Opinion
On first reading Sir Edwin Arnold’s THE LIGHT OF ASIA – II
by Rohana R. Wasala
Edwin Arnold’s purpose in composing the epic The Light of Asia, then, was to give readers an unbiased idea about the exalted personality of prince Siddhartha and the general substance of his teaching. But he was not addressing this task in a religious cultural vacuum. He had to take care not to step too hard on the religious toes of his contemporary Christian compatriots. Undaunted by that challenge, Arnold opens his monumental epic with the line ‘The Scripture of the Saviour of the World’, which was startling in its being used to mean the Buddha and his doctrine. It must have sounded very distasteful to the Christian readers of the West, because it was not about Christ, but about the little known Indian sage the Buddha.
But then, it was a time of profound intellectual upheaval. The Age of Reason or the Enlightenment in Europe of well over one and a half centuries duration had preceded Charles Darwin’s revolutionary theory of biological evolution, that came to be known to the world through the publication of his epoch-making book ‘On the Origin of Species by Means of Natural Selection’ (1859). By that time the Buddha was not totally unknown in the West. Ideas of ancient Eastern philosophers like Confucius of China and the Buddha of Bharat (India) as well as thoughts of their Western counterparts like Plato had influenced European thinkers of the time such as David Hume, Emmanuel Kant, and John Locke who figured in the enlightenment movement in Europe that came to be called the Age of Reason (1685-1815). The growing scientific ethos among the people undermined traditional religion and the fast spreading general scepticism regarding long held beliefs dealt a severe blow on theistic religion. Edwin Arnoldl’s senior contemporary Matthew Arnold (1822-1888), in his dramatic monologue ‘Dover Beach’ (1867), could only hear the receding ‘Sea of Faith,’
Its melancholy, long, withdrawing roar Retreating to the breath Of the night-wind, down to the vast edges drear And the naked shingles of the world.
The bleak barren desolate scene (with the ‘naked shingles of the world’: picture the wet pebbles on the indifferent beach constantly washed by the weeping waves) is a very depressing image of the uncertainty, the despair and the sadness that descended on a world that was losing the emotionally stabilising power of traditional religious faith. But it was also a time of bold inquiry and burgeoning hope. Edwin Arnold must have been emboldened by the existing zeitgeist of his time to shock his potential readers thus, only to offer them another more rational source of refuge to explore.
In terms of structure, The Light of Asia consists of eight cantos: Book the First, Book the Second, and so on up to Book the Eighth. The long epic poem employs the blank verse form, that is, lines of poetry without rhyme, that use a definite metre (a recurring pattern of rhythm) nevertheless. From the beginning to the end, the narrative is delivered in iambic pentameter lines (i.e., each line is made up of five metrical feet, each foot here being an iamb, that is, a foot consisting of a short syllable followed by a long syllable. Take any line from the poem, you can scan it into five iambic feet. But of course, occasionally, there are functional variations of the metre (as explained below). The opening line of Book the First (hence, of the whole poem) is ‘The Scripture of the Saviour of the World’, which can be scanned thus: The Scrip/ture of/the Sa/viour of/the World; the resulting stress pattern highlights the important words: Scripture, Saviour, World. The blank verse form more closely imitates the rhythm of natural speech than rhymed verse does, and, additionally, it makes for easy narrative continuity.
In Book the First, we are given the usual fictionalised narrative of how the Buddha-to-be descended from heaven to be born in the world of humans. Arnold recounts such details as Maya’s dream, its interpretation, and before all that, the ‘five sure signs of birth’ (which, though not specified in the poem, are equivalent to what we are familiar with as the Pas Maha Belum/the Great Fivefold Observation {kaalaya, deepaya, deshaya, kulaya, maata/time, land, state, caste, mother}) that preceded the Bodhisattva’s descent to the earth from ‘that sky’ (or the Tusita heaven according to Theravada Buddhist literature).
(Queen Maya)
Dreamed a strange dream; dreamed that a star from heaven –
Splendid, six-rayed, in colour rosy-pearl,
Whereof the token was an Elephant
Six-tusked, and white as milk of Kanadhuk –
Shot through the void; and shining into her,
Entered her womb upon the right…….
Thus was Siddhartha (the Bodhisattva/Buddha-to-be) conceived in his earthly mother’s womb. The birth takes place under a Palsa in the Palace-grounds in Kapilavastu (instead of under the shade between two Shala/Sal or cannonball trees on the way to Maya’s maternal home in Rajagriha/Rajgir, according to the story we know):
The conscious tree bent down its bows to make
A bower about Queen Maya’s Majesty;
And Earth put forth a thousand sudden flowers
To spread a couch……………
The narration of these miraculous occurrences which were claimed to have accompanied the birth of Siddhartha (‘All-Prospering’) did not spoil my enjoyment of the story, which was already known to me with similarly fantastic details, despite my then growing scepticism towards religion. People of different faiths usually adopt a healthy ‘suspension of disbelief’ when confronted with such fanciful accounts of events connected with the lives of religious figures that they adore, mostly because they are rational enough to read them as literature (a fact that Arnold himself was aware of and wanted his readers to understand as well).
The Queen mother dies seven days after the prince’s birth because she was ‘grown too sacred for more woe – And life is woe…………’
When old enough to learn all that a prince should learn, Siddhartha is entrusted to the wisest teacher available: Vishvamitra. But struck by the extraordinary precocity of his ‘softly-mannered, modest, deferent, tender-hearted…..’ royal charge, the old teacher
Prostrated before the boy; “For thou”, he cried,
Art Teacher of thy teachers – thou, not I,
“Art Guru. Oh I worship thee, sweet Prince!
The young prince also excelled in physical feats that formed a part of his training. He was a bold horseman and a skillful chariot driver. But he was so kindhearted that
Yet in mid-play the boy would oft-times pause,
Letting the deer pass free; would oft-times yield
His half-won race because his labouring steeds
Fetched painful breath; ……………………
One day while in play, Siddhartha’s cousin Devadatta shot a swan with an arrow and the injured bird fell to the ground. Siddhartha picked it up, removed the dart, and applied a poultice of soothing herbs on the wound. Though Devadatta wanted to have the bird that he had shot down, Siddhartha refused to give it back. An unknown priest suddenly appeared to mediate between the two cousins, and handed the bird to Siddhartha, saying that ‘the cherisher of life deserved the living bird, and not its slayer’. When the father king looked for the mysterious priest to reward him, he was gone:
And someone saw a hooded snake glide forth, –
The gods come oft-times thus! So our Lord Buddh
Began his works of mercy………………
It is in Book the Second that Arnold is seen giving full play to whatever he imbibed from his literary-aesthetic interaction with the Gita Govinda of Jayadeva, which Arnold seems to have used as a model for his own poetic masterpiece. The absolute devotion to the Buddha that Arnold expresses as an imaginary Buddhist votary in the capitalised last lines of the poem quoted in the epigraph to this essay indicates that his discovery of Buddhism was indeed a life changing experience.
While continuing my own narrative here, I consider this point an appropriate place to say something again about the form of the epic poem we are having a glance at. Now, too rigid an adherence to a set metrical foot is boringly mechanical at times (See the second paragraph above). Poets avoid this by varying it according to the context (as Shakespeare did in his plays). For example, from Book the Second we have
‘But they/ who watched/ the Prince/ at prize/-giving
Saw and/ heard all/ and told/ the care/ful King’
Here, the first line is a perfect iambic pentameter line. In the second line, however, the first two feet are trochees, not iambs; in a trochee, in contrast to an iamb, the stress or accent falls on the first syllable: Saw and/heard all/…. The context in the poem is where some courtiers, who have been attending on prince Siddhartha during a festival of royal beauties arranged by his father the ‘careful’ (full of care, i.e., worried, anxious) king Suddhodana on the advice of his wisemen to distract his eighteen year old young son from a premature otherworldliness that they had observed in his demeanour, are reporting to the king a sudden brightening of the prince’s mood on seeing the beautiful princess Yashodhara. What the watchful guards saw and heard passing between the two (Siddhartha and Yashodhara) gladdened them: they had instantly fallen in love with each other.
Whereas every one of the other maidens who came to receive gifts from the prince that day, even the fairest one among them,
….stood like a sacred antelope to touch
The gracious hand, then fled to join her mates
Trembling at favour, so divine he seemed,
So high and saint-like and above her world,
Yashodhara alone ‘Of heavenly mould’
Gazed full – folding her palms across her breasts –
On the boy’s gaze, her stately neck unbent.
“Is there a gift for me?” she asked, and smiled.
“The gifts are gone”, the Prince replied “yes take
This for amends, dear sister, of whose grace
Our happy city boasts”, therewith he loosed
The emerald necklet from his throat, and clasped
Its green beads round her dark and silk-soft waist;
And their eyes mixed, and from the look sprang love.
Those who stood nearest (the guards, no doubt) saw ‘the princely boy – Start, as the radiant girl approached….’ and they heard the sweet exchanges between the two instant lovers.The brief break in the metre in the verse line that records this highlights their (the guards’) joy and excitement at being finally able to bear the long awaited news of their happy finding to the fond father, the king they serve with so much love and loyalty.
This is a climactic moment of the whole scene (where the prince, set to choose his bride/his future queen consort, has just been rescued from his accustomed otherworldly melancholia). The king’s stratagem seems to be working. He wants his son to be a Chakravartin (lit. Turner of the Disc, a universal monarch) who will rule the world, not a holy man of wondrous wisdom. (As described in Book the First, these were the two alternative destinies that the dream-readers predicted for the baby conceived that night by Queen Maya. Ultimately, though,as we know, the king’s ambition for his son was not fulfilled. Siddhartha became Buddha instead of a Chackravartin.)
Long after Siddhartha attained Buddhahood, he is asked “why thus his heart – Took fire at first glance of the Sakya girl”, and he recalls an earlier life long gone by as
A hunter’s son, playing with forest girls
By Yamun’s springs, where Nandadevi stands,
Sate umpire while they raced beneath the firs
……………………………………………..
One with fir-apples; but who ran the last
Came first for him, and unto her the boy
Gave a tame fawn and his heart’s love beside.
This is just like a scene from Jayadeva’s Gita Govinda. Krishna/Govinda plays with Radha in a forest glade on the banks of the very same Yamuna. It is one of the swooning love scenes between the resplendent Blue God Krishna (in the form of Govinda) and the radiantly fair human cowherdess Radha during their heavenly trysts that Jayadeva enacts for us in his poem. While giving his account of the Siddhartha Yashodhara romance, Arnold is trying to infuse his poem with a touch of the divine magic of Jayadeva’s poetry.
Father Suddhodana creates for his son ‘….. a pleasant prison-house – Where love was gaoler and delights its bars’. The poet beautifully paints how the prince gradually grows tired of those delights. Around the end of Book the Fourth, Siddhartha has decided to renounce everything and embark on his lonely search for the Truth as a mendicant recluse. Channa, his charioteer, asks him:
Wilt thou ride hence and let the rich world slip
Out of thy grasp, to hold a beggar’s bowl?
Wilt thou go forth into the friendless waste
That has this Paradise of pleasures here?
The Prince made answer, “Unto this I came,
And not for thrones: the kingdom that I crave
Is more than many realms – and all things pass
To change and death………
The rest of the poem actualizes the ascetic Gautama’s painful exploration and his blissful ultimate discovery. Book the Seventh and Book the Eighth outline the doctrines of the Buddha as Edwin Arnold conceived of them in his essentially limited understanding of the Dhamma, which consisted of ‘the fruits of considerable study’ though. (Concluded)
by Dr B.J.C.Perera
MBBS(Cey), DCH(Cey), DCH(Eng), MD(Paed), MRCP(UK), FRCP(Edin),
FRCP(Lon), FRCPCH(UK), FSLCPaed, FCCP, Hony FRCPCH(UK), Hony. FCGP(SL)
Specialist Consultant Paediatrician and Honorary Senior Fellow,
Postgraduate Institute of Medicine, University of Colombo, Sri Lanka.
Joint Editor, Sri Lanka Journal of Child Health
In an age of unprecedented global development, technological advancements, universal connectivity, and improvements in living standards in many areas of the world, it is a very dark irony that child food poverty remains a pressing issue. UNICEF defines child food poverty as children’s inability to access and consume a nutritious and diverse diet in early childhood. Despite the planet Earth’s undisputed capacity to produce enough food to nourish everyone, millions of children still go hungry each day. We desperately need to explore the multifaceted deleterious effects of child food poverty, on physical health, cognitive development, emotional well-being, and societal impacts and then try to formulate a road map to alleviate its deleterious effects.
Every day, right across the world, millions of parents and families are struggling to provide nutritious and diverse foods that young children desperately need to reach their full potential. Growing inequities, conflict, and climate crises, combined with rising food prices, the overabundance of unhealthy foods, harmful food marketing strategies and poor child-feeding practices, are condemning millions of children to child food poverty.
In a communique dated 06th June 2024, UNICEF reports that globally, 1 in 4 children; approximately 181 million under the age of five, live in severe child food poverty, defined as consuming at most, two of eight food groups in early childhood. These children are up to 50 per cent more likely to suffer from life-threatening malnutrition. Child Food Poverty: Nutrition Deprivation in Early Childhood – the third issue of UNICEF’s flagship Child Nutrition Report – highlights that millions of young children are unable to access and consume the nutritious and diverse diets that are essential for their growth and development in early childhood and beyond.
It is highlighted in the report that four out of five children experiencing severe child food poverty are fed only breastmilk or just some other milk and/or a starchy staple, such as maize, rice or wheat. Less than 10 per cent of these children are fed fruits and vegetables and less than 5 per cent are fed nutrient-dense foods such as eggs, fish, poultry, or meat. These are horrendous statistics that should pull at the heartstrings of the discerning populace of this world.
The report also identifies the drivers of child food poverty. Strikingly, though 46 per cent of all cases of severe child food poverty are among poor households where income poverty is likely to be a major driver, 54 per cent live in relatively wealthier households, among whom poor food environments and feeding practices are the main drivers of food poverty in early childhood.
One of the most immediate and visible effects of child food poverty is its detrimental impact on physical health. Malnutrition, which can result from both insufficient calorie intake and lack of essential nutrients, is a prevalent consequence. Chronic undernourishment during formative years leads to stunted growth, weakened immune systems, and increased susceptibility to infections and diseases. Children who do not receive adequate nutrition are more likely to suffer from conditions such as anaemia, rickets, and developmental delays.
Moreover, the lack of proper nutrition can have long-term health consequences. Malnourished children are at a higher risk of developing chronic illnesses such as heart disease, diabetes, and obesity later in life. The paradox of child food poverty is that it can lead to both undernutrition and overnutrition, with children in food-insecure households often consuming calorie-dense but nutrient-poor foods due to economic constraints. This dietary pattern increases the risk of obesity, creating a vicious cycle of poor health outcomes.
The impacts of child food poverty extend beyond physical health, severely affecting cognitive development and educational attainment. Adequate nutrition is crucial for brain development, particularly in the early years of life. Malnutrition can impair cognitive functions such as attention, memory, and problem-solving skills. Studies have consistently shown that malnourished children perform worse academically compared to their well-nourished peers. Inadequate nutrition during early childhood can lead to reduced school readiness and lower IQ scores. These children often struggle to concentrate in school, miss more days due to illness, and have lower overall academic performance. This educational disadvantage perpetuates the cycle of poverty, as lower educational attainment reduces future employment opportunities and earning potential.
The emotional and psychological effects of child food poverty are profound and are often overlooked. Food insecurity creates a constant state of stress and anxiety for both children and their families. The uncertainty of not knowing when or where the next meal will come from can lead to feelings of helplessness and despair. Children in food-insecure households are more likely to experience behavioural problems, including hyperactivity, aggression, and withdrawal. The stigma associated with poverty and hunger can further exacerbate these emotional challenges. Children who experience food poverty may feel shame and embarrassment, leading to social isolation and reduced self-esteem. This psychological toll can have lasting effects, contributing to mental health issues such as depression and anxiety in adolescence and adulthood.
Child food poverty also perpetuates cycles of poverty and inequality. Children who grow up in food-insecure households are more likely to remain in poverty as adults, continuing the intergenerational transmission of disadvantage. This cycle of poverty exacerbates social disparities, contributing to increased crime rates, reduced social cohesion, and greater reliance on social welfare programmes. The repercussions of child food poverty ripple through society, creating economic and social challenges that affect everyone. The healthcare costs associated with treating malnutrition-related illnesses and chronic diseases are substantial. Additionally, the educational deficits linked to child food poverty result in a less skilled workforce, which hampers economic growth and productivity.
Addressing child food poverty requires a multi-faceted approach that tackles both immediate needs and underlying causes. Policy interventions are crucial in ensuring that all children have access to adequate nutrition. This can include expanding social safety nets, such as food assistance programmes and school meal initiatives, as well as targeted manoeuvres to reach more vulnerable families. Ensuring that these programmes are adequately funded and effectively implemented is essential for their success.
In addition to direct food assistance, broader economic and social policies are needed to address the root causes of poverty. This includes efforts to increase household incomes through living wage policies, job training programs, and economic development initiatives. Supporting families with affordable childcare, healthcare, and housing can also alleviate some of the financial pressures that contribute to food insecurity.
Community-based initiatives play a vital role in combating child food poverty. Local food banks, community gardens, and nutrition education programmes can help provide immediate relief and promote long-term food security. Collaborative efforts between government, non-profits, and the private sector are necessary to create sustainable solutions.
Child food poverty is a profound and inescapable issue with far-reaching consequences. Its deleterious effects on physical health, cognitive development, emotional well-being, and societal stability underscore the urgent need for comprehensive action. As we strive for a more equitable and just world, addressing child food poverty must be a priority. By ensuring that all children have access to adequate nutrition, we can lay the foundation for a healthier, more prosperous future for individuals and society as a whole. The fight against child food poverty is not just a moral imperative but an investment in our collective future. Healthy, well-nourished children are more likely to grow into productive, contributing members of society. The benefits of addressing this issue extend beyond individual well-being, enhancing economic stability and social harmony. It is incumbent upon us all to recognize and act upon the understanding that every child deserves the right to adequate nutrition and the opportunity to thrive.
Despite all of these existent challenges, it is very definitely possible to end child food poverty. The world needs targeted interventions to transform food, health, and social protection systems, and also take steps to strengthen data systems to track progress in reducing child food poverty. All these manoeuvres must comprise a concerted effort towards making nutritious and diverse diets accessible and affordable to all. We need to call for child food poverty reduction to be recognized as a metric of success towards achieving global and national nutrition and development goals.
Material from UNICEF reports and AI assistance are acknowledged.
By Dr Upul Wijayawardhana
The colossal failure of not a single opinion poll predicting accurately the result of the Indian parliamentary election, the greatest exercise in democracy in the world, raises the question whether the importance of opinion polls is vastly exaggerated. During elections two types of opinion polls are conducted; one based on intentions to vote, published during or before the campaign, often being not very accurate as these are subject to many variables but exit polls, done after the voting where a sample tally of how the voters actually voted, are mostly accurate. However, of the 15 exit polls published soon after all the votes were cast in the massive Indian election, 13 vastly overpredicted the number of seats Modi’s BJP led coalition NDA would obtain, some giving a figure as high as 400, the number Modi claimed he is aiming for. The other two polls grossly underestimated predicting a hung parliament. The actual result is that NDA passed the threshold of 272 comfortably, there being no landslide. BJP by itself was not able to cross the threshold, a significant setback for an overconfident Mody! Whether this would result in less excesses on the part of Modi, like Muslim-bashing, remains to be seen. Anyway, the statement issued by BJP that they would be investigating the reasons for failure rather than blaming the process speaks very highly of the maturity of the democratic process in India.
I was intrigued by this failure of opinion polls as this differs dramatically from opinion polls in the UK. I never failed to watch ‘Election night specials’ on BBC; as the Big Ben strikes ‘ten’ (In the UK polls close at 10pm} the anchor comes out with “Exit polls predict that …” and the actual outcome is often almost as predicted. However, many a time opinion polls conducted during the campaign have got the predictions wrong. There are many explanations for this.
An opinion poll is defined as a research survey of public opinion from a particular sample, the origin of which can be traced back to the 1824 US presidential election, when two local newspapers in North Carolina and Delaware predicted the victory of Andrew Jackson but the sample was local. First national survey was done in 1916 by the magazine, Literary Digest, partly for circulation-raising, by mailing millions of postcards and counting the returns. Of course, this was not very scientific though it accurately predicted the election of Woodrow Wilson.
Since then, opinion polls have grown in extent and complexity with scientific methodology improving the outcome of predictions not only in elections but also in market research. As a result, some of these organisations have become big businesses. For instance, YouGov, an internet-based organisation co-founded by the Iraqi-born British politician Nadim Zahawi, based in London had a revenue of 258 million GBP in 2023.
In Sri Lanka, opinion polls seem to be conducted by only one organisation which, by itself, is a disadvantage, as pooled data from surveys conducted by many are more likely to reflect the true situation. Irrespective of the degree of accuracy, politicians seem to be dependent on the available data which lend explanations to the behaviour of some.
The Institute for Health Policy’s (IHP) Sri Lanka Opinion Tracker Survey has been tracking the voting intentions for the likely candidates for the Presidential election. At one stage the NPP/JVP leader AKD was getting a figure over 50%. This together with some degree of international acceptance made the JVP behave as if they are already in power, leading to some incidents where their true colour was showing.
The comments made by a prominent member of the JVP who claimed that the JVP killed only the riff-raff, raised many questions, in addition to being a total insult to many innocents killed by them including my uncle. Do they have the authority to do so? Do extra-judicial killings continue to be JVP policy? Do they consider anyone who disagrees with them riff-raff? Will they kill them simply because they do not comply like one of my admired teachers, Dr Gladys Jayawardena who was considered riff-raff because she, as the Chairman of the State Pharmaceutical Corporation, arranged to buy drugs cheaper from India? Is it not the height of hypocrisy that AKD is now boasting of his ties to India?
Another big-wig comes with the grand idea of devolving law and order to village level. As stated very strongly, in the editorial “Pledges and reality” (The Island, 20 May) is this what they intend to do: Have JVP kangaroo-courts!
Perhaps, as a result of these incidents AKD’s ratings has dropped to 39%, according to the IHP survey done in April, and Sajith Premadasa’s ratings have increased gradually to match that. Whilst they are level pegging Ranil is far behind at 13%. Is this the reason why Ranil is getting his acolytes to propagate the idea that the best for the country is to extend his tenure by a referendum? He forced the postponement of Local Governments elections by refusing to release funds but he cannot do so for the presidential election for constitutional reasons. He is now looking for loopholes. Has he considered the distinct possibility that the referendum to extend the life of the presidency and the parliament if lost, would double the expenditure?
Unfortunately, this has been an exercise in futility and it would not be surprising if the next survey shows Ranil’s chances dropping even further! Perhaps, the best option available to Ranil is to retire gracefully, taking credit for steadying the economy and saving the country from an anarchic invasion of the parliament, rather than to leave politics in disgrace by coming third in the presidential election. Unless, of course, he is convinced that opinion polls do not matter and what matters is the ballots in the box!
By Prof. Kirthi Tennakone
ktenna@yahoo.co.uk
Thoughtfulness is the quality of being conscious of issues that arise and considering action while seeking explanations. It facilitates finding solutions to problems and judging experiences.
Almost all human accomplishments are consequences of thoughtfulness.
Can you perform day-to-day work efficiently and effectively without being thoughtful? Obviously, no. Are there any major advancements attained without thought and contemplation? Not a single example!
Science and technology, art, music and literary compositions and religion stand conspicuously as products of thought.
Thought could have sinister motives and the only way to eliminate them is through thought itself. Thought could distinguish right from wrong.
Empathy, love, amusement, and expression of sorrow are reflections of thought.
Thought relieves worries by understanding or taking decisive action.
Despite the universal virtue of thoughtfulness, some advocate an idea termed mindfulness, claiming the benefits of nurturing this quality to shape mental wellbeing. The concept is defined as focusing attention to the present moment without judgment. A way of forgetting the worries and calming the mind – a form of meditation. A definition coined in the West to decouple the concept from religion. The attitude could have a temporary advantage as a method of softening negative feelings such as sorrow and anger. However, no man or woman can afford to be non-judgmental all the time. It is incompatible with indispensable thoughtfulness! What is the advantage of diverting attention to one thing without discernment during a few tens of minute’s meditation? The instructors of mindfulness meditation tell you to focus attention on trivial things. Whereas in thoughtfulness, you concentrate the mind on challenging issues. Sometimes arriving at groundbreaking scientific discoveries, solution of mathematical problems or the creation of masterpieces in engineering, art, or literature.
The concept of meditation and mindfulness originated in ancient India around 1000 BCE. Vedic ascetics believed the practice would lead to supernatural powers enabling disclosure of the truth. Failing to meet the said aspiration, notwithstanding so many stories in scripture, is discernable. Otherwise, the world would have been awakened to advancement by ancient Indians before the Greeks. The latter culture emphasized thoughtfulness!
In India, Buddha was the first to deviate from the Vedic philosophy. His teachers, Alara Kalama and Uddaka Ramaputra, were adherents of meditation. Unconvinced of their approach, Buddha concluded a thoughtful analysis of the actualities of life should be the path to realisation. However, in an environment dominated by Vedic tradition, meditation residually persisted when Buddha’s teachings transformed into a religion.
In the early 1970s, a few in the West picked up meditation and mindfulness. We Easterners, who criticize Western ideas all the time, got exalted after seeing something Eastern accepted in the Western circles. Thereafter, Easterners took up the subject more seriously, in the spirit of its definition in the West.
Today, mindfulness has become a marketable commodity – a thriving business spreading worldwide, fueled largely by advertising. There are practice centres, lessons onsite and online, and apps for purchase. Articles written by gurus of the field appear on the web.
What attracts people to mindfulness programmes? Many assume them being stressed and depressed needs to improve their mental capacity. In most instances, these are minor complaints and for understandable reasons, they do not seek mainstream medical interventions but go for exaggeratedly advertised alternatives. Mainstream medical treatments are based on rigorous science and spell out both the pros and cons of the procedure, avoiding overstatement. Whereas the alternative sector makes unsubstantiated claims about the efficacy and effectiveness of the treatment.
Advocates of mindfulness claim the benefits of their prescriptions have been proven scientifically. There are reports (mostly in open-access journals which charge a fee for publication) indicating that authors have found positive aspects of mindfulness or identified reasons correlating the efficacy of such activities. However, they rarely meet standards normally required for unequivocal acceptance. The gold standard of scientific scrutiny is the statistically significant reproducibility of claims.
If a mindfulness guru claims his prescription of meditation cures hypertension, he must record the blood pressure of participants before and after completion of the activity and show the blood pressure of a large percentage has stably dropped and repeat the experiment with different clients. He must also conduct sessions where he adopts another prescription (a placebo) under the same conditions and compares the results. This is not enough, he must request someone else to conduct sessions following his prescription, to rule out the influence of the personality of the instructor.
The laity unaware of the above rigid requirements, accede to purported claims of mindfulness proponents.
A few years ago, an article published and widely cited stated that the practice of mindfulness increases the gray matter density of the brain. A more recent study found there is no such correlation. Popular expositions on the subject do not refer to the latter report. Most mindfulness research published seems to have been conducted intending to prove the benefits of the practice. The hard science demands doing the opposite as well-experiments carried out intending to disprove the claims. You need to be skeptical until things are firmly established.
Despite many efforts diverted to disprove Einstein’s General Theory of Relativity, no contradictions have been found in vain to date, strengthening the validity of the theory. Regarding mindfulness, as it stands, benefits can neither be proved nor disproved, to the gold standard of scientific scrutiny.
Some schools in foreign lands have accommodated mindfulness training programs hoping to develop the mental facility of students and Sri Lanka plans to follow. However, studies also reveal these exercises are ineffective or do more harm than good. Have we investigated this issue before imitation?
Should we force our children to focus attention on one single goal without judgment, even for a moment?
Why not allow young minds to roam wild in their deepest imagination and build castles in the air and encourage them to turn these fantasies into realities by nurturing their thoughtfulness?
Be more thoughtful than mindful?
US sports envoys to Lanka to champion youth development
Rahuman questions sudden cancellation of leave of CEB employees
