A New Book On Negativity & Nihilism In Sri Lankan Consciousness

By Basil Fernando –September 7, 2016

Basil Fernando

There is something deeply negative and nihilist imbedded into the Sri Lanka consciousness. By ‘Sri Lankan consciousness’ I mean the consciousness of all Sri Lankans, whether they are from the majority Sinhala community or the Tamil or other minority communities. What is common to all is a deep negativity inherited from the far distant past.

In my recent book on Asoka’s policy of Dhamma and democratic values, I trace this negativity to the influence of an Indian philosopher named Adi Shankara, who lived around the 8th Century AD and whose influence on India, pulling it in the same direction of nihilism and negativity, is enormous. Following several others, I have tried to show how this philosophy was brought into Sri Lanka by several Indian invasions in the 8th Century and thereafter, and how it became the predominant philosophical mold in the country, and how it has molded generations upon generations of Sri Lankans.

Many books have been written on Adi Shankara’s philosophy and the writings are from two extremely different points of view: One is from those who religiously venerate him, and the other is from those who deeply criticize him, blaming him for everything negative that has happened in India since the 8th Century, particularly the revival of the caste system, which had been subdued to a great extent by the Buddhist and Jainist movements from around the 3rd Century BC. Those philosophies were replaced with a new philosophy of nihilism, regarding the whole world as an illusion. Adi Shankara’s philosophy was opposed to the dualistic philosophies of previous centuries of Indian philosophy, which regarded the existence of God and the existence of the external world as two separate things. Adi Shankara’s philosophy of non-dualism meant that nothing other than God existed, and that everything else was but an illusion.

What is important is the moral influence of this philosophy. Since nothing exists and exists and everything is an illusion, there was no basis for anything called high ideals or any justification for morality. Morality, too, was an imaginary creation, which was only created in the same way other illusions are created. The removal of the idea of there being a material basis for morality meant that there was no justification or need for morality at all. There is, however, some contradiction in his philosophy: later, it attempted to give advice on how to live and things like that, while at the same time contradicting the very need for doing any of these things, because everything was an illusion, including morality itself.

This philosophy became popular at the time because it fulfilled an objective need of very powerful sectors of society, which had suffered greatly due to the spread of philosophies like Buddhism and Jainism. What was worse for them was that Emperor Asoka had taken Buddhist philosophy into his own ideas of nation builidng and regarded the precepts of Buddhism as a foundation for a just society. His idea of developing social responsibility was on the basis of these moral principles. He is regarded as one of the early rulers who understood the place of morals, as well as the place of social responsibility, as a necessary foundation of social order. His thinking was far advanced for his time, and it in fact encompasses many of the modern developments relating to human rights, ecology and environmental sciences, and the respect for the rights of not only human beings, but also other animals and all living things. With royal patronage, these ideas took root in many parts of India, and as they took root, the influence of Brahminism suffered deep setbacks. Mountains of historical evidence exist showing how Brahminism came to have a much lower place than it had enjoyed in the long period before, wherein Brahmins had been the dominant caste and had enjoyed privileges accordingly.

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