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Dharma Thoughts
62 EASTERN HORIZON | DHARMA THOUGHTS

Vijaya Samarawickrama is an accomplished Dharma educator, teacher, and
author. He retired after 60 years of teaching in schools, colleges and universities.
However, he continues to give Dharma talks throughout the country, participates
in inter-faith dialogues, speaks at various international seminars, and writes for
Buddhist books and journals.

Creating Heaven on Earth

By Vijaya Samarawickrama

Since about two hundred years or so ago when Buddhism was introduced to the West some
scholars described it as a cheerless religion which denies the possibility of salvation through faith
and devotion. Quoting the Buddha and his disciples out of context scholars and missionaries alike
sought to portray Buddhism as a life negating religion which condemns its followers to an eternity
th
of bondage in saṃsāra as a punishment for karma. One example is the 19 century Max Weber
(1866-1920) who is regarded as the father of the sociology of religion. He described Buddhism
as ‘asocial’ and ‘anti political’ besides being ‘other-worldly’. (The Religion of India. NY.The Free
Press.1960. p206)

Much more recently Pope John Paul 11 had this to say: The ‘enlightenment’ experienced by
the Buddha comes down to the conviction that the world is bad, that it is the source of evil and
of suffering for man. To liberate oneself from this evil, one must free oneself from this world,
necessitating a break with the ties that join us to external reality—ties existing in our human
nature, in our psyche, in our bodies. The more we are liberated from these ties, the more we become
indifferent to what is in this world, and the more we are freed from suffering, from the evil that has
its source in the world. (Crossing the Threshold of Hope. 1994). It is worth noting in passing that
his holiness was speaking in his capacity as the spokesman of God and therefore infallible. But there
are also Buddhists who complain that Buddhism is difficult to practice, demanding that its followers
give up all the pleasures of the senses and harping on suffering at every turn.

Nothing of course can be further from the truth. One only has to read the biographies of the
disciples of the Buddha to understand how happy they were in their everyday lives. In the early days
of Buddhism some monks and nuns described the happiness they experienced in the form of poems
which are recorded in the Thera-Theri gāthas or Songs of the Elders. Here are just two examples:

“I’m well freed, so very well freed,
freed from the three things that bent me over:
the mortar, the pestle,
and my hump-backed husband.
I’m freed from birth and death;
the attachment to rebirth is eradicated.”

Thig 1.11 Muttā Therīgāthā