came more and more problems with which the leaders had no frame of reference to combat. For instance, what to do when pacifism doesn't work in protecting your community. How to maintain peacefulness when outside forces are conquering violently.
             In many areas, where this sense of a Buddhist community had been created, the members had a great deal of pride in what they had created and were a part of, but their pride was kept in check by their inability to justify the right course of action. For example the Buddhists of Sri Lanka believed that they were the custodians of the teachings of the Buddha. It was there, on their Island, where the Theravadan tradition, the only sect of the Hinayana still around, had been born. Buddhism had prospered in Sri Lanka for over sixteen hundred years, until the first colonizers came from Portugal in the 1550's CE. Sri Lanka was then ruled, by one or another European colonizers, until the year of 1948. The reason for their inability to rule themselves was not because of lack of numbers, for 75% of all people in Sri Lanka ascribe to Buddhism, but because of the non-violent nature of their resistance. In the contradiction between pride and pacifism they had simply seen pride as a vi!
             ce and continued to try and live their lives in accordance to non-violent virtues. For nearly four hundred years the Buddhist of Sri Lanka had tolerated the overbearing nature of their western habitants, that is until Anagarika Dharmapala began his career as a Buddhist revivalist.
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