Vesak
vesak lanterns by chi chi

Over 2,500 years ago today, The Buddha expounded the Dhamma, and exhorted us to use it as a tool to free ourself from suffering. Today, we “Buddhists” remember him as we celebrate (sic) Vesak, by lighting up lanterns and decorating the city with colored light bulbs. Actually, our priests, as the official custodians/guardians of the Buddha word, should probably be pointing out that what we are doing isn’t exactly Buddhism, but it appears they are busy.

Ultimately, Buddha’s doctrine (Dhamma) was mostly about suffering, the cause of suffering, the path that leads to the end of suffering (noble eightfold path).

Modern Myths in Buddhism
Buddha = God: Despite the Buddha clearly stating that he is not God, and that there is no such person (a creator), some people still believe that Buddha is/was a/the God, or something

Life: Buddha preached that people should refrain from taking the life of living things (other animals and humans). The reasons were 1. Living things love life just as much as we do, and 2. (for the more practical), taking the life of a living thing is considered an act of negative karma.

These days, the belief is that ‘life’ in the above argument refers to big animals like Cows. And even then, its quite OK to get someone to kill them for you. So, if you don’t personally kill any cows, you are a good Buddhist, and it’s OK to slap more mosquitoes than you can count. After all, they don’t count as animals.

Meditation: in Buddhism, meditation was originally used as a method of realizing the truth, i.e. by concentration and practising various methods of meditation, people were able to realize some of the deeper thruths of Buddhism such as Impermanence.

Today, the aim of Meditation, is simply to become a good meditator. At meditators conventions everyone talks about how “so and so can sit for four hours without moving” and his “Inner Buddha is all awakened”…

Buddhism isnt about getting Ping.
[Ed: Ping or Pin refers to ‘merit’ or cosmic bonus points. In modern day Sri Lanka, Buddhists spend a lot of time and money trying to get this stuff…]

These people do good things for the sake of getting Ping. This is counter intuitive, as the entire idea behind doing something good should be altrustic.

Final Thoughts
In Sri Lanka (and many other “Buddhist” countries), Buddhism is not what it used to be. It is now a prepackaged modern religeon which can be mass marketed and broadcast via loudspeakers.