Be united or divided: the significance of the Buddhist practical principles to strengthen the reconciliation process for better and stable Sri Lanka

Abstract

Sri Lanka has been experienced a brutal war and struggle for over 30 years. During this period, the war caused hardships for the population, environment and the economy of the country were seriously damaged. The number of civilians has been lost their lives whereas many were displaced. Several occasions, the Sri Lankan government attempted to take them a lasting negotiated settlement with the international mediation, the LTTE violated the cease-fire agreement over thousand times. Finally, the Sri Lankan military defeated terrorism (the LTTE-Liberation Tigers of Tamil Eelam) instrumentally in May 2009, bringing the civil war to an end. Now, we are living in the post war period where we can see explosive regional tensions of ethnic and religious character in Sri Lanka as Buddhists, Tamils, Muslims and Christians. According to the Buddhist perspective, it suggests that the loving-kindness to be possible we must be able to look at another human being as another human being, irrespective of caste, creed, race, colour, class or faith. Instead of understanding the causality of violence and conflict, common opinion relies on the instrumentality of it to vanquish unjust violence, for Buddhist principles. Buddhism strongly believes that the ignorance of the other cultures and nationalities creates a narrow, distorted view of life and the world. Therefore, Buddhism recommends to solve problems through dialogue and negotiation among individuals, groups and nations. The prime concern of this study is to focus on the Buddhist practical principles to strengthen the reconciliation process for better and stable Sri Lanka.