Silence is Golden

I attended a Bana Gedera yesterday for the brother of a staff member and as is traditional the Buddhist Priest comes sharp at 7.30 and gives his bana for about 45minutes to an hour before he leaves, having been given a thank you in kind, and then the food is served for those present.

To a fault, the over 35s and the females were in one place listening to the Bana and the under 35’s mainly male, were outside the house, (the bana was being said in the living room) chattering away and as the night wore on got louder in their inter communication!

It was difficult to listen to what the Priest was saying with loud background chatter. This house did not have a loudspeaker for those outside to listen to the bana, so their chatter was audible. Usually a loudspeaker drowns out the chatter, so that those who want to listen can do so despite the noise, as the speaker system is loud.

In my opinion society does not discourage this behavior. In future when these young men get older we will inevitably have the chatter inside the bana room, leaving the priest no option but to castigate the flock who will in turn chase the priest away from the bana than the other way round.

This is an illustration as to the direction of our society. There is no commonsense as to right and wrong; what is duty and good behavior on behalf of the life of the person for whose bana we are attending, or towards his family who have sacrificed a lot to hold this event, as it is costly to feed 100 people, the kind of minimum gathering in a home for the 6^th day bana prior to the dana for the priests the following morning.

To this I should remind the readers of the inevitable mobile phone ring, which today is loud even for the SMS that people receive. They must have the decency to put these on silent or vibrate as it is very distracting for people at such events. They do not do it as society does not frown on it. The norms of society must change to discourage this practice.

For some unknown reason we seem to love unusual ring tones on mobile phones which are a further source of irritation, this when coupled with the insistence of people not to switch it off and answer all incoming calls leads to unnecessary annoyance to others and should be corrected.