“I Saw a Peach Tree in Full Bloom”: Transformative Spirituality and Mission in an Interreligious Context

The crisis in Sri Lanka, which is rooted in the politics of ethnicity and reached a new stage in May 2009 when the government forces militarily defeated the Tamil Tiger rebels, forms the backdrop to this article. Transformative spirituality in this context is demonstrated in the strong bond of friendship between the author, a Sri Lankan Sinhalese, and a colleague who is a Sri Lankan Tamil. The article draws upon four principles of transformative spirituality in the interreligious context articulated by Sri Lankan Jesuit priest Aloysius Pieris. First, it must take the context seriously, which, in the Sri Lankan context means its grinding poverty and its rich religious diversity, to which must now be added the devastating war that has just concluded. Second, robust interreligious dialogue requires that Christians look beyond typologies such as exclusivism, inclusivism and pluralism, and engage other religious traditions on their own terms. Third, unless religions engage with the other core‐to‐core, rather than engage the kernel of Christianity with the husk of Buddhism, there cannot be genuine transformative spirituality. Fourth, transformative spirituality is only possible when the core of Christianity meets the core of Buddhism in the praxis of liberation. Acknowledging that dialogue never engages only the participants' religious identity, but engages the other as a whole person with multiple identities, the article applies Pieris' interreligious dialogue principles to conflictual ethnic relations seeking to provide dialogue as a model for other types of reconciliation.     

Book Review

This paper uses an ethnographic study of the Ghost Festival rite performed by a Sri Lankan Theravāda temple in Taipei to illustrate the relationship between religious syncretism and missionary work. It explains how this Chinese ritual has been transformed in a Theravāda setting and made acceptable to Theravāda sentiment, and how it is adopted to advance the agenda of Theravāda missionary. Ghost Festival has had a long history in the Chinese culture and is an important ritual in Chinese Buddhism. However, the Ghost Festival does not exist in Theravāda tradition. The Theravādization of Ghost Festival thus offers interesting insight into the increasing exchange among Buddhists across different traditions in Asia.     

Counselling in areas of armed conflict: the case of Jaffna, Sri Lanka

In this article counselling is discussed in relation to the traditional resources of the Tamil community for dealing with psycho-social and mental health problems. It describes some of the problems of clients affected by the armed conflict, the approaches of the local counsellors and mental health professionals, and the training offered to future Sri Lankan counsellors who want to work with people affected by the armed conflict on the island.     

Identity and Immigrant Stereotypes: A Study Based on the Ego-Ecological Approach

Based on the ego-ecological approach, which views identity as deeply interconnected with the social environment via group memberships, this study reconstructed the psychosocial identity of a group of Sri Lankan immigrants who settled in Naples, Italy, with the aim of detecting resonances between their self-representations and the stereotypes circulating in the receiving society. Fifty-one Sri Lankan immigrants completed a shortened version of the Multistage Investigator of Social Identity (MISI) with the following two stimulus groups: “Sri Lankans” (i.e., ethnocultural identity) and “immigrants.” Analyses revealed an implication of the self in both groups (i.e., Sri Lankans and immigrants), with the represented immigrant self more negatively connoted than the ethnocultural self. The contents of the self-representations showed resonances with both the stereotypes associated with immigrants in Italian society and the specific stereotype associated with the Sri Lankan community, thereby empirically confirming that in the immigrant experience identity feels the effect of the attitudes of the receiving context.     

Beliefs about the cause,manifestation, and cure of schizophrenia: A cross-cultural comparison

This study set out to compare British and Sri Lankan young people's (students) beliefs concerning the causes, manifestations, and cures of schizophrenia. One hundred and seventy-five British and Sri Lankan participants completed the three-part questionnaire in their mother tongue. It was hypothesized that the Sri Lankans would have more negative and uninformed attitudes and beliefs about schizophrenia than the British. It was also hypothesized that the Sri Lankans would favour superstitious, family, and sociological causes to explain the development of schizophrenia, while the British would favour more biological explanations. These two hypotheses were confirmed after factor-analysing the internal structure of the three sections of the questionnaire. Even well-educated young people remain ignorant about one of the most challenging mental illnesses.     

Buddhist Meditation and the British Colonial Gaze in Nineteenth-Century Sri Lanka

ABSTRACT

This paper argues that the multiple orientalist expressions that flowed from British pens in nineteenth century Sri Lanka are of use to the scholar of Buddhism, in that they can not only shed light on the growth of Buddhist modernism and the use of the term ‘meditation’ within it, but also on Sri Lankan Buddhist practice on the ground. It first surveys the preconceptions of the British about the concept of ‘meditation’. It then examines the writings of a representative selection of scholar civil servants and Christian missionaries who were resident in Sri Lanka within the century. This data reveal that a vibrant culture of Buddhist devotion and preaching existed throughout the century, together, among the laity, with the practice of ‘meditation’ on objects related to insight into reality. Additionally, it suggests that the jhānas, although hard for westerners to understand, were an important part of Buddhist self-understanding. The paper, therefore, argues that the priority given to vipassanā as the essence of meditation within Buddhist Modernism is a reduction of the diversity within traditional practice and a distortion of the traditionally recognised interrelationship between the jhānas and other forms of mental culture.     

Migrants straddling the “here” and “there”: Explorations of habitus and hybrid identities among Sri Lankan migrants in New Zealand

Migrant settlement is of particular interest to the field of psychology due to a notable increase in the movement of people over the past few decades. This article explores the ways in which Sri Lankan migrants in New Zealand establish a sense of continuity between the host nation and country of origin. The theoretical framework for this research is informed by elements of ethnographic and indigenous research. We provide a rich understanding of migrant experiences that foregrounds the agency and resilience of migrants, and acknowledges the complexities of the notion of identity and migrant settlement. We explore complex, fluid, and hybrid cultural identities as experienced by Sri Lankan migrants and their negotiations of space and place, material practices, and objects of significance, such as an educational institution, antique dinnerware, and furniture with colonial origins. The present research thereby, argues for the need to acknowledge both the historical and current contexts that shape migrants' sense of habitus and cultural identities.     

The uninheritable state and the post-public sphere

In The Politics of Postsecular Religion (2008), Ananda Abeysekara contends that justice has to be predicated on the forgetting of systems of commensuration and calculation for an im-possibility – i.e., an ethical excess – that cannot be circumscribed by repeatable and calculable law. This ethical excess defines a space of politics that would similarly abandon the legacies of codified public memory. However, many of the elements that he identifies with uninheriting and active forgetting coincide with the ‘post-public’ sphere of Sri Lankan political culture, which undermines Habermasian assumptions of a rational and transparent public sphere. The structural forgetfulness that Abeysekara identifies with justice can be discerned in the artifacts and artifices of the Sri Lankan securitized state that is an unjust apparatus of extra-legal violence, moral indifference and orchestrated deniability.     

Validity of the Maslach Burnout Inventory – Human Services Survey among Sri Lankan Nursing Officers

This study assessed the validity and reliability of Maslach Burnout Inventory-Human Services Survey (MBI-HSS) among Sri Lankan nursing officers. Although the factorial structure and reliability of the MBI-HSS is established across different countries and cultures there is minimal research on burnout or its measurement instruments in South Asian settings. The pre-tested Sinhala version of MBI-HSS was administered to a simple random sample of 191 nursing officers employed in a tertiary care hospital in Colombo. Confirmatory factor analysis was used to assess the construct validity of the hypothesized three-factor (emotional exhaustion, depersonalization and reduced personal accomplishment) structure. A three-factor model fitted the data better than a one-factor or a two-factor model. Two items (4 and 13) were identified as having poor psychometric properties. Deletion of Item 4 resulted in the best fitting model. A modified version of the Sinhala MBI-HSS without item 4 seems to be a highly suitable instrument to assess burnout among Sri Lankan nursing officers.     

Teaching Council in Sri Lanka: A Post Disaster, Culturally Sensitive and Spiritual Model of Group Process

In response to the December 26, 2004 tsunami in Southeast Asia, a method of treating trauma with group therapy, called Council, was introduced to Sri Lankan para-professionals working for Sarvodaya, a local non-governmental organization, by American psychotherapists associated with Heart Circle Sangha, a Zen Buddhist temple in New Jersey. Working together, Americans and Sri Lankans incorporated meditation, mindfulness and culturally congruent spiritual ritual that made the group process acceptable and healing to the survivors who were Buddhist, Muslim, Hindu and Christian.     

Girls' identity formation in the changing social structure of Sri Lanka.

Adolescent girls (N = 118) from diverse social backgrounds in Sri Lanka described their views of womanhood. Qualities of the ideal woman considered most important were kindness and honesty, liking children, intelligence, and having a good job. Although the traditional role of the Sri Lankan woman is that of homemaker, most girls in the study (55%) drew the ideal woman working outside the home, often as a teacher or a doctor. Nevertheless, adolescent girls emphasized traditional qualities of the woman at both work and home as self-sacrificing and serving others.     

L2 Reading Motivation Among Sri Lankan University Students

This study investigated the extent of the motivational processes that facilitated the text comprehension among 406 Sri Lankan university students in Sri Lanka. Students’ L2 text comprehension and reading motivation were assessed using a reading comprehension test and a reading motivation and attitude questionnaire. The Principal Componential Analysis identified four constructs of intrinsic motivation and four constructs of extrinsic motivation. The relationship between these constructs and text comprehension was examined using the Confirmatory Factor Analysis. The final model fitted the data well, indicating that only intrinsic motivational constructs positively contributed to text comprehension when associated with extrinsic motivation.     

Buddhism and Counselling

The relevance of the principles and practices of Buddhism to the field of counselling is discussed. Buddhist techniques have already been used by the helping professions in many settings (e.g. Japan, Sri Lanka). The extension of their use to a wider range of settings, and to a wider group of clients, is both feasible and desirable. In addition to the obvious relevance of Buddhist techniques to clients who have a Buddhist background, it is argued that they have a wider applicability. As Buddhism espouses the notion of a productive and healthy lay life, it offers ways not only of dealing with problems and difficulties, but also of improving psychological well-being in general. Examples are cited of relevant Buddhist techniques and their application. It is argued that, once systematically evaluated, many of these could profitably be incorporated into the repertoire of techniques used in present-day counselling and therapy.     

Ontological deflationism in Madhyamaka

Between the years 1956 and 1962 the scholar-monk Nyanaponika Thera and the first Israeli Prime Minister David Ben-Gurion have exchanged eight long letters. These letters—published here for the first time—expose the extent of Ben-Gurion's interest in Buddhism and reveal the Buddhist rhetoric used by one of Sri Lanka's most influential scholars. This rhetoric, which was generally well received by Ben-Gurion, was an exemplar of ‘Protestant Buddhism’. It is suggested that Ben-Gurion could relate to this image of Buddhism because it reflected his own vision of Judaism that had ‘protestant’ characteristics. The letters contain autobiographical notes, unpublished comments on the Buddhist concepts of Suffering and Rebirth, and a curious plan to invite Nyanaponika to Israel.     

Constructions of Buddhism: autobiographical moments of Western monks' experiences of Thai monastic life

This article explores the autobiographical writings of Western monks living in Thailand in the light of scholarship on modern and Western Buddhism to understand their constructions of Buddhism. I explore Western monks' understanding of Buddhism before leaving for Thailand, their experiences of integrating into Thai Buddhism, and their lives after returning to their home countries. Their constructions consist of Buddhism as a scientific, rational tradition focused on the practice of meditation. These constructions are challenged during monastic life in Thailand and further problematized when reintegrating into their home countries. I find that they encounter challenges incorporating monasticism into Western countries and may choose lay life—reflecting the trend of laicization in Western Buddhism. I conclude that their constructions of Buddhism conceived in Western countries affect their experiences in Thailand and afterwards.     

Buddhism in war: A study of cause and effect from Sri Lanka

In this article, I explore two attitudes towards war present among Buddhists in contemporary Sri Lanka: support for an all‐out military victory over the Liberation Tigers of Tamil Eelam (LTTE) and support for a ceasefire followed by a negotiated settlement. After a phenomenological presentation of the two approaches, I turn to the factors that have conditioned them. I argue that canonical narrative is drawn on both to support the war and to reject it and then look at more recent colonial history to provide further data, particularly to the dynamic undergirding Buddhist support for war. In the nineteenth century, under British rule, one significant ‘other’ for Sri Lankan Buddhists was the Christian. A pattern of spirited defence developed in the face of what was seen as humiliation and betrayal at the hands of Christians. This pattern, the paper suggests, can throw light on responses in the present to the very different ‘other’, the LITE.     

Trauma is not the whole story: Trajectories of responses to childhood disasters intertwining with Life following the Indian Ocean tsunami

In an era of global threats, understanding the implications of disasters on young people's life course is of central importance. A particular emphasis should be placed on non-Western economically developing societies that are considered as vulnerable and are less studied, and on social groups within these societies that are underrepresented. The present study focuses on young Sri Lankan women who experienced the 2004 Indian Ocean tsunami as children. Thirteen young women generated their life stories in semi-structured interviews, 12 years after the disaster had elapsed. Holistic narrative analysis revealed new variations and in-depth meanings in disaster response trajectories and presented the intertwining courses of the responses to the Potentially Traumatic Event (PTE) with ecological aspects throughout development, as in Trajectories intertwining with Life (TiL). This study provides empirical, methodological, conceptual and practical innovations to the study of human development throughout the life course, within the interdisciplinary fields of trauma and disasters.

Highlights

• This research is interested in how childhood disaster response trajectories among an understudied population are understood through an ecological-developmental perspective.
• Life stories uncover Trajectories intertwining with Life (TiL) among Sri Lankan women who were children during the Indian Ocean tsunami.
• The TiL unique outcomes, integrating trauma responses as inseparable from ecological and developmental aspects, offer various theoretical and applied implications.