Though we were quite dormant during the wesak festivals last year, my father made it sure that this time it will not be so. However this article is not a description of i spent my wesak day as it would be no use to any other, but to note down a few observations that i thought important.
For those who are not familiar with buddhism, wesak full moon poya day basically stands out for three important events in lord buddhas life, that is his birth, enlightenment, and maha parinirvana or passing away. Buddhist around the world celebrate this day by occupying themselves in religious activities. such as observing sil, giving away alms and also participating in dhamma discussions and sermons.
one of the arguments that had been on air in the post wesak week was the criticism by some "eminent" buddhist , who have based themselves in colombo and its suburbs. in simple what they say is that the popular religious activities which draw large crowds does not align with the basic principles of buddhism. It was never the intent of lord buddah to have command over huge body of disciples.His "buddha sasana" was open to anyone who had the enthusiasm and the intelligence to understand it. therefore it is better to try and understand dhamma rather than engaging in huge tamashas that is there in the name of "maha pooja".At a glance, anybody who is familiar with the basic teachings of buddhism will understand that this argument stands true. It teaches that all earthly pleasures cause sorrow, birth causes sorrow and the only way to break the cycle , iis to get rid of "thanha" or of attachments.
But what most of these "pundits" have forgotten is that there is something called a buddhist society. Imagine that a century ago, what they preached happened. that is, people saw how pointless it is to organize large scale religous activities , which drew thousands of buddhists from all over the land, and everybody went to temple , learnt dhamma and meditated and after years of doing this, and they eventually passed away. My argument is that if things were like hat we would have never had buddhism not more than several decades.
in order for buddhism to prevail as an organized religion , it is important to construct a buddhist society. in order for a buddhist society to be built there should be a calling for all buddhist to unite. And that is were all the crowd gathering huge scale activities are important. Imagine we didnt have dalada perahara (procession of the temple of the tooth), imagine what a void it would create. i believe that large scale pinkamas and wesak celebrations are a must and an important catalyst in the upliftment of a srilankan society. the west also has buddhist temples and buddhists. But how many of the people in the west know about the true value of buddhism, it had been confined only to the eager ones who went in search of it. Had there been an attempt to create a buddhist community in the western world, the message of lord buddah might have reached to every nook and corner.
So i believe it is not the duty of these pundits to ridicule these large scale activities, but to encourage them and ofcourse in the mean time stress the fact that we need to identify the true message of buddhism.
