Towards a Better World is a translation of the famous
Sinhala didactic poem Lo-wada Sangarava composed by the
Venerable Vidagama Maitreya Mahathera (15 th C. A. D.). This
venerable poet flourished during the Kotte period of Sri Lankan
history, which saw a revival of Sinhala literature. As the head of
the Vidagama Sri Ghanananda monastery, a leading educational
centre of the Kotte Era, the Venerable Mahathera made a notable
contribution to Sinhala literature and Buddhist culture with his
rare poetic talent and eloquence in preaching. Lo-wada
Sangarava is the best known among his literary works, both for
its remarkable poetic excellence and the vast impact it has made
on the lives of the Buddhists ever since it was composed.
Drawing his inspiration from the Canonical discourses
which emphasized the value of birth as a human being in an
extremely rare Buddha-age with its prospect of an exit from the
samsaric cycle of births and deaths, the venerable poet sounds a
clarion call to arouse a sense of urgency in making the best use of
that rare opportunity. He makes no pretence in addressing the
poem directly to the reader himself, awakening him gradually from
common-sense to a deeper sense of values. The purpose of the
poem is to instil and inspire, aiming at an inner transformation in
the reader and the listener. The language and the idiom used are
geared to the benevolent purpose of character- moulding.
Couched in the classical Sinhala metre abounding in
alliteration, the poem is a perfect blend of sound and sense. Its
powerful diction is marked by an effective employment of
stirring metaphors and similes both Canonical and original. The
imagery is often so picturesque that most of the verses could well
be depicted pictorially. We have resisted the temptation to render
the poem into English verse, in order to be more faithful to its
contents. Any traces of poetic diction, however, that may have
crept into the present translation, are probably due to the very
inspiration coming from the original itself.
Lowada Sangarava has had an immense appeal to
several generations of Buddhists over the past few centuries,
mainly because of its lucid presentation of the salient
teachings of the Buddha. Within the space of four lines full
of rhyme - and - reason the poet would often drive - home a
deep truth of Dhamma through homely similes and metaphors. In just four lines he could make one vividly aware
of the ironies of one s present life situation so as to bring about a
transformation in one s total outlook on life. In this respect the poem
has the flavour of the come-and-see quality of the Dhamma
(ehipassiko)as well as the quality of leading-one-onwards
(opanayiko)
The poem vibrates through and through with a note of
compassion for the morally degraded, lifting them up to an
awareness of their potential for higher things. The hortative tone
of the poem comes-it seems-not from an ivory -tower but from a
heart that almost bleeds for those who have gone astray due to
ignorance or non-knowledge . Clarification has to precede
purification, at least initially. So the poet has modestly chosen the
common medium of the natives, making a case for its
effectiveness rather apologetically in preference to the more
fashionable Pali of the elite. True to his promise, the poet has
succeeded in portraying vividly the manifold dangers in samsara
(the cycle of recurrent births and deaths) with its relentless law of
karma (the moral law of cause and effect), and in highlighting the
ideal of the sublime peace of Nibbana as the ultimate goal in life.
At a juncture in which the West is looking up to the
wisdom of the East to make its own concept of the millenium a
reality, this time honoured didactic poem of the Venerable
Vidagama Maitreya Mahathera is presented here in translation in
the hope that it will contribute towards a better world. The
a-moral and the immoral trends in moden society, wedded as it is
to material progress as the hand-maid of prosperity, are leading
towards moral anarchy with disastrous consequences. May this
translation- Towards a Better World -help bring about an inner
transformation by an awakening to the true values of life ! # Don't forget to SUBSCRIBE...
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