Features

‘Reflections on the Continuing Crises of Post-War Sri Lanka’

Published

1 year ago

2025/05/2

The Institute of International Studies(IIS) recently published a volume, ‘Reflections on The Continuing Crises of Post-War Sr Lanka’ edited by Professors Amal Jayawardena and Gamini Keerwella. Delivering the keynote address, at its launch on 24 April, at the BMICH, former Foreign Secretary, H. M. G. S. Palihakkara reflected on the context and substance of the publication with particular reference to the challenge before the NPP government to convert the voter support it received into a public policy consensus essential to addressing multiple issues of statecraft at hand.

Excerpts:

We are at a juncture of profound change happening nationally as well as internationally – changes that seem to engender a mixed bag of imponderables and great worry, even danger. While many contend that these changes upend globalised advancement, portend uncertainty and unpredictability, some good is seen by others in that certain disruptions could lead to pathways for course corrections. While this obviously divisive and controversial discourse goes on, what is clear and present is that it’s a world where affairs within and between states are in flux. Some of our neighbourhood commentators put it as a ‘world adrift’ or a world ‘getting unhinged’. The description of this volatility and prescriptions for handling the vortex of churning issues may defy objective analysis but the stark reality is that it represents an unprecedented and defining challenge to the post World War international system or the so-called ‘rules -based order’.

Head winds and tail winds of this flux have begun to manifest with different intensity in different countries constraining their space and capacity to grow sustainably and live securely. For some, the situation may morph into existential issues. Sri Lanka’s case lies somewhere in between it looks, but there is no denying that all will be profoundly affected-especially so for countries like us that are struggling to transit from crisis-recovery stability to a sustainable growth scenario. They are obliged to do this while juggling as prudently as possible, attendant geopolitical conundrums thrown up by the competing interests of power players, leading to difficult and often futile attempt to balance the unbalanceable!

At the national level, a new government of former ‘armed struggle fame’ has assumed office promising constructive change, clean and accountable governance based on the idea of reconciliation and equal citizenship for all. This was a hitherto unseen national common ground crafted by the voters(north-south-east-west) – voters fatigued with corrupt stereo-types. They did so, asking the new government to deliver on this attractive and perhaps the most inclusive post conflict mandate yet.

But the government seems to remain somewhat overwhelmed with this exciting but daunting agenda of public policy making and governance. Challenges include dovetailing the currently apparent economic stability into a growth conducive one; preventing a double jeopardy of economic crisis pain morphing into reform pain; doing all that without falling prey to grinding strategic matrixes of our ‘geopolitical friends’; dealing with some of our closest friends who come bearing gifts like distress money and un-solicited power play advice; how to negotiate with them without simply signing onto their wish lists that seek to requisition our sovereign assets thus leaving little or no room to negotiate even as unequals, let alone as sovereign equals!

To add to these woes of the new government, the incumbency factor seems to be setting in as evidenced by some ham-handed handling of delicate issues both domestic and international.

In this fraught setting, the government has boldly, and one must say correctly, decided to go for local polls. This is obviously not a regime change election but it certainly is a regime test one. The losers at the last elections both big and small, seem to have found common cause in firing the first salvos of the government ‘toppling game’ even as they know very well there is no constitutional way to do regime change for the next five years. The Government, on its part has not done itself any favours by scoring rather heavy in clumsiness index. Waffling continues uncomfortably on several fronts critical to public policy issues of national and international significance.

So this is a daunting inventory of domestic things to do in an international system that has turned volatile- a system in which an oxymoronic situation had long persisted because the alleged ‘ rules-based order‘ continued to be confronted by the reality of power-based practice. As we all know, when in contention, power usually trumps the rules. It happens so often it has become quite a ‘convenient truth’! The crudest and what could even be the most dangerous form of this contradiction is peaking now thanks to the phenomenon known as the Trump Two.

The book ‘Reflections on the Continuing Crises of Post-War Sri Lanka.’, helps us introspect in a context where the country is striving -in fact struggling- to recover from multiple self-made crises and become a self-caring nation under a new but un-tested Government-obviously, a timely thing to do.

Well researched and well sourced work in this volume explore an array of considerations both in empirical and conceptual terms as to how and why , after ending the armed conflict, conflicts by other means have continued spawning multiple crises- occurring in almost regular succession-and in diverse domains e.g. governance, socio-economic, ethnic and religious harmony, political, security, foreign policy and so on.

The purpose here is a comment in the form of my take on what this volume presents to the policy community-both political and bureaucratic:

First, it gives out a yet another alarming read-out of the cost of successive leadership failures in this country- failure to ensure constitutional governance, sustainable and equitable economic growth, reconciliation, accountability, the rule of law and so on. It reminds me of a meeting thirteen years ago, which I had the honour to chair in this very Hall at the BCIS, remembering the late legal legend, HL de Silva.

There my observation was that:

” The diminishing respect for the rule of law diminishes us all. Such erosion will allow impunity to raise its ugly head. Usually, impunity signals the onset of decay. It impairs civilised life and democracy. And it undermines the investment climate. Conversely, the upholding of the rule of law manifestly strengthens sovereignty, pre-empts external calls for intrusive accountability, deters threats to territorial integrity of the nation and facilitates the enjoyment of fruits of citizenship and democracy by all’. http://www.island.lk/index.php?page_cat=article-details&page=article-details&code_title=52289)

It is ironic but highly appropriate that the authors felt compelled to flag these same ‘reflections’ more than a decade later signifying the extent of the ‘unfinished business’ before us.

Secondly, it brings into sharp relief, the absence in this country of a culture of consensus or common ground in the business of public policy making. This contrast has remained conspicuous because the conscientious voters of this land have repeatedly braved political violence, insurgent violence and terrorist violence to grant that mandate to the elected government to do consensual work towards preventing crises and deterring conflict.

That did not happen of course. The consensual culture wished for by the voters died of political asphyxiation. This was due to the kind of parochialism our rulers have been obsessed with. There was decay in multiple fields – the economy, accountability, rule of law, national security, human security, foreign policy and so on. What is more, the contrary took root and polarisation rolled on fuelled both by those elected to power as well as by those thrown out of power. The former did so to remain in power and the latter to topple and recapture. The economy suffered. Investors ran away. The voters found they have nowhere to run.

This continues to date, even after the voters have once again shown that consensus is possible in this country. There was a country-wide consensual momentum to vote into power the current govt. who promised change to bring about accountability, the rule of law, transparent and corruption free governance and equal citizenship for all plus economic reforms. Rejecting the most, if not all corrupt stereo types and ignoring the usual ethnic and religious divides, voters rallied round a high octane call for that change. But the Govt. seems to be going about exploiting that momentum, if they are going about it at all, in the clumsiest way possible thus losing traction in turning that voter’s consensus into a public policy consensus. And not to be out-done, the losers- big and small- have got back on the usual track to begin the govt toppling game. So, the fact that the responsibility of building common ground lies not only with the government but also with the Opposition has become an inconvenient truth.

A ray of hope emerged when there was an all-party initiative to handle the unfolding ‘Tariff war’. But it looked more like a proforma reaction to a tariff drama by a bull-dozing President of a misfiring superpower, than a genuine domestic compulsion to initiate a consensual process enabling us to negotiate with our foreign interlocutors from a position of policy cohesion and bargaining strength.

This is in contrast to other countries including in South Asia that had the vision and wisdom to go consensual on critical national issues while not ruling out the option of politicians to go parochial on non-critical issues so that they can still mis-lead voters to win elections!

Faced with a looming economic crisis, the Congress – BJP agreement on economic reforms in India under PM Manmohan Singh’s watch in the 1990s paved the way for the robust growth of the Indian economic and geopolitical power today; In Bangladesh, an unprecedented bipartisan understanding on energy esp. its policy on exploiting newly discovered LNG deposits as well as a degree of self-rule to their hill tribe rebels and agreement in Nepal on mainstreaming their rebels are such contrasting examples of public policy consensus in our own sub-region.

They understood that weaponizing national issues for electoral gain can gravely undermine the welfare of the succeeding generation.

So besides these contrasting and rewarding examples and experiences in our own sub region, what is so magical about common ground and why do we have to do it?

We need a consensual economic reform programme that cannot and should not be weaponised for the purpose of regime change undermining stability and predictability , even going beyond the important gauntlet of 2028, when Sri Lanka has to resume the enormous burden of debt repayment,

Going by the Govt’s track record so far, the opposition can count on the Govt. to provide enough vulnerabilities on the non-critical list to exploit and attempt regime change! So it is irrational and irresponsible for the opposition to use imaginary or real faults so early in the game to upend the hard earned macro-economic and social stability as we prepare for the 2028 threshold.

On the geopolitical , foreign relations and governance front, one can do without the disruptive, destabilising and even dangerous contentions like the on-going one advocating that Sri Lanka should formally ‘align and economically integrate’ with its giant neighbour. That country is clearly a party to the principal geo-strategic rivalry in the Indo Pacific that is growing in complexity and intensity. Such a huge change of course for Sri Lanka could invite dangerous target practice by other power players. It would also be naïve to believe that the only way forward for Sri Lanka is a piggy back with India for a ride to economic prosperity on a trickle down basis..

It is a cogent point that it could amount to a ‘strategic capture in connectivity clothing’; that no such template has worked elsewhere in the world and Sri Lanka could thus become a non-self-governing territory where our sovereign assets may be parcelled out to strategic players jostling for power.

Both sides of this contention have overlooked the middle path imperative available for Sri Lanka. That is assiduously working to allay ill-founded or well-founded Indian security fears in a verifiable way using many bilateral tools available including the so called ‘national technical means’ while pressing ahead with equal vigour to deepen and widen ‘negotiated’ economic cooperation in identified areas – not structural integration- with our friendly neighbour. This is the way for Sri Lanka to exploit the competitive and comparative advantage it has with a robustly growing India that can benefit both countries. This is the must do thing. Any asymmetry dictated aligning or integration by momentum or wish list signing without negotiating is ‘the must avoid thing. There are many reasons for this avoidance but the latest and the most explosive one comes from Bangladesh. As a blow back to an asymmetry driven integration and autocratisation of the Hasina regime, Indo-Bangla relations exploded while Bangladesh itself imploded.

There are varying degrees of indo centric trouble in all South Asian countries except may be in Bhutan so much so that some Indian analysts themselves have characterised India’s ‘neighbourhood first policy’ as a ‘neighbourhood lost policy’.

We of course cannot afford such polemical luxury but we do need a domestic consensus to do two things:

‘Assure India about their security fears through bilateral technical means and ‘negotiate’ with India on deep-going economic cooperation. This middle path imperative backed by a bipartisan or consensual common ground will demonstrate our policy consistency and predictability towards India while providing benefits achieved by negotiated mutuality – not solely dictated by asymmetry. To be successful, this needs a domestic consensus here- across the isles of quarrelling members of the legislature- the kind of common ground the late Minister Kadirgamar strenuously worked for- the kind of acts of contrition and consensus that LLRC proposed some decades ago in order to advance post-conflict peace building.

Whether this already is a foregone conclusion or still an open question available to negotiate will become clearer when two crops of indo Lanka MOUs concluded by the former Government as well as the present one, cease to be unseen documents.

Such common understanding is needed not only to pilot our relations with our close and distant friends like India and China but also to deal with a host of other governance and foreign relations issues like accountability and reconciliation which remain externalised because the lack of a domestic understanding to deal with them has made them migrate abroad and morph into diplomatic issues entailing multiple challenges. Some past Govts unsuccessfully tried to address these challenges by actively encouraging international consensus on some of these. They did so, while being unable or unwilling to develop a national consensus on these sensitive matters despite the voters here providing robust mandates to do so. Without a national common ground, external prescriptions by themselves cannot deliver justice to victims. Every unpunished crime has an economic cost in both national and international terms. Most, if not all these failures are principally due to the paucity of a shared understanding here.

Consensus is not something you find in a cupboard! It has to be nurtured. Consensus happens not when you make everybody absolutely happy. It happens when you equitably distribute managed unhappiness among everybody. To some it is a fine art. To others it is a hard-nosed science. Perhaps it is a hybrid . Whatever it is, our voters have done it and found it. The NPP’s resounding election victory was the result. So the winner Government must mould that voters’ consensus into a public policy consensus. They can lose sometime but not too much time as windows may start closing. Policy makers – or ‘pain makers’ as some call them- must make haste slowly. If not, down the road, our succeeding generations may be compelled to launch another valuable book of reflections like this .

My friend Professor Jayadeva Uyangoda in his probing scrutiny about the causes and effects of our crises aptly refers to what he calls ‘a crucial political point’ about the “relationship between the state and society becoming violent and the capacity of the liberal parliamentary democracy to restore peace between the State and society becoming severely limited”. If our policy people don’t get the hybrid our voters have found, it is most likely that the next ‘reflection book’ might say ’peace restoration’ is still work in progress. Hopefully, it will not say restoration has regressed!

On that note of mild happiness, I would like to thank you for your patience.

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Features

Is power devolution under JVP-NPP a political daydream?

Published

22 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

‘Spectrum’ Art Exhibition Showcases Emerging Talent at Lionel Wendt

Published

22 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.

Features

Rewiring Brain: Meditation to Break the Cycle of Craving

Published

22 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. ✍️