In other words, Mill endorses the view that any tempering of right to freedom of thought, conscience and religion which is absolute, is an attempt to limit and question the rationality of individuals and their ability and liberty to choose their own physical and moral good (Dyzenhaus, Reibetanz, and Ripstein, 315-318). The Limitation of Western Legal Rhetoric The solution provided by the political and legislative domains seems limiting in its attempt to resolve the existing tensions between the religious groups in Sri Lanka. The emphasis on either freedom of or freedom from religion requires Buddhist, community-oriented values as opposed to Christian, individualisticaldesire to safeguard the presumably absolute right of the individual to choose one’s religion and engage in various forms of religious activities, the advocacy of communal and non-absolutist notion of rights that is then coupled with other rights such as to retain one’s religion without being asked to change it in order to preserve a communal identity. The problem that must be highlighted is that the global-political realm in which legal discourse takes place is shaped by Western ideals and essentially cannot deal adequately with Buddhist understandings of the self and notions of rights, and this includes the Western rhetoric and language that is built into the 5
represents a Western perspective on notions of person, rights and human rights, which is not necessarily compatible with Buddhist core tenets and views on these very notions.6 universal moral right that belongs equally to all human beings simply by virtue of a Western-Christian context driven by the understanding of a God-given order and morality applicable to all human beings and later translating into notions of the Christian context in which the notion of human rights emerged, something that is obviously problematic when considering other religious realities. For example, this universalistic and absolute form of rights, whereby an individual has absolute entitlement to a right, is not present in Buddhist thought since Buddhist precepts are not absolute but relative (Florida 17). This is illustrated through the different number of precepts for the laity and monastics as well as in the notion of karma, in which moral responsibility is determined relatively by individual actions and where there are no absolute rules for ethical behaviour (Florida 16).
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