ABSTRACT
The author of this 1998 poem provides an example of the kind of ethical thinking that shapes Sri Lankan discussions about war, in general, and the Sinhala-Tamil conflict, in particular. It can be argued that our poet’s ethical orientation is deontological, inasmuch as she is focused on the action of war and on what she perceives to be one’s duty not to engage in war. Other Sri Lankans have framed their discourse on war with a type of utilitarianism,2 which asserts that “we ought always to produce the greatest possible balance of value over disvalue.”3 Still other Sri Lankans have invoked versions of virtue ethics, which asks the basic question, “Who should I be?,” as they contemplate the morally problematic category of war. In this chapter, each of these three modes of thought shall be explored in a study that combines the results of my field experiences with publications on or about war in Buddhist Sri Lanka. While ethicists doubtless would want to investigate in greater detail the differences between the three types of ethical thinking, I have been content to find their general affinities and to chart their fortunes as Sri Lankan discourse about war has been forced to move from the theoretical to the practical, nurtured by the ongoing Sinhala-Tamil conflict. In charting their general affinities, moreover, I hope to demonstrate that Sinhala Buddhism is ambivalent about war. In other words, I hope to show that, depending on the context (and depending on the Buddhist), the Buddhist tradition of Sri Lanka condemns, with as much frequency as it justifies, war and its violent legacies in defense of the dharma or of the island.
