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Royal College Colombo, religious extravagance and human values – By Niranjan Selvadurai Source : ft “Asare saramatino sare casaradassino te saram nadhigacchanti micchasankappagocara.” In the unessential we see the essential, in the essential we see the unessential, anyone who entertains such wrong thoughts will never realise the truth.  – Dhammapada (Verse 11)  Royal College, Colombo is planning to have a pirith chanting ceremony on 1 March this year. The intention is to do it in style with an accompanying perahera and an open invitation to the entire school community involving students, parents, and teachers. The required funds are being collected from the school students. The event is promoted as a collaborative religious program. Perhaps recent discussions in public forums that the school needs to be secular has some bearing on this repackaged message.  This letter does not aim to discuss the pros and cons of this event. The focus is to ...