Kandy the so called Heritage

Below is a reproduction of a verse / poem posted at www.writeclique.net few years ago.

Reason for reproduction is now even a squirrel does not have the trees in jumping range.

See the preceding blog why I hate cats?

Somebody recently poisoned the monkeys in Kandy City.

Just to illustrate the fact that there were more monkeys in this city I have reproduced it.

Monkeys in business suits now have taken over the city.


Reproduction is below

Years gone by
Five centuries to the count
Where the present lake stands
Were the paddy fields that stretched
To the far corners of the valley
Forming the rice basin of the hill country


The commoner garden
Name for the city was Bogambara
Which literally meant
The valley with plenty (of water and produce)
Of bo (plenty), gam (village) bara (belonging)
Was a place of homage to the Dhamma Raja
The Buddha


Then there were more monkeys
Than human beings dwelling in the mountains
That stretched from Knuckles to Hantana range
And the monkeys could reign
The tree tops
Without ever climbing down


Though the palace was built
More than five centuries ago
The lake that is rudiment
Of its former majesty
But thrice as big as it today
Was built by the last King of Senkadagala,
The Rajasinghe


With the ascent of the British
The city lost its majesty
One end of the lake
Left to be filled up
And the other end of the lake
Becoming the Bogambara stadium
With a prison nearby
Leaving behind a legacy
Sans the beauty and serenity
Of the Wadawasam age


The forest range
That overshadowed
The southern belt
Was cleared up rapidly,
Roadways and railways built around
With most of the old monuments
Demolished except a few
A British design was planted
With an armory of offense
To the west of the city


A half a century ago
When I went for
A cold bath in my birthday suit
To Raja Pihilla, the King's fountain
My mum had to worry about
Only the monkeys who descent down
To pinch our bright coloured cloths


Just in the last quarter century
With monkeys in business suits
Taking over the city
On a so called tourist drive
The lake that is reclaimed or filled
With more and more of filth and rubbish
Without any semblance or regard to aquatic life
Is it a living monument to the modern age pollution?


In fifty years from now
With the wanton destruction
Of the remaining rain forest of mother Lanka
The rains failing and the rivers drying
The lake would be a muddy field
Yet again,
Back to its original self


But million dollar question would be
Who would plough the fields?
With all the business monkeys
By then,
Would have
Left the city of Kandy

Asoka

Why I hate Cats

I hate cats from my childhood.

The day our cat caught my squirrel and killed it I started hating all cats including our cat (never my cat in my vocabulary).

I cried and got hold of the tail of the cat and trashed her on the floor till my anger subsided but felt short of killing her.

The cat got the message and would not come near me and then one day I handed over her to one of my aunts whose house had lot of rats.

I cannot remember having a cat till late in my life.

Then we had two orphaned male cats one was killed by a dog and other was poisoned and dished out during Perehara for supper.

My daughter looked after 33 litters (she had counted) in her childhood and the last litter she came and told me that all five of them were blind to a different degree.

The had no defense from Kala Waddas (Ceylon Civet) and we looked after them in a cage and were disposed and I told her no more caring for cats (litters).

This year, New year's eve I found three kitten in an open area of the house (neighbor's cat) not protected by civets.

My decision was wait till they are bigger and dispose them quickly.

I frightened the mother cat (thinking she may take them away) but she was cunning and secretly come and go but not caring for the litter but found her catching birds in a nearby house.

Then she did not come to feed for three days and I found one dead and two others just surviving.

Called a yesteryear servant girl now a big woman and told her to take them away and give them to somebody with two small packets of milk vitamin enriched and cash for another big packet (now over Rs.300/=).

Today I was watching over my cup of tea and there we over 10 young squirrels come out of the nest due to rain. Many of them were barely able to jump and their mothers did not had any control over them.

I knew the worse would happen.

One missed the jump and fell over 40 feet down and before I could reach, the cat had already caught it.

The irony here is there are very few trees below that would have prevented the young squirrel from landing on the ground . Thirty (30) years ago when we moved here there were many trees and during this period at least 7 jack trees were felled in addition to other trees.

This is what we call development in Buddhist Style.
Before the turn of the last century monkeys would go from Hanathana Range to Knuckles range without ever climbing down to the ground and then there were more monkeys than business monkeys of present.

Read my verse on Kandy the so called heritage


That is it; killers in my neighborhood.

To my surprise there were 4 cats guarding below watchfully.

I could not believe westerners love them and feed them and there was an old woman in America, neurotic about the lost cats and not the house.

People are saying how cute when one cat was found.

Unlike dogs they can fend themselves in the wild and they are wild animals domesticated and never can be trained not to kill.

The other reason I hate them is they steal food.

Cat in the neighborhood come and secretly drink my dog's milk.

Now I sit with him till he finishes.
My dog deliberately leave them for the cats (probably learned from me).

1. They kill (not appropriate for Buddhist ethics) birds, squirrels and rats and any animal at their disposal
2. They steal (not appropriate for Buddhist ethics)
3. They can be never trained
4. They know how to coax
5. They make very ugly noise in the night
6. They urinate on linen.
7. Their scat has an awful smell
8. They are never at home but always at the neigbour's house stealing
9. They breed so often
10. Above all they are nuisance to the neighbors
11. They never look after our household

I think we should have a cat's law (we have a law for dogs- why don't we round the cats up and kill them since they also transmit Rabies) for Cat Buddhists.

But our cat's law goes like this, Yes it is my cat but I did not ask him or her to kill or steal: it is it's (their) instinct to help Cat Buddhists and Cat Philosophy.

I call it my cat logic or catelogic (how it is pronounced in typical Sri-Lankan Style!)

They perpetuate catalogue of errors of discretion.

We Buddhists in Sri-Lanka have bizarre law and ethics and very selfish too.

I cannot think of anything good except the purring.

Sri-Lankan keeps cats and they never feed them.

They say if they feed them they won't catch the mice ( I must call them Cat Buddhists to add to my list of Buddhists in Sri-Lanka) at night but go and give Bodhi Puja every weekend.

I feel like killing my neighbors (this feeling was there for the last 30 years) having cats and not feeding them but until now I have resisted it.

The Common misinterpretations of a Pali Verse that states the body decays but the Name and the Tribe does not

This verse I have heard many politicians of yesteryear utter in tandem with political speeches, I often wonder from where it originated.

This has nothing to do with Buddhism or Dhamma.

Somebody with knowledge with Pali had coined this verse and all politicians of yesteryear and present use this as a phrase to propagate his or her name and tribe. This is how the post-colonial culture and politics developed.

“Rupam Jirati Majjanam (Body decays)

Nama Gottam Najirathi” (nmae and tribe do not)

The face value seems all Buddhist in nature but its implication in modern day is really disruptive to the nature of Dhamma as stated in the Tripitaka (the Three Baskets).

There is no problem with the first statement.

The second statement destroys the whole tenet of Dhamma in its entirety.

In Buddhist phenomenology self (Nama or Soul) does not exist and the tribe (Gothra) is an illusion that originate from the above wrong premise.

I have to restate the same with my own invention as below.

The meaning I am trying to derive at is that the Mind State does not vanish at death but (Patisandhi) re-link with the next Bhava using Kamma as the vehicle or the driving force.

Rupam Jirati Majjanam

Nama (means Mind here) Kittam (means Kamma) Najirathi

(The Gotham is substituted with Kittam-Kriya)

In Abhidhamma context it is realistic to use the above version of the verse (even though I am not a Pali scholar) to express the conditional existence of Bhava. The term Nama Rupa (stated above in first chapter) occurs frequently in Abhidhamma and Nama is used interchangeably with the Mind. The term for body is corporeality and not Rupa in Pali context.

Who perpetuated this myth is immaterial but the damage it has done is enormous. In that context writing something of my own contradicting the statement is appropriate even though it is a departure from the original tenets of this book.

This I think originated with the British rule. It is common for us to blame the British for every little mishap we are going through in our modern history. But this one is a direct antecedent. They are the one who started naming the streets even in Kandy with British names of inheritance and their Governors. All the streets in Colombo have some relevance to British authorship. In their tradition it is a normal and is all welcome by every British administrators big and small.

What went wrong was that we adopted this tradition without scrutiny in the post-colonial period and continue to do so even now. Instead of naming the street with some meaningful road traditions like main street, cross street, first lane or second lane we started adapting our own names. Politicians in turn for their gain started naming these streets with the names of their kith and kin. They invented and used the above jargon riddled Pali verse for the propagation of the political agenda.

Even though the tradition is British the wrongful doing is our own ill vision, political patronage and heritage.

Buddhism and its Corruption

1. Buddhism has been corrupted and hijacked by many.

2. This probably included the modern day writing.

3. Buddhist text are enormous

4. It is unlikely that one has time and resources to delve deep into its tenets.

5. Biggest division and argument (Vada) are Theravada and Mahayana

6. There is no centralizing theme to home in.

7. I believe one can extract the core values, key words and concepts if one is not entangled with modern concepts.

8. Best way to master Buddhism is to learn and master Pali (interpretation is very difficult). There are very few Pali scholars left currently.

It has almost become a dead language.

Sinhala has killed Pali in its entirety.

Reviving Pali is of utmost importance.

9. Untangling the tangled is my objective (This was true in Buddhas time too).

Brahmajala Sutta (Bikku Bodhi) is the best if one is to discover the tangle and then to untangle oneself.

10. I feel I am less entangled or confused (even though I have kept my own interpretations based on my big / little ignorance of Pali) now that I have put them into English words.

This is for one who has never known it and wants to have some grip with it. I hope I have not confused anybody in this endeavour.

Unfortunately we now have very few erudite.

Below is how I see Buddhism evolved in this little country over the past 50 to 60 years and how it is getting corrupted by the day.

1. Eggo (eggs and not ego-there is no ego in true Buddhism) Buddhists

This is something as a little brat not even going to nursery school I have heard and seen at first hand.

There was an intense debate over eating eggs before and during 1956 (2550 celebrations ) and the Eggo Buddhists won the day.

Their argument was that we Buddhists can eat eggs as long as we eat the eggs not fertilized by a cock.

This is where cock's right to sex is violated; not any cock but the bird's variety.

We are cock sure that every egg we eat is not fertilized before our consumption and we can see it through the shell with penetrative mind cultivated in meditation and some cultured meditative instincts.

This is where cocks rights are violated by default and cocks are not allowed to screw since if they do that we Buddhists won't be able eat eggs.

This is the cork screw solution we extend to non-Buddhist rearing animals (for our consumption and if we Buddhist are not there to consume the products they lose a livelihood) and birds for food.

The logic of it pops out like a cork screw of a campaign bottle.

With this point of confirmation we Buddhist over the next 50 years evolved the modern Buddhism to even kill fellow beings in the name of a Nation and National build up.

2. Then came the Mujja Pama Dharshaya which culminated during the period of Mrs. Kumaranatunge where the highest amount of alcohol was on sale and produced except wine.
This is coming out of the 5 precepts where one takes intoxicating beverages and depends on one's liver's powerful enough biochemical mechanisms to detoxify them and as long as one does not show signs of intoxication it is not a bad thing (corollary is little bit is OK).
The rationale here is one must train the liver to identify alcohol early enough ideally during pregnancy and then when the big match (cricket the national game) comes one must train the teenagers to indulge on it. If the training is done early one can consume alcohol even on the Dalada Perehara (except elephants on 4 legs) and specially on May Day Perehara.

3. The third one is the most powerful economic wise. Arogyasala Lottery or the Hospital Lottery introduced around 1956 and this has now progressed in 50 years to Lotto Game (Universal National Game of the poor) and extend even up to World Cup and I.P.L cricket and bidding of players.

4. Then come the Casino. The owner can be a Buddhist as long as the players are not Buddhists.

All the above are for the powerful Buddhist in the Colombo 7 and around.

5. Sri-Lankan Ego Buddhists with copyright to Thera-Vada.
Now that the sole authority (copyright) on Buddhism is on Sinhalayas and there is a category of Buddhists who protect the copyright of Buddhism (without practicing precepts and principles) of Theravada, come what it may and promote practices exclusively mentioned below and resistant to spread of Buddhism to other nations and countries and monopolizes Theravada (spreading Vada or argument for this monopoly for commercial consumption).

The rest of the five are for the followers.

6. Bodhi Puja Variety and is the most popular one.
This is the category who get round the Bodhi or the sacred pipal tree (not papal or pupal or phallus) chanting and pouring milk on it roots (which leads to rotting of the aeriel roots and the tree prefers dry or arid soil with roots growing very deep in search of underground water).
This chanting is done without understanding the difference of water and milk to a living tree.

7. The Chicken Buddhists
The next variety is the most common. If you ask them do you eat meat. They say no, no and not for beef but if you prompt and what about fish and chicken, they come out with the circular theory and logic that broilers live for 42 days and if it was killed on the 41st day and we actually contribute to its welling and it's misery terminated and helps them to evolve into better life next time (one day earlier) by making a hungry human being happy at meal time.

This was the best philosophical tenet that evolved from Eggo-Buddhists to modern Tech and Computer Buddhists.

The answer for fish is fodder for another fish in the food chain and Man is the last in that chain because we are terrestrial and the fish on a muddy pool is saved from cranes and they have no business to be on our soil or terrestrial footing anyway.

8. The next is the confused Buddhist like me where part of me is ancient Buddhist thinking and the other part is modern but with age catching up with my intellectual interpretation I am becoming more and more of an ancient Buddhist good for an ornamented coffin, in few years time.

The last two if I try to explain fully I will be expelled from this blessed country like the Buddhist monk who wrote poems instead of Gatha in ancient times, the Vidhagama Rahula Thera who ended up as a saint in Mumbai (Goa).


9. Political Buddhists in the Parliament

10. National Buddhists in the Army

11. International Buddhists

12. and above are the emerging Buddhists from ashes (of ruined practices) of Phoenix, some of whom are already in Parliament and devising various means to make Buddhism more and more difficult to understand and is good only for foreigners (international Buddhism but not for simple practice-practicing Buddhists) with various cults.

12. Cat Buddhists
Recently I have added this item to.
Details elsewhere; these are Buddhists who keep cats starved at night to make them catch rats.
Little they know cats cannot see in total darkness.