{"id":75479,"date":"2018-03-09T16:58:42","date_gmt":"2018-03-09T23:58:42","guid":{"rendered":"http:\/\/www.lankaweb.com\/news\/items\/?p=75479"},"modified":"2018-03-09T16:58:42","modified_gmt":"2018-03-09T23:58:42","slug":"whither-srilankan-youth","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/www.lankaweb.com\/news\/items\/2018\/03\/09\/whither-srilankan-youth\/","title":{"rendered":"Whither Srilankan Youth?"},"content":{"rendered":"

Dr. Mareena Thaha Reffai, Dehiwela<\/em><\/span><\/strong><\/h2>\n

\u00a0While watching the videos of the riots in our country within the last one week, I was absolutely devastated. Not only because of the destruction caused to the innocent poor people’s property and homes, but more so watching the youth who were causing these.<\/p>\n

I am also a mother. It makes me wonder what the mothers of these rioting Sinhalese youths will be thinking if they actually saw the videos. Are they going to be proud? Would they condone the actions? Would they\u00a0\u00a0applaud them? Certainly not.<\/p>\n

What are the Buddhist leaders thinking when they watch these? Are they proud of the youth society they are producing? I’m sure certainly not.<\/p>\n

There’s something very sinister going on in our country. What makes the youth \u2013 hardly out of school \u2013 most of them appear to be within\u00a0\u00a018 to 25 years of age. how can a gang of such children cause\u00a0\u00a0the vandalism we see\u00a0\u00a0so clearly in the videos? I saw a video where about 10 of them stealing and setting fire to a shop. Another about a gang of about 25 roaming the roads armed with poles and picking up large stones and throwing at windows and CCTV. What struck me was \u2013 isn’t there a single son of our soil in this crowd\u00a0\u00a0who stops to think \u2013 Hey! This is not right! We are supposed to be Buddhists. Buddhism does not teach this?<\/p>\n

I know herd mentality can set the crowd reaction \u2013 but that is usually on actions done at the spur of the moment, with anger or rage. But this looks perfectly\u00a0\u00a0pre medicated and everyone of them seems to be enjoying it. They don’t seem to have an iota of Buddhist sense \u2013 the religion of peace, selflessness, kindness in them.<\/p>\n

How did this happen? What motivated them?\u00a0\u00a0Was it a promise of money? Or a hatred for fellow human beings? Jealousy of other people’s apparent success?\u00a0Fear of being overcome in number \u2013 surely!<\/p>\n

I am sorry to say this \u2013 but I think the Buddhist clergy – not the ones parading in robes but have no idea of true Buddhism, but \u2013 the ones with correct knowledge, the ones with correct Buddhist attitude\u00a0\u00a0and the ones who are in authoritative positions of guiding the society, has to shoulder the whole blame. If these youth\u00a0have been given the simple teachings of Buddhism in their prime, they would have developed a conscience. They would have known that thanhawa \u2013 greed for worldly things is alien to Buddhism. They would have felt it in their bones that this action is wrong, wrong, wrong. All, about 1000 of them or more,\u00a0\u00a0for days continuing to cause havoc with no sense of remorse? Something is seriously wrong.<\/p>\n

Having so many poya holidays and banning meat and alcohol on these poya\u00a0\u00a0days alone does not obviously imprint Buddhist principles in the young minds. These youths probably never attend any banas. This has to change.\u00a0\u00a0\u00a0From childhood they must be inculcated with the correct moral codes of human life. Whose responsibility is that?<\/p>\n

Where would these youngsters end up? What does the future hold for them? What sort of society that Srilanka is nurturing? How many thousands more with this mind set are out there?<\/p>\n

It’s time someone gave serious thought to this matter.<\/p>\n

Sent by:<\/p>\n

Dr. Mareena Thaha Reffai,<\/p>\n

\u00a0Dehiwela<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"

Dr. Mareena Thaha Reffai, Dehiwela \u00a0While watching the videos of the riots in our country within the last one week, I was absolutely devastated. Not only because of the destruction caused to the innocent poor people’s property and homes, but more so watching the youth who were causing these. I am also a mother. It […]<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":1,"featured_media":0,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"closed","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[12],"tags":[],"class_list":["post-75479","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","hentry","category-forum"],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.lankaweb.com\/news\/items\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/75479","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.lankaweb.com\/news\/items\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.lankaweb.com\/news\/items\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.lankaweb.com\/news\/items\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/1"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.lankaweb.com\/news\/items\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=75479"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/www.lankaweb.com\/news\/items\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/75479\/revisions"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.lankaweb.com\/news\/items\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=75479"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.lankaweb.com\/news\/items\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=75479"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.lankaweb.com\/news\/items\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=75479"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}