Buddhist Spectrum

Gadaladeniya frescoes fade into oblivion

Priyanka Kurugala

One attractive national heritage site is Digana situated on a flat rock in Kandy. Those who need to study our Sri Lankan arts should never forget this important and historical place. The paintings are rich in colours, pictures two-dimensional. The Buddha statues, built with large open eyes, are directly related to the Kandyan period.

This temple site, Gadaladeniya, faces a pathetic situation with lack of attention of the authorities. Water seeps through vanishing the traces of the frescoes inside the main temple building. The Vijaya thupa is a special feature among the other Thupas of the country.

There are four doors to enter four Devalas, but the Thupa is located at the centre on four pills above the Devalas. The interior of this Thupa, along with paintings, too have been damaged because of the water seeping.

Other buildings situated in this sacred site are a sorry sight as well, with some of them deserted. Roofs and some other walls have aged; if not maintained good and proper, they will not get back the beauty and serenity.

The Central Cultural Fund (CCF) has built a roof in 2001, which shelters the main building. If the CCF has spent Rs. 15000 on a watcher on monthly basis since 2001 it would amount to Rs. 16200000 by now, which would have been better utilized on the temple conservation, opine the residents. Other buildings in the vicinity are on the verge of destruction as well, to make things worse.

Authorities have not taken single proper action to conserve these buildings either, according to the temple sources. Visitors have access to a few frescoes in the interior of the Gadaladeniya temple.

The temple authorities are reluctant to take any conservation action, because the site comes under the purview of Archaeological Department. The temple’s Chief Incumbent Ven. Akiriye Ariyakiththi Thera has made a number of requests for conservation which yielded but meagre.

People are not interested in entering the old temple hence the frescoes will go into oblivion. This is primarily because the floor tiles have not been fixed properly.

“Authorities should mainly pay their attention to the Vijaya Thupa.” Ven. Thera said.

The plan of the main building is completely of Indian origin. The temple belongs to the Gampola period. According to historical evidence it was a built by King Buwanekabahu IV in 1344. The chief architect was a South Indian called Ganesvarachari. This history makes the public view the temple as a Hindu Kovil.

The main temple building has a seated Buddha statue under a Makara Thorana and four standing Buddha images. The Makara Thorana is decorated on both faces with gods such as Brahma, Suyama, Santhusuta, Natha, Maithree and two attendants.

Central Cultural Fund Director General Professor Nimal de Silva told the Daily news that they have taken steps to commence the conservation program of the Gadaladrniya temple.

The conservation program will initiate in January, 2011. The authority has allocated Rs. 8 millions for the renovation program. The Vijaya thupa conservation program is now completed.

However monkeys and some other natural reasons have damaged the roof tiles. “We have to continue this type of maintenance programs,” he said. Four watchers have been appointed to guard the temple.

As for ancient frescoes, Professor de Silva noted that they have been photographed. The conservation and the restoration of this site into original glory is the dream of those who love our culture and history.

Samsaric cycle divided by zero

Thanissaro Bhikkhu

The goal of Buddhist practice, nibbana, is said to be totally uncaused, and right there is a paradox. If the goal is uncaused, how can a path of practice — which is causal by nature — bring it about? This is an ancient question. The Milinda-pañha, a set of dialogues composed near the start of the common era, reports an exchange where King Milinda challenges a monk, Nagasena, with precisely this question.

Nagasena replies with an analogy. The path of practice doesn’t cause nibbana, he says. It simply takes you there, just as a road to a mountain doesn’t cause the mountain to come into being, but simply leads you to where it is.

Nagasena’s reply, though apt, didn’t really settle the issue within the Buddhist tradition. Over the years many schools of meditation have taught that mental fabrications simply get in the way of a goal that’s uncaused and unfabricated. Only by doing nothing at all and thus not fabricating anything in the mind, they say, will the unfabricated shine forth.

This view is based on a very simplistic understanding of fabricated reality, seeing causality as linear and totally predictable: X causes Y which causes Z and so on, with no effects turning around to condition their causes, and no possible way of using causality to escape from the causal network.

However, one of the many things the Buddha discovered in the course of his awakening was that causality is not linear.

The experience of the present is shaped both by actions in the present and by actions in the past. Actions in the present shape both the present and the future. The results of past and present actions continually interact. Thus there is always room for new input into the system, which gives scope for free will.

There is also room for the many feedback loops that make experience so thoroughly complex, and that are so intriguingly described in chaos theory. Reality doesn’t resemble a simple line or circle. It’s more like the bizarre trajectories of a strange attractor or a Mandelbrot set.

Because there are many similarities between chaos theory and Buddhist explanations of causality, it seems legitimate to explore those similarities to see what light chaos theory can throw on the issue of how a causal path of practice can lead to an uncaused goal. This is not to equate Buddhism with chaos theory, or to engage in pseudo-science. It’s simply a search for similes to clear up an apparent conflict in the Buddha’s teaching.

And it so happens that one of the discoveries of non-linear math — the basis for chaos theory — throws light on just this issue.

In the 19th Century, the French mathematician Jules-Henri Poincaré discovered that in any complex physical system there are points he called resonances. If the forces governing the system are described as mathematical equations, the resonances are the points where the equations intersect in such a way that one of the members is divided by zero.

This, of course, produces an undefined result, which means that if an object within the system strayed into a resonance point, it would no longer be defined by the causal network determining the system. It would be set free. In actual practice, it’s very rare for an object to hit a resonance point.

The equations describing the points immediately around a resonance tend to deflect any incoming object from entering the resonance unless the object is on a precise path to the resonance’s very heart.

Still, it doesn’t take too much complexity to create resonances — Poincaré discovered them while calculating the gravitational interactions among three bodies: the earth, the sun, and the moon. The more complex the system, the greater the number of resonances, and the greater the likelihood that objects will stray into them.

It’s no wonder that meteors, on a large scale, and electrons on a small scale, occasionally wander right into a resonance in a gravitational or electronic field, and thus to the freedom of total unpredictability. This is why meteors sometimes leave the solar system, and why your computer occasionally freezes for no apparent reason. It’s also why strange things could happen someday to the beating of your heart.

If we were to apply this analogy to the Buddhist path, the system we’re in is samsara, the round of rebirth. Its resonances would be what the texts called “non-fashioning,” the opening to the uncaused: nibbana. The wall of resistant forces around the resonances would correspond to pain, stress, and attachment.

To allow yourself to be repelled by stress or deflected by attachment, no matter how subtle, would be like approaching a resonance but then veering off to another part of the system. But to focus directly on analyzing stress and attachment, and deconstructing their causes, would be like getting on an undeflected trajectory right into the resonance and finding total, undefined freedom.

This, of course, is simply an analogy. But it’s a fruitful one for showing that there is nothing illogical in actively mastering the processes of mental fabrication and causality for the sake of going beyond fabrication, beyond cause and effect. At the same time, it gives a hint as to why a path of total inaction would not lead to the unfabricated.

If you simply sit still within the system of causality, you’ll never get near the resonances where true non-fashioning lies. You’ll keep floating around in samsara. But if you take aim at stress and clinging, and work to take them apart, you’ll be able to break through to the point where the present moment gets divided by zero in the mind.

Buddhism, its relevance in 21st Century

Bhikkhu Seelananda

Buddhism, as one of the four major religions in the world today, is an empiricist and anti-metaphysical religion. It does not accept anything which cannot be experienced either through the senses or extrasensory perception. Our prime intention here is to identify the relevance of the teachings of the Buddha for this modern so-called scientifically and technologically developed world.

The Buddha was born in the 6th Century BC. He discovered the reality behind phenomena in our universe. In the world there is nothing permanent as well as nothing separately existing but everything co-exists.

Interdependence is the great truth of life. He was not a divine being, nor a man as we know him, but a man par excellence (accariyamanussa). There is no equivalent in a western language for this concept accariyamanussa. This means not thought of, a not comparable kind of being.

There is no word in English unless we use the term Buddha with this concept in mind. His teaching is mainly focused on man himself. People are born again and again, and die again and again. This was the question which arose in him and to which he found a positive answer. That is why he is a Buddha.

He realized that it was not only man but the whole universe that is composed of ever-changing phenomena. When this truth arose in his mind he contemplated and reasoned out a solution through his intuitive wisdom.

He comprehended that it was because of birth that one has to face decay, death, lamentation, despair and all types of dissatisfaction. He saw this causal relationship in phenomena and realized that the way to end decay death and dissatisfaction is to end birth. So he grappled with what might be the cause for birth.

He realized that its cause was becoming. And becoming arises because of grasping. Why do we grasp things in the world? Because of craving. That was the causal relation he unraveled.

Today in this scientifically and technologically developed global village, though there are many amenities for easy living and pleasure, people are both physically and mentally unhappy and do not have a feeling of security. Both satisfaction and security are experience of the mind.

Safety can refer to freedom from physical danger. When the mind is satisfied that the person is free of physical danger, the mind produces an experience of safety. When one does not feel mentally secure, one is unhappy. In society there are many people who are not secure. They are always in fear and dread.

This was crystal clear during the time of the JVP insurgency in 1988-89. We know very well that most of the high personages of this country, even though they had a number of security personnel and perhaps two three houses to change to, from time to time, were mentally insecure.

Not only such high personages but also most ordinary people in the country were panicked at the time. The reason was that they were not mentally secure. The Buddha said ‘mind is the forerunner and mental states are mind made’.

So mind is the most significant thing in one’s life. According to the teachings of the Buddha, man is the component of five aggregates: form, feeling, perception, volition, and consciousness.

Of the five only form is physical and the other four are mental. These mental faculties are very important in contemplating man. But in modern science and technology, which produce many things for the physical benefit of man the mental factors are not sufficiently recognized.

I think this is because of the philosophy behind science. However, it is one of the fundamental principles of science that we do not accept anything un-experimented with or un-observed. This is the time for scientists to open out and think of the other dimensions of life such as religion.

A religion like Buddhism cannot be set aside any more. Majority of the world population follow a religion. Therefore scientists should give a place to the experience of religion and should consider religious teachings as being integral to man. We can be certain that Buddhism provides vast knowledge about man and his mental and physical development.

In the world today, there are many multinational and multi purpose projects which are vast for the development of countries. But people are not satisfied with what they have. There is no contentment. Craving, grasping, and arising and perishing are the main features in the world.

As science is predominant in the world today, scientists can take a new step for the advancement of science through recognition of ethical and religious dimension. The Dhamma taught by the Buddha is not something outside the world and beyond experience. Therefore it is not contrary to science.

The Dhamma realized by the Buddha is a discovery of the existing phenomena in the universe. It is, therefore a universal truth, an everlasting truth about the universe. Science today has already established that certain teachings of the Buddha are correct beyond doubt. But it took a long time.

It would take similarly a long length of time to obtain scientific proof of other aspects of Buddhism too. Consider a case of a man walking through an unknown jungle who has no food to satisfy his hunger; suddenly he sees a tree full of ripe fruits which he had not seen before.

He has a doubt whether it is poisonous or tastes bad. He takes a small bite of the fruit and finds it sweet. Being a careful man, he waits quite a long time to see whether it has harmful effects on him. After a considerable length of time, he finds that the fruit is neither poisonous nor harmful. Then he eats the whole fruit.

Similarly, instead of wasting time to obtain scientific proof of the other aspects of the Dhamma, would it not be wise to straightway accept that the whole of the Dhamma as a true teaching, and a way of life for mental and physical development, and which if followed would bring solace to mankind.

Even the span of life of a human being is limited. So an individual cannot wait to follow the Dhamma till the whole of the Dhamma is proved by science. It also must be mentioned that there are certain aspects of the Dhamma, which are extrasensory perceptional and are entirely beyond modern science.

What the Buddha taught is not only for the 6th century B.C. but it is relevant to this modern world too. As it is a timeless (akalika) teaching, surely it can be practised by the wise during the 21st Century as well and in many more centuries or millennia to come.