ABSTRACT

As a young science teacher at a high school in Colombo, Sri Lanka, A. T. Ariyaratne knew that the good life involved applying Buddhist values such as compassion and loving kindness to improve life for all, so he took his students to work in depressed rural villages to help people who had largely been left behind by modern society. Ariyaratne would go on to clarify his vision of the good life to include not only the idea of liberation for poor villagers but also a new conception of Buddhist liberation as a dual liberation: a liberation of the individual and the society together. His work led to the development of the Sarvodaya movement that would bring Buddhist and Gandhian development to hundreds of villages in a dynamic attempt to reform the society. Ariyaratne and Sarvodaya became powerful voices for peace during the ethnic conflict that went on in Sri Lanka for over two decades. Today Ariyaratne advocates a nonviolent revolution based on Dharmic values and Gandhian ideals that would offer a comprehensive plan for a new way of life that could rescue the world from the inequities and problems prevalent in the modern world.