Features
A singular modern Lankan mentor – Part I
Gananath Obeysekere: In search of Buddhist conscience (Baudha Hurdasakshiya Soya)
by Laleen Jayamanne and Namika Raby
“People were nourished by stories.” (Kathandarawalinne minissu jeewathwune) Gananath
“Man does not live by bread alone” Matthew 4:4
Dimuthu Saman Wettasinghe’s film Gananath Obeyesekere: In Search of Buddhist Conscience opens with a bravura tracking shot moving past trees, water, a splash of saffron robes. These sunlit images are enfolded in a non-religious, rather melancholy male choral chant, but soon the singular voice of Professor Gananath Obeyesekere cuts through with a kind of Dionysian intensity. He tells us a story about Gauthama Buddha, as the camera encircles, at speed, what turns out to be the Kandy Lake. His tale is about a devastating war waged by the king of Kosla against the Sakya kingdom but of the Buddha’s unshakable belief that if folk get together and discuss matters in good faith (call it diplomacy), all wars could be averted. This carefully and deeply researched, imaginative, ‘Educational Film’ of 142 minutes, with its exhilaratingly dense overture and its subtle montage, is a loving tribute to an exemplary Lankan scholar/teacher and his life work (of some 70 years) as an internationally renowned Anthropologist.
In my understanding of Classical Greek Theatre and Indian Philosophy (both studied at the University Ceylon Peradeniya in the late 60’s), ‘Dionysian intensity’ and Buddhist thought don’t sit easily together, Dionysus being the god of Greek Drama and festivity and as such, of intoxication and ecstasy, while Buddhist ideas of Reason, logical debate and introspective awareness of mental processes (Vipassana, Insight), were original contributions to perennial Indian Philosophy. But the wonder is that Gananath as a thinker was able to yolk together vastly diverse fields of scholarship and practices from many traditions, languages, and impart them to students in a memorable manner. In this two-fold activity, his voice was a powerful pedagogical instrument (in a musical sense) and tool (as in crafting words and sentences by breathing life into them). Let me elaborate with an anecdote I heard recently from a friend who was one of Gananath’s students from the mid-1960s at Peradeniya. The Anthropologist Dr Namika Rabi, who now in her retirement lives in LA, was a freshman then. She told me the following when I asked her what it was like listening to him:
One afternoon my room-mate Romaine Rutnam said to me that there is this interesting talk on campus, under the Popular Science Series delivered by Dr. Gananath Obeyesekere, with an interesting title, “Pregnancy Cravings (Dola Duka) and Social Structure in a Sinhalese Village” that we should go and listen to. The talk appealed because it was grounded in real society. I wondered where this faculty member came from, and I found out that there was a Department of Sociology and Dr. Obeyesekere was its Chair. One had to apply to the programme and get accepted and it was a four-year programme. I applied and got in, forgetting my plan to leave the campus in three years.
Professor Obeyesekere taught me Social Theory; Anthropological Methods; Anthropology of Religion; and Social and Cultural Organisation. Professor Obeyesekere brought dynamism into the classroom with his style of teaching, integrating abstract theory with how it works in practice through kathandara and carried me away with it”.
Though I myself was not a student of Gananath’s I have been to some of his seminars and listened to his public lectures over the years, both in Lanka and elsewhere. In the early 90s we organised a seminar by Gananath, (on what he called his ‘Cook Book’!), in the Dept. of Anthropology at The University of Sydney. His, The Apotheosis of Captain Cook: European Myth Making in the Pacific, led to a major Anthropological debate with Marshall Sahllins, on Cannibalism and ‘Primitivism’ in Colonial-Anthropology in Hawaii where Cook was killed by the indigenous folk. I certainly agree with Namika on the unusual power of Gananath’s oral communication with students and fellow academics, and crucially, with the interested public. One always gets the feeling that he is thinking on his feet, with a strong awareness of the listener (as in theatre), and then he varies his colloquial tone with humour, a wise crack here, a touch of irony there. Listening to him becomes enjoyable. He manifestly enjoys communicating ideas, his self-enjoyment in explicating them in accessible ways is infectious. He had an intuitive grasp of the theatrical dimensions of lecturing, in a place within the academy after all called, a ‘Lecture Theatre’. These ‘dynamics’, as Namika puts it, are so rare in the genre of the university lecture where we drone on for an hour or two each week, reading from stale notes, tone deaf, burning brain cells of young minds instead of firing them. Tone deafness is an occupational hazard of lecturing.
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Here’s Namika elaborating on how Gananath guided her in her scholarly and professional life. It is evident from her account that visionary Mentors do not produce clones but rather draw out and nurture the talents of a student well before she knows she has some.
Namika Raby: A Student’s Perspective
“As a cultural anthropologist Gananath’s ability to communicate abstract thinking into the classroom through dramatic performance is an integration of scientific Reason and Dionysian intensity. Beyond his voice, in my time, he was a performer. I remember him explaining the role of the sanni demon, a lowly creature in Sinhalese Buddhism, mimicking the demon, Gananath hopped with a banana on his toe to portray the demon.
Gananath had many illustrious students over time. However, I was a unique case because of my ethnicity and gender and a lifetime of what I call my Gananath “interventions” beginning during my days in the Department of Anthropology, Peradeniya. Nagging me to apply to graduate school and persuading my parent with a home visit to send me to graduate school abroad are a couple of examples of these interventions. Our ties are enduring, accompanying me throughout my career and life. So, I could say our ties evolved in multifaceted ways over half a century, as a teacher, a mentor, and my adoptive family with Ranjini in La Jolla into a holistic relationship. My husband and I had Sunday dinner with the Obeyesekere family, Gananath, an excellent cook, did Sunday dinners. One time we arrived and lo and behold a duck was hanging upside down from Gananath’s study window. He was preparing Peking Duck.
In my early training under Gananath, a memorable example was learning to do fieldwork. As undergraduates it was mandatory to do fieldwork during college breaks. As he said, “don’t come into my class if you don’t muddy your feet in the field.” He assigned us a location and ideas to study. He looked at me and said, “you’re a girl, you can go from home and study the Kachcheri, it is fascinating.”
I think of the irony of a researcher studying the meaning of exotic rituals advising me to find meaning in a bureaucracy. Kachcheri Bureaucracy in Sri Lanka: The Culture and Politics of Accessibility was the subject of my Ph.D. thesis, and my first publication. Once I learned to bring in the meanings of culture as they interfaced with rational structures, procedures, I was trained at the International Water Management Institute (IWMI) to apply my insights to irrigation bureaucracy and technology of irrigation for practical solutions. This became my life’s work. When I applied for a Post-Doctoral fellowship at IWMI, Gananath wrote a letter in support. With IWMI’s interdisciplinary team I researched and published on Mahaweli System H and Irrigation Management for Crop Diversification to be followed by work in the northern Philippines; This experience led to my recruitment and training by the World Bank. I worked on designing and evaluating National Irrigation Projects for The World Bank, in the Philippines; UN/FAO in India; and in Imperial Valley, California.
This eldest daughter of Muslim parents from Matara, Kotuwegoda, who boarded a plane for the first time to go to graduate school in California, was able to travel back to Sri Lanka to walk the rice fields of Galnewa; climb the hills of Northern Philippines to study the zanjeras (community managed farms); walk 22km of the Indira Gandhi Canal in Rajasthan, with my team, in darkness and pouring rain with a Jat elder leading us with his torch made of palm leaves and chanting jai hind; see the beauty of ancient Rome on my way to work at the Investment Center, FAO; work for the World Bank in the highly secured environment of Cali, Colombia; and study irrigation under drought in arid Imperial County, California by walking the extent of the All American Canal, and farms cultivating fruits and vegetables. Perhaps my most rewarding work came as an academic, (without time constraints, and fortunate to be funded by a grant by the American Institute for Lankan Studies) when I completed my case study of Ridi Bendi Ela (Alla) and Magallavava, Nikerawetiya, where the Government of Sri Lank did a pilot study of a Farmer Company established under the Companies Act. Farmer organizations based on purana, and newly settled villages. A total of 11 villages covered the command area of the tank.
Prof. Obeysekere with folk masks
In his very earliest work Land Tenure in Village Ceylon, Gananath challenged the western notion of the homogenous village of kinship and landownership and showed in great detail how land holding patterns defined what a village was.
In Ridi Bendi Ela, with a few exceptions, landholding cut across villages and during droughts farmers practiced thattumaru (rotated land holdings seasonally), as described in Gananath’s work. In my villages the relationships based on landholding patterns were complicated by landless outsiders settled as colonists by the Government. In these villages I also observed the doctrine/thought vs practice dimensions of Buddhism with relation to rice cultivation.
This pilot project trained farmers to undertake off-farm income generation activities, and progressively undertake self- management of the canal network. Magallavava, the tank, dates to 276-303 AD, constructed by King Mahasena (according to historical records), and according to some villagers, by king Pandukabaya. According to local legend, during the time of Lord Buddha, a prince and princess from India heard of the plight of the drought ridden villagers and brought silver coins to build the anicut to Magallavava, hence the name Ridi Bendi. Gananath often told us, “history matters.
These experiences became teaching tools in the classroom at California State University, Long Beach. Gananath’s film Kataragama: The God for All Seasons (story of Kareem included), remained a favourite with our students at every level.
Isn’t it interesting Dr. Obeyesekere, you asked me to muddy my feet in the field and I ended up spending my career doing just that?”
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In Search of Buddhist Conscience
(Baudha Hurdasakshiya Soya), skilfully interweaves the multiple strands of Gananath’s life and work. They are: his family background in a village (his multi-lingual father, an Ayurvedic physician trained in Calcutta and writer, and an anti-colonial thinker, as was his maternal grandfather); his married life with Ranjini Ellepola and their profound shared ethic of education, love of language, a feel for the aesthetic and generous hospitality to students and friends; his robust education locally which made him fluently bilingual and in the US; discussions with a large number of scholars, including Gananath and Ranjini, and also a Pattini Kapumahattaya, providing illuminating, lively commentaries on his work; explication of a series of his key texts and their concepts across his very long career; a rich array of images (stills and film clips) from Gananth’s extensive ethnographic archive where we see a young Gananath in the field with his multi-ethnic research teams. The filmmaker Dharmasiri Bandaranayke’s ‘teacherly documentary voice-over’, synthesises some of the facts, which helps, as there is so much rich material and new ideas to take in. Because of the careful interweaving of these many strands through the montage and the long duration of the film overall, it has a relaxed tempo, but one also feels a sense of urgency, the urgency of the ‘search’ (for Gananath and these dedicated young filmmakers too), in the Lankan historical political context of cycles of organised state violence against Tamil people including the long civil war, since political Independence in 1948.
Together, the very title ‘In Search of Buddhist Conscience’ and the melancholy chant (not a gatha but playing with its sonic memory, given the mise-en-scene of the iconic Temple of the Tooth, Dalada Maligawa glimpsed in the background), which opens the film, suggest a ‘loss’. A loss of conscience, the loss of a Buddhist conscience which was once robust in Lanka as manifested in the expansive, tolerant folk traditions, presented as incontrovertible ethnographic evidence. The film examines Gananath’s anthropological work as an intellectual (historical, ethnographic, theoretical, and yes, aesthetic) reclamation of the syncretic richness of the Buddhist and Hindu folk traditions as they intersected in all their hybrid multiplicity and presents the multi-ethnic folk of Lanka, both men and especially the women, who embodied their values so vibrantly, eloquently, intransigently and therefore unforgettably.
I am blown away by the suggestive power of this film for possible research on the Lankan folk archives of the Tamil Hindu traditions and what may be called an inclusive, vital, Buddhist folk imaginary, and material culture, through Gananath’s scholarship. One learns about Lanka’s deep cultural connections with South India from the ethnographic record as analysed and theorised by Gananath. For a lapsed Roman Catholic like me, the film is a profound revelation about my country of birth where I lived my first 23 years. Walter Benjamin wrote his essay ‘The Story Teller’ at a moment in Western modernity when the richly diverse European oral traditions were long gone and yet his essay, shot through with melancholy, catches light like a little gem every now and then, depending on how and why one might reread it under the pressure of the present moment baring down like a tonne of bricks, obliterating a future, inconceivable without a sense of a deep past, linked to legends, stories, ‘folk lore’ of the people. The film indicates that much of what the film dramatizes is now archival material, the living traditions mostly lost in processes of modernisation and westernisation of Buddhism itself. However, Gananath is no melancholy European Jewish intellectual like Walter Benjamin.
The ’dramatis persona’ ‘Gananath’ who comes across in Dimuthu’s film is an intellectual whose scholarly and indeed existential understanding of the tragedy of our post-independence etho-nationalist history, has not dampened his irrepressible sense of humour and a feel for the comic in public life and in the Lecture Theatre. After all, Dionysus presided over the genres of tragedy, comedy and the Satyr plays in the Civic Theatre Festival in Athens, the City Dionysia. And I have no doubt that Gananth has read his favourite thinker Nietzsche’s Birth of Tragedy in the Spirit of Music. But then Gananath has also imbibed the theatrical comic ribald humour and delight in high farce from our robust folk rituals. Two walls of his beautiful home in Kandy are shown decorated with a rare collection of comic-grotesque-scary folk masks (of the Sannyas and Demons) of Lanka, awaiting a museum that would house them. There is a precious group photo of Anthropologists at the famous Folk Art Museum in Bali, in Ubud, where a young Gananath is seen in the company of the legendary Margret Mead and others. I saw a Lankan Demon mask there when I visited the museum and now imagine that Gananath probably arranged for that demon to join his South Asian ‘na yakku’ (kith and kin demons) – this phrase in Sinhala makes me crack up! Gananath has brought both intensity and laughter into the intellectual arena of the academic lecture, making his pedagogic style unforgettable. This film is also a testament to that evanescent, spirited performance of a singular modern Lankan ‘guru’, in the sense of mentor who incites students to learn to think for themselves and strike a path of their own. By his own example he teaches us the irresistible art of critical thinking.
(To be continued)
The JVP General Secretary Tilvin Silva’s recent remarks at a news conference in Jaffna where he ruled out the possibility of holding provincial council elections this year has been widely reported and widely criticized. About the same time there was another media event in Jaffna that went largely unnoticed and unreported outside Jaffna. What was said at the second media event may carry far more political implications than Tilvin Silva’s election timing talk. A veteran Tamil political participant made the startling yet not implausible statement that the prospect of having political devolution under the JVP-NPP government is becoming “a daydream”. The statement was made by Dr. K. Vigneswaran, who served as Provincial Secretary to the only North-East Provincial Council Government that was elected under the auspices of the Thirteenth Amendment.
Dr. Vigneswaran is a Professional Civil Engineer who studied at Royal College, graduated with First Class Honours in Engineering in 1964, and went on to complete a pioneering PhD at the university of Waterloo, Canada, applying the finite element method (FEM) in the field of Geotechnical Engineering. His engineering career has always been at the Irrigation Department where he rose to a Deputy Director. That was when the department was in its golden years, and Vigneswaran was known for his technical mentorship, meticulous administrative skills, and for knowing the fine print of everything. While at the Irrigation Department, Vigneswaran married Ramya de Silva, a fellow irrigation Engineer. After 1983, Vigneswaran became a fulltime political activist and a powerful resource in Tamil politics, but with unwavering commitment to nonviolence, democracy and federalism. The family moved first to India and then Canada, and Vigneswaran has been shuttling between Canada and Sri Lanka.
Devolution: Tortuous Trajectory
Since 1987, the Indo-Sri Lanka Agreement, and the 13th Amendment, Vigneswaran has been a permanent fixture in all the politics and institutional dynamic of implementing 13A and establishing provincial councils. He served as Secretary to the only elected Provincial Government for the Northern and Eastern Provinces. After 1994 and the election of Chandrika Kumaratunga as President, Vigneswaran became a key participant in all the civil society efforts and government initiatives to restore the PCs and implement 13A, both during the Kumaratunga presidency and the succeeding administrations of Mahinda Rajapaksa and the Sirisena-Wickremesinghe duo.
Devolution efforts stalled after the election of Gotabaya Rajapaksa, who in so many words declared that he had no time for 13A or PCs in his presidential agenda, whatever it was. Only that his whole agenda turned out to be a wholesale disaster for the country. Already by then, all the nine Provincial Councils had fallen into abeyance with the cancellation of the 1988 PC elections by the Sirisena-Wickremesinghe duo, with the TNA standing by. The abeyance continues under the JVP-NPP government with no apparent end in sight after Tilvin de Silva’s statement in Jaffna.
I say all this to provide the proper context for Vigneswaran’s statement in Jaffna that the prospects for power devolution under the JVP-NPP government are becoming a political daydream. He said something else as well: that of all the government leaders he has encountered over the years, the only leader who has been genuinely sincere about power devolution is former President Chandrika Kumaratunga, and no one else. I am constrained to add that the insincere category would include Ranil Wickremesinghe, who for all his handsome promises, never matched any of them with experiential sincerity. The present JVP-NPP government still has time to show that they are not an insincere lot.
It is not my purpose to agree with or question Dr. Vigneswaran’s assertions, but to use them as cue and context to comment on the widening mismatch between the JVP-NPP government’s promises and its practices on the matter of power devolution and the restoration of the PC system. With a stalling economy, rising prices and external shocks, it is obvious that the government has all the economic matters to worry about, but that does not mean that it can ignore all the other government responsibilities. No government is put in power to solve a single problem or address a single issue. It is in the nature of governments to deal with multiple problems with varying priorities. Otherwise you could have a single cabinet minister to deal with one problem at a time. That is never going to be the case.
The economy is of course the top of mind priority for the government even as it is a top of mind concern for the people. Even on the economic front, the government is holding steady but is showing little progress. And there are other government initiatives where political accountability will call for answers: to wit, the catchall Clean Sri Lanka programme, ambitious educational reforms, contentious energy sector reforms and, yes, power devolution as well as the overpromised constitutional reforms. Not to mention the sprawling unforced errors over substandard coal imports, foreign exchange fraud, and the chronic neglect of developing the renewable energy sector. Correcting these fields of errors may require a separate ministry for each.
Devolution: Daydream or Deliverable
On the PC system and constitutional reform, there has been scant progress in spite of handsome promises. On both, the government is inadvertently deepening the holes that it had dug itself into through indifference, inaction or procrastination, or all of them and more. In the matter of devolution and provincial councils, the government can simply defuse the situation by directing the Election Commission to conduct elections at the earliest opportunity that is logistically possible. Making his statement in Jaffna, Mr. Tilvin Silva alluded to funding shortfall and legal complications as reasons for the necessity to postpone PC elections until next year. Neither reason holds water.
The funding question would seem to have been put to rest by the statement of Health Minister and Cabinet Spokesman Nalinda Jayatissa, presumably reflecting cabinet consensus, that there are no funding issues and if needed additional funds could be arranged through supplementary allocations. It is also disingenuous to cite legal complications as a reason. The so called legal complications arose because of the collective stupidity of the Sirisena-Wickremesinghe parliament that included the then miniscule NPP and the politically-lost TNA. The JVP-NPP has now ballooned from a handful MPs to a two-thirds majority and it can expedite any legislation that it wants to enable the PC elections to be held without delays.
Alternatively, the elections can be held under the old arrangement of proportional representation with assurance by political parties to honour their commitment to fielding more female candidates. Already at a gathering of all political parties, including the NPP (but not the JVP), and civil society groups, convened by People’s Action For Free & Fair Elections (PAFFREL), the political parties jointly committed to a 25% quota for women and youth under the old electoral system. The ongoing parliamentary committee exercise studying the legal matter, headed by the overstretched Foreign Minister Vijitha Herath, is also an unnecessary red herring. The Election Commission is ready to go under whatever law or electoral system that is before it. So, there is no reason to hide behind legal complications to further delay the PC elections.
Somewhat amusingly, Public and Parliamentary Affairs Minister Ananda Wijepala has trotted out the argument that the NPP government has already conducted two nationwide elections during the one and a half years it has been in office, and that unlike the Ranil Wickremesinghe government the JVP-NPP is not in the business “to delay elections for our personal benefit” – whatever that means. Unfortunately, the good minister is missing the point. The question is not how many elections can the JVP-NPP hold in how many years, but how many years do people in the provinces have to wait before they vote in another provincial election? How many more years? That really is the question.
We know the current situation in the provinces. There are provincial governments but no elected provincial councils. The government administration in every province is being run by the President of the Republic through his handpicked governors and unelected government officials. This is a travesty of democracy and the euthanizing of the PC system. Already under 13A, the office of the provincial governors has been constitutionally and legally compared to the office of the Governors of old Ceylon who represented the monarch in what was then a crown colony. The irony is that a JVP-NPP President may have inadvertently positioned himself as the monarch of all he provincially surveys, courtesy of the Thirteenth Amendment!
The JVP was in the forefront of the litigation that caused the demerger of the Northern and Eastern Provinces. If Dr. Vigneswaran’s assertion were to prove correct, a potential dissolution of the provincial system under the JVP-NPP government would be the consummation of the JVP’s original opposition to the introduction of the provincial council system itself. The whole system may not be eradicated, but it could be devoured of its democratic essence while preserving the administrative shell as the medium for the country’s president to overreach into the provinces. That would be worse than a daydream, a real nightmare.
by Rajan Philips ✍️
A new art exhibition, titled Spectrum ,will be held at the Lionel Wendt Art Centre on the 20th and 21st of June 2026, bringing together a collection of works by ten emerging artists.
Athsara Wijegunawardena
Neha Thirumavalavan
Dillai Joseph
Wasantha Siriwardena
Champika Dias
Nipun Dias
Dr. Prasanna Siriwardena
Kalhari Perera
Siromi Samarasinghe
Chandana Illankone
All ten artists have trained under the guidance of renowned Sri Lankan artist Royden Gibbs, and this exhibition marks an important point in their individual journeys.
Dr. Prasanna Siriwardena
Spectrum brings together a mix of styles, subjects and approaches, giving visitors a chance to experience a wide range of work in one place. The exhibition will include pieces in watercolors, soft pastels, oils and charcoal, reflecting both the discipline and personal direction of each artist. The work ranges from scenery and portraits to still life and studies of the human form, offering different ways of seeing and interpreting familiar subjects.
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- Nipun Dias
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- Wasantha Siriwardena
Dillai Joseph
Although they share the same mentor, each artist presents a distinct point of view. The result is a show that feels varied yet connected, with each piece carrying its own character and intent. It is this balance that gives Spectrum its identity.
The exhibition aims to support and highlight emerging talent within Sri Lanka’s art scene, while also creating a space where artists and audiences can connect. Visitors will find work that shifts between quiet observation and more expressive pieces, making it an engaging experience for both seasoned collectors and those simply interested in art.
Spectrum is expected to draw art lovers, collectors, students and members of the wider creative community. It also offers an opportunity to discover and support new artists at an early stage in their careers.
Open to the public over two days, Spectrum invites visitors to experience a range of work in a venue that has long been part of Colombo’s cultural landscape.
“Craving begets sorrow, craving begets fear. For him who is free from craving there is no sorrow; how can there be fear for him,” Dhammapada verse 216 states. The mental factor craving, Tanha in Pali, is central to Buddhist Teaching, as its ultimate goal is the cessation or extinction of it—tanhakkhaya. Even though Tanha is translated as craving here, it can sometimes mislead modern readers into thinking tanha only refers to extreme or physical addictions. Just as with any Pali term, it has broad meanings. Venerable Walpola Rahula describes it as “thirst” or unceasing wanting, one of the deep-rooted proclivities or latent tendencies (anusaya) of life (Rahula 1959), without which life as we know would not exist.
Even though the Buddha recognized this natural phenomenon two and a half millennia ago, it was only in the late 20th century that science took note of it and gave it a captivating term—the Hedonic Treadmill. The advantage of this empirical investigation to us Buddhists is that it provides a way to gain penetrative, experiential comprehension (anubodha) of this concept using the vernacular of this technology-savvy age—an alternative to struggling with the language of a bygone era.
These investigations have revealed that there are no hard-to-comprehend metaphysical or mysterious elements involved with this phenomenon; it is a biochemical process fundamental to sustaining life. What is more, an effort to grasp this concept would be well within the goals of Vipassana meditation described in the Sutta Pitaka, incorporating the four elements of investigation: body (kayanupassana), sensations (vedananupassana), mind (chittanupassana), and natural laws (dhammanupassana).
Vipassana and modern science
Vipassana meditation is an in-depth exploration of how humans perceive the world, gain knowledge, and interact with themselves and the environment. Knowing this with wisdom allows one to lead a harmonious way of life (samadhi), a condition conducive to curbing the “thirst” and achieving the Buddhist ideal. The goal of modern science is also to investigate life, but humanity has often used that knowledge to increase material wealth and comfort, providing only lip service to spirituality on the fringe.
An attitude that tends to ignore the consequences of wanting more and more – thirst, potentially endangering the planet. However, that does not prevent us from using scientific information as and aid or a tool to grasp Buddhist concepts. The scientific method bears parallels to the Buddhist approach: it is based on causality (paticcasamuppada), empirical verification (ehipassiko), systematic observation (meditation), and rejecting dogma and beliefs. The primary difference is simply the vocabulary used.
The process of perception: five aggregates
Our five external sense organs receive data (vedana) containing information on the environment: Eyes: receive light, Ears: receive sound, Skin: senses physical contact and temperature, Nose & Tongue: sense chemical properties of substances. The data received by the sense organs is transmitted to the brain, where it is registered as neural networks (sanna). Neural networks, which are interconnected groups of nerve cells (neurons) can be viewed as mind-readable QR codes.
The activity of the brain, or mind (mano), processes this data and converts them into actionable information (sankhara). Modern neuroscience and psychology have made great advances in understanding these processes at the molecular level. This process allows the individual to become aware of their environment, build an autobiographical memory or the notion of a self (atta), and take actions to protect and perpetuate life.
The Pali term vinnana refers to the collection of information committed to memory. Translating vinnana as “consciousness” can be confusing, as the latter often refers to all brain activities. All physical phenomena that sense organs encounter and the mental constructs (sankhara) are referred to as Rupa. This activity of mind forms the basis of all knowledge, representing the entire world as perceived by the individual. This process is what the Teaching refers to as the Five Aggregates (pancakkhanda). The critical takeaway is that the world we perceive is merely a mental construct. While an objective world exists, our sense organs have limitations in seeing it—a fact easily realized through the hundreds of illusions used for entertainment.
Evolution and emotion
The evolutionary purpose of this data processing mechanism is to enable living beings to respond to environmental factors for survival. The psychological and physiological state that arises prior to acting is called emotion. Primarily, emotions can be of three kinds: desire (loba) – seeing a new phone causes an urge to buy it, even though the current one works fine; aversion (dosha) – encountering a vicious dog triggers a “fight or flight” response; delusion (moha) or illusion – an unanswered message to a loved one triggers worry or speculation. Thus, tanha or thirst represents how we connect to the world in its entirety; it can be desire, aversion, and delusion, not merely simple greed. Consequently, these are natural phenomena beyond our immediate control, which are intended to sustain life. In other words, emotions are the forerunner to volitions or intentions, which the Teaching defines as kamma.
The biochemistry of craving
Emotions result from the interaction between the nervous system and biochemicals known as neurotransmitters and neuromodulators (e.g., dopamine, serotonin, epinephrine, GABA, glutamate, acetylcholine, and endorphins). Just as the Buddha’s simile of two bundles of bamboo supporting each other describes, these two processes are interdependent and co-arising. Every thought or emotional state corresponds to patterns of neural firing. When neurons fire, they release these chemicals into synapses, influencing how one feels and acts. This release perturbs the body’s normal balance, or homeostasis. Once an action is complete, these chemicals are reabsorbed, and the body returns to its baseline.
Return to baseline is essential for survival. For example, if we stay satisfied with just one meal forever, we could not sustain life. Nature has developed another mechanism to prevent us from being satisfied – we also habituate. In the case of dopamine, the brain adapts by reducing the response to the same stimulus. To get the same level of satisfaction with repeated experiences, the amounts of neurotransmitters needed keeps increasing. This leads to the cycle of craving and dissatisfaction—the Hedonic Treadmill. You “run” toward happiness on the treadmill, but it does not take you anywhere, leaving you in the same emotionally unsatisfactory state, wanting more and more.
Breaking the cycle
This explains why achievements and possessions do not bring permanent happiness, and lead to a cycle of struggle, addiction, crime, and other ills of society. For Buddhists, it also explains why we cling to meaningless rituals. The Dhamma captured this complex phenomenon in the Four Noble Truths: pleasant experiences are impermanent (anicca), leading to grasping (tanha) and unsatisfactoriness (dukkha). The remedy is the Eightfold Path that involves wisdom (panna), conduct (sila), and harmony (samadhi).
Neuroplasticity and the point of liberation
While we cannot stop the sense organs from receiving stimulation (vedana) and sending them to brain, the mind can be developed to prevent vedana from leading to tanha. This is the “point of liberation,” the seventh link in the paticcasamuppada formula. We may not have free will, but we have ‘Free Won’t’ or the ability to say no to the natural tendency to act upon stimuli. We can rewire our neural connections to do so. This ability can be cultivated by practice and repetition, and neuroscience refers to it as neuroplasticity—the brain’s ability to change with experience.
The natural tendency of the brain is to strengthen frequently used neural networks while weakening and eliminating lesser used networks and building new ones as needed. This is known as neural plasticity or rewiring the brain. As described in the Eight-fold Path, the way to weaken and eliminate dopamine-driven neural networks includes three aspects. First, the process leading to thirst must be understood. One must engage in sila – activities and thoughts that cultivate Metta: loving-kindness and goodwill, Karuna: compassion, Mudita: appreciative joy, and Upekkha: equanimity, emotional stability, calmness, and evenness of mind in the face of gain and loss, praise and blame, fame and disrepute, pleasure, and pain. That must be done with wisdom, ritualistic behavior does not strengthen the correct neural networks. These activities promote a “cocktail” of oxytocin, serotonin, and GABA, subduing the role of dopamine and helping us step off the Hedonic Treadmill. This leads to a tranquil state of mind and a harmonious existence – samadhi. Again, it is an interdependent, co-arising process that improves upon repetition. Using mind altering substances hijacks this process, thus the need for adhering to the Fifth Precept.
The goal of Vipassana is to understand this process and train the mind to say “no” to tanha. It is not just about sitting on a mat; it requires developing a lifestyle that maintains homeostasis or harmony, samadhi, at every moment. Pali term bhavana means the development of wisdom and insight. In modern vernacular – rewiring brain. This model must be assessed for its efficacy by the individual and realize the benefits by themselves –ehipassiko; knowledge without practice does not work. According to what the Buddha taught, that is the path to cessation or extinction of craving – tanhakkhaya, the supreme goal.
by Geewananda Gunawardana, Ph.D. ✍️
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