The International Day of Vesak established by the General Assembly of the United Nations on a proposal made by Sri Lanka in 1999, was observed in the Netherlands on May 11, in the Great Hall of Justice at the Peace Palace by courtesy of the President of the International Court of Justice, and the Carnegie Foundation, as arranged by Sri Lanka’s Ambassador to the Netherlands, Adam M.J. Sadiq.
Following are the extracts of a speech made by Dr. M.C.W. Pinto, formerly Ambassador of Sri Lanka and Secretary-General of the Iran-United States Claims Tribunal, a Member of the Institut de Droit International.
The General Assembly of the United Nations at its 54th Session in 1999, on a proposal by Sri Lanka and other Asian States, resolved that the contribution of Buddhism to humanity, over some 2,500 years, should be appropriately recognized. Accordingly, the Assembly decided that each year, there would be international observance of Vesak Day, that is, the day of the full moon in May, when Buddhists commemorate the birth of the Buddha, his enlightenment, and his passing away. Invited to address you this year on that occasion, I would like to recall in outline the life and times of Prince Gautama of the State of Sakka who was destined to be proclaimed the Buddha, the Enlightened One; second, to describe also in outline, the message he proclaimed to the world; and finally, share with you some thoughts on the contemporary relevance of that message.
The man whose life and message are commemorated on Vesak Day each year has inspired, influenced and brought solace to millions across the millennia and across the world. Born Prince Gautama to a royal family in the Himalayan State of Sakka (Nepal) some 563 years Before the Common Era (BCE), it is said, his parents had planned to shield him from all awareness of human suffering in its many forms, notably sickness, old age and death. The young Prince, however, recognizing perhaps that such a plan was not likely to succeed, chose instead to confront the universal reality of suffering and discover a way, a Path, by which all humankind might end, or avoid suffering, each by his or her own efforts, and without divine assistance or intervention of any kind.
Such was the task Prince Gautama set himself at age 29. Turning away from the settled happiness of conjugal and parental life in royal luxury, Gautama wandered the country as a mendicant, ever searching for what might be the cause of the suffering that seemed inevitably to attend the human condition. It was only after six years of that search that Gautama would confirm:
1) That suffering was, indeed, universally a feature of the human condition;
2) That all suffering had a cause, and that cause was the craving generated by unsatisfied desire;
3) That suffering could be ended; and
4) That there is a Path, a discipline, which if diligently followed would bring an end to suffering and with that final deliverance leave an ineffable and permanent peace, that would be called Nibbana.
The Buddha offers to all, what Buddhists call the Noble Eightfold Path leading to the end of craving, the cause of suffering. By way of preparation, there is recognition of four cardinal virtues: metta, rendered in English as “benevolence”; karuna, “compassion”; mudita, “joy in the good of all beings”; and upekkha, or “equanimity”, but with a meaning more profound, approaching “fairness”, or “impartiality”, or even the very concept of Justice itself.
Recognition of these cardinal virtues prepares the traveller for the first four steps along the Path: right understanding, right intention, right speech, and right action. The remaining four steps are then guides to ethical conduct and mental discipline in daily life: right livelihood, right effort, right mindfulness, and right concentration.
Prince Gautama declared that he had discovered that Path through his own efforts, and based upon his own experience, without the assistance, or intervention of gods or supernatural beings, and, most importantly, that this deliverance from suffering could be replicated by any determined follower of the Path of disciplined behaviour that he had discovered. Disclaiming knowledge of gods or other supernatural beings, he declared, if such existed, they too, would need to follow the Path to end suffering. Upon acclamation of Prince Gautama’s discovery of the Path, and the way to end suffering, he was called the Buddha, the Enlightened One.
The Buddha, having discovered the Path and himself, reached the goal of enlightenment, devoted the remaining 45 years of his life to expounding his message of deliverance from suffering and encouraging its propagation. At the age of 80, the Buddha passed away. The year, on current reckoning, was 483 BCE.
Preserve the pristine meaning
The Buddha taught in Pali, an Indic language related to Sanskrit. His discourses were committed to memory by monks familiar with that practice. The discourses were later set down in writing. Together with scholarly commentaries on them, they form a vast record of the Buddha’s teachings. They reach us today across some 25 centuries through countless translations, revisions and interpretations among the world’s principal languages. The Buddha’s adherents were acutely sensitive to losses and uncertainties inherent in those processes. Being concerned to preserve the pristine meaning and appeal of the discourses, they convened meetings of the clergy and lay Buddhists, sometimes referred to as “Councils’, with a view to promoting open consultation aimed at resolving controversies and achieving uniform understanding of the texts and their interpretation, and minimizing basic disagreement that could lead to schism.
At the second Council held at Vesali in India in 380 BCE disagreement arose as to what the Buddha had actually taught about the code of discipline for monks, and two schools of Buddhism developed: the Theravada School favoured a conservative approach and stricter adherence to the Buddha’s spoken word which, by the first century BCE had been recorded in writing on palm-leaf pages by monks in Sri Lanka in the original Pali spoken by the Buddha. The influence of the Theravada School spread south from India to Sri Lanka, Burma, Thailand, Cambodia and Laos; and another, the Mahayana School, also inspired by the Buddha’s teachings, were recorded in Sanskrit, and spread north-east to present-day Nepal, China, Japan, Korea and Vietnam.
After the Buddha’s death in 483 BCE, Hinduism and the ancient traditional religions of India, gradually re-asserted their influence under the patronage of powerful monarchs of the Maurya dynasty. But one of them, the Emperor Ashoka, called in time “the Great”, gave Buddhism pride of place in his empire and did much to transmit the Buddha’s message to the world. Ashoka’s rise to power was among the most violent of a violent era. Having seized the throne in 270 BCE after the murder of his brother, Emperor Ashoka began to increase his power over neighbouring states, fighting a cruel war to subdue the State of Kalinga. With the conquest of Kalinga, Ashoka had brought virtually the entire sub-continent under his rule. And then the Emperor had what appears to have been a complete change of heart and mind. Abandoning violence, asking forgiveness of those whom he had conquered, he chose (in a move sometimes compared with that of the Emperor Constantine in Europe some centuries later) to convert to Buddhism, wholly accepting and acting upon its principles of non-violence and benevolence toward all living beings.
Contemporary relevance
Eminent teacher and Nobel laureate, Prof Amartya Sen, one of the world’s outstanding thinkers referring to what he calls some of “the Buddha’s worldly thoughts that remain of particular relevance today”, emphasizes (1) the importance of rational thought, communication and public reasoning; (2) significance of human values for decent governance and public politics; (3) the need to go beyond contractarian modes of political and moral reasoning championed by the “social contract” tradition favoured in contemporary political and moral theory; and (4) the need for a global rather than a parochial way of understanding the demands of fairness and justice as a means of safeguarding peace, and the stability of the world order. He emphasizes the Buddha’s focus on learning and communication that led to the establishment of a University at Nalanda in the third century BCE and development of printing in China, Korea and Japan, recalling that the first printed book that is actually dated, was the translation into Chinese by Kumarajiva (402 CE) of an Indian Buddhist treatise called the Diamond Sutra printed in China.
Mark Kurlansky in his book entitled “Paper”(2016), having quoted Victor Hugo’s observation that “The invention of printing is the greatest event in history….” goes on to explain why, in his opinion, printing developed out of the demand to copy and reproduce the texts recording the Buddha’s teaching.
Although the Buddha’s discourses relate to a range of human behaviour, they do not address directly the subject of Law and Law’s institutions. However, writers continue to observe that the Buddha’s message does have legal implications, as could most readily be gathered from the laws proclaimed by Emperor Ashoka in the third century BCE inspired by the Buddha’s teaching. It would also be reasonable to assume that the Buddha’s discourses have profoundly influenced development of the legal traditions of the countries in Asia where Theravada or Mahayana Buddhism, or both were received. It seems clear that in the legal traditions of most Asian countries, there persists a strong tradition to be observed at the inter-State level that would favour resolving disputes through negotiation and persuasion leading to consensus, as the only reliable basis for amicable and productive conduct of future relations.
As has been observed by Prof Patrick Glenn in a magisterial treatise, Asian legal traditions differ from those of the West, “in refusing to root normativity in formal structures and sanctions”. In regard to Asian ways of dispute resolution, he concludes:
“You are left with pure tradition – not present positivism
and not revealed truth – and tradition which seeks primarily
to persuade and not to oblige. It is a tradition of great and
friendly persuasion.....”
It has yet to be shown, however, that if a tradition of leaning away from the imposed or obligatory resolution of disputes does exist, that it is the result of the teachings of the Buddha or of Confucius, or of both.