After a ceremony on Sunday in which Sri Lankan Foreign Minister Rohitha Bogollagama inaugurated the Sri Lanka-Iran Business Council at the Sri Lankan Embassy in Tehran, the Tehran Times conducted a brief interview with Sri Lankan Ambassador M. M. Zuhair. Following are excerpts of the interview:

“I foresee excellent prospects for trade between Iran and Sri Lanka. Both countries have tremendous potential for expanding imports and exports of products. Iran has a large number of items that can be exported to Sri Lanka. At the moment the main export is only crude oil,” Ambassador Zuhair said. “In the meetings between our foreign minister and the leaders of your country we have emphasized that. Opportunities are there. Similarly, there is tremendous hope to import a large number of items from Sri Lanka to Iran.”

Ambassador Zuhair also commented on Buddhism, which is the main religion of Sri Lanka, and the Eightfold Path of Buddha.

“Buddha is one of the great personalities, who 2500 years ago gave us a path in which one becomes absolutely free of worldly cravings which dominate our life. We are dictated by worldly cravings and materialistic pursuits. And he gave us the philosophy of how to conquer first ourselves before the rest of the world. You conquer yourself, conquer the greed, conquer your avarice, conquer your hatred of people, like malice, and all this. He gave us a wonderful way of control. Though I would also say that even Prophet Muhammad (S) and Jesus Christ (AS) also referred in some way to this. But the difference is, in his Eightfold Path, he gave man the ways to be free of his worldly cravings, to be independent, to be genuinely independent,” he said.

“Now we think we are independent, but we are being controlled by our own internal forces over which we have no power. So I would also like to add this point. In the Eightfold Path of Righteousness, what is called righteous speech is one of the eight paths on which he said you should go if you want to be free. Now what is this righteous speech? Now today the Western world is talking of freedom of speech. They are talking of absolute freedom. Anyone must be able to say anything. Sometimes we find they do not oppose even disrespectful reference to learned men of the past, nor to learned men of the present.

“So we are supposed to make a righteous speech, a correct speech. Not the freedom of absolute freedom of speech. So your speech must be a righteous speech. So this is an inherent limitation in the freedom of speech that Buddha gave us for good living.

“Today, because this is being abused, you find conflicts all over the world. You find people going and fighting with newspaper editors sometimes because they write disrespectful things about the past leaders, the learned, the clergy, the police, the father, the parents, the teachers. They attack sometimes. “Of course, legitimate criticism, yes, but sometimes they are making unjustified criticism and causing a lot of disturbance. So we support this righteous speech as one of the wonderful things that was given to us by Buddha from the Eightfold Path. I think almost all the other religions support this position.”

Asked about the project to translate the complete Tripitaka from Pali into English, the Sri Lankan ambassador replied, “Yes, that has been completed. I think they have also finished printing of that also. I hope I will be able to get out some copies and make it available.

Commenting on tourism links between Iran and Sri Lanka, Ambassador Zuhair said, “During the last Noruz (Iranian New Year holidays), there were five charter flights that took Iranians to Sri Lanka, and the report that I got said that they were very happy… They were able to enjoy the scenic beauties of Sri Lanka, the golden beaches, the beautiful green tea plantations, the nice cold misty climate in the hill mountains, and also the beautiful wildlife, fauna and flora… And now the same party who arranged this told me they are going to do it for the three-month holiday season beginning from the 15th of July. They want to have a charter flight every week. I hope they will succeed. I know for certain, those who are going to Sri Lanka will never regret it because they will be very happy. “Not many Sri Lankans are coming to Iran. That is another area where the Iranian tourism organization will have to make more efforts. That is partly because we don’t have a direct flight. So we are working on a direct flight. I think those who are interested in promoting Iranian tourism to Sri Lanka will have to work on a direct flight.”