By Professor Shelton Gunaratne ƒ”š‚ Asian educators should cease to reify Western social science theories and models by creating their own.ƒ”š‚  My recent incursion into textbooks written in Sinhala for mass communication education in Sri Lanka showed unmistakable dependence on the Western masters and the authors’ lack of originality. I hope that the following excerpts from […]

By Shelton Gunaratne ƒ”š‚ Responding to my review essay on paticca samuppadaƒ”š‚  (Lankaweb, 25 Feb. 2013) commentator Ben Silva shouts, “BUT IN SCIENCE WE NEED VERIFIABLE EVIDENCE AND A SOLID BODY OF THEORY, obeying known laws of nature. Is journalist Shelton G an expert on molecular biology, genetics, epigenome field etc. to talk about the mechanics […]

By Shelton A. Gunaratne Gunaratne is a professor emeritus at Minnesota State University Moorhead. He conducts a monthly Buddhist discussion group in Moorhead on the second Saturday of every month. More than 2600 years after the Buddha passed away, a modern-day Sri Lankan atuwacaria (commentator), L. Jayasooriya, has been trying to save Buddha Dhamma from […]

By: Shelton Gunaratne, Grand Forks Herald With the rapid spread of Buddhism in the western United States, boosted by increased immigration from Asia, Americans have begun to apply Buddhist principles to solve their everyday problems. MOORHEAD “ƒ¢¢”š¬‚ With the rapid spread of Buddhism in the western United States, boosted by increased immigration from Asia, Americans […]

By Shelton Gunaratne With the rapid spread of Buddhism in the western United States, boosted by increased immigration from Asia, Americans should consider applying Buddhist principles to solve their everyday problems. Although Buddhism has two major sects”ƒ¢¢”š¬‚Theravada and Mahayana”ƒ¢¢”š¬‚both agree on the crux of Buddhist philosophy based on the Four Noble Truths (FNT), the Noble […]

By Shelton A. Gunaratne ƒ”š‚ Two readers of my local newspaper have crossed cudgels with me for expressing the view that “for increasing numbers of immigrants from non-Western countries, the white founders of America do not mean much, nor does the primacy of the old Constitution the founders created”ƒ”š‚ (The Forum, Nov 18, 2012, p. C8). […]

ƒ”š‚ Shelton A. Gunaratne ƒ”š‚ The 2012 federal elections clearly showed that the American electorate has chosen the Middle Path (the Buddhist principle of madhyama pratipada) between the extremes of capitalism (yang)) and socialism (yin) as the preferred way to solve the monumental economic and social problems of the country. ƒ”š‚ American voters re-elected Democratic President Obama, the […]

Shelton Gunaratne, professor of mass communications emeritus, Minnesota State University Moorhead, MOORHEAD, Minn.”ƒ¢¢”š¬…”Shelton Gunaratne, professor of mass communications emeritus, Minnesota State University Moorhead, has launched the promotion of his 1,000-page autobiographical trilogy with the assistance of Author Solutions Inc. of Bloomington, Ind. ƒ”š‚ Gunaratne is a regular contributor to Lankaweb, which has published all the essays […]

By Shelton A. Gunaratne, professor of mass communications emeritusƒ”š‚  Minnesota State University Because I have been applying Buddhist philosophy for more than a decade to critique the well-known Newtonian-Cartesian research paradigm and to develop a universally applicable systems approach based on the principles of dependent co-origination (paticca samuppada), I was curious to read an article […]

By Shelton A. Gunaratne ƒ”š‚ The conference of nonaligned leaders in Colombo ended Aug. 20, 1976, with the adoption of a stinging warning to the world’s rich nations that they must yield more of their wealth to a new economic order, the New York Times reported. A week ago, at its 16th summit in Tehran, President […]

Shelton A. Gunaratne ƒ”š‚ Adversarial rightwing analysts have successfully used the nebulous concept of plagiarism to halt the rapid climb of yet another rising star in American journalism: the “aristocratic”ƒ”š‚ Yale-and-Harvard educated Fareed Zakaria. A naturalized American of East Indian origin, his success as a foreign-affairs analyst and a savvy author, as well as the creator […]

By Shelton A. Gunaratne – professor emeritus at Minnesota State University Moorhead The Sunday Leader (July 8, 2012) published a story titled “Gota Goes Berserk”ƒ”š‚ written by its eminent editor Frederica Jansz, who faced a legal tiff with Gotabhaya Rajapakse recently. We do not know how many comments the Leader received on this gutter-level story. […]

By Shelton A. Gunaratneƒ”š‚ ƒ”š‚ ƒ”š‚ ƒ”š‚ ƒ”š‚ ƒ”š‚  Before condemning multiculturalism as a failure because it is “an anti-Western ideology that wallows in relativism and guilt,”ƒ”š‚ John B. Calvert (The Forum, Sunday, June 3, 2012) should have clarified whether hisobjection was based on the descriptive or the normative meaning of multiculturalism. In its descriptive sense, the term refers to […]

By Shelton Gunaratne, professor emeritus at Minnesota State University Moorhead Recently, the Lankaweb published two essays on the doctrine of paticca samuppada (P.S.): one by Suwanda Sugunasiri on May 9, and the other by R. Chandrasoma on May 12. ƒ”š‚ P.S. is central to Buddhist philosophy because Buddha intended it as an aid to understand the […]

By Shelton A. Gunaratne When Bob Dylan wrote the song “The times they are a-changin’ in late 1963, I don’t think he had the slightest notion of the technological innovations that have transformed the global society way beyond what Marshall McLuhan, the Canadian media pundit, described in 1964 through his catch phrase “medium is the […]

By Shelton A. Gunaratne ƒ”š‚ Three obviously Republican replies have appeared in response to my opinion piece “Of wealthy, by wealthy, for wealthy,”ƒ”š‚ published in The (Fargo-Moorhead) Forum on Sunday, Jan. 15. [The original article appeared in the Lankaweb of Jan. 10.] I commend each of them for allowing me the opportunity to elucidate my exposition […]

By Shelton A. Gunaratne-Professor of mass communications emeritus, Minnesota State University Moorhead The next two primaries”ƒ¢¢”š¬‚South Carolina on Jan. 21 and Florida on Jan. 31″ƒ¢¢”š¬‚would most likely confirm Mitt Romney as the surefire candidate of the Republican Party for the U.S. presidency. Romney’s New Hampshire primary victory speech gave us a peek into the major […]

By Shelton A. Gunaratne Professor of mass communications emeritus, Minnesota State University Moorhead ƒ”š‚ Despite the impressive facade of grassroots democracy conveyed to the world at large by the system of caucuses and primaries in the United States, I see the operational dynamics of American representative democracy as a vitiation of how President Abraham Lincoln defined […]

By Shelton A. Gunaratne Professor of mass communications emeritus, Minnesota State University Moorhead. The first electoral event of the presidential election year 2012 will be the Iowa Caucuses scheduled for Tuesday, Jan. 3. These caucuses illustrate how American democracy begins at the grass-roots level even though a large number of people do not take advantage […]

By Shelton A. Gunaratne-Professor of mass communications emeritus, Minnesota State University Moorhead By the mid-19th century, the controversy over slavery and the rights of slave owners had split the Democratic Party into Northern and Southern factions and given rise to a third party (Constitutional Unity, comprising former Southern Whigs and Know Nothings), each of which […]

By Shelton A. Gunaratne Professor of mass communications emeritus, Minnesota State University Moorhead ƒ”š‚ The Republican Party leadership should take a good look at the party history to understand that the social and political ideology of early Republicans”ƒ¢¢”š¬‚a composite of anti-slavery expansion activists, modernizers, ex-Whigs and ex-Free-Soilers who founded the Grand Old Party (GOP) in 1854, […]

By Shelton A. Gunaratne Professor of mass communications emeritus, Minnesota State University Moorhead ƒ”š‚ During a four-day visit to Las Vegas, Nevada, mid-November, 2011, we”ƒ¢¢”š¬‚my spouse and I”ƒ¢¢”š¬‚literally visited Paradise in its magnificent splendor to enjoy the sight and sound of the Fountains of Bellagio dancing to the tunes of the soothing songs of Frank Sinatra […]

By Shelton A. Gunaratne Professor of mass communications emeritus, Minnesota State University Moorhead ƒ”š‚ Republicans and their Tea Party troglodytes tend to believe that capitalism is an unchanging phenomenon. Therefore, they yearn to seek solutions to America’s contemporary problems in the U.S. Constitution and associated conventions adopted and practiced in the late 18th century. Oblivious to […]

By Shelton A. Gunaratne Professor of mass communications emeritus@ Minnesota State University Moorhead The capitalists poo-pooh Marx and Engels’ dialectical materialism theory, which asserts that every economic order grows to a state of maximum efficiency, while at the same time developing internal contradictions or weaknesses that contribute to its decay. Although rarely acknowledged by Western […]

By Shelton A. Gunaratne Professor of mass communications emeritus, Minnesota State University Moorhead ƒ”š‚ How can a democracy committed to “equality and justice for all,”ƒ”š‚ a phrase Americans recite in their Pledge of Allegiance, allow itself to become a nation, in which: The top 1 percent own 34 percent of the wealth (income plus assets), and […]

By Shelton A. Gunaratne Professor emeritus of mass communications, Minnesota State University Moorhead ƒ”š‚ The Tea Party troglodytes and several of the Republican contenders for the U.S. presidency want to abolish the U.S. foreign-aid program and withdraw from the United Nations. ƒ”š‚ Rep. Ron Paul, R-Texas, who is known as a vocal opponent of U.S. military intervention […]

In response to An Outsider’s View”ƒ¢¢”š¬‚6ƒ”š‚  (originally published in Lankaweb, 1 Oct. 2011), In response to An Outsider’s View”ƒ¢¢”š¬‚6ƒ”š‚  (originally published in Lankaweb, 1 Oct. 2011), Mark Antonenko of Grand Forks, North Dakota, published the following letter to the editor in The Grand Forks Herald (“Marx’s siren song lures “ƒ”¹…”ship of state’ onto rocks,”ƒ”š‚ 20 […]

By Shelton A. Gunaratneƒ”š‚ Professor of mass communications emeritus, Minnesota State University Moorhead Right-wing Republican backers, particularly the Tea Party troglodytes, disingenuously argue that the mixed economy of the United States (where privately owned businesses and government both play important roles) is the main reason for its current economic plight. They hold that deficits and debts […]

By Shelton A. Gunaratne Professor of mass communications emeritus, Minnesota State University Moorhead ƒ”š‚ Recently, the Oscillation Project with Emulsion-Tracking Apparatus (Opera) sent neutrinos from a particle accelerator at CERN outside Geneva, Switzerland, racing some 450 miles to a cavern in Gran Sasso, Italy. Neutrinos are electrically neutral elementary subatomic particles, each of which has a […]

By Shelton A. Gunaratne Professor of mass communications emeritus, Minnesota State University Moorhead Almost 238 years ago, a group of American colonists protested the British government’s Tea Act when they destroyed three shiploads of prime tea, which the monopolistic East India Co. was about to unload at the Boston Harbor. This so-called Boston Tea Party, […]