Pure Mind, Peaceful Society

There’s something special about places of worship.

Here I was, late this morning and among the throng of worshippers at the Buddhist Maha Vihara (the Buddhist temple complex in Brickfields) to celebrate Wesak day, patiently waiting in line to be sprinkled with “blessed” water by the monks. To my left other lines were forming, this time for entering that part of the temple complex where prayers are carried out. All the people there, young and old, were equally patient, standing in line and without any jostling.

It was as if everyone was at peace with one another and with the surroundings, this despite the big crowd (it was multiracial – Chinese and Sri Lankans devotees and a few of other races, Caucasian observers, et al), the mid-day heat, and the smoke from burning incense that keeps getting into one’s eyes.

If it has been at some other place and some other time, the crowd and the heat, together, would have been a potent brew for losing tempers and whatever comes after. That is why I say that places of worship are special.

Perhaps, its because when we visit these holy places we make a conscious attempt to clear our mind of “impurities” –. hatred, greed, anger, jealousy, malice, ill will, fear, to name some. The Venerable Dr. K. Sri Dhammananda, Chief High Priest of Malaysia and Singapore, in his Wesak day message in Maha Vihara News said, “When these (impurities) are not actively present in the mind, then we regard the brightness that temporarily appears in the mind as happiness”.

And so it was appropriate that the theme chosen for this year’s Wesak day celebration is – “Pure Mind, Peaceful Society”. As individuals, it is within our capability, even if it is only for one day out of 365 days (like my case), to look inward within our self and conquer all that is not right in our thoughts and feelings.

But in the larger context of the world we live in, however, “purification” of minds is no easy task.

How do you tell the likes of those responsible for the Holocausts, the Cambodian “Killing Fields”, the ethnic cleansing in the Balkans and Rwanda and the assassinations in the West Bank and Gaza that they should not have so much hatred for their fellow beings? How do you tell the Neocons not to make war in the name of liberation when it is all about greed (read oil)? And how do you tell the people whose land had been taken, the freedom fighters and terrorists, too, not to suicide bomb but contain their anger?

Thinking of all this, one can only despair.