ABSTRACT
Sallie King notes that engaged Buddhism has a “double legacy”: it is traditional in drawing on the ethical traditions of Buddhism, and it is modernist in engaging the “social/political/economic issues which it confronts in particular locales.”1 The SarvodayaShramadana Movement in Sri Lanka shares this “double legacy” but also has a somewhat more complex identity. Sarvodaya clearly began during the Buddhist resurgence surrounding the emergence of an independent Ceylon and so it shares many ideas and perspectives with the forms of Sinhala Buddhism and Sinhala Buddhist Nationalism that also emerged during that period. These movements have appealed for inspiration and authority not only to the Buddhist scriptures but also to the Buddhist chronicles of Sri Lanka, such as the Sarvodaya, however, as a Buddhist and Gandhian movement also clearly attempts to engage the kinds of social, political, and ethical issues that Sallie King mentions. One question that confronts anyone who encounters or reads about the Sarvodaya Movement is: To what extent can these two aspects of Sarvodaya’s legacy or identity be separated? To what extent does Sarvodaya express or embody the Sinhala Buddhist perspective and to what extent does it break free from this perspective as a truly engaged Buddhist movement? The critics of Sarvodaya have tended to regard it as simply another version or expression of the Sinhala Buddhist position, while Sarvodaya’s supporters have tended to view Sarvodaya as a totally separate, engaged Buddhist movement that is uninfluenced by Sinhala Buddhist views and biases. This chapter will argue that we must regard Sarvodaya from both of these perspectives in order to understand the movement. On the one hand, it must be seen as one manifestation of the kind of reconstructed Sinhala Buddhism that arose in Ceylon both before and after independence from Great Britain in 1948. But on the other hand, Sarvodaya must also be seen as going significantly beyond this Sinhala Buddhist perspective to express a more radical and revolutionary Gandhian-Buddhist response to the social, political, and economic problems facing the nation and the world.
