Features

Federalism and paths to constitutional reform

Published

1 month ago

2026/04/27

Sahan Weerasooriya

Chelvanayakam (R) and S. W. R. D. Bandaranaike shaking hands.

S. J. V. Chelvanayakam: Visionary and Statesman

S. J. V. Chelvanayakam KC Memorial Lecture Delivered at Jaffna Central Collage on Sunday, 26 April, by Professor G. L. Peiris – D. Phil. (Oxford), Ph. D. (Sri Lanka); Rhodes Scholar, Quondam Visiting Fellow of the Universities of Oxford, Cambridge and London; Former Vice-Chancellor and Emeritus Professor of Law of the University of Colombo.

I. Life and Career

Had Mr. Chelvanayakam been with us today, he would no doubt be profoundly unhappy with the state of our country and the world.

Samuel James Velupillai Chelvanayakam was born on 31 March, 1898, in the town of Ipoh, in Malaya. When he was four years of age, he was sent by his father, along with his mother, for the purpose of his education to Tellippalai, a traditional village at the northern tip of Sri Lanka, or Ceylon as the country was then called, in close proximity to the port of Kankesanturai. He attended three schools, Union College in Tellippalai, St John’s College Jaffna and S. Thomas’ College Mount Lavinia, where he was a contemporary of S. W. R. D. Bandaranaike, with whom he was later destined to sign the Bandaranaike-Chelvanayakam Pact.

He graduated in Science as an external student of the University of London, in 1918. In 1927, he married Emily Grace Barr-Kumarakulasinghe, daughter of the Maniyagar, or administrative chief for the area, appointed by the colonial government. He had four sons and a daughter. His son, S. C. Chandrahasan, worked closely with me during my time as Foreign Minister on the subject of repatriation of refugees from India. Chandrahasan’s wife, Nirmala, daughter of Dr. E. M. V. Naganathan, was a colleague of mine on the academic staff of the University of Colombo.

Mr. Chelvanayakam first contested the Kankesanturai constituency at the parliamentary election of 1947. His was a long parliamentary career. He resigned from his parliamentary seat in opposition to the first Republican Constitution of 1972, but was re-elected overwhelmingly at a by-election in 1975. He died on 26 April, 1977.

There are many strong attributes which shine through his life and career.

He consistently showed courage and capacity for endurance. He had no hesitation in resigning from employment, which gave him comfort and security, to look after a younger brother who was seriously ill. As his son-in-law, Professor A.J. Wilson remarked, he learned to move in two worlds: a product of missionary schools, he was a devout Christian who never changed his religion for political gain. He was, quite definitely, a Hindu by culture, and never wished to own a house in Colombo for fear that his children would be alienated from their roots.

Gentle and self-effacing by disposition, he manifested the steel in his character by not flinching from tough decisions. Never giving in to expediency, differences of principle with Mr. G. G. Ponnambalam, the leader of the All Ceylon Tamil Congress, of which Mr. Chelvanayakam was a principal organiser, led him to break away from the Congress and to form a new party, the Ilankai Tamil Arasu Kachchi, or the Federal Party.

During the disturbances in March and April, 1958, he was charged in the Magistrate’s Court in Batticaloa and sentenced to a week’s imprisonment. He was also subject to house arrest, but he never resorted to violence and used satyagraha to make his voice heard. When, in 1961, he was medically advised to travel to the United Kingdom for surgical treatment, he had to be escorted to the airport by the police because he was still under detention. Although physically frail and ailing in health during his final years, he lost none of the indomitable spirit which typified his entire life.

II. Advocacy of Federalism: Origins and Context

At the core of political convictions he held sacrosanct was his unremitting commitment to federalism. A moment of fruition in his life was the formation of the Federal Party, Ilankai Tamil Arasu Kachchi, on 18 December, 1949.

Contrary to popular belief, however, federalism in our country had its origin in issues which were not connected with ethnicity. At its inception, this had to do with the aspirations, not of the Tamils, but of the Kandyan Sinhalese. The Kandyan National Assembly, in its representations to the Donoughmore Commission, in November, 1927, declared: “Ours is not a communal claim or a claim for the aggrandizement of a few. It is the claim of a nation to live its own life and realise its own destiny”.

Mr. S. W. R. D. Bandaranaike, soon after his return from Oxford, as a prominent member of the Ceylon National Congress, was an ardent advocate of federalism. He went so far as to characterise federalism as “the only solution to our political problems”. With Thomas Hobbes in his famous work, The Leviathan, he conceived of liberty as “political power broken into fragments”. Bandaranaike went on to state in a letter published in The Morning Leader on 19 May, 1926: “The two clashing forces of cooperation and individualism, like that thread of golden light which Walter Pater observed in the works of the painters of the Italian Renaissance, run through the fabric of civilisation, sometimes one predominating, sometimes the other. To try and harmonise the two has been the problem of the modern world. The only satisfactory solution yet discovered is the federal system”.

Federalism had a strong ideological appeal, from a Marxist-Leninist perspective. The constitutional proposals, addressed by the Communist Party of Ceylon to the Ceylon National Congress on 18 October, 1944, go very far indeed. They envisioned the Sinhalese and the Tamils as two distinct “nations” or “historically evolved nationalities”. The high watermark of the proposals was the assertion that “Both nationalities have their right to self-determination, including the right, if they so desire, to form their own separate independent state”.

These proposals received further elaboration in a memorandum submitted to the Working Committee of the Ceylon National Congress by two leading members of the Communist Party, Mr. Pieter Keuneman and Mr. A. Vaidialingam. Their premise was set out pithily as follows: “We regard a nation as a historical, as opposed to an ethnographical, concept. It is a historically evolved, stable community of people living in a contiguous territory as their traditional homeland”.

The Soulbury Commission, which arrived in the country in December, 1944, had no hesitation in recognising that “The relations of the minorities – the Ceylon Tamils, the Indian Tamils, Muslims, Burghers and Europeans, with the Sinhalese majority – present the most difficult of the many problems involved in the reform of the Constitution of Ceylon”.

They took fully into account the apprehension expressed by the All Ceylon Tamil Congress that “The near approach of the complete transfer of power and authority from neutral British hands to the people of this country is causing, in the minds of the Tamil people, in common with other minorities, much misgiving and fear”.

III. Constitutional Provisions at Independence

The Souldbury Commission, like the Donoughmore Commission before it, was not friendly to the idea of federalism, principally because of their commitment to the unity of the body politic. Opting for a solution, falling short of federalism, they adopted the approach that, if the underlying fear related to encroachment on seminal rights by capricious legislative action, this anxiety could be convincingly assuaged by enshrining in the Constitution a nucleus of rights placed beyond the reach of the legislature.

The essence of the solution, which commended itself to the Soulbury Commission, was a carefully crafted constitutional limitation on the legislative competence of Parliament, encapsulated in Article 29(2) of the Independence Constitution. The gist of this was incorporation of the principle of non-discrimination against racial or religious communities by explicit acknowledgement of equal protection under the law.

The assumption fortifying this expectation was the attribution of an imaginative role to the judiciary in respect of interpretation. It was lack of fulfillment in this regard that precipitated a setback which time could not heal. Judicial attitudes, including those of the Judicial Committee of the Privy Council, which constituted at the time the highest tier of the judicial hierarchy, were timid and diffident.

When the Citizenship Act of 1948, by means of a new definition, sought to deprive Tamils of Indian origin of the suffrage, no protection was forthcoming from the courts on the ground of impermissible discrimination. This refusal of intervention was premised on an implausibly narrow construction of the word “community”, in that, according to the Courts’ reasoning, in the landmark case of Kodakkan Pillai v. Madanayake, Indian Tamils were not identifiable as a community distinct from the larger community of the Tamils of Ceylon. It is hard to disguise the reality that this was, at bottom, a refusal to deal with the substantive issues candidly and frontally.

The resulting vulnerability of minority rights, which judicial evasion laid bare, was a major contributory cause of the erosion of confidence on the part of minority groups. This mood of suspicion and despair, arising from an ostensibly weak method of protection of human rights, presaged ensuing developments.

IV. Further Quest for a Constitutional Solution

Chelvanayakam

The central theme of this lecture, in honour of a statesman who was an epitome of restraint and moderation, is that the deterioration of ethnic relations, which culminated in a war of unrivalled savagery over a span of three decades, was progressive and incremental. There was no inevitability about the denouement. It was gradual and potentially reversible. At several crucial points, there was opportunity to arrest a disastrous trend. These windows of opportunity, however, were not utilised: extremist attitudes asserted themselves, and polarisation became the outcome. This trajectory was, no doubt, met with dismay by far-sighted leaders of the calibre of Mr. Chelvanayakam.

The formation of the Federal Party was a turning point. With Mr. S.J.V. Chelvanayakam, King’s Counsel, as founder-president, and Dr. E.M.V. Naganathan and Mr. V. Navaratnam as joint secretaries, the party embarked on a journey which marked a radical departure from the conventional thinking of the past. This was plain from the text of seven resolutions adopted at the national convention of the party held in Trincomalee in April, 1951. The foundation of these resolutions was the call to establish a Tamil state within the Union of Ceylon, and the uncompromising assertion that no other solution was feasible.

The path was now becoming manifest. The demand up to now had been for substantial power sharing within a unitary state. This was now giving way to a strident demand for the emergence of a federal structure, destined to be expanded in the fullness of time to advocacy of secession.

Although standing out boldly as a landmark in constitutional evolution, the Federal Party resolutions did not carry on their face the hallmark of finality or immutability. The call of the Tamil leadership for secession yet being some years away, the ensuing decades saw further attempts by different governments to resolve the vexed issues around power sharing.

The first of these was the Bandaranaike-Chelvanayakam pact, signed by the Prime Minister and the leader of the Federal Party on 26 July, 1957. There was an air of uneasy compromise surrounding the entire transaction. This was evident from the structure of the pact, which, as one of its integral parts, contained a section not reduced to writing in any form, but consisting of a series of informal understandings.

The essence of the pact was the proposed system of regional councils which were envisaged as an intermediary tier between the central government and local government institutions. This did break new ground. Not only did the pact confer on the people of the North and East a substantial measure of self-governance through these innovative councils, including in such inherently controversial areas as colonisation, irrigation and local management, but territorial units were conceived of as the recipients of devolved powers. Of particular significance, the regional councils were to be invested with some measure of financial autonomy. The blowback, however, was so intense as to compel the government to abrogate the pact.

The next attempt, eight years later, was by the United National Party, which had vehemently opposed the Bandaranaike–Chelvanayakam Pact. This was the Dudley Senanayake–Chelvanayakam Pact, signed between the leader of the United National Party, at the time Leader of the Opposition, and the leader of the Federal Party. It differed from the Bandaranaike–Chelvanayakam Pact, both contextually and substantively.

As to context, it was signed on 24 March, 1965, on the eve of a parliamentary election, to ensure for the United National Party the support of the Federal Party. A disheartening feature was the plainly evident element of duplicity. Once in government, the Prime Minister’s party showed little interest in implementing the pact. Within three years, the Federal Party left the government, and its representative in the cabinet, Mr M. Tiruchelvam QC, Minister of Local Government, relinquished his portfolio.

Substantively, the lynchpin of the pact was a system of district councils, but there was entrenched control of these bodies by the central government, even in regard to action within their vires. This was almost universally seen as a sleight of hand.

Despite the collapse of these efforts, room for resilience and accommodation had by no means disappeared. Nowhere is this better exemplified than in the events which led up to the drafting and adoption of the “autochthonous” Constitution of 1972. This involved the historic task of severing the centuries-old bond with the British Crown and bringing into being the Republic of Sri Lanka.

One of the Basic Resolutions, which eventually found expression as Article 2 of the new Constitution, characterised Sri Lanka as a unitary state. The Federal Party proposed an amendment that the word “federal” should be substituted for “unitary”. Mr. V. Dharmalingam, the spokesman for the party on this subject, in his address to the Constituent Assembly, on 16 March, 1971, showed flexibility by declaring that the powers of the federating units and their relationship to the centre were negotiable, once the principle of federalism was accepted. Indivisibility of the Republic was emphatically articulated, self-determination in its external aspect being firmly ruled out.

There was no reciprocity, however. Mr. Sarath Muttettuwegama, administering a sharp rebuke, declared: “Federalism has become something of a dirty word in the southern parts of this country”. The last opportunity to halt the inexorable march of events was spurned.

The pushback came briskly, and with singular ferocity. This was in the form of the Vaddukoddai Resolution adopted by the Tamil United Liberation Front at its first national convention held on 14 May, 1976. The historic significance of this document is that it set out, for the first time, in the most unambiguous terms, the blueprint for an independent state for the Tamil nation, embracing the merged Northern and Eastern Provinces. The second part of the Resolution contained the nucleus of Tamil Eelam, its scope extending beyond the shores of the Island. The state of Tamil Eelam was to be home not only to the people of the Northern and Eastern Provinces, but to “all Tamil-speaking people living in any part of Ceylon and to Tamils of Eelam origin living in any part of the world who may opt for citizenship of Tamil Eelam”.

The most discouraging element of this sequence of events was the timid and evasive approach adopted by prominent actors at crucial moments. The District Development Councils Act of 1980 presented a unique opportunity. Disappointingly, however, the Presidential Commission, presided over by Mr. Victor Tennekoon QC, a former Chief Justice and Attorney General, lacked the courage even to interpret the terms of reference as permitting allusion to the ethnic conflict. Despite the persevering efforts of Professor A.J. Wilson, son-in-law of Mr. Chelvanayakam, and a confidant of President J.R. Jayewardene, and Dr. Neelan Tiruchelvam, the majority of the members were inclined to adopt a narrow, technical interpretation of the terms of reference. The setting of the legislation was one in which Tamil formations, such as the Tamil United Liberation Front, were struggling to maintain their moderate postures in an increasingly polarised environment, with pressure from radical elements proving almost irresistible.

The whole initiative paled into insignificance in comparison with a series of tragic events, including the burning of the Jaffna library during the run-up to the District Development Council elections in the North and the calamitous events of Black July 1983. Policymakers, at a critical juncture, had, once again, let a limited opportunity slip through their fingers.

The next intervention occurred in the sunset years of the United National Party administration. This was the Parliamentary Select Committee on the ethnic conflict, known after its Chairman as the Mangala Moonesinghe Committee, appointed in August, 1991.

The Majority Report made a detailed proposal which was intended to serve as the basis of a compromise between two schools of thought—one stoutly resisting any idea of merger of the Northern and Eastern Provinces, and the other demanding such merger as the indispensable basis of a viable solution. An imaginative via media was the concept of the Apex Council, which formed the centrepiece of the Majority Report. It adopted as a point of departure two separate Provincial Councils for the North and the East. This dichotomy would characterise the provincial executive as well: each Provincial Council would have an Executive Minister as the head of the Board of Ministers. However, over and above these, the two Provincial Councils together would constitute a Regional Council for the entire North-East region. Although presenting several features of interest, as a pragmatic mediating mechanism, the proposal did not enjoy a sufficiently broad support base for implementation. (To be concluded)

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Features

Is power devolution under JVP-NPP a political daydream?

Published

7 hours ago

2026/06/7

Thilina Walpola

Former President Chandrika Kumaratunga

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 ✍️

Features

Rewiring Brain: Meditation to Break the Cycle of Craving

Published

7 hours ago

2026/06/7

Thilina Walpola

“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. ✍️

Features

‘Spectrum’ Art Exhibition Showcases Emerging Talent at Lionel Wendt

Published

7 hours ago

2026/06/7

Thilina Walpola

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.

: Nipun Dias

: 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.