TOR-O/10b: Orientation Workshop on Community Responsibility (Cultural)
Conducted an orientation workshop (two-days on 30th Nov & 1st
Dec 2014)) for a selected number of students on community responsibility, with the particular emphasis on making
students to practically experience
ethnic and cultural diversity by engaging and performing. As per to the
practical difficulties of providing such experience to all students, we gave
opportunity to interested and committed students so that expecting them to be icons in the student community of the
Faculty of Science and in the university to cultivate the values and the philosophy.
For this programme we collaborate with a visiting group of students from University of Ruhuna (partially funded
by a UDG activity of Ruhuna university) to stimulate a unique environment with opportunity
to mingle students of different cultures from both universities (35-40 number
from Ruhuna and 40-50 number from EUSL). The two-day
interactive workshop at EUSL was to make students practically experience and cohabit with ethnically
and culturally diverse students and selected community representation.
Dr. Jeyashankar,
Senior Lecture in fine Arts, EUSL who is a well know social activists was the main
resource person handling the workshop.
A One-Day Orientation
Workshops was conducted on 6th Dec 2014 focusing on Spirituality, trying to find common grounds beyond ethnic
and religious believes. Perennial philosophy sees humans as essentially commensurate with the entire universe and
ultimately divine - offers a rich spectrum of spiritual techniques through
which it is possible to recognize and experience one's own divinity and achieve
liberation from suffering.
As the first
workshop of this nature for students, we orient students towards two established
Perennial philosophies, the “Buddhist Philosophy
and Meditation” and “Vedanta Philosophy”. The Sinhala and Tamil speaking students attended these two workshop after a common session conducted by Dr. F. C. Ragel, Senior Lecturer in Physics, motivating such Ancient Wisdom through modern physics concepts (e.g. quantum mechanics, quantum field theory and unified field theory or Super Sting theory: some links https://www.youtube.com/watch?
The resource
person for the session on “Buddhist Philosophy and Meditation” was Rev. Katagoda Saddhananda, The
residential Rev. of Mahamevna Sadaham Asapuwa, Parakum Uyana, Polonnaruwa. He
is one of experts in conducting meditation programs in the region of
Polonnaruwa and outside, and has conducted more than 50 meditation programs.
The resource
person for the session on “Vedanta Philosophy” was Swamy Vedhandhanantha, The Residential
Acharya of the Divine Life Society, India; who is a Postgrad in Tamil
Literature, Teacher of
Vedantam, Sanskrit, Sri Bhagavad Gita, Thirukural.
