The Saadhu Blog
Who Starts A War?
Oct 20, 2014 • 15 min read
One of the themes for this years conference is - "Sufism as a way of life, celebrating life through love, compassion, forgiveness, and good neighbourliness."
Porn Of Violence
Oct 8, 2014 • 5 min read
The term 'Pornography of Violence' has been used by many writers. It was explained by Prof. Robert Knox Denton of the State University of New York, "emotionally arousing material that focusses on doing harm to people in a way that, perhaps tacitly, seems to condone that behavior in order to gratify the author or reader". Denton also is the author of 'The Semai: A nonviolent people of Malaysia', perhaps the only nonviolent human community left on earth.
Research Into Art
May 28, 2014 • 5 min read
Research could help us understand the Arts, and Arts could help us understand Research. Dr. Godwin Kodituwakkau, tells us in his book, 'Paryeshana Lokayata Pivisemu'.
Tagoredesha
May 24, 2014 • 5 min read
The SAARC literary Festival in Dhaka made me think that we could call South Asia as Tagoredesh. I met so many poets, writers and fellow travelers, from Afghanistan, Bangladesh, Bhutan, India, Maldives, Nepal, Pakistan and our own Sri Lanka. All of them held Tagore in the highest esteem, as the greatest literary figure of recent times.
Art Of Hunger
May 22, 2014 • 6 min read
'A Hunger Artist' was written by Franz Kafka in 1924, describing the 'Art of Fasting'. Kafka begins the story, "In the last decades interest in hunger artists has declined considerably. Whereas in earlier days there was good money to be earned putting on major productions of this sort under one’s own management, nowadays that is totally impossible." The hunger artist had claimed that it was the easiest thing to fast. People came to watch the Hunger Artist in his cage, but the interest would fade in about forty days. In Kafka's story, the man was going hungry willingly.
Art Of Gluttony
May 22, 2014 • 5 min read
While seven billion children, women and men are starving, others are making an art of gluttony. The Catholic Church considers gluttony (over-indulgence and over-consumption of anything to the point of waste) as one of the Seven Deadly Sins, and St. Thomas Aquinas added gluttony is also the "obsessive anticipation of meals, and the constant eating of delicacies and excessively costly foods."(Catholic Encyclopedia)