The children of the soul struggle

My policy. While I'm originally from SL I don't live there anymore, I have spent more than 50% of my life Down Under and am a citizen. As I don't live in SL I will not, directly or indirectly, interfere in the political affairs of the country. However, I'm a diaspora child and as such reserve the right to make comments on my observations about SL.

Opinions and view expressed here are purely mine.

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Looking around the news I came across this observation about organised Buddhism in SL.

The JVP and the Buddhist monks are also two of the most powerful opponents to the peace talks and the devolution of authority to the Tamils. One Colombo-based diplomat estimates that while only about 20 percent of Sri Lankan monks supported the JVP in the early 1990s, nearly 75 percent do today.
"There is a competition between the older, orthodox Buddhists on the right, and the left-leaning monks - for the national soul," says a former government cabinet minister in Colombo.

In this struggle for the "soul" these monks, together with the JVP ( a bunch of narrow minded commie/fascist nationalists ), seem to be involved in anything but Buddhism (JVP and Religion another paradox violated). How do these actions lead to detachment and following of Buddhist principles?. May be the Tsunami has also given an opportunity for the temples to again discover their place in society through social work.

I'm guessing that a lot of the 75% were ordained as child monks. My question here is about children being given away to temples (aka child ordination). Surely most of these 75% were away from theirs parents in their formative years. Yes young monks can always visit their parents but that's not the point. The damage done to young minds when there is no parental love, security and influence is well known, studied and documented. This is why we have the Rights of the Child.

This "article" [slow link] ( in the Government run newspaper ) aims to defend this practice...

I would like to quote a few statistics, which reveal a very grim picture of the ills which poverty breeds in our country. The following figures are not certified but have been roughly estimated by Child Rights groups and
organisations working in this field. It is said one hundred thousand children are employed as domestic labour. Thirty to fifty thousand comprise sexually abused children and of these five thousand are acknowledged to being sold into sexual activity. 51% of Colombo's population live in shanty towns which are cess pools of vice - drug addiction, alcoholism, child abuse and prostitution. Compared to this sordid scenario, a Buddhist monastery must seem like a haven.

Rather than trying to defend this as the best of the alternatives open to children in poverty, shouldn't the press be focussing on the real problem of poverty eradication. Are direct questions about "poverty" being avoided in the SL media ? and thus will the government be held accountable in the court of public opinion?. Damn!!!

In the meanwhile there will be thieves of the soul wearing saffron cloth ( no!, they are not monks ) intent on making more Sri Lankan mothers suffer by leading their children to histories unmarked graves fighting for that human need of cultures.

First Blog

My first Blog entry ever....oh, yippeee (picture me filled with unbridled joy jumping for on a cushion).......

It was about 5.15 PM and I was on my way home from work, after popping in for a couple of hours to fix a critical bug before UAT, when I heard on the radio that early reports were coming of a Tsunami hitting Sri Lanka due to an earthquake off the coast of Sumatra with a death toll of at least 350. Given the distance from ground zero I was amazed that a tsunami had reached all the way to SL and I just assumed that the Eastern part of the country had been hit. I made a bad joke to my sis-in-law about Galle being flooded and it turned out later that one of her uncles was killed in town while shopping (I'm still living that down). As the night went on the toll became 650, 1500, 3500 by the time we went to bed. I woke up to 6000 ......and onwards.

Having spent most of my life in Oz it was amazing how helpless I felt. The raw, unreasoned feelings were of wanting to go and provide physical and monetary assistance to the affected. I thought about volunteering too. I would still like to during my holidays in May/June if I can find a way to contribute. Anyway, #### We rang and volunteered with the local offices of a large NGO. They were operating a second call-center to cater for the emergency and finally called us to work on the 1st of Jan. Middle Australia are generally charitable and I wasn't sure what to expect. The following are some of the stories about the donations that I accepted during those 5 hours.

• An old couple who needed help operating the phone got a telephone operator to put them through to donate $40.
• A regular contributor rang and donated $5000.
• Another lady rang and wanted to make sure that all the aid wasn't going to Indonesia, due to "political" reasons. When I told her about the global multi-nation relief effort she was happy to contribute $100.
• Another older lady rang and wanted to know if there were bank transaction fees applied credit card donations. I said "yes" because in Oz the accepting business pays the fees, not the card holder. She decided to go around to her local bank branch and place a direct deposit.
• A man rang and wanted more information about the NGO. I read out what I had in front of me and pointed him to the website. He decided to contribute $400.
• A couple of more $1000 and $500 donations.
• Another lady rang; she had her whole extended family over for a New Year lunch and put all their contributions of card.
• A lot of transactions of $20, $50, and $100.

To the left of me was a lady who worked on development projects and had been in Asian countries a couple of times in the past year. To the right of me was a young student from the country, she had come into the city for 31'st celebrations and decided to help out.

• A young girl, from a country town I haven't heard of rang and wanted to contribute $10. I asked her for the details and she said she wanted to use a savings account bank card. Now that was a genuinely touching moment. I couldn't help but pointed her to a bank branch and she was going to ask her mother to take her.
• Another man contributes about $300 (I forget the exact). He was spreading his contribution around many organizations.
• A father rang and wanted some advice for his 11yr olds who wanted to start up a collection through the local community and friends. I gave him to the general/administration office contact details to make arrangements on a working day.
• A nurse rang wanting to volunteer. I pointed him to AVI.
• Another man offering $2000 and another with $4000.

I was amazed by the generosity, I guess as a nation we are wealthy enough and very compassionate. Could it also be something to do with the Expanding Circle?.