Shradda and my visit to Sambudda Raja Maligawa.

‘Shradda’ is a Sanskrit word which has no equivalent in English, at best it can be understood as faith with love and reverence.

Why we need to develop Shradda?

    Because we are going  to understand the reality of this life and the world, I would say the universe.

At the beginning we do not have a clue. But we have or aware of some explanations from the dignified person called Lord Buddha. The Lord Buddha taught us the reality of the life and guided us attain a status where time and space do not exists. This status is commonly called Niravana.

So.. why still we need Shardda?

If we want to achieve Niravana  we need to go  the path guided by the Lord one. Since we cannot understand what will be the end, we need to develop a faith about our leader, the dignified one. It is a faith with love and reverence.

Other famous religious beliefs do follow the same ideology. That is they ask followers to have a full faith or total believe in GOD. It is not same as Shradda, it is a devotion (Bhakthiya), selfless affection to the religious theory. Affection is a bond (bandimak). We must not have any bond on our way to Nirvana.

So, we are not devotees of Lord Buddha. We are Shraddawathun of Lord Buddha. Since there is no word to match in English, most people leisurely used the word ‘devotee’.

I visited Sambuddha Raja maha vihara from various websites including Mahamegha and news, we (with my family) thought of visiting there to worship this great ‘ masterpiece ’.

It was 2.00 PM and very hot. When entering the shrine room there was a board saying to remove shoes. Still we have to move about 50m to reach the shrine room entrance.

No trees to shade. Environment concern is zero point. It was a concrete world.   Very hot indeed. We had to run on asphalt layered road.. So we ran.

On our way, a well-built monk announced that we need to raise our hands and place in forehead to get Shradda and also have to pass the hot path to feel how it likes in the hell. I was quick to pick that this is not a Shradda but a devotion.

When we enter a bald headed person asked us to chant ‘Sadu’ and place our hands in the forehead.  I didn’t do anything but smiled with him. Thanks.. he absorbed my dissatisfaction about his command.

The building architecture is really impressive. It do posses modern architectural capabilities. I looked at a drawing in lonely large wall. For me it was like wicked drawing. Anyone can categorise those creation for various artistic roots like Shanchi, Amarawathi...etc.. But, definitely these artists had not had any Sharddha about the dignified once. He might have a good artistic talent but do not have Shradda. So.. how he can express the Lord Buddha’s immense good qualities (Budu Guna) without Shradda.

We stopped at the first Lord Buddha’s statue. My little one came and asked.

‘Thaththi.. ayi budu sadu lipstick ganne. e kaleth ewa thibunada’ (Father why Lord buddha is using lipstick. Was that available at that time also)

That was end. I will never visit this place. Let my beloved country be safe from these ‘Mahayana’ trends.

Unusual experience with Rabies

Recently, just before the sinhala new year dawn, I had to visit a funeral house. it was really heartbreaking moment for me. Nine years old kid died on the symptom of rabies. Rabies is incurable disease. if you get infected without any notice... it is fatal.
Rabies is contagious viral disease of especially infected by dogs (widely seen in Sri Lanka). it can transmit through saliva to humans. Mostly a bite from infected dog, cat, bat, monkey or other type of animals.
It takes several days (rarely  few months) to notice the symptoms. it depends on the distance from infected location to your brain. It will take 2-3 days if the infected region is in your hand area and 10 days when it happened to leg area. You must take immunization drops before the stipulated dates and feel 100% cure from the disease. if it stuck your brain, sorry..it is the end.

Parents of the above young boy are senior executives of a reputed bank. it is suggested that infected saliva may have been transmitted to the little kid through an open wound. Being a senior executives of a bank do not allow them to give much attention for their children and now it has been paid of loving son’s life. They may have worked their ‘family time’ with the company hoping promotions and more money. Surely they can get those benefits, but it sans the ‘family company’, the very objective you are trying to achieve in your life. it is individual ability to balance the path between ‘family company’ and the ‘working company’.
When I was at this funeral house, it was said that this little kit is more ‘religious’ than other same age kids. Religious references was related to his vegetarian attitude. I was annoyed to hear this kind of remarks, because humans are not born vegetarians. if we practice vegetarian theory against the nature theory you will get struck with natural phenomena again. That is your ability level to fight against the virus/bacteria is in very compromise level. Specially for kids consequences would be disastrous.

Earthquake, Tsunami and Sri Lanka

It was around 2.00 PM on 11-04-2012. I was having a small nap after having lunch. I noticed that little bit vibration from the bed. Since no one is around me, I thought that the problem with myself. Again it was happened for a few second. I checked my legs... head and hands all are working properly. So.. I decided the problem with not myself. Again it happened, this time few more extra seconds.. I decided it must be earth  tremor and wanted feel it from the ground. So I layed in the floor and eagerly waiting to feel the earth tremor by my whole body. Unfortunately, there were not any other tremor.


At that time kids were playing, on top of the roof a person was painting it. No one complained about the tremor. so I forget it and continued my nap.


Little later my wife called and asked. They have walked out their office and I was asked to go out from the house with kids. I smiled and asked her not to panic unnecessarily and explained reality of earthquake is. Kids played without any interruptions...


As usual I visited http://earthquake.usgs.gov/ for more information. Yes.. there was a major earthquake in Indonesia. It had happened underwater and there was a possibility to create a Tsunami. If Tsunami created it must hit indonesia within 30 minutes. I was eagerly looking at that information. By 3.00 PM USGS said it was horizontal earthquake where creating Tsunami was not possible. And Indonesia didn’t have any Tsunami effects. So.. by 3.00PM risk of Tsunami was eroded. I updated my wife and few friend that there won’t be Tsunami.


I switched on the TV. My god... they were saying possible tsunami time in colombo. These people had very high probability of Tsunami. They referred the same USGS information as I did. Something wrong somewhere.


We should evacuate beach area as a precautionary measure. That must be. I noticed that people were moving with their belongings. Specially shop owners. People were running here and there with stressful, panic-ridden attitude. I felt Sorry... for them. I knew at the end nothing would happen to them or their properties. If our authorities do their warnings with some kind of severity level, this kind of unnecessary incidents could have been avoided.


By 6.00PM it was all over. Still earthquakes are happening in that region. Normally it call as aftershocks. After 2004 major earthquake, thousands of earthquake happened in that region alone.


Since the possibility of happening vertical earthquake with magnificent power is very rare, I firmly believe there won’t be any Tsunami in Sri Lanka in my lifetime. it won’t happen even in my kids life time as well.

The difference between Octane 90 & Octane 95

Octane number is a standard measure of the performance of a motor or aviation fuel. The octane rating was developed by chemist Russell Marker at the Ethyl Corporation in 1926.
The octane number of a fuel is a measure of its ability to prevent engine knock. In another word it’s ability to resist self-igniting. 

Self-ignition leads to inefficiencies if it occurs during compression prior to the desired position of the piston in the cylinder as appropriate for value and ignition timing. The problem of premature ignition is referred as Engine Knock, which is a sound that is made when the fuel ignites too early in the compression stroke.
Engine knock gets its name because of the sound it produces: a knocking or pinging sound coming from the engine.
Severe knock causes severe engine damage, such as broken connecting rods, melted pistons, melted or broken valves and other components. The octane rating is a measure of how likely a gasoline or liquid petroleum fuel is to self ignite. The higher the octane number, the less likely an engine is to pre-ignite and suffer damage.
But the most typically used engine management systems found in automobiles today monitor the level of knock that is being produced by the fuel being used. In modern computer controlled engines, the timing of the ignition will be automatically altered by the fuel management system to reduce the pre-ignition to an acceptable level. There is no point using fuel with a higher octane rating than the engine was designed for. So long as the fuel doesn't cause engine knock, it's good enough.

Some cars are optimized for higher octane fuel and we must use relevant octane rating fuel for such vehicles.

A common misconception is that power output or fuel efficiency can be improved by burning fuel of higher octane than that specified by the engine manufacturer. The power output of an engine depends in part on the energy density of the fuel being burnt. Fuels of different octane ratings may have similar densities, but because switching to a higher octane fuel does not add more hydrocarbon content or oxygen, the engine cannot develop more power.

Similarly, octane rating do not guide us to purity level of the fuel. It is depend on the external factors such as quality of storage tank, pumping methods.. etc.

We should use fuel with the octane rating recommended by the car manufacturer. For the Toyota Prius it says “Use unleaded gasoline (Octane Rating 87 [Research Octane Number 91] or higher)”
In simple terms, if we used octane 95 instead of octane 92 (which is cheaper) we won’t  get any performance advantage or long life for the Prius engine. Instead it would drain out our pocket money little by little for nothing.