Dr. A.T. Ariyaratne

by Danny Fisher

It was an extraordinary day today at UWest in that we had the tremendous honor of hosting a lecture by Dr. A.T. Ariyaratne, Sri Lanka’s “Little Gandhi” and the founder of the Sarvodaya Shramadana Movement there. Though he is perhaps less well-known in the United States than fellow socially engaged Buddhists Thich Nhat Hanh and His Holiness the Dalai Lama, Dr. Ariyaratne is every bit as celebrated and revered by practitioners (and others) the world over. Among the various honors he has received for his many years of service are the Niwano Peace Prize, the Gandhi Peace Prize, and the King Beaudoin Award. In 2005, he was a nominee for the Nobel Peace Prize.

Dr. Ariyaratne founded Sarvodaya in 1958, inspired in equal measure by the Buddhist revival in Sri Lanka and the Gandhian ethic. Today, it is the largest NGO in Sri Lanka. A grassroots movement dedicated to the “sustainable empowerment” of rural Sri Lankans “through self-help and collective support, to non-violence and peace,” Sarvodaya’s 1,500 person staff benefits 15,000 villages in 34 districts throughout Sri Lanka. Their website states:

    It is not as much what we do to alleviate rural poverty but the way in which we do it which makes us so effective and sustainable–through the active participation and engagement of the villagers themselves.

Sarvodaya has also been instrumental in responding to national disasters in Sri Lanka, such as the tsunami that followed the 2004 Indian Ocean earthquake.

I first learned about Sarvodaya and Dr. Ariyaratne through editors Christopher S. Queen and Sallie B. King’s book Engaged Buddhism: Buddhist Liberation Movements in Asia, which I read as an undergraduate. In a chapter of the book entitled “A.T. Ariyaratne and the Sarvodaya Shramadana Movement,” George D. Bond rightly singles out Dr. Ariyaratne and Sarvodaya’s work as mold-breaking. He writes:

    Sarvodaya…went farther than other groups in the [nineteeth and twentieth century Buddhist revival in Sri Lanka] in arguing that Buddhist liberation involves not only individuals but also society. The Dhamma entails dual liberation; there is a necessary and dependent relation between the freedom of the individual and the freedom of society. Neither the classical Theravāda monastic interpreters nor the other reformers stressed as clearly as Sarvodaya the implications of the Dhamma for social change. Sarvodaya affirmed the world by arguing that the path to individual liberation ran through social liberation. [1]

Dr. Ariyaratne has been on my radar ever since I read Bond’s piece nearly ten years ago. I was absolutely thrilled to meet him and hear him in person today.

Dr. Ariyaratne showed three short videos about the work of Sarvodaya and spoke on the subject of “Peace Through Consciousness Transformation.” I was struck by much of what he said–both on this subject and on others–and will offer reflections on the lecture in my upcoming podcast. Stay tuned for that.

I leave you with the photo below, which was taken by my good friend Julia Stenzel (who also took the picture of Dr. Ariyaratne and I that appears above).

WORKS CITED:

  1. George D. Bond, “A.T. Ariyaratne and the Sarvodaya Shramadana Movement” in Engaged Buddhism: Buddhist Liberation Movements in Asia, ed. Christopher S. Queen and Sallie B. King, 122 (Albany, NY: State University of New York Press, 1996).