“The Top Ten Buddhist News Stories of 2009″ – Check Out My Latest Piece for elephant journal
My latest piece for elephant journal, “The Top Ten Buddhist News Stories of 2009″, is up. I hope you’ll take a look. Here’s my write-up on one of them:
5. SINHALESE BUDDHISM AND THE END OF SRI LANKA’S CIVIL WAR
This past summer saw the end of Sri Lanka’s more-than-a-quarter-century civil war. From 1983 until their defeat this past May, the Liberation Tigers of Tamil Eelam, a separatist militia composed of Hindu-Tamil minorities, fought the Sri Lankan government (representing the Sinhalese Buddhist majority) for the creation of an independent state. Though investigations into possible war crimes and controversy over the handling of hundreds of thousands of Tamil refugees have dominated the headlines since, there have also been noteworthy developments with regards to Sinhalese Buddhism: (1) For the first time in twenty-six years, the annual Kathina Perahera festival of the Naga Vihara took place on Sri Lanka’s Jaffna peninsula—the “first major event” held in Jaffna since the start of the war. (2) President Mahinda Rajapakse publicly thanked the country’s monks for “the guidance and blessings he received from the Mahasanga during the liberation of the country from terrorism.” (3) President Rajapakse and former army general Sarath Fonseka opened their presidential campaigns at Buddhist shrines as the Venerable Battaramulle Seelaratana Thera made history with his own surely divisive bid for the country’s highest office—the South Asian nation’s first from a Buddhist monk. (The move hearkens back to the controversial elections of quite a few monks to parliament in 2004.)
