p. 150

the minds of the people." His comments reflect his criticism of SBN and its involvement in the ethnic conflict. He also criticizes the way that average Buddhists practice the rituals in hopes of being reborn in the time of the next Buddha, Maitreya, to seek liberation. They could find the truth now, he says, if they would look inside the mind instead of looking outside with these pujas. He lays the blame for the lack of guidance squarely at the door of the Sangha. The Buddha, he says, taught a clear path, but the Sangha has distorted it and led the people astray. The Sangha, for example, is responsible for the recent Sinhala translation of the Tripitaka which ought to have made the dhamma available to the people. Instead, however, the Sinhala translation uses a form of literary Sinhala that is more complex than the original Pali and is inaccessible to the average person. He also blames the Sangha for promoting racial tensions that keep the fires of war burning in Sri Lanka and prevent a peaceful resolution of the ethnic conflict.

　　 Another criticism of the Sangha and contemporary Buddhism stems from his interest in social engagement. The temples, he says, waste huge sums of money in the performance of elaborate pujas "that do no good." He pointed out that the Temple of the Tooth, the chief temple in the country, spends over ten thousand rupees per day on pujas. About this he says flatly, "This is not Buddhism." His society could build simple housing for poor people for the same ten thousand rupees. This kind of social service is central to his vision of what the dhamma requires. He cited the Buddha's commissioning of his first disciples and his sending them out for the "welfare of the people." His society has sought to help all people, Sinhalese, Tamils, and Muslims by building houses and providing food and clothing for them. In his view the dhamma has no ethnic boundaries for all are human beings and can improve their minds. The society has also engaged in projects to preserve the environment as well as human beings. Guru C says that when one knows the dhamma one will want to serve others; social service is consistent with the dhamma.

Summary:
　　 One hears in these teachings various threads, the Orientalist trust in the texts, the revival's belief in a pragmatic path of meditation for laity, the global influences of Krishnamurti and the socially engaged Buddhist ideals. Guru C and his followers probably regard themselves as reformers who seek to recover the central meaning of the dhamma. Guru C has written that "Ancient Buddhism is a superior educational system. Modern Buddhism is a chain of offerings that lead nowhere." His society members follow his teachings as a way to cope with their daily lives and also to address the larger problems around them. But in following this path they may be seen to be moving toward a kind of sectarian status within Buddhism. Their own guru clearly has more authority for them than the Sangha and so they prefer to study his dhamma rather than the canonical dhamma of the Sangha.

　　 We shall see that this represents a mild step toward sectarianism and that more dramatic steps are being taken by other gurus.

p. 151

Guru D
　　 The fourth guru in our study provides a good example of both the way that the meditation movement has evolved and the kind of flux that exists in contemporary Buddhism for/by the laity. Guru D was in the first generation of laymen who learned meditation at the Kanduboda meditation center. For many years he practiced and taught meditation from his home in a suburb of Colombo; now he has become a monk, although he has few ties to the orthodox sangha or to orthodox practice. He is the leader of his own meditation center and has a large following. In his movement we see how a strong emphasis on individualism leads toward sectarianism.

1. The first feature to note about this movement is the power and authority of the guru [role] in contemporary Sri Lanka. Guru D exemplifies this role and its significance in the current context. Guru D is an English-educated man who worked most of his life in a government position in Colombo. Becoming interested in meditation after the Burmese inspired revival of it in the 1950s, he went to the vipassana center at Kanduboda and practiced under the teachers there. After practicing meditation for some time, he became for many years a lay teacher of meditation in Colombo. Then he retired from his job and took ordination as a monk. Meditation has been his primary concern from the time he began so that even though he was ordained, he never was a part of "contemporary Buddhist orthodoxy," a fact that comes out in his teachings and guidelines for his followers. For example, when I asked Guru D who his teachers had been, he said that his only teacher was the Buddha, thereby declining to acknowledge any of his teachers in the contemporary Sangha.

　　 After taking ordination he founded his meditation center in the hill country of the island in the early 1990s. At this center, Guru D has absolute authority and his followers regard him as an arahant. One suspects that this may be the reason that he became ordained -- he too may have believed that he had become an arahant and knew the Theravada teaching that a person could not remain a layman if he attained nirvana, or at least he wished to convey this image. Perhaps it is just his personality, but compared to the gurus that we have considered thus far, Guru D has a much more commanding and dominating manner that carries the guru role to a higher level. Whenever any questions come up at his center his followers refer them to "the priest." He takes full responsibility for both the teachings and the organizational details at his center. Although he has a number of meditation teachers under him at the center, there is no doubt about where the authority lies. Once, for example, when I was interviewing one of his Bhikkhuni teachers, some of his other followers interrupted our session twice to ask if "the priest" had given permission for the interview. Everyone in his center defers to the authority of this guru; indeed there seems to be a kind of fear of the guru and a desire to please him. In keeping with his guru status, his teaching style is simple and authoritative. On Poya days about one thousand of his followers come to the center to hear him preach on the dhamma and to be instructed in meditation. Guru D seems to accept and enjoy his status as a guru, for he says, "It is a great thing that I can lead people to salvation."