The Samannaphala Sutta is the second of the discourses of the Buddha in the Digha Nikaya (Collection of Long Discourses). The discourse begins with an event in the life the Buddha which is of immense relevance to day, especially in the context of the grand celebrations planned for the celebration of the 2550th Buddha Jayanthi. The Buddha had come to the city of Rajagaha (present day Rajagir) in the Kingdom of Magadha together with a large company of bhikkhus and was residing in the Mango-forest owned by Jivaka Komarabachcha, the Royal Physician. .

King Ajatasattu like his father Bimbisara was a new type of monarch whose principle ambition was to capture and maintain power.They were pioneers in the practice of amoral statecraft or real politik. Ajatasattu like his father kept a close watch on happenings in his realm. Wandering teachers came under special suspicion. They made excellent spies and informants. Two centuries later Kautalya in his compendium on state craft, Arthasastra, recommended that kings should maintain wandering ascetics at state expense, to bring them vital to him information from enemy territories. Ajatasattu was very sceptical about the usefulness of wandering ascetics to society and regarded them as social parasites. When news reached him that the great sramana Gotama had come to Rajagaha and was staying in the pavillion of the Mango Forest, the king decided to go and question the Blessed One about samannaphala -"the visible fruit" of the renouncer life to society. It was a bright Poya night. The king’s royal physician who owned the Mango Forest offered to guide king to the place where the Buddha had taken abode.

As the king entered the Mango Forest with his entourage, we are told that he was "filled with fear and terror and that his hair stood on end". There was a not sound to be heard in the forest. Was this offer by the royal physician to help the king meet the sramana Gotama a ruse to ambush and kill him ? "Did you not say the sramana Gotama was staying here with thousands of his followers? The king asked the royal physician. How is it so still? "Twelve hundred and fifty mendicants, you say, but I have not heard "a sneeze, a cough or a any other noise". The physician replied, "Do not be afraid majesty. Alight from your elephant and approach the Blesssed One on foot. He is there sitting against the middle column of the pavilion". Ajatasattu could not contain his amazement. The Buddha was leading the bhikkhus in meditation and they were rapt in Right Concentration "in silence like a clear lake". "Amazing!" "Amazing!". If only my restless son the crown prince, were possessed of such calm as this sangha of bhikkhus", wished King Ajatasattu. That was how the Buddha and his first bhikkhus spent a Poya night.

This Vesak celebrates the 2550th Buddha Jayanthi. Great preparations are being made for to celebrate this with piety and devotion. Many religious services have been planned throughout the Island. The government, to promote the spirit of Buddhism has banned the sale of liquor for a whole week. Businessmen and women and politicians are becoming paragons of virtue and very principled Buddhists! This part of the celebration is referred to as pratipatti puja. This is followed by a period of what is called amisa puja. The latter by far is what attracts the interest of the wealthy and of popularity seeking pinvath politicians. One wonder if the organisers of the amisa puja; pandal designers and builders, makers of spectacular lanterns, really have time to devote themselves to the pratipatti puja. There will be non stop live broadcasts of pratipatti puja from leading vihares all over the island. TV journalist dressed in immaculate white will bring you to tears with their unctuous commentaries. These are being announced ahead of time. Then they will go to town with live shows of various amisa puja spectacles.

The electronic media attention, even of that State media, will be given to these ‘merit bringing’ extravaganzas. The spirit of competition and commerce seems to dominate the amisa puja. Big prize money is being offered to the biggest and most spectacular Vesak lanterns, even by State media institutions and government departments. Time was when the simple bamboo framed lanterns hanging from village homes were symbolic of the Light of Dhamma. It was also an occasion for kindling family togetherness as parents and children cut and cleaned strips of bamboo and pasted crepe paper on the frames, joyfully lit and hung the lanterns outside their homes. Today large sums of money are invested to make grand lanterns, to win big prize monies. The spirit of competition and commerce also drives the building and display of Vesak pandals. The media including State media are pre-announcing where the biggest and most spectacular pandals will be located. The viewers are told how many feet higher the one pandal is than the other and the tens of thousand of electric bulbs that will illuminate them and who the grand patron is.

And this at time when we are told there is an energy crisis in the country and electricity bills are rising sky high, higher than the garishly illuminated pandals. For the big merchants and traders who sponsor these, it is not so much an occasion to accumulate merit but for vanity and show of wealth. All this squandering of wealth, while the victims of the tsunami are still living in tents or temporary shelters and a shadow war is going on. The Eighteenth Century Scottish political philosopher Adam Ferguson did not share the euphoria about civil society as today’s Colombo liberals. The false values of civil society, Ferguson deplored, induces loss of the ’public spirit’: "Public life is considered a scene for the gratification of mere vanity, avarice and ambition; never as furnishing the best opportunity for just and a happy engagement of the mind and heart".

The Buddha was not a world estranged leader of humans. He recognized the importance of wealth creation for the well being of society. He advised the entreprenuers of his day to be thrifty and diligent in the production of wealth. The Buddha admonished that wealth must be earned righteously - dhammena and strongly condemned squandering of wealth (Anguttara Nikaya 1.87). All religions teach their followers to good and avoid evil. The Noble Eightfold Path too enjoins Right Action. But it is the only ethical system that explicitly stresses the importance Right Livelihood. Some livelihoods, the Buddha declared, are intrinsically evil. How a person earns his wealth and donates his surplus to the sangha or the poor was not a matter of indiffernce to the Buddha. All the great institutionalised religions have painlessly substituted the signs of charity for the imperative of justice. The underlying and more troubling question about the huge sums of money spent by neo-evangelicals to mix the ‘good news’ with ‘good works’ is that they obscure the direct relationship of poverty and malnutrition in Third World countries with the super wealth of the West. How many religious leaders today pause to ask themselves how their great benefactors have accumulated their wealth or pause to question the moral rectitude of some of the individuals they appoint as patrons or presidents of prestigious Buddhist organizations? Does charity cover a multitude of sins? Is not the unquestioning acceptance of lavish donations, encouragement of misplaced religiosity and pandering to the vanity of the rich?

While Buddhist leaders raise loud protests against unethical conversion, what is the Sasana doing to uplift poor Buddhists? Did not the Buddha in the Kutadanta ask the dhana-patis (Lords of Wealth) to convert themselves into dana-patis (Lords of Sharing)? The earliest meaning of Dana, is ‘Sharing" or equitable redistribution of wealth, not alms giving, as the Buddha insists in the Cakkavatti Sihanada Sutta? Is not transformation of Dana into Charity or Alms, given with the selfish motive of gaining a merit, a later deviation and reversal to a brahmanic practice? One sees the same distortion in Christianity and Islam. Originally the Hebrew word zedaqa and the Arabic word sadaka exclusively meant (resditributive) Justice, but in later times came to mean Alms. Must we not ferret out the possible original social dynamic of early Buddhism? Might not the affectionate name Anathapindhika, by which the wealthy householder Sugata was called suggest that impelled by the power of the Buddha’s word he had become a ‘sharer with the bereft’? Is there not a similar, ‘between the lines’ suggestion that the highly remunerated royal physician Jivaka gave free medical aid to the poor and the needy?. Could the memories not have been suppressed by subsequent monkish ’handling’ to suggest that both these men exclusively served only the bhikkhu sangha? The social `E9lan of early Buddhism suggest that the fourfold sravaka sangha consisting of white robed upasakas and upasikas and yellow robed bhikkhus and bhikkunis were communities of dana – sharing wealth and the Dhamma with each other.

In an earlier Vesak article to this newspaper I warned that Vesak is fast being turned into the same type of consumerist festival and carnival as the annual celebration of the birth of Jesus. I titled the article "Christmassing Vesak". The captains of commerce and media moguls are at it with great gusto. There is a grand carnival of amisa puja every in year in Dehiwela, sponsored by the Mayor (no matter from which party he is elected). For a full four nights till the early hours of the morning there is bedlam. Loudspeakers blare what are supposed to bhakthi gee. The same ones again and again. Little children cannot sleep. Domestic dogs howl frightened by the lighting of crackers. Crowds jam pack the roads and every lane in the vicinity is blocked by all sorts of parked vehicles: open trucks to mini buses and three wheelers. Loudspeakers are certainly one of the worst plagues that ‘modernity’ has brought to this country. Many pansalas have taken to broadcasting all night pirith service at full blast over loudspeakers. Some pansalas and Buddhist establishments simply play taped recordings of pirith at all times of the day and night. Sometimes this happens when city traffic is at its peak. The decibels are deafening and adds to the cacophony of the blare of horns (another toy our motorists should never have been given to play with). Whenever this public nuisance is forced on people I cannot help calling to mind that Poya service recorded in the Samannaphala Sutta. How far have we strayed from that noble ideal? The externals of religion drown the essence of a religion which fosters tranquility of mind as one of its principle disciplines. Those blaring loudspeakers are in flagrant contradiction of the spirit of the Dhamma. If Buddhist leaders have forgotten the early Buddhist practice of meditating on the words of the Buddha with collected minds, surely they must heard there is something called noise pollution?

Is there not enough stress due to the blaring of horns, lottery vendors, three wheel drivers playing radios at full blast. Private buses torturing travelers with blaring FMM Radio rock ‘music’ and babble. Continuous noise affects the nerves and is one of the main causes of stress and tension today. Must religion be an additional stress inducing factor?.