift of the sun a few minutes before sun rise, when seen at the top of a hill, is caused both by Total Internal Reflection (TIR) and diffraction of the sun's light beams by the lower atmosphere very close to the earth surface at horizon. Light rays undergo through Total Internal Reflection when they meet a common boundary between two media, one denser than the other (like glass and water, water and air or glass and air) provided that the incident rays travels through the dense medium before meeting the common boundary. When the incident angle exceeds a particular value (called critical angle), rays are reflected towards the denser medium just like they are reflected by a plain mirror.

Light rays from the un-risen sun are incident through the dense air which is at very low level, close to the earth surface, of the atmosphere towards rare (low dense) layers which are above surface layers. Under these circumstances, light rays get reflected towards the dense layer at boundaries separating dense/rare air layers. Even though the actual position of the sun at this time is covered by the solid earth, an observer/pilgrim at the top of a hill like Sri Pada, can see the sun through the reflected light rays and those images of sun and are seen above the horizon.

As this happens while the sun and the earth are moving, an observer sees a large number of images of the sun as the time passes and the apparent positions of images are not the same. The observers may misunderstand the changing of positions of the sun's images as movements of the sun up and down in the eastern sky.

A few minutes later, the sun rises above the horizon and this is the real sun. As the total internal reflection does not occur now, one can see only one figure which is the real sun just above the horizon. This position of the real sun is usually below the positions of the images seen a little earlier.

Phenomenon diffraction

Ira Sevaya may be partly a result of the diffraction of solar light beams at the tip of the earth in the early morning. A light ray finds the body of the earth as a tiny sharp edge and therefore it undergoes the phenomenon diffraction at the earth surface and breaks the ray into a number of branches, which are transmitted in different directions. Similarly in total internal reflection, a number of images are formed by diffraction too and an observer on a high location can see fluctuation of images of the sun before he sees the real sun rise.

The geographical situation of Sri Lanka in the Indian ocean may be another enhancing support in forming some more images of the rising sun. The reflection of solar radiation from the moving sea waves in the Bay of Bengal also can result in the formation of images of sun above the horizon which is known as Ira Sevaya.

Both of the main phenomena, Total Internal Reflection and diffraction, cause the so called Ira Sevaya a natural event occurring all over the world, every day. Both the sun and earth are moving and rotating bodies. The sun is the common energy source providing energy to the whole world from a distance of 150 million kilometres from us. It is not close to Adam's Peak (as some people believe). Before it rises over the horizon that can be seen from Sri Pada hill, the sun spends hours in the sky in other parts of the world!

The world of Buddhism: unity in diversity

The vision that inspired Professor G P Malalasekara in establishing the World Fellowship of Buddhists:

Professor Y Karunadasa

As we all know, during its long history of over 2500 years, Buddhism has given rise to a large number of schools and sub-schools, sects and sub-sects. Today, we find them all within three great Buddhist traditions prevailing in three major regions in: Theravada Buddhism in South Asia, Vajrayana Buddhism in North Asia, and Mahayana Buddhism in East Asia.

It is worth examining why what the Buddha taught gave rise to a wide variety of Buddhist schools and sects? One reason that comes to mind is the clearly expressed idea that the Dhamma, the corpus of the Buddha’s teachings, is a means to an end and not an end unto itself. In his well known discourse on the Parable of the Raft, the Buddha compared his Dhamma to a raft. It is for the purpose of crossing over and not to be grasped as a theory. The Dhamma has only instrumental value. Its value is relative, relative to the realization of the goal.

As an extension to this idea, it also came to be recognized that the Dhamma as a means can be presented in many ways, from many different perspectives. There is no one fixed way of presenting the Dhamma which is valid for all times and climes. The idea behind this is that what is true and therefore what conforms to actuality need not be repeated in the same way as a holy hymn or a sacred mantra. The Dhamma is not something esoteric and mystical. As the Buddha says, the more one elaborates it, the more it shines (vivato virocati).

In connection with this, what we need to remember here is that the Dhamma is not actuality as such. Rather, it is a description of actuality. It is a conceptual-theoretical model presented through the symbolic medium of language. There can be many such conceptual-theoretical models depending on the different perspectives one adopts in presenting the Dhamma. However, the validity of each will be determined by its ability to lead us to the goal: from bondage to freedom, from ignorance to wisdom, from our present human predicament to full emancipation. We find this situation beautifully illustrated in a Chinese Buddhist saying that the Dhamma is like a finger pointing to the moon. This analogy has many implications. One implication is that any finger can be pointed to the moon. What matters is not the finger as such but whether it is properly pointed so that we can see the moon. Another implication is that if we keep on looking only at the finger we will not see the moon. Nor can we see the moon without looking at the finger, either.

We can therefore approach different schools of Buddhist thought as different fingers pointing to the same moon. If we approach them in this manner then we need to identify their common denominator, the most fundamental doctrine that unites them all? This is a matter on which we don’t have to speculate. For the Buddha himself as well as all schools of Buddhist thought identify it as the Buddhist doctrine of the denial of soul/self/ego (anatta).

From its very beginning Buddhism was fully aware that the doctrine of the denial of soul was not shared by any other contemporary religion or philosophy. We find this clearly articulated in an early Buddhist discourse. Here the Buddha refers to four kinds of clinging: clinging to sense-pleasures, clinging to speculative views, clinging to mere rites and rituals in the belief that they lead to liberation, and the clinging to the notion of self. The discourse goes on to say there could be other religious teachers who would recognize only some of the four kinds of clinging, and that at best they might teach the overcoming of the first three forms of clinging. What they cannot teach, because they have not comprehended this for themselves, is the overcoming of clinging to the notion of self, for this, the last type of clinging, is the subtlest and the most elusive of the group. The title given to this discourse is the Shorter Discourse on the Lion’s Roar. Clearly it is intended to show that the Buddha’s declaration of the denial of soul is “bold and thunderous like a veritable lion’s roar in the spiritual domain” (Ven. Bhikkhu Nanamoli).

That the notion of no-self is the most crucial doctrine that separates Buddhism from all other religions came to be recognized in the subsequent schools of Buddhist thought as well. Acarya Yasomitra, a savant of the Sautrantika School of Buddhism (5th c. C. E.) categorically asserts: “In the whole world there is no other religious teacher who proclaims a doctrine of non-self”. We find this same idea echoed by Acariya Buddhaghosa, the great commentator of Theravada Buddhism when he says: “The knowledge of non-self is the province of none but a Buddha” (Vibhanga Commentary, 5th c. C. E.).

To be continued