*The title "According to Sannasgala" is inspired by "According to Mathew" (2018) / "මතෙව්" (2018) Sinhala and English film which was based on the murders conducted by Rev. Mathew Peiris in the 1970s in Sri Lanka.
Upul Shantha Sannasgala is a contemporary Sri Lankan Sinhalese writer who has written a controversial novel about his life, about Buddhism and Buddhist monks.
This book was published in 2018 and was available to purchase in the Colombo Book Fair: 2018 at Bandaranaike Memorial International Conference Hall (BMICH).
The name of the book is (Sansara / සංසාර): ( Kolomba Kathawa / කොළොඹ කථාව): (Bhikshu Parichchedaya / භික්ෂු පරිච්චේදය).
The book contains his discussions with his pet dog, discussions with himself and discussions with several monks.
And also the book contains things he extracted from the social media about Buddhism.
He has shown his negative perspective about Buddhism and has attempted to create a 'discourse' about this matter through his novel.
The writer believes Sri Lanka is struggling as a third world country due to its centralization in Buddhism and also due to the Sinhalese culture.
The writing has a 'confessional writing style' as well which is evident during the reading of the book.
He has used many examples in Sinhala to back his observations which are shared in my Sinhala blog post. (Check below link)
https://bookerreadsdaily.blogspot.com/2019/04/blog-post.html
Therefore I am not going to translate these quotations into English.
According to the writer's view, Buddhism is bound with Sinhalese culture negatively and have lost its core values.
But he has 'over-emphasized' on little aspects of wrongdoings in Buddhism and the Buddhist monks rather than focusing on the 'bigger picture'.
The writer seems to be 'blinded by hate' during his writing this book which is evident when you read the book in my opinion.
He has 'less prioritized' many major achievements of Buddhism as a religion compared to other religions of Sri Lanka.
Therefore some of his accusations are baseless without proper evidence.
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