Features

Sugathapala senarath Yapa: The one who went away

Published

4 years ago

2022/08/26

By Uditha Devapriya
Archive images courtesy of Gordon de Silva

In 2016 Torana Video Movies released Hanthane Kathawa. One of the last Sinhala films to depict university students in a romantic light, Hanthane Kathawa (1969) marked the debut of the man who became the Sinhala cinema’s most popular star, Vijaya Kumaratunga. It was also the last in a series of films which revolved around the theme of unrequited love, the others including Dahasak Sithuvili, Romeo Juliet Kathawak, Bakmaha Deege, and arguably the best of them all, Golu Hadawatha. Though classical in their conception, these works are important, in that they heralded both the end of an era in the Sinhalese cinema and marked the entry of those who would play a major role in the new cinema.

Probably no other film epitomised this shift than did Hanthane Kathawa. Kumaratunga would, of course, figure prominently in the new Sinhala cinema. Also making their debuts alongside him were the likes of Amarasiri Kalansooriya and Daya Tennakoon. Tennakoon and Dharmasena Pathiraja, then studying at the Peradeniya University, where the story is set, made a significant contribution to the mood and the tenor of the film. Though very few critics have noted this aspect to the film, Pathiraja’s repertoire of actors – who he would use again and again – included those who made their entry in Hanthane Kathawa. In that regard, the latter marked an interregnum between two historical eras.

On its own, Hanthane Kathawa stands out rather well. The acting is convincing – perhaps because many of the cast members were real-life university students – and the music, by Premasiri Khemadasa, who for the first and last time in his career worked with Mahagama Sekara, figures in among the best he composed for any film. It marked the last time Tony Ranasinghe played the role of a sympathetic everyman: practically every role he got in the 1970s were as hardened, cynical protagonists or antagonists. It also signalled the return of Swarna Mallawarachchi, who would soon leave Sri Lanka. As for the story, it is captivating, if not simple, revolving around a theme one can identify with at once. For me, it is one of the few Sinhala films that remain as fresh today as it was at the time of its release.

More than anything, the film reveals the eclecticism of its director. There are references to other films and works of art which one can easily miss. Its theme – a contest between two completely different teenagers over a woman – borrows from two somewhat interrelated stories: the bandit’s version of events in Kurosawa’s Rashomon, and the last few sequences in Sarachchandra’s Maname. To this one can add another reference: Roman Polanski’s Knife in the Water. Neither Rashomon nor Knife in the Water was playing at mainstream halls in Sri Lanka at the time; these were art-house works, screened at places like the British Council and the American Center. That the director had absorbed these influences obviously tells us that he was an avid cinephile eager to come up with a different work of art.

And yet, very little has been written about the director, Sugathapala Senarath Yapa. This may be because Yapa never directed a feature film again. He had his reasons for not doing so. The critical fraternity, long wooed over by what directors like Lester James Peries were doing in the Sinhala cinema, were beginning to turn and rebel against them. Like the Cahiers du Cinema critics in France, they were not disposed towards directors they associated with classical films: what they called “le cinéma de papa”, or “daddy’s cinema.” At the screening of Dharmasena Pathiraja’s Ahas Gawwa, a group of critics distributed pamphlets directed at, and against, Peries: following their French counterparts, they termed the latter’s conception of the cinema “Apochchige Cinemawa.” Yapa became one of their targets.

Sugathapala Senarath Yapa was born in Akuressa in 1935. Both his parents died when he was young. He would be brought up by his grandmother, a “generous woman” as he remembered her for me. His childhood, he recalled, had been rather boisterous, amounting to a series of misadventures which frequently landed him in trouble. These misadventures reached their peak when together with a friend of his called Abeywickrama, Yapa spread a rumour around his first school, Rakvana Maha Vidyalaya, that the buns served to children during the interval contained worms. The outcry this provoked and the discovery of the two culprits who had spread the rumour led to Senarath Yapa being expelled. Out of one school, he managed to get into another, Pelmadulla Central College some miles away.

Pelmadulla Central had been headed by a stern but well-meaning principal, A. V. Gunapala. A member of the Hela Havula, Gunapala had just one message for young Yapa: stick to your studies, don’t indulge in antics. Heeding Gunapala’s message, Yapa managed to get through his SSC Preparatory Exams. However, the school he had applied for to do his SSC Exams, St Anthony’s College, rejected him. The Rector at St Anthony’s, “one Father Moses”, told him to wait for another year. “I didn’t want to wait that long. I would have wasted time getting into all kinds of mischief and into fights with boys my age.” Having abandoned his hopes for a career in the civil service, Yapa ultimately decided to let go of his studies.

At the time cinema halls were limited to the cities. Villages like Akuressa and Rakvana, on the other hand, had to do with “moving theatres”, which were essentially makeshift camps. These would screen the popular attractions of the day: Bollywood romances and Hollywood thrillers. Yapa made his way to these theatres: “I got to watch the entire Zorro series there.” His first job was as a movie title painter for one of the many touring theatres. Having seen his work, the owner of the hall, the MP Reggie Perera, asked him to pay visit. When he met Yapa, Perera offered him a better job: “as a kind of advertiser for the company.” This would be followed by another more lucrative job: as a counter clerk at a touring cinema owned by a distant cousin, “the comedian L. M. Perera.” It was while at this job that Senarath Yapa did his clerical exams, passed them, and began work at the Labour Department.

Offering a more stable and lucrative career, the Labour Department encouraged Yapa to get more fully and actively involved in the arts, starting off with a series of radio drama that included a translation of Tagore’s Gitanjali. His stint at the radio service a few years later got him to meet Mahagama Sekara. The radio service also helped Yapa land a role in a newly established drama troupe. Headed by G. D. L. Perera, the troupe was called Kala Pela. The role was not in a play as Yapa had expected, but in a film: Perera’s debut, the searing and beautifully poignant Sama, which also marked the debuts of Denawaka Hamine and Leonie Kothalawala. Sama would win a number of awards, locally and internationally.

Senarath Yapa wound up as the Secretary and Treasurer of Kala Pela. Later he left the group, determined to carve his own path. In his first few years at the Labour Department, he had made it a habit to visit the British Council, to watch films and read books about the cinema, to brush up his knowledge of Western culture. “I wanted to get away from what I had been watching and savouring at the touring theatres.” He could not have picked on a better time and era to transition from the one to the other: the 1950s, when he was at the prime of his youth, was when exciting new strides were being made in the Japanese, Indian, and even Sri Lankan cinema, with Satyajit Ray and Akira Kurosawa taking the lead.

Recalling the films he saw and the books he read, Yapa had this to tell me”

“What I understood about the cinema, from what I watched and came across back then, was that art is not always about action. A good film is built not just on what characters say and do, but what they hide from other characters. Two films that inspired me in this regard were Vittoria de Sica’s Bicycle Thieves and Kurosawa’s Rashomon. Bicycle Thieves is about a father who can’t bear to tell his son that he is trying to steal a bicycle for him. Rashomon is about a group of people who have got involved with a murder, who can’t come out and tell us what really happened. Not even the dead Samurai can speak the truth.”

Interview with Sugathapala Senarath Yapa, December 21, 2015

Good art, in other words, revealed as much as it concealed, and in the movies and plays he saw, the characters, even the heroes, hid their intentions from one another. This aspect surfaced more sharply in the 1960s, with the arrival of a new generation of directors in the West, particularly in Europe. Two films in particular epitomised this trend: Antonioni’s Blow-Up and Roman Polanski’s Knife in the Water. Having seen Knife in the Water, Sugathapala Senarath Yapa finally decided to make his own film. In it he combined three stories: not just Polanski’s and Kurosawa’s films, but also Sarachchandra’s Maname.

Because the story revolved around a woman whose intentions and desires are never clear, Yapa asked the lead actress, Swarna Mallawarachchi, “to watch My Fair Lady and model herself on Audrey Hepburn’s performance.” There is a point in the story, in fact, where the male characters jokily taunt Mallawarchchi for being a “fair lady.” What this showed clearly was a director who wanted everything to be pitch-perfect, a director who wanted his work to reflect his own love for the cinema. In this Yapa differed very little from Lester James and Sumitra Peries, except probably in the circumstances from which he hailed: unlike the latter, he came from an altogether less affluent and privileged background.

Perhaps, it was these circumstances that, tragically, prevented him from moving into what could have been a promising career. “I was soon among the directors attacked by critics who felt their conception of the cinema was the only one that mattered.” While the two Perieses could bear the brunt of these attacks, Yapa found himself increasingly side-lined and ostracised, to a point where he had to limit himself to the Government Film Unit. At the GFU, he revealed his talents once again: his debt documentary (really a docudrama), Minisa saha Kaputa, won the Silver Peacock at the New Delhi Film Festival. Like Peter Bogdanovich and William Friedkin, however, Senarath Yapa was pushed to making lesser works: his next two films, Pembara Madu and the much better Induta Mal Mitak, are deeply commercialist in their outlook. At the GFU, meanwhile, he directed 28 documentaries.

Despite his less than memorable encounter with radical left-wing film critics and directors, Yapa holds those who demand a greater and superior conception of the cinema in high regard. “Today, films have become an extension of fantasies, of dreams,” he told me, as we wrapped up our interview. This may seem like an unfair judgement – aren’t all films, at the end of the day, extensions of dreams? – yet viewed from a certain angle, there is really no denying that the commercial cinema, while sustaining the industry, has fallen far short of the production and aesthetic values which epitomise it in countries like India. I sense some bitterness in Yapa’s recollections of the past, but this is only to be expected: no one who has seen Hanthane Kathawa can fail to be entranced by its romantic sweep. This is a movie that should have heralded a brilliant career. That it did not is utterly saddening.

The writer is an international relations analyst, researcher, and columnist who can be reached at udakdev1@gmail.com

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Features

Is power devolution under JVP-NPP a political daydream?

Published

10 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

10 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

10 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. ✍️