| Eppawela
Phosphate Agreement – Part I By Batty Weerakoon
UNP accommodates McMoRan
Fudged Law: Invalid Agreement
The B. C. Perera Committee in 1996 reviewed the project that had been finalized with
Freeport McMoRan Resource Partners for the exploitation of the Eppawela Phosphate
deposits. Tenders had been called for this project in 1991-92, and the project had been
finalized under the UNP regime when Mr. Ranil Wickremasinghe was Minister of Industries.
The project was for exporting Diammonium Phosphate manufactured in Sri Lanka with the
Eppawela rock phosphate. However the Agreement could not be signed during that period for
two reasons. One was that McMoRan found that the market for Di-ammonium phosphate around
that time was low. The other was that this company was seeking to finance the Project by
the export of unprocessed rock phosphate for a given number of years or as a percentage of
the proven rock reserves. The B. C. Perera Committee finalized the agreements in mid 1997
by agreeing to the export of 3.6 million metric tons of raw rock during the first 12 years
of the Project. This will be part of the 26 million metric tons of phosphate contracted
for a manufacturing period of 30 years. There is an escape clause too which stipulates
that a larger quantity of rock could be exported with the express authority of the
Secretary to the Ministry of Industrial Development. This latter provision goes a long way
to meet the position advanced by Louis A. Clinton, President of Freeport McMoRan Pacific
on the issue. The letter to Secretary M/Ind., and Chairman of the "Cabinet Appointed
Tender Board" is dated 18 October 95 and is addressed from Jakarta.
Mineral Investment Agreement
This Mineral Investment Agreement is reportedly ready for signature on behalf of the
Government of Sri Lanka, by the Secretary to the Ministry of Industrial Development. There
is however no provision in the relevant law for an Investment Agreement on the basis of
the arrangements contained in the Agreement under consideration.
The Mines and Minerals Act No. 33 of 1992 contains the substantive law on the
exploration for minerals and the mining of minerals in Sri Lanka. The only instance in
that Act where an "investment agreement" is mentioned is in the proviso to the
prohibition on the transfer of a license, contained in sec. 35(2)(d). The proviso says
that, "an industrial mining license may be transferred......... as provided for in
the investment agreement in pursuance of which such license was issued and subject to such
conditions as may be prescribed." Here the "investment agreement" does not
relate to or refer to any person other than the licensee. McMoRan or its agent is no
licensee. In the Mineral Investment Agreement the provision is for McMoRan to operate on
the licenses issued to Lanka Phosphate Ltd., which is a State owned company holding a 10%
share in the "Project Company" known as Sarabumi. The device is for Lanka
Phosphate to transfer its licenses for exploration and mining to Sarabumi. The transfer by
itself does not set up any kind of legal relationship between the license-issuing
authority and the latter company. The Mineral Investment Agreement mentioned in the B.C.
Perera report does not therefore come under this provision. There is no other provision
for such Agreement.
Nor is there provision for the Secretary to the Ministry of Industrial Development to
enter into such an Agreement. He is not mentioned anywhere in the Act as a person who can
come into any Agreement. The license issuing authority is the Geological Survey and Mines
Bureau which comes under the purview of the Ministry of Industrial Development. The
Secretary to the Ministry is the final appellate authority where a license is refused or
is cancelled. That he should not involve himself in ‘’investment agreements is
as it should be. This means that the Act, which is the substantive law on the subject,
does not contemplate a "Mineral Investment Agreement" as has been designed to be
signed by the Secretary to the Ministry and a project company like Sarabumi which is not
in fact a licensee.
But the provision for such Agreement has been by Regulations purportedly made under the
Act. The Regulations dated 23 November 1993 have been made by Mr Ranil Wickremasinghe,
Minister of Industries and S & T. Regulation 10 (1) says, "Special negotiations
in the form of an Investment Agreement may be conducted by the Secretary with any private
sector proponent or participant with regard to the terms and conditions of and
supplementary rights and obligations under such agreement."
This regulation, in the first instance, provides for an Investment Agreement which
cannot exist in the prevailing law. It has been introduced without reference to the
substantive law. It has been smuggled in. This is because the McMoRan Project has to
by-pass several provisions of the law in different sectors. That has to be done unnoticed
by the law and the law makers. To amend the law to accommodate McMoRan would be
politically scandalous. Hence the attempt to provide some cover of seeming legality to the
conspiracy through Regulations. Once it is done it becomes the law for the Project.
Article I57 of the Sl, Constitution of 1978 guarantees the inviolability of the
investments and interests of the nationals of any country which has entered into an
investment treaty or agreement with Sri Lanka as provided for in that Article. Reliance
has been placed on this Treaty in order to give to the Investment Agreement legal status.
Once an Agreement of this nature is made and signed by a Government under its own
Regulations it cannot be heard to disown it in the Tribunals of adjudication or
arbitration provided for in the Treaty. The preamble to the draft Investment Agreement
states that the Secretary to the Ministry of Industrial Development enters into the
Agreement representing the Government of the Republic of Sri Lanka "acting with the
approval and approbation of the Cabinet of Ministers granted by virtue of the powers
vested in them by the Constitution of Sri Lanka." This purported authority, issuing
from the Regulations is meant to give to the Investment Agreement a spurious legality for
the purpose of protection under the Investment Treaty.
McMoRan makes the Agreement but Dummy signs it
It was Freeport McMoRan Resource Partners that offered on the Eppawela Phosphate tender
and was selected. The B.C.Perera Committee’s final round of negotiations in
furtherance of the Tender ended in August 1997. The Report tendered after this round too
is entitled, "Report of the Negotiating Committee on the Joint-Venture Agreement with
M/s Freeport McMoRan Resource Partners of USA for the manufacture of rock phosphate
fertilizer for export utilizing the rock phosphate deposit at Eppawela." The Report
says that in this final round of the Negotiating Committee the drafts of the Mineral
Investment Agreement and the subsidiary Agreements were agreed upon and initialled by
S/Ministry of Industrial Development and representatives from Freeport McMoRan Resource
Partners and IMC Agrico. But in the Agreement itself M/s Freeport McMoRan does not figure.
As to how IMC Agrico came into this business is explained by the B.C. Perera Report. It
says that in February 1997 McMoRan had informed the S/ID that "their company and IMC
Global Inc., had merged themselves in to a Joint Venture Company - IMC Agrico." This
revealed information is not quite in keeping with other known facts. The INTERNET has it
that Freeport McMoRan Resource Panners Ltd., had undergone a corporate transformation in
to Phosphate Resource Partners Ltd. This is information traceable to 1997. The new Avatar
of McMoRan is reported as holding a 43.5 % ownership of IMC Agrico. In the light of the
McMoRan communication to S/ID in February 1997 referred to above it has to be assumed that
the rest of the ownership of IMC Agrico is by IMC Global Inc., which is an MNC in its own
right. IMC Agrico is therefore no more than a front for the operations of McMoRan and IMC
Global Inc. But it has its own corporate personality and the buck stops there.
The Investment Agreement meant to be signed by Secretary to the Ministry of Industrial
Development on behalf of the SL Govemment is neither with McMoRan, the company that
tendered, nor with IMC Agrico, the company that was introduced by McMoRan. The party to
the Agreement is what is called a "Project Company". It has been named with
quite a sense of irony as Sarabumi. IMC Agrico holds 65% of its shares. Tomen - a Japanese
construction company, holds 25%, and Lanka Phosphate Ltd., has been given gratis a 10%.
The B.C. Perera Report states blandly something that is cernainly disturbing. It states,
"A serious attempt was made to get the two foreign investors to also sign the MIA
[Mineral Investment Agreement]. However they did not agree and stated that they have
followed the present pattern everywhere. The Project Company which will be a signatory to
the Agreement will represent them". Certainly the Project Company will represent
them. But how can it make them liable under the Agreement? That is not a question the B.C.
Perera Report has gone into. Nor can it be said that the Committee had made any attempt to
correctly identify the party it was dealing with although it should have known that a
correct identification of the parties to an Agreement is crucial to matters of performance
and enforcement.
Form 10K filed under the Securities and Exchange Commission, Washington DC 20549,
reveals that in July 1993 Free-Port McMoRan Resource Partners Ltd., had transferred all
their phosphate fertilizer businesses, including the mining and sale of phosphate
chemicals, to IMC-Agrico. Was it that the B.C. Perera Committee was not aware of these
changes till the negotiations reached the point of signing the Agreement? Why did McMoRan
fail to inform the Committee of it true business relationship with IMC Agrico till the
communication dated February 1997 referred to above?
Misleading Cabinet
The B. C. Perera Report is carefully structured. Regretfully it can be said that it was
meant to mislead the Cabinet on matters relating to the relationship of parties. Right at
the commencement it gives a brief history of the Eppawela tender the notice of which had
been published in December 1992. The Report says, "In response to this notice, six
proposals were received. The Committee appointed by Cabinet to handle this matter having
considered the Evaluation Report of the six proposals, decided with the approval of the
Cabinet to undertake negotiations with Freeport McMoRan Resource Panners of USA. It was
revealed that only Freeport McMoRan had the required technology to process the Eppawela
apatite deposit. IMC Agrico an affiliate of M/s Freeport McMoRan Resource Partners had
done studies and worked on the utilization of this particular phosphate deposit several
years ago and therefore they had the benefit of that research. They are also one of the
leading phosphate fertilizer firms in the world." The B. C. Perera Report had been
signed on 21 August 97. Nowhere does it attempt to update its facts on this history. It is
an attempt to pass off that history as also the prevailing factual situation on the date
of the Report. In fact it adds to that history by presenting IMC Agrico as an affiliate of
McMoRan when it certainly had no grounds to infer such a relationship. What precisely is
it that the Report attempts to present? That Freeport McMoRan is the joint-partner in the
Eppawela project and that it had available to it the research by its affiliate, IMC
Agrico, done on the deposit several years ago. This too is not true. Clearly the Committee
had no factual basis at all on which to state that IMC Agrico was an affiliate of McMoRan.
It is only after the mid 1993 transfer of the business to IMC Agrico that the
negotiations had commenced. The first round of negotiations was in March 1994 under the
UNP government. The second was in March 1995 and the third in December 1996. All this
while the successful tenderer kept mum about the change and even went to the extent of
submitting the drafts of the Agreements that needed to be signed. It was only after HE the
President had directed the Committee to conduct "one final round of negotiations and
clear any outstanding issues along with the texts of the Mineral Investment Agreement and
the subsidiary Agreements", that it was revealed by the foreign investor that it was
not McMoRan but IMC Agrico that was coming into the Project Company as share-holder. This
meant that the successful tenderer. McMoRan, had substituted another as the joint-Venture
partner. That was IMC Agrico. The latter too flatly refused to sign or counter-sign the
Agreement.
The resulting position is that only the locally incorporated Sarabumi will hold itself
liable on the Agreement. It also means that for the damage that is possible as resulting
from the mining operations neither McMoRan nor IMC Agrico could be made legally liable.
This is in a situation in which the Agreement itself, as does the Report, contemplate the
possibility of serious environmental damage resulting from the mining operations. The
Report says that, "The Government could suspend the operations of the Company in the
event the Company fails to remedy severe environmental damage." That would be like
the proverbial shutting of the stable door a little too late. Sarabumi which will be left
holding the baby is no more than a dud company. The device of a "Project
Company" adopted in this instance helps those who profit immensely from the Project
to avoid liability for the inevitable damage that will be caused by the mining. By the
time the question of restoring the damaged environment comes up during or after the 30
year period of the Project the foreign shareholders would have cleared out of the scene
having even transferred their shares to local "investors".
(Continued tomorrow)
Health
Vitamins are good for you ... aren’t they?
Not according to a report published last week. The US Academy of Sciences revealed that
high doses could actually be harmful. Jacqui Thornton, Mark Court and Alasdair Palmer in
London reveal how a booming business is built on the fallacy that the more vitamins you
take, the healthier you will be. Clint Eastwood takes vitamins religiously, swearing that
they will extend his life and keep him free from cancer. So does Caprice, the
bare-all-on-any-occasion model - as does Goldie Hawn, the Hollywood actress. Sylvester
Stallone swallows 65 different vitamin and nutrient pills a day.
It is not only movie stars who believe in the miraculous powers of mega-doses of
vitamins. So do some celebrated doctors. Dr. Jack Warner, an American nutritionist, for
instance, claims that his vitamin preparations can reverse Down’s syndrome: he
insists, that if you feed his vitamin cocktails to a child with Down’s, it will
change not just the child’s brain, but also his or her facial appearance.
Dr. Linus Pauling, one of the last century’s greatest chemists - he won the Nobel
prize twice - was also profoundly convinced of the life-enhancing power of vitamins. He
took large doses of vitamin C every day and insisted that his diet explained his longevity
(he died in 1994 aged 93). He said his trials on cancer patients proved that high doses of
vitamin C helped those with the disease live longer.
Pauling’s advocacy helped to create a consensus that the more vitamins you take,
the healthier you will be. Today, millions share that view. One in three people in
Britain, for example, takes some form of vitamin-enhanced food supplement - even though
last week’s report from the American Academy of Science provided yet more evidence
that high doses of vitamins have no health benefits at all.
The manufacture and marketing of vitamins is now a very big business, worth more than
pounds 360 million in Britain alone. It is dominated by Seven Seas, a former British
company now owned by Merck, a German pharmaceuticals giant.
Boots, which operates the largest chain of pharmacy shops in Britain, is the second
biggest player: it uses its stores to sell its own-label vitamin and food supplement
products. The company does not publicly reveal the exact sales or profits of its vitamins
operations. But Roche, a Swiss pharmaceuticals leviathan, is hot on Boots’ heels. In
1998, the company made apounds 260 million profit worldwide on its vitamins and chemicals
division.
Manufacturers such as Roche appear to be able to take advantage of their
customers’ willingness to pay over the odds for their product. Throughout the 1990s,
an international cartel of major pharmaceutical companies fixed vitamin prices by
restricting competition and dividing market share.
The racket was uncovered by the US Justice Department. Several companies - including
Roche, BASF from Germany and Aventis, another multi-national company - agreed last year to
pay penalties that seem likely to total more than dlrs 1 billion. Only last week, they
were ordered to pay dlrs 242 million (pounds 152m) in compensation by the US District
Court in Washington. Other cases are still in progress around the world. The US District
Court in Dallas has just jailed four former executives of BASF and Roche after they
pleaded guilty to conspiring to form a price-fixing cartel.
Unscrupulous vitamin manufacturers may not only be over-charging the public: they may
also be taking advantage of our gullibility. According to research published last week by
the US National Academy of Sciences, very high doses of vitamins C and E, far from warding
off age, disease and general degeneration, may actually promote it. People who take very
high doses of vitamins over a prolonged period, they found, could find their cells damaged
and their hair falling out.
The research - it is, in fact, not a new investigation, but a survey of previous work
into the effects of high doses on vitamins - is the latest in a series of reports that
have highlighted the damage that excess intake of vitamins can cause.
Last month, scientists from the University of Southern California found that people who
take 500 mg of vitamin C each day were two and half times more likely to suffer thickening
of the arteries than those who do not. Smokers in the group taking high doses of vitamin C
were five times more likely to develop thickened arteries, which are a major cause of
heart attacks.
Then there was the report published in Nature two years ago from scientists at
Britain’s Leicester University. They said that they had found that a dose of more
than 500 mg of vitamin C a day could cause cancer and recommended that no one take more
than 60 mg a day. Before that, there was the research which suggested that high doses of
vitamin B6 - often taken by women to ease pre-menstrual pains - could cause nerve damage.
Yet there is no consensus about the doses above which vitamin C and vitamin E start to
pose health risks, or even on whether they are dangerous at all. The American National
Academy of Science says anything above 2,000 mg a day of vitamin C and 1,000 mg of vitamin
E could pose serious risks to health. They recommend a dose of 90 mg a day of vitamin C
for men, and 75 mg a day for women, with 15 mg of vitamin E.
Britain has no dangerous dose" level. The daily dose level British scientists
recommend is also different: 40 mg of vitamin C, with no recommendation for vitamin E. The
EU has yet another recommended daily dose: 60 mg of vitamin C, and l0 mg of vitamin E.
Confused? So, it seems, are many scientists. The only thing that seems to have been
established beyond reasonable doubt is that some level of intake of vitamins is essential
to health.
At the heart of the debate is the multi-milliondollar question: are vitamin supplements
actually good for you - or do you get all the vitamins you need from a balanced diet? In
other words, are supplements just a smart way for pharmaceutical companies to make money?
Although it has been recognised since the 18th century that fresh citrus fruit could
prevent scurvy, it was only in 19O6 that the British biochemist Sir Frederick Hopkins
discovered that foods contained what he termed "accessory factors": compounds
that appeared to act as catalysts and regulators for the transformation of food into cells
and energy.
Sir Frederick had discovered what, in essence, vitamins do. Unlike the other essential
constituents of food - proteins, carbohydrates and fats - they do not provide energy, or
material that can be converted into tissue, but help to speed up the reactions that ensure
that food is converted into energy or tissue.
The poor diets of the industrial working classes in the early 20th century meant that
many children had diseases and disabilities caused by serious vitamin deficiencies. The
discovery that those diseases could easily be remedied, either by vitamin tablets or by
simply eating a richer diet, was enormously exciting: its result has been that the
diseases of vitamin deficiency - rickets and beriberi, for instance - have more or less
disappeared from rich countries.
Not surprisingly, that helped to generate great hopes for the untapped health benefits
of vitamins. It was found that vitamin C, for instance, helped the immune system function
more effectively. That generated the expectation that it could prove the cure for a whole
range of ills, not the least of which was the common cold.
When the public picked up on the scientists’ excitement, the big companies began
to get to work, providing us with vitamin supplements and promising that, if we bought
them, we would all be healthier and happier.
But most of the extravagant hopes for the curative powers of high doses of vitamin
supplements have, so far, not been proved - to put it mildly. Pauling’s research on
the power of vitamin C to slow down cancer has now been comprehensively demolished.
"Linus Pauling was a great chemist, but, if you look at his research on vitamins
carefully, you’ll see it was deeply flawed," notes Professor Gordon McVie,
Director of the Cancer Research Fund. "No one now thinks that high doses of vitamin C
have any effect at all on cancer. There is no evidence at all of any beneficial effect.
There is no evidence that high doses of vitamin C do anything to ward of colds, either -
despite the fact that this is one of the most widely held beliefs about the benefits of
the supplement.
Dr. Mark Porter, a GP who appears regularly on television and who has looked carefully
at the evidence, argues that "high doses [at least l,000 mg a day] are indeed
supposed to ward off colds and speed recovery, but the evidence for their efficacy is very
patchy indeed. I can find no convincing proof that taking regular supplements protects
people from catching a cold. There is, however, some evidence that taking high dose
supplements during a cold helps you recover more quickly."
"The truth is," insists Professor Ben Sacks, a neurologist and psychologist,
"that there is an awful lot of nonsense talked about the beneficial effects of
vitamins. At their worst, some of the claims for their effects are simply fraudulent -
like Dr. Warner’s outrageous claims for the effect of vitamins on Down’s
syndrome, which are garbage. High doses of vitamins have no effect whatever on
Down’s, which is a chromosomal disorder that cannot be affected by vitamins.
"But mostly," Prof. Sacks continues, the companies and ‘health
advisers’ who make the claims are just taking advantage of people’s ignorance
and advertising their own." People who take high doses of vitamins, he says, fall for
the fallacy that if a small amount is good, more must be better". That fallacy is
obvious when you take a substance such as alcohol. There is some evidence that a small
amount of alcohol is good for your health, and may protect you from heart disease. But
taking alcohol in large doses very obviously has catastrophically bad effects. "
Taking high doses of vitamin C probably won’t harm you,) "Prof. Sacks explains.
‘’It just won’t do you any good. It won’t stop you getting cancer. It
won’t even stop you catching a cold. What happens to people who take very high doses
of vitamin C is that they get the most expensive urine in the world. You can’t store
vitamin C, so, when you take a very high dose, your body simply gets rid of it."
Dr. Sarah Schenker, of the British Nutritional Foundation, agrees. "People
shouldn’t waste their money on expensive vitamin supplements," she
insists." Vitamins are indeed essential to health. You absolutely need a balanced
diet with fresh fruit, vegetables, fish and lean meat. But that should give you the
vitamins you need. More will just end up being excreted without being used."
She says the problem is that many people still don’t eat well enough to get the
vitamins they need, though she notes that chips and even crisps are quite a good source of
vitamin C: the deep-frying process seals in the vitamin C, which escapes in most other
cooking.
The solution, she believes, is not vitamin supplements but a better, more balanced
diet: vitamins in pills do not seem to be as well absorbed by the body as vitamins found
in food. The paradox is that people on poor diets who need vitamin supplements are
unlikely to be those who would take them.
"Unfortunately," she says "balanced nutritional advice seems to fall on
deaf ears. It just becomes boring." Unlike the more exciting claims made for
expensive vitamin supplements - which are most avidly listened to by those who have least
need of them.
Many observers now believe it is time the Government followed the US Supreme Court,
which two years ago ruled that, if any medicinal claims are made for a "food
supplement" (which is what vitamins are), then the product must be subject to the
same rigorous tests to prove the truth of those claims that drugs are required to undergo.
At the moment, there is no such requirement. Indeed, Britain’s Department of
Health is not even involved in the assessment of claims made by vitamin supplement
manufacturers. That’s the business of the Ministry of Agriculture, because, despite
the claims made for them, vitamins aren’t classed as medicines but food.
"So far, "says Prof. Sacks, there is no scientific test in which large doses
of vitamins perform significantly better than placebos containing small quantities of
completely inert chemicals."
It seems that there is a case for at least ensuring that the public is fully informed
about what it is spending its money on.
(C) The Telegraph Group London 2000
Religion
Values emerging from Buddha’s life
By J. P. Pathirana
The values that emerge from Buddha’s life we would like to highlight are
essentially three and they are renunciation, loving kindness and compassion and wisdom.
These three values emerge very clear by episodes in the Buddha’s own life.
Incidentally, it is no coincidence that these three qualities between them equal the
attainment of Nirvana because as you know there are three defilements (Klesha) that cause
us to be born again and again — the defilements of desire, illwill and ignorance. In
this context we might also remember that renunciation is the antidote for desire; loving
kindness and compassion is the antidote for illwill and wisdom is the antidote for
ignorance. Through cultivating these three qualities one is able to eliminate the
defilements and attain enlightenment. So it is no accident that these qualities should
stand out so prominently in the life of the Buddha.
Let us start with renunciation. As often happens some of the very first evidence of the
Buddha’s renunciation manifested itself while he was still very young. Renunciation
is basically a recognition that all existence is suffering. When one recognises the fact
that all existence is suffering, this brings about what we might call a turning-about, in
other words, seeing that life is full of suffering one begins to look for something more.
This is why suffering is the First Noble Truth. This recognition that existence is
suffering is the essence of renunciation. You may know of Prince Siddhartha’s visit
to the annual ploughing ceremony at the age of seven. It was there that while watching the
ploughing, the Prince noticed a worm that had been unearthed by the plough devoured by a
bird. This sight led the Prince to comtemplate on the realities of life, to recognise the
fact that all living beings kill each other for food and this is a great source of
suffering. Already we see at this tender age in the biography of the Buddha the beginning
of this recognition that existence is suffering. If we look a little bit later in the life
of the Buddha, we will come to the famous episode of the four sights which moved the
Prince to renounce the household life and to follow a life of asceticism to seek the
truth. The sights of old age, sickness, death and an ascetic led Him to consider why it
was that He should feel uneasy when in fact He was himself not free from and subject to
old age, sickness and death. This consideration led Him to develop a sense of detachment
from pleasure, led Him to seek the truth by way of renunciation. It is interesting to note
that Prince Siddhartha’s renunciation is not renunciation out of despair. He enjoyed
the greatest happiness and yet saw these sufferings of life, recognising that no matter
how great one’s indulgence in pleasures of the senses might be, eventually one would
have to face these sufferings. Recognising this He was moved to renounce the household
life and seek enlightenment for the sake of all living beings.
Let us next look at the quality of loving kindness and compassion. Here too we can see
this quality manifested very early in the life of the Buddha. The most striking example of
this is the episode of the wounded swan. We are told that He and His cousin Devadatta were
roaming in the park surrounding the palace when Devadatta shot down a swan with his bow
and arrow. Both boys ran towards the spot where the swan had fallen, but Siddhartha being
the faster runner came to the place where the wounded bird lay. Gathering the bird in His
arms He nursed the bird and this brought about a reaction from Devadatta who insisted that
the bird ought to be his since he was the one who shot it down. The boys brought this
dispute to the wise man of the court who decided that the life belonged rightly to the one
who preserved it, not to the one who destroyed it. Here we have a striking example of the
Buddha’s attitude of loving kindness and compassion which grows directly out of this
recognition that the nature of life is suffering. Later too after His enlightenment, the
Buddha continued to display this quality, as for instance in the famous episode in which
the Buddha nursed the sick Puthigatta Tissa Thera, whose illness was such that the other
members of the Order shunned him, as he was so smelling with the matter that oosed from
the sores in his body. The Buddha in fact took this monk in His arms, washed the wounds,
applied medicine, gave him new robes to wear out of absolute love and compassion.
Let us now look at Wisdom which is the third of the three qualities. Wisdom is the most
important of the three qualities because after all it is wisdom that uproots ignorance,
the under-lying cause of suffering. It is said that just as one can cut off the branches
and trunk of a tree and if the root of the tree is not taken out, the branches and trunk
will grow again. So in the same way, one can eliminate desire through renunciation,
illwill through loving kindness and compassion, but so long as ignorance is not
eliminated, this desire and illwill are liable to grow again.
Wisdom is achieved primarily through meditation. We have an episode again early in the
life of the Buddha in which we see His early development of skill in concentrating the
mind and this episode in fact occurred at the same time as the incident we considered a
moment ago involving the bird and the worm. We are told that having witnessed the bird
devouring the worm, having recognised the unhappy nature of life, the young Prince sat
under a tree and began to meditate spontaneously. He achieved the first level of
meditation concentrating the mind on the process of in-breathing and out-breathing. So we
have this experience of meditation in the early life of the Buddha and later He renounced
the household life and went forth to seek the truth, one of the first disciplines which He
tried was again the discipline of mental concentration. We are told that He studied with
two foremost teachers of the time, Alara Kalama and Uddakarama and He learned from these
teachers the methods of mental concentration. Yet, we find that the Prince left the two
teachers because He found that meditation alone could not permanently end suffering. This
is important because, although in its emphasis on mental development Buddhism is very much
in the tradition of the Indus Valley civilisation, yet the Buddha goes beyond the
tradition of mere meditation. This is what distinguishes the Buddha’s teachings from
the teachings of many other Indian schools, particularly the teachings of the tradition of
Yoga. It is also what distinguishes Buddhism from some of the contemplative traditions of
other religions, because in Buddhism, meditation by itself is not enough. Meditation is
like sharpening a pencil, sharpening the mind so to speak. Just as when we sharpen a
pencil we sharpen it for a purpose, so that we can write with it, so in sharpening the
mind we have a purpose and that purpose is wisdom. Sometimes this relationship between
meditation and wisdom is exemplified by the example of a torch. Suppose we want to see a
picture in a darkened room and there are many draughts in the room, we will find that the
light of the torch will flicker. Similarly, if our hand shakes, the light cast by the
torch will be unsteady and we will be unable to see the image.
In the same way, if we want to penetrate into the real nature of things, if our mind is
unsteady, distracted and wavers as a result of emotional disturbances, then we will not be
able to penetrate into the real nature of things. The Buddha applied this discovery on the
night of His enlightenment when we are told that with His mind concentrated, made
one-pointed and supple by meditation, He directed it to the understanding of the nature of
reality and penetrated the real nature of things. So the Buddha’s enlightenment is
the direct result of this combination of meditation and wisdom — concentration and
insight. We also find other aspects of wisdom expressed in the life of the Buddha and one
of the more important one is of course the Middleway or the Middle Path. The Middle Way is
exemplified in the life of the Buddha by His own experience of a life of luxury as a
Prince and by the six years of vigorous asceticism which He practiced after He left His
father’s Palace. After realising the futility of these two extremes in His own
experiences, He then hit upon the Middleway or Middle Path which avoids both extremes. |
