Venerable K Sri Rewatha Thero addresses the Scottish Parliament

On 3rd June 2009, Venerable K.Sri Rewatha Thero (Bhante), addressed the Scottish Parliament by leading Time for Reflection before the main business of the day. Although monks are members of the Sri Lankan parliament, this is the first time that a Sri Lankan Buddhist monk has had the opportunity and great honour of addressing a European parliament.

Bhante Rewatha chose teachings of the Buddha as the foundation of his talk. He said,

“Today may I reflect on some teachings of Buddha on non violence and peace. Once he mentioned ten qualities that a Raja ( a king) should develop. The old term Raja can today be replaced by the government and the ten duties of the king can today be applied to all those who constitute the government such as the head of the state, ministers, political leaders, legislative and administrative officers.

The first one is generosity. Rulers should not have cravings for government wealth and property. They should give away wealth for the benefit of the people.

The second is a high moral character. The third is that they must be prepared to give up all personal comfort in the interest of their people.
The forth is honesty and integrity, the fifth is kindness and gentleness.
The sixth is leading a simple life with self control.
The seventh is freedom from hatred and ill will and the eighth is non violence and promoting peace and unity among people.
The ninth is patience and tolerance. They must be able to bear hardship, difficulties and insults without losing their temper. The tenth is that they should not oppose the will of the people.

Those sacred words, spoken over 2600 years ago, may seem unrealistic in the modern world, but on reflection, we can all be inspired by them and prompted to become more moral, caring and compassionate human beings.

Once Buddha said,” One should defeat anger through kindness, wickedness through goodness, selfishness through charity, and falsehood through truthfulness.”

The Buddha not only taught non violence and peace but went into the field of battle himself, intervened personally and prevented war.”

Bhante continued by giving examples of the links between Scotland and Sri Lanka and praising the compassion and generosity of the “big hearted Scots” who gave such support to a country devastated by a major natural disaster.

He reflected on the very lengthy war which has recently ended and how Sri Lanka was now facing another battle to bring peace to all citizens of the country. He claimed,” It will take many, many years to erase the scars, both physical and mental. To rebuild the infrastructure in the areas ravaged by terrorism needs money and expertise but thanks to the continuing support of the Scottish people we feel optimistic about achieving this target.”

Report By Shira Kirkhope

Images by kind permission of Andrew Cowan .(Parliamentary Photographer)