{"id":76962,"date":"2018-04-29T22:28:35","date_gmt":"2018-04-30T04:28:35","guid":{"rendered":"http:\/\/www.lankaweb.com\/news\/items\/?p=76962"},"modified":"2018-04-29T15:08:57","modified_gmt":"2018-04-29T22:08:57","slug":"letter-to-the-citizen","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/www.lankaweb.com\/news\/items\/2018\/04\/29\/letter-to-the-citizen\/","title":{"rendered":"LETTER TO THE CITIZEN"},"content":{"rendered":"

\u00a0Asoka Weerasinghe Kings Grove Crescent, Gloucester ; Ontario . Canada<\/em><\/span><\/h2>\n

29 April 2018<\/p>\n

The Editor (Letters)<\/p>\n

THE OTTAWA CITIZEN<\/p>\n

Ottawa<\/p>\n

Dear Editor (Letters)<\/p>\n

The\u00a0 moment the heavy iron rod came down on the neck of the white sitting Buddha statue decapitating it on the front lawn of the Buddhist temple, Hilda Jayewardenaramaya, on Heron Road, on the snowy night of March 16,\u00a0 2018, the hurt not only lanced through the pious\u00a0 and compassionate hearts of the local Buddhist community, but also the Buddhist communities across Canada, the States, England, Thailand, Vietnam, Cambodia and Japan.\u00a0 Since then these foreign Buddhist communities have stretched their hands to touch and comfort us.<\/p>\n

Although our hearts were lanced stabbing us with hurt, the spirit of Buddhist compassion was never touched.\u00a0 So none of us spat an angry word toward this executioner., Yet,.we are still stymied not being able to understand the vandal\u2019s anger to do what he did.\u00a0 Why? Especially\u00a0 when we are a peaceful community.<\/p>\n

The decapitated Buddha has been restored,which cost us a pretty penny which was prohibitive for a charitable organization operating on donations.\u00a0 It is now sitting on a. pedestal on the front lawn of the temple.\u00a0 We\u00a0 hope and pray that it won\u2019t be vandalized again.<\/p>\n

What was established with the unveiling of the restored Buddha statue on Sunday (29) afternoon was that\u00a0 love, compassion, respect and healing transcended Federal; constituency boundaries when Nepean\u2019s Liberal MP Chandra Arya, our neighbour, honoured us by unveiling the statue which proceeded with the consecrating Buddhist chanting.<\/p>\n

For a better appreciation what the Buddha statue symbolizes to our Buddhist community is that it is a symbol of peace of mind, well being and calm. It does not symbolize a God that we worship. Look at its gentle closed eyes and its lips stretched into a serene smile which provides us inspiration to deepen our own practice of developing inner peace.<\/p>\n

For the vandal who decapitated the Buddha statue in a moment of anger, let me invite him to sit with me\u00a0 in Metta<\/em><\/strong> (loving kindness) Bhavana<\/em><\/strong> (development) Meditation which will help the person to Overcome,anger, resentment and hurt, and also harmonize relationships with\u00a0 family members, friends, acquaintances and strangers like me.<\/p>\n

I request most humbly, please do not hurt us, Buddhists, again in case you wish to\u00a0 act as an executioner for the second time wanting to decapitate the Buddha statue, on the lawn of our Buddhist temple, Hilda Jawardenaramaya on Heron Road.<\/p>\n

And as a Peace Offering I have a gift for you in the colour of Buddha\u2019s saffron robe – a yellow rose symbolizing Joy and Friendship. Let\u2019s meet.<\/p>\n

Please accept it.<\/p>\n

May you be well, may you be happy, ,may you be peaceful, may you be loved and may no harm come your way, ever.<\/p>\n

Sincerely<\/p>\n

Asoka Weerasinghe<\/p>\n

Coordinator of Outreach Programmes<\/p>\n

Hilda Jayewardenaramaya, Ottawa<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"

\u00a0Asoka Weerasinghe Kings Grove Crescent, Gloucester ; Ontario . Canada 29 April 2018 The Editor (Letters) THE OTTAWA CITIZEN Ottawa Dear Editor (Letters) The\u00a0 moment the heavy iron rod came down on the neck of the white sitting Buddha statue decapitating it on the front lawn of the Buddhist temple, Hilda Jayewardenaramaya, on Heron Road, […]<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":1,"featured_media":0,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"closed","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[17],"tags":[],"class_list":["post-76962","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","hentry","category-asoka-weerasinghe"],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.lankaweb.com\/news\/items\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/76962","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=76962"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/www.lankaweb.com\/news\/items\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/76962\/revisions"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.lankaweb.com\/news\/items\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=76962"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.lankaweb.com\/news\/items\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=76962"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.lankaweb.com\/news\/items\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=76962"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}