It is with sadness that I have to comment on the level of discourse in the nation’s newspapers when, instead of intellectual arguments, people have to descend into abuse. I refer to Mr. Abeyratne’s denigration of my concern regarding child-recruitment to the Buddhist sangha and my suggestion that adults who are near retirement or have retired, could be a good source for recruitment.

This suggestion is that of a "modern Devadatta" he says, forgetting an important principle in Buddhism about the importance of "right speech". Let me briefly recapture the implications of my argument.

1. Children do have rights in our modern age and one such right is to have an uninterrupted childhood and that is why the Buddha with great insight proclaimed that youths under age fifteen should not be recruited. Can children under fifteen adhere to the ten precepts outlined for them in Mahavagga IV: 54-55?

2. Even when it comes to the higher ordination or Upasampada the Buddha noted the reason for rejecting those under age twenty, again with great insight: "How, monks, can these foolish men knowingly ordain an individual who is under twenty years of age?" And the reason is also given in the same chapter, in section 49, and that is even at twenty years of age it is difficult to endure the rigours and abstentions of monastic training. (see Horner translation, pp, 97-98)

3. Now to the question that has upset Mr. Abeyratne, namely, the possibility of adult and late adult ordinations. I urge him to look at the lives of monks and nuns in the Theragatha and Therigatha and he will find that an overwhelming number of them are older people. Indeed it would be interesting to look at the Canon to see how many boys and girls of under age 15 were in fact ordained as novices. I think there will be only a very small number. Remember that the Buddha’s own mother and his other relations were also in late middle or old age when they obtained full ordination. Is he suggesting that Mahaprajapati Gotami was incapable of following Buddhist practice?

4. Regarding my suggestion that retirees or those near to retirement could be encouraged to ordain, Mr. Abeyratne responds that such folks "are not sharp as what they used to be when one is young and is therefore, unable to attend the various duties which a youthful monk could". I am puzzled by this statement because that precisely is one reason why children should not be ordained as novices. Further, that older folks are not "sharp" is simply contradicted by our knowledge of modern neurobiology (that is why the USA has banned old age discrimination under Federal Law and why many old professors still manage to work in US Universities). Moreover, because most of our respected monks are truly old people, and this includes our Mahanayakas, does Mr. Abeyratne plan to pension them off owing to their failing faculties? He adds that older people are incapable of attending all night pirith ceremonies forgetting that monks take turns and no one keeps up for twelve hours at a stretch. And indeed some of the nicest pirith reciters are old monks whom your correspondent dismisses as weak, if not senile.

5. Again, as far as I know most people have to retire after fifty-five in this country and many may want to do so earlier if proper incentives to join the Sangha are found. I am also not making the absurd suggestion that all retirees will have the same capabilities but we should tap their motivational and seriously begin to provide incentives for recruiting mature motivated people. Many older people are already engaged in rigorous meditational practices in various centres throughout Sri Lanka and they should obviously be the first target for recruitment.

Others could easily perform the less rigorous duties of grantha dhura. And I know for a fact that Malwatta and other fraternities do confer Upasampada on older people. I find it sad that Mr. Abeyratne has ignored our traditional Sinhala wisdom that the older one gets the wiser one becomes, though Mr. Abeyratne’s example forces me to qualify that statement.

6. Finally, in a last act of Buddhist kindness he has relegated me to a modern Devadatta. The Buddha, of course, had considerable compassion for his wife’s brother who was a member of the Buddhist sangha but broke away for his insistence that monks should spend all their time in the forest, that they should subsist on begging for alms, that they wear only clothes taken from a dust heap, that they dwell under the foot of a tree, and that they should be vegetarians. The Buddha rightly refused to make these rules compulsory for all. Devadatta’s great crime, however, was creating dissension in the Order and attempting to hurt the Buddha. But the Buddha himself believed that Devadatta, after expiating his sins, will himself eventually become a Buddha. Maybe there is some hope for us modern Devadattas.
Professor Gananath Obeyesekere,
Kandy.