THE ENTERPRISING CASE OF A MODERN DAY ARHANT –  IV
Posted on December 17th, 2022

By Rohana R. Wasala

In almost all the videos I watched on the internet, Ven. Samanthabhadra refers to Buddhists he judges to lack the level of intellect that he thinks a rational thinking Buddhist should have, using  very derogatory terms such as fools, donkeys, animals, etc. He has no empathy  for people with perceived weaknesses. He also betrays an inability to listen to others even when they want to confirm his point of view. Often, he puts a question to the audience (usually, he adopts what appears to me to be an intimidating tone, and most listeners, on their part, seem hopelessly uncomprehending and confused), and if a rare soul boldly offers to answer, Ven. Samanthabhadra Thera interrupts that person, and takes over even before the answerer has had enough time to make a proper start, and completes the answer for him, which apparently sounds incomprehensible even to the person who offered to answer! 

We know some people exhibit a penchant for constant adulation and recognition for their achievements. It looks as if this monk is making a special effort to make himself acceptable to and popular among the young. I think he may be genuinely interested in making Buddhism popular among the young. He seems to be adopting unconventional methods for the purpose. Arhant Samantabhadra has even appeared in a song video of a popular young musician and singer (actually a music entrepreneur with a keen sense of marketing) with near explicit sexually suggestive scenes, where a disillusioned young man previously given to a hedonistic lifestyle comes to him seeking ultimate solace. The sage waits with a calm smiling face to admit the young rake into the ambit of his spiritual grace. Samantabhadra Thera was also seen defending another controversial video of the same singer featuring a male homosexual couple wallowing in a stream indulging themselves without a care in the world. The monk’s argument was, as I remember, that one should concentrate on the central artistic merit of a work of art, but not on those peripheral factors. Of course, the young musician is a successful businessman in the musical field in Sri Lanka, and probably more extensively abroad. He is a devout young Buddhist, who is trying to bring about some social reform through his art in a novel innovative way. So, though they represent two widely divergent domains (spiritual and mundane) one common goal unites them: Both the monk and the musician have declared their altruistic intentions in respect of the average Sinhala-Buddhist-culture-dominated  Sri Lankan society which, including the youth, they think, tends to be backward, change-resistant, superstitious, hypocritical and immoral, and hence is in need of immediate reformation. Though their goal is the same, that of curing a sick society, it may be that either is trying to promote himself through the other among their supposedly captive young fans. Both seem to have reached the acme of unconventionality while promoting themselves in their respective fields. 

The saying that necessity makes strange bedfellows is usually more applicable to politics and business than to the spiritual domain. Who is more likely to be at the receiving end of this (seemingly) unholy alliance between a monk and a musician is clear. Ven. Samanthabhadra is probably being used as a stalking horse to approach the fashionably lumpen, immature sections of Sri Lanka’s youth who come from a relatively affluent economic background. The targeted individuals are, however, not representative of the majority of young Sri Lankans, who are, no doubt, educated, cultured and uncommonly creative.  The duo are promoting each other. Of them, the monk jokingly admits that he is marketing his ideology through this sort of thing. At the same time, a strong suspicion lurks in our minds regarding role of the Arhant: How can we be sure that Ven. Samanthabhadra is not being used as an unwitting battering ram against Sri Lanka by vested interests in other more important contexts, with extremely serious negative  implications for the majority Sinhala Buddhist community? 

A recently published You Tube video (September 25, 2017) shows  Samanthabhadra Himi’s violent verbal reaction to the Ven. Mahanayakes’ alleged reluctance to officially allow the maverick monk to conduct a religious program at the Sri Dalada Maligawa in Kandy around that date. According to the lay organizer of the event, self introduced as a former SM of the Kandy Railway station, who appears in that video, even the GA (Provincial Secretary) and the Municipal Commissioner of Kandy,  when approached by him about Samanthabhadra Himi’s intended schedule at the Maligawa, showed the same disinclination to have anything to do with Samanthabhadra Himi. The unwillingness of the two Ven. Mahanayakes who are joint custodians of the foremost Buddhist shrine in the island and in the whole Buddhist world, and the answering hesitation of the government officials mentioned (because they are subordinate to the Ven. Mahanayakes in the context) are not surprising, given the particular monk’s frequent controversial utterances about  the much venerated sacred relics, and his contemptuous comments on the alleged gullibility and low intellectual capacity of ordinary lay Buddhists, and his searing critical remarks about fellow members of the Order including the Nayake monks for their alleged indolence and lack of virtue. Most of all, there was the case of this monk calling the Tooth Relic a wild boar tooth. 

When they were informed of Samanthabhadra Himi’s planned program at the Maligawa so soon after his outrageous speech, the religious and lay guardians of the shrine and the relevant government authorities must have naturally entertained genuine misgivings about his real intentions, which could have led to undesirable consequences. The heavy precautionary police presence with barricades at the Maligawa (as seen in the video) suggests that the authorities  didn’t want to take chances. Obviously, they were not going to allow any untoward incident to take place there between supporters and opponents of the self-proclaimed Arahant. 

This is a most unfortunate situation to arise at a time when the majority Sinhalese Buddhists are urging the Maha Sangha to unite and speak with one voice providing them with much needed guidance and protection against internal and external, implicit and explicit, political and religious aggression. The realization of Nibbana or attainment of Arahanthood or lesser spiritual status cannot be further from their minds than now for the besieged community. Samanthabhadra Himi’s escapade might be read as an unfortunate distraction.

The Maha Sangha are an absolutely democratic religious community whose members are completely independent of each other as individual bhikkhus, except where teacher pupil relationships are concerned. This mainly facilitates the apparent proliferation of mavericks among them, pursuing their own agendas, not a healthy state of affairs for Sangha unity. But not all these maverick monks are bad.  A number of them are fulfilling their social obligations while not forgetting their higher spiritual goal. They are acting as individual monks because they have no choice but to get involved in tackling political problems that affect the Buddhasasana, mainly due the perceived failure of the Mahanayakes to provide the necessary leadership. Meanwhile, a number of other maverick monks are an embarrassment and a problem to the Buddhist laity as well as to the whole Sangha community as they are engaged in party politics, business, and even  in occult practices. Samanthabhadra Himi quite rightly criticizes the latter. However, the Mahanayake Theras do not belong to that category.  It is in fact the Ven. Mahanayake Theras leading a united Maha Sangha who must ultimately bring these errant monks to heel. One maverick monk, however well intentioned he may be, is not equal to that task. If such a monk tries to launch one-man reform movement, he will only create dissension among the Sangha, which is considered a grave papakamma or unwholesome act or ‘sin’ with equally grave consequences for the perpetrator.

In this video of September 25, 2017, an enraged Siri Samanthabhadra Himi works himself up to a frenzy and launches into a passionate denunciation of the Mahanayake Theras, even casting aspersions on their moral  character. He implicitly likens them to old dogs, monkeys, and jackals; he charges them with avarice and dissoluteness. If we understand this (the truth about these leading monks as he alleges)”, he states, then they have not understood the Dhamma. What have they done? They have only been minding the estate, and undressing the women around”. The Mahanayake Thera of Asgiriya was a special target. Doesn’t that Mahanayake of Asgiriya”, he rhetorically asks, chant pirith to bless a Muslim or a Tamil? Then, why is he ‘allergic’ only to me?”.  The implication of this charge is clear: Samanthabhadra Himi thinks that it is improper or worse for a Buddhist monk to chant pirith and invoke blessings on a Muslim or a Tamil. Any ordinary Buddhist will say that it is not wrong for a Buddhist monk to do that; Buddhist compassion embraces all. Samanthabhadra Himi uses the contextually derogatory words thambiya” and demala” to refer respectively to a Muslim and a Tamil. He is thus betraying his racist prejudice against those persons, something we do not expect of even an ordinary monk, let alone Arhants. He also praises himself as a ‘Southerner’ (Southerners according to him are good at ‘grinding chillies’ which I think he is using to mean criticizing or attacking opponents). So, he seems to be prejudiced against some sections of his own ethnic community.

In referring to the Ven.  Mahanayake Thera, he uses a very pejorative form of the Sinhala equivalent of the English pronoun ‘he’, which is oo”, usually reserved in the Sinhala language for an animal or a person considered low. Samanthabhadra Himi casually recalls the earlier Mahanayake Thera (presumably of the same Asgiriya Vihara) as having advised the monks who want to eat meat to do so in secret. Then, Samanthabhadra Himi claims, he retorted, ”Why? Are we cats?” (He says cats are known for stealing meat.) Apparently, he implies that it is OK for Buddhist monks to eat animal flesh, and if they want to eat meat, they should do so openly. (His opinion about the acceptability of meat eating is likely to be challenged by at least some ordinary Buddhists as ultimately incompatible with the first precept of the Five Precepts (panca sila): abstaining from killing. Incidentally, in a different and earlier video I watched, Samanthabhadra Himi argues that Sinhalese Buddhists have become ‘moda’ (intellectually deficient) as a result of avoiding ‘mas maalu’ (meat and fish)! Luckily for him, none of his listeners asked him to explain why the Veddahs, who are of the same antiquity as the Sinhalese failed to this day to exhibit any  intellectual prowess superior to that of the latter in some acceptable way, despite the fact they (the Veddahs) have mostly stuck to their stone age or hunter gatherer mode of living and have not still abandoned their dependence on meat eating. 

Returning to the alleged general ignorance and hypocrisy of those whom he condemns as errant monks, he quotes from ‘Maggadhusaka sutta’. It is about monk imposters, in which category he includes the leading monks  whom he attacks, apparently incensed by what he seems to take as an affront they committed towards him by refusing to extend special recognition to him. It is when the lay organizer tells him that the Anunayake Thera of Asgiriya Vihara allegedly threatened him, that Samanthabhadra Himi gets worked up to insult the Anunayake Thera in the most abusive terms as already mentioned. In the same context he says that  if a yellow robed person threatens (another) thus, he is an empty headed ‘gobbaya’ (idiot) without any sense of dharma vinaya (discipline taught in the dhamma), thereby unwittingly condemning himself! 

Towards the end of the video , he talks about the desirability, nay, the imperativeness of keeping religion and state as separate institutions (i.e., the principle of secularism as it is usually called), something that assumes a unique complexity and significance for Sri Lanka as a whole in relation to the current vital political crises engulfing it. Evidently, he is not equipped with enough political knowledge or practical experience in the field to advise anyone on the subject of secularism, though he is entitled to do so on the ethical aspect of statecraft. Even then,  broaching the sensitive subject of secularism in the course of his criticism of what passes for Buddhism and the various lapses he finds in popular Buddhist religious practice both among the monks and the lay Buddhists can invite adverse reactions from the people. This is because there is a strong perception among them that the Sinhalese Buddhist cultural heritage, the Sinhalese race, and their historic homeland as a unitary state are under threat today as never before.  They greatly fear that both the unitary status of the Sri Lankan state and the prominence hitherto given to Buddhism are going to be completely abolished or seriously modified. Verbal attacks on the leaderless Sinhalese Buddhists and Buddhist monks have become the order of the day. Samanthabhadra Himi is effectively making a vital contribution to the threatened transformation or disintegration of Sri Lanka through his scorching criticism of traditional Buddhist practices, ordinary Buddhist laity and the Sangha Order, especially the Ven.  Mahanayakes.

There is nothing new in his criticisms. As shown before, Colonel Olcott, who embraced Buddhism through conviction, did not accept the authenticity of the Tooth Relic, but understood and respected its symbolic value for Buddhists. Anagarika Dharmapala’s withering attacks on indolent monks are still remembered. He also talked about the compatibility of Buddhism with modern science. Even before the Anagarika’s time, Western scholars such as Rhys Davids and Edwin Arnold had been attracted to Buddhism by its scientific attitude expressed in its advocacy of free thought (e.g., the Kalama Sutta) and its quality of Ehi passiko” ‘Come and see” (Don’t accept the Dhamma on faith. Come and realize/experience its truth for yourself). Unlike Samanthabhadra Himi, Anagarika Dharmapala reestablished the Buddhasasana, reinforced the local Buddhist culture, and laid the foundation for the freedom agitation that eventually led to the departure of the colonial British..

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