When one reads the newspapers in Sinhala and English, (sadly I do not know Tamil, so I cannot comment on their content) and listens to the Radio and watches TV, I realize that had I been away meditating in the forests for 6months, I would not have missed anything of value, and it would be a regurgitation of the same old stories with a few new twists, but no real changes or improvements to society. Time has not brought one improvement to the quality of life of the Sri Lankan citizen!
So should I continue to meditate knowing that nothing has changed, or get out of this trance and come out and do something that will make a change! I would like to feel the latter, and then I wonder how with my meager resources and lack of clout how I could do what I want. I believe individually if we take that attitude then this country WILL NOT change for the better and continue in its higgledy piggledy way.
It is incumbent on us those who have a mind or body to agitate against injustice. We cannot all do everything as the job is too great, but if we agitate enough with some time allocated from our free time for it, we may with many who feel that way make a difference to our society. Drawing rooms in the Capital and outskirts continue to debate injustice, but with a feeling of individual helplessness at what we can do to change the status quo. How does one give rise to empowering these genuine people to change the system? We must give rise to discussion fora instigated by opposition parties at village level, where these very points can be discussed and debated. Many people do not realize the level of their ignorance, namely in believing what they see or read in Media, so that is the first myth to be erased, and then be taught to think critically about every aspect of debate. In company we tend to report on something we read or saw on TV and to the audience uncritically spread that as being an accurate and true statement without qualifying it first, saying where we heard it and how reliable this source of information it to give us credibility on its statement.
If we therefore act with a bit of skepticism, we will be able to decide to concentrate our attention on the more important aspects of life that affect ourselves and our children over the unimportant and insignificant, as otherwise we attach the same weight to everything uncritically.
We can then put to bed the Grease Devils, UNP Satyagrahas, Government coverups, and the General deterioration of Media reporting in context and concentrate on our Country, its people, and how we can all live and co exist in peace without being hounded out of home and country for saying what we believe or having independent thought on what is right and wrong and which contradicts the dictum of the powers that be who can affect our individual Freedom and Liberty to act and speak of our free will exercising a certain amount of restraint where we do not have first hand evidence of transgressions, whilst making that qualification in our comments.
More debate and discussion is needed in our homes to formulate our attitudes so that we can speak with a better understanding of the problem. We can contribute to this at all levels of society if we allow people to say their piece and be allowed to critically evaluate others comments and then give our opinion explaining why we differ in our outlook of the same if that is so.
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