Features

I’ve witnessed a coup attempt before — and history bodes poorly for America’s future

Published

4 years ago

2021/10/31

by Alfred Mccoy, Tom Dispatch

As an eyewitness, I can recall the events of January 6th in Washington as if they were yesterday. The crowds of angry loyalists storming the building while overwhelmed security guards gave way. The slavishly loyal vice-president who would, the president hoped, restore him to power. The crush of media that seemed confused, almost overwhelmed, by the crowd’s fury. The waiter who announced that the bar had run out of drinks and would soon be closing…

Hold it! My old memory’s playing tricks on me again. That wasn’t the U.S. Capitol in January 2021. That was the Manila Hotel in the Philippines in July 1986. Still, the two events had enough similarities that perhaps I could be forgiven for mixing them up.

I’ve studied quite a number of coups in my day, yet the one I actually witnessed at the Manila Hotel remains my favorite, not just because the drinks kept coming, but for all it taught me about the damage a coup d’état, particularly a political coup, can do to any democracy. In February 1986, a million Filipinos thronged the streets of Manila to force dictator Ferdinand Marcos into exile. After long years of his corruption and callous indifference to the nation’s suffering, the crowds cheered their approval when Marcos finally flew off to Hawaii and his opponent in the recent presidential election restored democracy.

But Marcos had his hard-core loyalists. One Sunday afternoon, four months after his flight, they massed in a Manila park to call for the restoration of their beloved president. After speakers had whipped the crowd of 5,000 into a frenzy with — and yes, this should indeed sound familiar in 2021 — claims about a stolen election, thousands of ordinary Filipinos pushed past security guards and stormed into the nearby Manila Hotel, a storied symbol of their country’s history. Tipped off by one of the Filipino colonels plotting that coup, I was standing in the hotel’s entryway at 5:00 p.m. as the mob, fury written on their faces, surged past me.

For the next 24 hours, that hotel’s marbled lobby became the stage for an instructive political drama. From my table at the adjoining bar, I watched as armed warlords, ousted Marcos cronies, and several hundred disgruntled soldiers paraded through the lobby on their way to the luxury suites where the coup commanders had checked themselves in. Following in their wake were spies from every nation — Australian secret intelligence, American defense intelligence, and their Asian and European counterparts — themselves huddled in groups, whispering mysteriously, trying (just like me) to make sense of the bizarre spectacle unfolding around them.

Later that same evening, Marcos’s former vice-president, the ever-loyal Arturo Tolentino, appeared at the head of the stairs flanked by a security detail to announce the formation of a “legitimate” new government authorized by Marcos who had reportedly called long-distance from Honolulu. As the vice president proclaimed himself acting president and read off the names of those to be in his cabinet, Filipino journalists huddling nearby scribbled notes. They were furiously trying to figure out whether there was a real coalition forming that could topple the country’s democracy. It was, however, just the usual suspects — Marcos cronies, leaders largely without followers.

By midnight, the party was pretty much over. Our waiter, after struggling for hours to maintain that famed hotel’s standard of five-star service, apologized to our table of foreign correspondents because the bar had been drunk dry and was closing. Sometime before dawn, the hotel turned off the air conditioning, transforming those executive suites into saunas and, in the process, flushing out the coup plotters, their hangers-on, and most of the soldiers.

All day long, on the city’s brassy talk-radio stations and in the coffee shops where insiders gathered to swap scuttlebutt, Marcos’s loyalists were roasted, even mocked. The troops that had rallied to his side were sentenced to 30 push-ups on the parade ground — a source of more mirth. For spies and correspondents alike, the whole thing seemed like a one-day wonder, barely worth writing home about.

But it wasn’t. Not by a long shot. A coterie of colonels deep inside the Defense Ministry, my source among them, had observed that comedic coup attempt all too carefully and concluded that it had actually been a near-miss.

A year later, I found myself standing in the middle of an eight-lane highway outside the city’s main military cantonment, Camp Aguinaldo, ducking bullets from rebel soldiers who had seized the base and watching as government Marines and dive bombers attacked. This time, however, those colonels had launched a genuine coup attempt. No drinks. No waiters. No wisecracks. Just a day of bombs and bullets that crushed the plotters, leaving the country’s military headquarters a smoking ruin.

Two years later, the same coup colonels were back again for another attempt, leading 3,000 rebel troops in a multipronged attack on a capital that trembled on the brink of surrender. As a cavalcade of rebel armor drove relentlessly toward the presidential palace with nothing in their way, American President George H.W. Bush took a call aboard Air Force One over the Atlantic about a desperate request from his Philippine counterpart and ordered a pair of U.S. Air Force jet fighters to make a low pass over the rebel tanks and trucks. They got the message: turn back or be bombed into extinction. And so Philippine democracy was allowed to survive for another 30 years.

Message from the Manila Hotel

The message for democracy offered from the Manila Hotel was clear — so clear, in fact, that it helps explain the meaning of tangled events in Washington more than 30 years later. Whether it’s a poor country like the Philippines or a superpower like the United States, democracy is a surprisingly fragile construct. Its worst enemy is often an ousted ex-president, angry over his humiliation and perfectly willing to destroy the constitutional order to regain power.

No matter how angry such an ex-president might be, however, his urge for a political coup can’t succeed without the help of raw force, whether from a mob, a disgruntled military, or some combination of the two. The Manila Hotel coup teaches us one other fundamental thing: that coups need not be carefully planned. Most start with a handful of conspirators plotting some symbolic attack meant to shake the constitutional order, while hoping to somehow stall the security services for a few critical hours — just long enough for events to cascade spontaneously into a desired government collapse.

Whether in Manila or Washington, coup plotting usually starts right at the top. Just after the news networks announced that he had lost the election last November, Donald Trump launched a media blitz with spurious claims of “fraud on the American public,” firing off 300 tweets in the next two weeks loaded with false charges of irregularities and sparking loud, long protests by his loyalists at vote-counting centers in Michigan and Arizona.

When that response got little traction and Biden’s majority kept climbing, Trump began exploring three alternate routes, any of which might have led to a constitutional coup — manipulating the Justice Department to delegitimize the election, rigging the ratification of electoral votes in Congress, and the paramilitary (or military) option. At a White House meeting on December 18th, Michael Flynn, Trump’s former national security advisor, urged the president to “invoke martial law as part of his efforts to overturn the election” and accused his staff of “abandoning the president,” sparking “screaming matches” in the Oval Office.

By January 3, rumors and reports of Trump’s military option were circulating so credibly around Washington that all 10 living former defense secretaries — Dick Cheney, Donald Rumsfeld, and Mark Esper, among them — published a joint appeal to the armed forces to remain neutral in the ongoing dispute over the election’s integrity. Reminding the troops that “peaceful transfers of power… are hallmarks of our democracy,” they added that “efforts to involve the U.S. armed forces in resolving election disputes” would be “dangerous, unlawful, and unconstitutional.” They warned the troops that any “military officials who direct or carry out such measures would be… potentially facing criminal penalties.” In conclusion, they suggested to Trump’s secretary of defense and senior staff “in the strongest terms” that “they must…refrain from any political actions that undermine the results of the election.”

To legitimate his claims of fraud, according to the New York Times, the president also tried — on nine separate occasions in December and January — to force the Justice Department to take actions that would “undermine an election result.” In response, a mid-ranking Trump loyalist at Justice, a nonentity named Jeffrey Clark, began pressuring his boss, the attorney-general, to write Georgia officials claiming they had found “significant concerns that may have impacted the outcome of the election.” But at a three-hour White House meeting on January 3rd, Acting Attorney General Jeffrey Rosen balked at this evidence-free accusation. Trump promptly suggested that he could be replaced by that mid-ranking loyalist who could then send the fraud letter to Georgia. The president’s own top appointees at Justice, along with the White House counsel, immediately threatened to resign en masse, forcing Trump to give up on such an intervention at the state level.

Next, he shifted his constitutional maneuvering to Congress where, on January 6th, his doggedly loyal vice president, Mike Pence, would be presiding over the ratification of results from the Electoral College. In this dubious gambit, Trump was inspired by a bizarre constitutional theory advanced by former Chapman University law professor John Eastman — that the “Constitution assigns the power to the Vice President as the ultimate arbiter.”

In this scenario, Pence would unilaterally set aside electoral votes from seven states with “ongoing disputes” and announce that Trump had won a majority of the remaining electors — making him once again president. But the maneuver had no basis in law, so Pence, after scrambling desperately and unsuccessfully for a legal justification of some sort, eventually refused to play along.

A Political Coup

With the constitutional option closed, Trump opted for a political coup, rolling the dice with raw physical force, much as Marcos had done at the Manila Hotel. The first step was to form a crowd with some paramilitary muscle to stiffen the assault to come. On December 19th, Trump called on his hard-core followers to assemble in Washington, ready for violence, tweeting: “Big protest in D.C. on January 6th. Be there, will be wild!”

Almost immediately, the Internet’s right-wing chat boards lit up and indeed their paramilitaries, the Proud Boys and Three Percenters militia, turned up in Washington on the appointed day, ready to rumble. After President Trump roused the crowd at a rally near the White House with rhetoric about a stolen election, a mob of some 10,000 marched on the Capitol Building.

Starting at about 1:00 p.m., the sheer size of the crowd and strategic moves by the paramilitaries in their ranks broke through the undermanned lines of the Capitol Police, breaching the building’s first-floor windows at about 2:10 p.m. and allowing protesters to start pouring in. Once the rioters had accomplished the unimaginable and seized the Capitol, they were fresh out of plans, reduced to marching through the corridors hunting legislators and trashing offices.

At 2:24 p.m., President Trump tweeted: “Mike Pence didn’t have the courage to do what should have been done to protect our Country.” On the far-right social media site Parler, his supporters began messaging the crowd to get the vice president and force him to stop the election results. The mob rampaged through the marbled halls shouting “Hang Mike Pence.” Hunkered down inside the Capitol, Representative Adam Kinzinger (R-Illinois) tweeted: “This is a coup attempt.”

At 2:52 p.m., Representative Abigail Spanberger (D-Virginia), a former CIA agent, tweeted from inside the barricaded House chamber: “This is what we see in failing countries. This is what leads to the death of democracy.”

At 3:30 p.m., a small squad of military police arrived at the Capitol, woefully inadequate reinforcements for the overwhelmed Capitol Police. Ten minutes later, the D.C. Council announced that the Defense Department had denied the mayor’s request to mobilize the local National Guard. While the crowd fumbled and fulminated, some serious people were evidently slowing the military’s response for just the few critical hours needed for events to cascade into something, anything, that could shake the constitutional order and slow the ratification of Joe Biden’s election.

In nearby Maryland, Republican Governor Larry Hogan had immediately mobilized his state’s National Guard for the short drive to the Capitol while frantically phoning Acting Secretary of Defense Christopher Miller, who repeatedly refused him permission to send in the troops. Inside the Pentagon, Lieutenant General Charles Flynn, the brother of the same Michael Flynn who had been pushing Trump to declare martial law, was participating in what CNN called those “key January 6th phone calls” that refused permission for the Guard’s mobilization.

Following a phone call from the mayor of Washington and its police chief pleading for help, Secretary of the Army Ryan McCarthy “ran down the hall” of the Pentagon to get authorization for the Guard’s mobilization. After a crucial delay of 90 minutes, he finally called the Maryland governor, outside the regular chain of command, to authorize the Maryland Guard’s dispatch. Those would indeed be the first troops to arrive at the Capitol and would play a critical role in restoring order.

At about 4:30 p.m., Trump finally tweeted: “These are the things and events that happen when a sacred landslide election victory is so unceremoniously and viciously stripped away from great patriots who have been badly & unfairly treated for so long. Go home in love & peace.”

Ten minutes later, at 4:40 p.m., hundreds of riot personnel from the D.C. police, the FBI, and the Department of Homeland Security arrived, along with the Maryland Guard, to reinforce the Capitol Police. Within an hour, the protesters had been pushed out of the building and the Capitol was declared secure.

Just five days later, Dr. Fiona Hill, a senior Russia expert on the National Security Council under Trump, reviewed these events and concluded that President Trump had staged a coup “in slow motion… to keep himself in power.”

History’s Lessons

Beyond all the critical details of who did what and when, there were deeper historical forces at play, suggesting that Donald Trump’s urge for a political coup that would return him to power may be far from over. For the past 100 years, empires in decline have been roiled by coup attempts that sometimes have overturned constitutional orders. As their military reverses accumulate, their privileged economic position erodes, and social tensions mount, a succession of societies in the grip of a traumatic loss of global power have suffered coups, successful or not, including Great Britain, France, Portugal, Spain, the Soviet Union, and now the United States.

Britain’s plot was a bit fantastical. Amid the painful, protracted dissolution of their empire, Conservative leaders plotted with top generals in 1968 to oust leftist Labour Prime Minister Harold Wilson by capturing Heathrow airport, seizing the BBC and Buckingham Palace, and putting Lord Mountbatten in power as acting prime minister. Britain’s parliamentary tradition simply proved too strong, however, and key principals in the plot quickly backed out.

In April 1974, while Portugal was fighting and losing three bitter anticolonial wars in Africa, a Lisbon radio station played the country’s entry in that year’s Eurovision Song Contest (“After the Farewell”) just minutes before midnight on an evening that had been agreed upon. It was the signal to the military and their supporters to overthrow the entrenched conservative government of that moment, a success which became known as the “Carnation Revolution.”

However, the parallels between January 6th and the fall of France’s Fourth Republic in the late 1950s are perhaps the most telling. After liberating Paris from Nazi occupation in August 1944, General Charles de Gaulle headed an interim government for 18 months. He then quit in a dispute with the left, launching him into a decade of political intrigue against the new Fourth Republic, whose liberal constitution he despised.

By the mid-1950s, France was reeling from its recent defeat in Indochina, while the struggle against Muslim revolutionaries in its Algerian colony in North Africa turned ever more brutal, marked as it was by scandals over the widespread French use of torture. Amid that crisis of empire, an anti-elite, anti-intellectual, antisemitic politician named Pierre Poujade launched a populist movement that sent 56 members to parliament in 1956, including Jean-Marie Le Pen, later founder of the far-right National Front.

Meanwhile, a cabal of politicians and military commanders plotted a coup to return General de Gaulle to power, thinking he alone could save Algeria for France. After an army junta seized control of Algiers, the capital of that colony, in May 1958, paratroopers stationed there were sent to capture the French island of Corsica and to prepare to seize Paris should the legislature fail to install de Gaulle as prime minister.

As the country trembled on the brink of a coup, de Gaulle made his dramatic entry into Paris where he accepted the National Assembly’s offer to form a government, conditional upon the approval of a presidential-style constitution for a Fifth Republic. But when de Gaulle subsequently accepted the inevitability of Algeria’s independence, four top generals launched an abortive coup against him and then formed what they called the Secret Army Organization, or OAS. It would carry out terror attacks over the next four years, with 12,000 victims, while staging three unsuccessful assassination attempts against de Gaulle before its militants were killed or captured.

The Coup of 2024?

Just as the Filipino colonels spent five years launching a succession of escalating coups and those French generals spent four years trying to overthrow their government, so Trump’s Republicans are working with ferocious determination in the run-up to the 2022 and 2024 elections to ensure that their next constitutional coup succeeds. Indeed, if you look back on events over the past year through the prism of such historical precedents, you can see all the components for a future political coup falling into place.

No matter how improbable, discredited, or bizarre those election fraud claims are, Republican loyalists persist in endless ballot audits in Arizona, Wisconsin, Pennsylvania, Georgia, and Texas. Their purpose is not really to find more votes for Trump in the 2020 election, but to maintain at least the present level of rage among the one-third of all Americans and more than half of all Republicans who believe that Joe Biden’s presidency is fraudulent.

Since the 2020 election coincided with the new census, Republicans have been working, reports Vox news, to “gerrymander themselves into control of the House of Representatives.” Simultaneously, Republican legislators in 19 states have passed 33 laws making it more difficult for certain of their residents to vote. Driven by the white nationalist “replacement theory” that immigrants and people of color are diluting the pool of “real American” voters, Trump and his Republican loyalists are fighting for “ballot integrity” on the principle that all non-white votes are inherently illegitimate. As Trump put it on the stump in 2016:

“I think this will be the last election that the Republicans have a chance of winning because you’re going to have people flowing across the border, you’re going to have illegal immigrants coming in… and they’re going to be able to vote and once that all happens you can forget it. You’re not going to have one Republican vote.”

In case all that electoral manipulation fails and Trump needs more muscle for a future political coup, right-wing fighters like the Proud Boys are still rumbling away at rallies in Oregon, California, and elsewhere across America. Just as the Philippine government made military rebels do a risible 30 push-ups for the capital crime of armed rebellion, so federal courts have generally been handing out the most modest of penalties to rioters who attempted nothing less than the overthrow of U.S. constitutional democracy last January 6th.

Among the 600 rioters arrested as of August, dozens have been allowed to plead guilty to misdemeanors and only three had been sentenced to jail time, leaving most cases languishing in pretrial motions. Already Republicans like Senator Ted Cruz have rallied to their defense, writing the U.S. attorney general to complain about an “unequal administration of justice” with “harsher treatment” for Capitol defendants than those arrested in Black Lives Matter protests.

So, in 2024, as the continuing erosion of America’s global power creates a crisis of confidence among ordinary Americans, expect Donald Trump to be back, not as the slightly outrageous candidate of 2016 or even as the former president eager to occupy the White House again, but as a militant demagogue with thundering racialist rhetoric, backed by a revanchist Republican Party ready, with absolute moral certainty, to bar voters from the polls, toss ballots out, and litigate any loss until hell freezes over.

And if all that fails, the muscle will be ready for another violent march on Washington. Be prepared, the America we know is worsening by the month.

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Features

All in the mind!

Published

21 hours ago

2025/05/12

Thilina Walpola

Brain

The Buddha, born as Prince Siddhartha, attained Enlightenment and Parinibbana all on a Vesak full-moon day, would have never anticipated that millions of followers of his doctrine would be celebrating this day, all over the world with festivities, over 2500 years later. Perhaps, what is happening in his name is not what he expected, indulging in festivities than following the path he showed for ultimate detachment. Perhaps, as an inevitable consequence of Buddha Dhamma’s transformation, by his followers, to a religion was the emergence of Buddhist art, culture, literature etc. Though this has, no doubt, enriched the lives of many, including non-Buddhists, with the displays of creativity at the highest level in these festivities, we should not forget the core message of the Buddha.

In the search for the reasons for the ever-pervading sense of dissatisfaction and the way to overcome it, the Buddha became the unsurpassed analyst of the human mind and thoughts, his concepts being validate by science, two and a half millennia later! Though Hans Berger, the inventor of the Electro Encephalogram (EEG), which records the electrical activity of the brain, is credited with the proposition that the brain is always busy, the Buddha not only stated that the mind is constantly bombarding us but also showed us how to control the mind. He also showed that the world around us was a creation of our mind and had included the mind also as a sense, on top of the five senses acknowledged by scientists. His concept that the mind is the sixth, the modifier sense is validated now, as it is shown that what see is what we want to see and what we hear is what we want to hear etc.

One of the biggest problems we have is endless thinking. As we wake up in the morning, we think of what happened yesterday or about the dreams we had the previous night. One can even go to the extent of saying that our thoughts are bombarding us even in sleep in the form of dreams. Though some of these thoughts are productive, in the main we torture ourselves thinking how we could have done better, even though it is an exercise in futility as what happened in the past cannot be undone. Our mind gets attached to some events in the past and have endless thoughts about these events which is of no use other than leading to a sense of depression. We then think of what we have to do tomorrow and anxiety creeps in. In this process we forget what is most important; the present! Scientists explain all this based on the Default mode network (DMN) in our brains, a set of connected parts of the brain which acts as a network which is responsible for remembering the past and imagining the future as well as thinking of others. Some scientists opine that it is the neurological basis for the ‘self.’

The Buddha pointed out that whatever misdeed happened in the past is like the pain one gets when hit with an arrow fired by someone else and that thinking again and again about it is like taking a second arrow and stabbing yourself with it. Though the pain inflicted by the first arow is natural, the second is our own making which prolongs the agony by torturing ourselves. What is needed is the avoidance of overthinking and being aware of the thoughts. Emptying the mind of the bombarding unnecessary thoughts increases awareness. Instead of being the driver of the car, we should attempt to be the passenger who is at liberty to enjoy the view and this could be achieved by mindfulness, a concept introduced by the Buddha. There is ever increasing scientific evidence, using dynamic MRI studies and PET scan studies, that mindfulness meditation reduces the activity of the DMN in our brains.

Mindfulness meditation is a way of slowing down thinking, concentrating on the present whilst getting rid of unnecessary baggage of thoughts of the past and the future. Emptying the mind of thoughts that act as a noise imparts a sense of clarity. It is not an easy task as we are attempting to go against what the brain is programmed to do via the DMN which functions to preserve the self. Unfortunately, mindfulness has become big business and the Buddha is not even credited for introducing the concept!

Thinking is an essential process in human development as well as human destruction, as exemplified by many wars raging around us at this moment. Right thinking is one of essentials in the Noble Eightfold Path, the Buddha laid for us for the purpose of achieving ultimate detachment. In addition to thinking correctly, we should get rid of harmful thoughts which leads to renouncing attachment, kindness and letting go of harmful intentions. On the basis of this a new modality of treatment has emerged for mental illnesses; cognitive behaviour therapy (CBT) which teaches patients that some thoughts are false and also to recognise which thoughts are useful and which are harmful, one of the most effective being mindfulness-based CBT.

It is important to know when to think and when not to and as the Buddha stated, “Think when it is useful but do not be a slave to thoughts, which is the basis of wisdom.”

Buddha also showed that by progressively suppressing thoughts one could reach a stage where awareness exists without thoughts and could go further where there is no awareness either, resulting in ultimate detachment. Once you reach this stage, thoughts are used only as and when necessary, without any attachment at all. Thus, the Buddha showed that all is in the mind including the way to control.

The inspiration to pen these Vesak thoughts came by watching an excellent video forwarded by Ven Teldeniyaye Amitha Thera of Nottingham Shanti Vihara, in the course of fortnightly Vipassana meditation sessions conducted via Zoom. My respectful thanks go to Ven Amitha Thera and I highly recommend “What Happens When You Stop Thinking? Buddhism’s answer” which is available on YouTube. The link is: (https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=tfTiA2_FtEw)

Happy Vesak!

By Dr Upul Wijayawardhana

Features

Dhammam Saranam

Published

21 hours ago

2025/05/12

Thilina Walpola

After a Dhamma session I attended, a participant inquired about the meaning of taking refuge in the Three Jewels (Triratna). A longtime meditation practitioner volunteered that it is a powerful mantra that helps to awaken the mind and go to the higher self. I have no idea what he meant by that, but a flood of emotions rushed my mind. Empathy for the believer, for one; but it occurred to me that I have not given much thought about it either, at least for quite a while.

The fact of the matter is that taking refuge in the ‘Three Jewels’ is our tradition. A tradition is just that, the transmission of customs or beliefs from generation to generation, with no questions asked. The term refuge is defined as a condition of being safe or sheltered from pursuit, danger, or trouble. What is the danger we are seeking shelter from? As a child, I had my own explanations: according to Buddhacharithaya we were taught, Buddha was omniscience and omnipotent, and there was no doubt that such powers could protect you from any danger.

A similar mystic power was attributed to Dhamma as well; leaving the radio on in full volume when the protective suttas were broadcast was assured to bring safety and health. Sangha, on the other hand, were there to bless us in good and tough times: moving into a new house, starting a new job, recuperating from an illness, or even after death to secure a better afterlife by transferring merits.

Such musing aside, I wonder if this tradition has been satisfactorily explained to us, not just as children but as adults as well. Especially, how Dhamma could be a refuge or what is expected when we recite Dhammam Saranam ever so often? It occurred to me that there is a gap in our education. An investigation of the literature reveals that I am not alone, scholars too have identified this shortcoming: our Buddhist education has failed.

I received good grades in Dhamma studies, and I memorised the entire book we used for our ordinary level exam; even then, how is my knowledge of Dhamma incomplete? As not many undertake Dhamma studies after leaving school, how and when such a gap in education could be filled? Well, it has been a problem with historical origins, and the collapse of socio-religious institutions of the country bear witness to this fact, the scholars reason. If we agree with the scholars’ notion that our Dhamma education is inadequate, it behooves us to explore what part of it was left out of our education.

Right after the Parinibbana, the Sangha recognised the need for preserving Dhamma, and they produced the system of memorisation and interpretation of it for the benefit of the followers. This is the system that Arahant Mahinda brought to Sri Lanka. When many members of the Sangha were decimated during Great Famine in the first century BCE, the question arose whether learning and preservation of Dhamma was more important than practice.

The advocates of learning and preservation prevailed. By the beginning of seventeenth century, the practice had completely disappeared, and Buddhism was reduced to a set of rituals acquired from other traditions in the hands of Ganinnanses. When venerable Welivita Saranankara thero (1698-1778) started the Buddhist revival, he had to learn Pali and reinterpret the Dhamma.

This process of reinterpretation continues to date. Venerable Sangha tries to do this for the benefit of laity, in person and using all other available media. Scholars analyse it and write volumes for the sake of knowledge, and devotees follow various meditation recipes hoping it will dawn on them and lead to spiritual salvation. Whatever path followed, there are several pitfalls that must be avoided for a successful outcome.

These are the drawbacks that our Buddhist education has failed to avoid: First, the goal of education must be identified, and Dhamma relevant for the goals of the followers must be taught. Second, the origin and purpose of Pali and Sinhala commentaries must be understood, and their relevance must be verified. Third, the bondage to tradition must be relaxed, otherwise, we get trapped in a vicious cycle. Lastly, Dhamma must be taught in terms that are accessible to modern society.

Returning to the main question, let us focus on Dhamma first: the Pali word Dhamma has many meanings, but here it refers to what the Buddha taught, which is represented by Tipitaka, the Theravadin’s Pali Canon. Then the question arises whether it is necessary to absorb the entire contents of the twelve-thousand-page Canon to grasp the meaning of Dhamma? Scholars are of the opinion that it is not necessary; they point out that the essence of Dhamma is captured in the first two sermons of the Buddha given at the Deer Park in Isipatana to the five ascetics.

Yes, everything one needs to know about Dhamma is captured in these two suttas (Nanamoli 1995). The remaining ten thousand plus Suttas are on various explanations of his teaching by Buddha to suit different audiences and occasions. They do not deviate from the contents of the first two, and that consistency is further proof of this summation. Some scholars go even further, they say that the simple verse uttered by Assaji in response to Upatissa’s question encapsulates the essence of the Dhamma:

Of those things that arise from a cause,

The Tathagata has told the cause,

And also, what their cessation is:

This is the doctrine of the Great Recluse.

Everything in twelve thousand pages of text condensed into a single verse! In modern parlance, this verse means “When A is, B is; A arising, B arises; When A is not, B is not; A ceasing, B ceases.” It can be further simplified to ‘Everything comes to existence because of causes and conditions. If we had to stop something from coming into existence, its causes and conditions must be eliminated.’ According to science, this is the law of cause and effect that applies to all phenomena in this universe. Upatissa was said to have become sotapanna, the first stage to liberation upon hearing this verse. Dhamma is also referred to as Hethu Pala Dahama for this reason.

In fact, this simple verse, known as the Paticcasamuppada Gatha, can be considered as the first principle from which the Dhamma in its entirety can be derived. If it governs everything, it must apply to the cycle of samsara as well, ending of which is the supreme goal. Upatissa was said to have sufficient training to unravel the complex message contained in this simple verse and see the Dhamma. Can we get a glimpse of this rationalising process?

If something comes to existence due to causes and effects, it must have a beginning, a progression, and an end. In science, it is called a process, an activity, but not a static object. Just like running, eating, or growing. It does not make sense, you may say; how can this paper on which this essay is printed, held in my hands, which I can feel, smell, and taste if I wish, not be a thing? That is the conventional way of thinking. The other way to look at it is to see its history.

The newsprint was produced from pulp that came from a pine, spruce, or a fir tree growing in the northern hemisphere. The trees grew from seeds, which came from pollen and so on. Every transformation involved in that process required some conditions: chemicals, heat, and water to make paper, and soil, rain, and cold climate for the pine trees to grow. Contemplating the causes and conditions of any phenomenon is not only a fun exercise for a science student, but also a way to meditate on impermanence by anyone interested. However, the way we relate to time gets in the way.

We humans have evolved accustomed to the day-night cycle. Compared to that twenty-four-hour cycle, some processes appear fast while some others appear unimaginably slow. As Einstein pointed out, time is a relative concept. A rock may appear to be a thing, but it is also a process: it is hardened magma that will eventually erode, wash into the ocean, move with tectonic plates, and end up as magma once more. In human time scale, that process is unfathomable, but in cosmic time scale it is a mere split second.

If the earth were twenty-four hours old, humans would have existed only for three seconds, for example. On the other extreme, some insects live only a few hours. For them, in their timescale, humans may appear to be eternal. It may be hard to wrap our heads around, but if we can leave time factor aside, everything becomes a process, which means they are in a state of constant change. This is even more so at atomic level. The scientific term for this state of continuous change is flux. That is what Dhamma teaches us, but were we told that in the class? Yes, in Pali it is called Anicca. Any phenomenon that arises this way is referred to as Sankhara, meaning put together or compounded (Dhammapada verse 277).

All natural phenomena like birth, aging, sickness, and death are such processes. While they are inevitable aspects of life, Dhamma pays more attention to mental processes, which also have the same properties. They too are in flux and devoid of substance. Another characteristic of processes is that as they depend on conditions and causes, they are not under the control of an agent, neither human nor superhuman. Justifiably, free will or conation becomes debatable under such conditions.

That means processes lack substance, purpose, or agency; they keep running based on the causes and conditions. There is no doer. This is defined as no self, which Pali describes as Anatta. According to Dhamma, the notion of a permanent self is merely a convention. However, there is a crucial distinction about mental processes; the human mind can be developed to have some control over mental processes, a key element of Dhamma.

by Geewananda Gunawardana, Ph.D.

(To be concluded)

Features

Championing Geckos, Conservation, and Cross-Disciplinary Research in Sri Lanka

Published

21 hours ago

2025/05/12

Thilina Walpola

Cyrtodactylus yakhuna (Demon ground gecko) Photo - I. Das

In the vibrant tapestry of Sri Lanka’s biodiversity, where rainforests pulse with life and endemic creatures lurk under every leaf, Dr. Nimal D. Rathnayake has carved a unique niche — one that combines the precision of a scientist with the strategic insight of a marketer.

A leading voice in herpetology and a respected academic in the fields of tourism and management, Dr. Rathnayake is a multidisciplinary force, passionately working to conserve reptiles — especially the often-overlooked geckos — while also reimagining how humans interact with nature.

A Childhood Rooted in Discovery

Dr. Rathnayake’s journey into the world of reptiles began in his youth. Growing up with an innate curiosity about the natural world, he joined the Youth Exploration Society of Sri Lanka (YES), a group dedicated to inspiring young people to explore and understand the environment. His early exposure to fieldwork through YES and later, the Amphibia and Reptile Research Organization of Sri Lanka (ARROS), laid the foundation for a lifelong engagement with herpetology.

ARROS, a grassroots organisation with a strong emphasis on field-based research and conservation, gave Dr. Rathnayake the platform to pursue his fascination with amphibians and reptiles more seriously. It was here that he honed his skills in species identification, ecological monitoring, and data collection — skills that would become essential to his later academic pursuits.

Nimal D. Rathnayake

The Silent Stars: Geckos of Sri Lanka

While Sri Lanka is renowned for its charismatic wildlife — elephants, leopards, and blue whales — Dr. Rathnayake has dedicated much of his scientific career to one of the island’s most understated yet ecologically important creatures: geckos.

Sri Lanka is home to more than 50 species of geckos, many of them endemic and highly localised. These small, nocturnal reptiles play crucial roles in the ecosystem as insect predators and as prey for larger animals. Despite their importance, geckos are often ignored in mainstream conservation efforts.

Dr. Rathnayake’s research on geckos has helped shift that narrative. Through detailed ecological studies, he has contributed to understanding their behaviour, habitat preferences, and conservation status. His fieldwork has included both rainforest-dwelling species such as the Cnemaspis geckos — which cling to the moist boulders of the wet zone — and dry-zone species like the agile Hemidactylus that thrive in arid, rocky landscapes.

Much of his work has highlighted the vulnerability of geckos to habitat fragmentation and deforestation. Many species have extremely limited ranges, making them especially sensitive to environmental change. Dr. Rathnayake advocates for the inclusion of microhabitats — such as rocky outcrops and forest understory — in conservation plans, which are often overlooked in broader biodiversity strategies.

A Scholar of many languages: Science, Marketing, and Management

Dr. Rathnayake’s academic career is as diverse as the ecosystems he studies. With over 25 published papers and several books, he has explored topics that span from ecological fieldwork to the intricacies of tourism marketing and destination management. His dual expertise in science and business places him in a unique position to craft interdisciplinary solutions to environmental problems.

One of his key areas of focus is ecotourism — a sector with tremendous potential in biodiversity-rich Sri Lanka. Drawing from his research in marketing and management, Dr. Rathnayake emphasises the importance of balancing tourism growth with environmental responsibility. He is a vocal advocate for wildlife-based tourism models that prioritise education, ethical practices, and community involvement.

His work often draws on field data from herpetological studies — such as gecko population dynamics or habitat assessments — to inform tourism planning. For instance, understanding the specific conditions required by a rare Cnemaspis species can help guide decisions about where to place hiking trails or visitor lodges, minimising disruption to fragile habitats.

Image of the large gecko om Tharulenagala Rock Cave

Building Bridges Between Academia and Conservation

One of Dr. Rathnayake’s most valuable contributions lies in his ability to bridge academic research with practical, on-the-ground impact. His collaborations with local communities, conservation NGOs, and tourism authorities have helped translate science into policy and practice.

He has also been a dedicated mentor to young scientists, guiding students and early-career researchers through fieldwork, data analysis, and publication. His roots in YES and ARROS continue to inform this commitment to youth engagement. For Dr. Rathnayake, fostering a love for science in young people is not just a passion — it’s a strategy for ensuring long-term conservation.

His outreach also extends beyond academia. He frequently speaks at public forums, contributes to media features, and participates in educational programmes aimed at demystifying reptiles. In a culture where snakes and lizards are often feared or misunderstood, his efforts to raise awareness are a crucial part of building public support for conservation.

Sri Lanka’s biodiversity faces increasing pressure from urbanisation, agriculture, climate change, and illegal wildlife trade. Dr. Rathnayake warns that without strategic, science-informed planning, many of the country’s lesser-known species — including endemic geckos — could disappear before the public even knows they exist.

He emphasises that conservation can no longer exist in isolation. “We must think across disciplines — biology, economics, policy, education — if we are to create sustainable models for both nature and people,” he often says.

His vision includes scaling up community-based ecotourism, promoting habitat restoration projects that include gecko microhabitats, and advocating for stronger legal protections for reptiles. Through his research and advocacy, Dr. Rathnayake is working to ensure that conservation in Sri Lanka evolves with the times — grounded in rigorous science, yet responsive to social and economic realities.

In the world of conservation science, specialisation is often the norm. Yet, Dr. Rathnayake has forged a different path — one that values integration over isolation, and collaboration over competition. From the quiet movements of a forest gecko to the complex dynamics of an eco-tourism, he navigates it all with depth and clarity.

As he continues his work, Dr. Rathnayake remains a strong voice in both national and international discussions on biodiversity. His story is a reminder that impactful science isn’t confined to labs or lecture halls. Sometimes, it begins with a child watching a lizard on a tree trunk — and grows into a lifetime of discovery, mentorship, and conservation.

By Ifham Nizam