By Surya Vishwa 

The word spirit is derived from the Greek (and Latin) word to mean breath/spirit (prana). A human is a machine powered by breath. Once the breath departs from the body the machine stops. The final breath (spirit/energy/power) departs. Some spiritual/religious traditions such as Buddhism and Hinduism believe that the energy that so departs will find its way to another life source – human or animal or be trapped or released to different realms as per the actions that have either purified or contaminated the last completed life cycle. 

This can be seen as a logical explanation based on the premise that every action has a consequential reaction. From a rational dimension it seems equally logical to conclude that the powerful human energy that scientists have discovered to be equal to electricity and could be conserved as such, could surpass the limits and confines of the body. From both spiritual and modern science lenses the concept of afterlife has been discussed and diverse case studies from around the world used to prove the phenomena of human energy’s ‘karmic’ transference but it still remains at a rather sketchy level due to modernity’s assault on our senses. 

Yet, this article would argue that the teachings of the Buddha was based primarily on the concept of re-birth where he posited that the human goal should be to free oneself from all attachments and ties to liberate oneself from the cycle of sorrow that the reality of life is all about. Nirvana is this liberation.

There should be more focus in this modern world today on what greed, corruption, anger and discrimination could lead to – the stages of non liberation – and the non researchable yet fully believable phenomena of the unseen world where beings that was once human languishes orphaned of the body but unable to leave the ties that bound him. The Buddha described these different levels of the unseen world of suffering that a human would have to deal with – from the loot of life wrongly lived. 

Comparatively it could be argued that in the Christian and Muslim faiths where reincarnation does not figure as a belief, that the entire set of dogmas and rules is to ensure that the ‘soul’ – the core spiritual essence of the person goes ‘to the realm of God – heaven – permanently detached from the world for evermore. But as Jesus Christ stated it is ‘easier for a camel to go through the eye of a needle, than for a rich man to enter into the kingdom of God.” (Matt. 19:24.) The term rich man is better defined as a man attached to his riches as it is certainly possible to be wealthy and use that wealth for immense good which is what we should be doing in this world we have come to temporarily.

The ‘kingdom of God’ or heaven or moksha that has different interpretations in Christianity, Islam and Hinduism could be simply seen as the mental state of total freedom and absence from all attachment. It is this mental state achieved in a cycle of life that could determine the fate of the person in the hereafter.

Because we have replaced our knowledge systems only with the tangible and material world of profit and comfort upon which today’s global education system and governance is shaped, there is little or no effort to research and understand the unknown worlds that those such as the Buddha spoke about. The ancient sages perfected their mind – and the Buddha reached the pinnacle of that perfection which he attributed to his long sansaric good Karma and although many Western spiritual scholars and spiritually oriented scientists had studied aspects such as reincarnation it has been wiped under the carpet by the thinking that such ideas fall more to the category of unscientific mumbo jumbo.

The knowledge realm that we think we know is minute and narrow. The knowledge realm that the Thathagatha tackled were wide and encompassed what meets the human eye and what does not. The description of the different lokas or worlds and the reality therein – the reality for example of the pretha loka – where beings attached grossly to the world and who had lived thinking this brief life is eternal, end up eternally suffering, has been described extensively in Buddhist literature. 

This writer has interviewed practitioners who know such realities and also have experienced phenomena where different spaces can be ‘occupied’ although they may appear empty. Swiss psychoanalyst Carl Jung had devoted an entire chapter in his biography on it and explains phenomena that he himself witnessed and knew as accurate from a different realm of his mind. 

It is a pity that psychoanalysis did not integrate deeper and closer into the unseen world and tie up with spiritual dimensions as much as its actual potential. 

Contemplating upon death or life after death is generally seen as morbid in Western culture but in Buddhistic cultures such as Tibet and Bhutan it is decreed to be a daily practice to focus on the fleeting and uncertain nature of life and the certain destiny of death. 

If upon birth emphasis and priority is given to teach children not rhetoric exam oriented learning as we do now but on the fleeting nature of life and the values that we should live by it is possible that the adults that we create and who shape our political, business and other areas of function in life would be a total different human breed. If we change humans we change the world. 

The integration of life and death must be taught to each child as they do in Bhutan where from a toddler age a child is taught to reflect five times a day on death. Thus it is not a wonder that Bhutan is a country that values forests over concrete, happiness over money making, where the king forced democracy on the people. It is a country where corruption is absent in governance and which presented to the world the Gross National Happiness index changing forever the blind assumption that money and profit is an indication of happiness. 

Sri Lanka is a Buddhist country and its majority are Sinhalese people and hence the term ‘Sinhala Buddhist’ nation has been used often, especially in post colonial times, to describe it. In ancient pre colonial times it was called Sinhale or Siwhela and the Mahasammathawadaya based on people wellbeing was its governance framework.

Historians and heritage specialists such as Prof. Nimal de Silva and Rohitha Dassanayake have explained in their work that the ancient Sinhalese people were most peace loving and its monarchs dedicated to the welfare of the country and people than themselves. It is pointed out in many documentations that the ethnic riots that this nation knew surfaced after colonisation. 

Sri Lanka today is among the countries which are destabilised around the world and its challenge is more spiritual than economical. Sri Lanka like Bhutan has to re-align its spiritual Buddhist roots and implement it fully in primary segments such as education, politics and business. The term Sinhala-Buddhist is often used in contexts that seem to spell out or insinuate the domination of one set of people of another but to do so will be an insult to the ancient Sinhala monarchs of Sri Lanka and to the Buddhist philosophy they espoused. The Elara-Dutugamunu war is often misconstrued as a Sinhala-Tamil war but in fact historians explain clearly that although Elara was a just king ruling from Anuradhapura he was an invader and not a Sri Lankan Tamil.

Education of a truly Buddhist country should not be about rote exam taking. Education should teach children to become one with the universe and nature and see the need to unite rather than separate. The Buddha taught this unity. A mind which sees the wisdom of unity in all things will never take passionate decisions triggered by unrest or anger. A mind which sees unity in all things will understand the eternal Dhamma that such decisions lead to more unrest. This is probably why it is explained in the Dhammapada that if a human cuts another human to pieces and in that process if that human losing his life hates the perpetrator, that such a person cannot be the follower of the Dhamma. 

One cannot understand the wisdom of this type of Dhamma teaching if we merely take it at surface level. We need silence and reflection to understand it. We cannot learn Dhamma the way we do other school subjects. Useless is the memorisation of verses and ability to intellectually theorise if we do not dedicate quality reflection to see that if there was ever a teacher of human rights and peace that it was the Buddha. The current education system does nothing to encourage introspection and reflection as the ancient Gurukula system of Buddhist and Indian societies did. What our societies had was a value prioritised education system that created wisdom and loving kindness along with technical skill. It is these Dharmic values that we need infused in politicians, media personnel, lawyers/judges, business persons and student leaders. 

We need a politician to serve instead of ruling, the media to unite without separating, the lawyer and the judge to be understanding and the business person to enhance the human and environmental condition without depleting it. 

In this time of crisis in Sri Lanka let us understand the spiritual significance of Buddhism and work to amplify its relevance in every aspect of society and where we use it to solve our problems. Much of life’s problems could be solved when we solve the mind. 

Priyadarshana Ariyarathna, researcher on the link between the ancient science of astrology and the Dhamma points out as follows: “The blind faith or fear of astrology will end when people realise that the Dhamma if lived as preached by the Buddha will erase what we call ‘apala’ or ‘sapala’ and that both are origins in the mind that influence how we act. In astrology what transpires is the playing out of the actions of the past and the present. The actions of the present life we can control but those of the past we cannot and these are unseen influencers of our life.”

He continues: “All the occurrences of the world can be explained through the science of astrology and linked through the Dharmic lens. Why great disasters occur in the world is for people to learn to exercise Dharmic qualities such as empathy, charity and kindness. We are part of the universe and each human action has a universe based reaction as well. These thoughts cannot be understood without deep contemplation. Each human being learns from the Karmic lesson that life teaches that indeed they have to pay the debt they accrue in their life through their actions. This is the universal law and there is no escaping it.”

Tibetan Book of the Dead