It is no secret now that Chief Prelate of the Malwatte
Chapter, the Most Venerable Thibbatuwawe Sumangala Thero actively supported the
presidential bid of Sarath Fonseka.
After Fonseka lost and was subsequently arrested, the Mahanayaka Haamuduruwo
protested to the President and clearly chagrined by the President’s refusal to
respond went on to mobilize the other Mahanayakas and issue a joint statement
regarding the issue. The Venerable Thero also attempted to mobilize the entire
Maha Sangha against the President. There was talk of the Maha Sangha planning
to issue a Sangha Aggnawa or edict/order censuring the treatment meted
out to Fonseka.
All these efforts came
to naught due to ‘better sense prevailing’(according to some) and
‘intimidation’ (according to others).
This little sub-plot of the political drama following the Presidential
Election raises important issues about the Maha Sangha, the Buddha Sasana and
the matter of ‘custodianship’ over the latter, in particular the location and
sway of the country’s ruler in and over these institutions respectively.
Throughout the past two thousand years, there has been a
symbiotic relationship between ruler and the Maha Sangha. There has never been a clean cut separation
of church and state in this country and indeed except for very rare and
infrequent periods where invasion and/or anarchy had overarching impact on the
political, social, cultural and religious life of society, the ruler has
essentially been the key patron or dayaka and the Maha Sangha the
main approver/advisor on a range of issues that could fall within the ambit of
government.
The Mahanayaka Thero’s involvement calls us to revisit
history and the historical relationship of ruler and the Maha Sangha, I
believe, in terms of constitutional provision, the realities historical weight
as in tradition and expectations thereof, the realities flowing from political
and economic sway of each over society in general and over each other.
Tradition has it that the King (read ‘ruler’) has the
support and blessings of the Maha Sangha as long as the dhamma is
protected, there is responsibility in all actions and the wellbeing of the
people taken care of. Where these basic
conditions are violated or absent, the Maha Sangha can act against the
king. It is however not an arbitrary
decision of a single bikkhu but the consequent to a comprehensive
process that includes debate and discussion eventually coming out as a collective
decision.
Moreover, the engagement of the Buddhist Order in affairs of
the state was not supposed to take ad hoc, knee-jerk form. There was a
tradition and there was consistency in that tradition. Historically, also, there were no
‘Mahanayakas’. That was essentially a title conjured by the British. The organic title was that of ‘Sangharaja’
whose history can be traced back to the Kurunegala Period. That title did not devolve upon an individual
on account of ‘kinship’ ties (theoretically, all such ties are erased upon
being ordained) or caste (again something that is incongruous with the Buddha
Vachana). A bikkhu is
appointed ‘Sangharaja’ after a lengthy process.
First the particular bikkhu has to be the chief of a pansala
(temple) and then head a cluster of pansal, terms ‘Moolayathana’ (Mul-Ayathana
or Root/Base-Institution) and it is the entirely of such institutions that
elect the ‘Sangharaja’. Even this post,
alternates among the aranyawasi (ascetic) and the gramawasi
(temple-based) bikkhu orders. The
Sangharaja had to be a bikkhu who absolutely well versed in the dhamma
and fluent in at least 6 languages, according to tradition. This system was adopted in or was exported to
Thailand during the Gampola Period.
The authority to engage/interfere comes not on account of
knowledge of the dhamma or social standing but the fundamentally social
character of the Buddha Sasana.
The word sangha, broadly, refers to ‘collective’ and a group
consisting of the siw-wanak-pirivara the bikkhu, bikkhuni, upasaka and
upasika or all those who have taken refuge in the Noble Triple Gem and
therefore belong to the collective of shravakas. In common parlance sangha refers to
the bikkhu order. The Sasana
is therefore not the preserve of those in the kasavatha. The strength and sway of the Sasana
therefore resides in the extent to which there is ‘inclusivity’ of all
‘stakeholders’ (ugly word, I know). The
relationship among the parts need to be governed by commitment to the dhamma
and adherence to all tenets pertaining to solidarity, peace, cooperation and
commitment to the arya ashtangika marga (the Noble Eight-fold
Path).
Where such commitment is evident, the Sasana is
strong and ruler containable. Where
ruler, as the most visible upasaka or at least dayaka is
righteous, then he/she can in the true spirit of cooperation embedded in the
best traditions pertaining to the relationship, help make the Sasana a
better and more effective institution in society. Although the Bikkhu Sangha has its own
internal mechanisms to correct itself when individual and institution strays
from role decreed by the Buddha as laid out in the Vinaya Pitaka, there
are instances/situations where the laity can have a say in the overall
discourse pertaining to the social function of the Sasana. Thus the entire body of norms as well as the
play of tradition makes for an institution that has the potential to be
extremely strong to the point that it functions like a state within a state.
Unfortunately, this is not the case. The Sasana was tainted from the
outside by the British who instituted the ‘in-organic’ post of ‘Mahanayaka’ for
the Siyam Nikaya and internally from that Order itself by a manifest
embrace of a kind of materialism that is out of sync with the Buddha
Vachanaya and the maintenance of an inexplicable and patently anti-Buddhist
‘caste-purity’. The British also put in
place a system of property transfer that has served to subvert the Buddhist
Order and alienate the Bikkhu from the laity; a system where vast wealth
embedded in extensive property is handed down according to the wishes of
individuals and not the collective, typically keeping wealth within ‘family’
and not under the stewardship of the Sasana, in which case it could be
deployed to uplift the lives of the most underprivileged and dispossessed
sections of the population.
These realities notwithstanding, the Maha Sangha has
retained significant power in political affairs and this comes not so much from
institutional strength but the appeal of the institution to a general public
that is not unaware of tradition and that has extensive historical memory. This is why even ad hoc interjections
on the part of important bikkhus causes rulers to pause and why all
leaders obtain the blessings of the Maha Sangha at every turn.
The elected executive authority has extensive powers in
accordance with constitutional provision and, in the terms of the Kandyan
Convention (repeated in subsequent constitutional enactments) is the supreme
patron of the Buddha Sasana, mandated and required to protect it. It can be argued therefore that ‘king’ or
‘president’ is the ultimate custodian. On paper, perhaps yes. On the other hand, not everything in society
that is significant can be written. Quite outside what exists on paper, the Buddha
Sasana and the broader sangha, the collective that includes the
laity, does have political power and most importantly the potential to act as
countervailing power to the formal institutions of political power and those
who inhabit these and abuse such powers as are at their disposal.
If I was pushed, I would say that the Buddha Sasana
is currently at about 1% operational strength partly due to it being crippled
by 500 years of colonial rule, partly due to a manifest straying from the dhamma
and partly due to the lack of commitment on the part of the bikkhus and
the dayakas to be pro-active in making the institution work for
themselves, for society and community, citizen and nation.
It is time, I believe, for a Dharmasangayana.
Malinda Seneviratne is the 'Editor-in-Chief' of 'The Nation' and can be reached at msenevira@gmail.com. This article was published in the now defunct Sunday Lakbima News, February 28, 2010.
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