There is an ancient Buddhist understanding that gratitude is among the noblest qualities of a truly healthy and well-rounded human being. Behind our achievements stand our parents, teachers, mentors, friends, and sometimes unexpected individuals who open doors and illuminate paths that we might never have discovered on our own.
This thought often comes to mind when I reflect on the remarkable journey of my friend, Prof. Patrick Mendis. He rose from the rice fields, water buffaloes, and ancient hydraulic civilisation of Polonnaruwa to prestigious universities, governments, and diplomatic institutions around the world.
A naturalised U.S. citizen who served in the government of the United States under six American presidents, Patrick has never forgotten his Sri Lankan roots. On the contrary, he has most recently established the Professor Patrick Mendis Gold Medal and Prize for academic excellence in management education at Rajarata University in Anuradhapura. There is a special sense of completeness in this gesture: a son of Rajarata returning-through education-to the intellectual landscape of Sri Lanka’s ancient kingdoms.
His story is especially meaningful to me as I write these words from Anuradhapura, because our intellectual journeys intersect not only in Sri Lanka but also in China.
Sri Lanka and China
I serve as the Chief Incumbent of the historic Abhayagiri Raja Maha Viharaya in Anuradhapura, one of the great monastic and intellectual centers of ancient Asia. Founded in the first century BC, Abhayagiri developed over the centuries into an international center of Buddhist learning, with connections extending across the Indian Ocean and into East Asia.
Among the most celebrated witnesses to that history was the Chinese Buddhist pilgrim Venerable Faxian, who came to Sri Lanka in the early fifth century and studied at Abhayagiri. His account records thousands of monks residing here, offering a glimpse of the intellectual vitality of this ancient monastic community and the enduring historical bond between Sri Lanka and China.
In 2018, a bronze statue of Venerable Faxian was unveiled at Abhayagiri in the presence of Sri Lankan and Chinese Buddhist representatives. Patrick later visited me with his wife, Dr. Antonina-a Polish professor with whom I had an endearing conversation in Chinese-during the Esala season and paid his respects before the statue.
For Patrick, who has devoted much of his diplomatic and academic life to Sino-American relations and to understanding China’s history and civilisation, our meeting carried a unique symbolism: a modern friendship rooted in an ancient connection between China and the ‘Buddhist kingdom of the Lion,’ as Faxian described the island.
I received my doctorate from Wuhan University in China. Patrick, too, developed a deep intellectual relationship with China. He served as a visiting professor of commercial diplomacy and international finance at Wuhan University and, over the years, taught at more than twenty-five universities and academies across China. In 2018, the National Confucius Research Institute in Qufu-the birthplace of Confucius-honoured him with its coveted International Confucius Award.
Promoting Buddhist diplomacy
While teaching in China, Patrick engaged with Buddhist scholars and monks. He also studied Confucianism and Daoism. These traditions have profoundly shaped Chinese civilisation, while Buddhism helped connect and enrich these intellectual traditions, contributing to the flowing river of Chinese cultural heritage formed by these three tributaries.
Born to a Buddhist mother and a Catholic father, Patrick was raised in Polonnaruwa among its rice fields, reservoirs, temples, and farming communities. These surroundings became his earliest classroom, where he encountered and learned from Buddhist monks and Catholic priests. Over time, he was increasingly influenced by the writings of his friends, the Most Venerable Dr. Bhikkhu Bodhi of the Buddhist Publication Society in Kandy and the Most Venerable Henepola Gunaratana Thero (Bhante G) of the Bhavana Society in West Virginia, as well as those of the late Venerable Prof. Walpola Rahula of Vidyodaya University, now the University of Sri Jayewardenepura.
Patrick has dedicated much of his career to promoting dialogue between Buddhism and Catholicism. Following the visit of Pope John Paul II to Sri Lanka and the publication of his Crossing the Threshold of Hope, Patrick was invited to the Vatican by the Pontifical Council for Interreligious Dialogue. He engaged with senior Vatican officials on Theravada Buddhism and Catholic teachings, seeking to promote greater understanding between the two traditions.
As the author of Buddhist Equilibrium: The Theory of Middle Path for Sustainable Development (1994) and Buddhist Diplomacy (2010), Patrick was also invited to participate in the World Buddhist Conference, organised by Venerable Dr. Anil Sakya, Rector of the World Buddhist University in Thailand, which brought together Buddhist monks and scholars from around the world. As the keynote speaker, Patrick discussed the Buddhist Suttas as a source of wisdom for human well-being and sustainable living. In Sri Lanka, he also lectured at the Sri Lanka International Buddhist Academy (SIBA) at the invitation of the Sri Dalada Maligawa in Kandy.
The trinity of Sri Lankan mentors
Three extraordinary Sri Lankan personalities had an important influence on Patrick’s intellectual and professional life: Ambassador Jayantha Dhanapala, Sir Arthur C. Clarke, and Dr. A. T. Ariyaratne. They came from very different worlds, yet their influence flowed into one stream of public service.
Ambassador Jayantha Dhanapala played a formative role in Patrick’s early journey in international diplomacy. In 1985, Patrick was appointed to represent the Government of Sri Lanka as its first Youth Ambassador to the United Nations in New York. That experience with Dhanapala introduced him to an enduring principle of diplomacy: representing one’s country requires humility, discipline, respect for other cultures, and the ability to understand civilisations different from one’s own.
Ten years later, Patrick returned to the United Nations and was elected Chairman of the World Youth Leadership Summit in New York, followed by an invitation to serve as a visiting scholar at the International Leadership Academy of the United Nations University.
By then, Ambassador Dhanapala had observed the development of the young Sri Lankan he had first encountered at the United Nations. In a letter dated April 29, 1997, written while serving as Sri Lanka’s Ambassador to the United States in Washington, Dhanapala offered a remarkably concise assessment of Patrick’s character: ‘He is a man of balanced views, meticulous scholarship and public spiritedness.’
Patrick’s other mentor and friend was Sir Arthur C. Clarke, who offered a different dimension to his intellectual formation. Clarke made Sri Lanka his home and became one of the world’s most celebrated science-fiction writers, while also advocating technological advancement and space exploration for human progress.
Sir Arthur wrote the Foreword to Patrick’s book, Globalisation: The Human Side of Globalisation. Introducing Patrick to readers, Clarke wrote: ‘The author, Dr. Patrick Mendis, is an American academic and diplomat originally from Sri Lanka-my adopted country for half a century.’
That single sentence captured something essential about Patrick’s identity. He had become an award-winning American academic, a high-ranking U.S. government official, and a UN negotiator, yet Sri Lanka remained his proud point of origin. It was also the country that Clarke himself had proudly chosen as his home.
At the launch of Globalisation book at the Embassy of Sri Lanka in Washington, co-organised by his friend Ambassador Bernard Goonetilleke and the Harvard University Alumni Association, Sir Clarke offered another thought that speaks directly to the challenge facing smaller nations in an interconnected world. Globalisation, he observed, was no longer simply a choice for nations, but engagement with the wider world need not mean surrendering one’s individuality. That idea is particularly relevant both to Patrick and to Sri Lanka.
Civilisations do not survive by isolating themselves. Nor do they flourish by abandoning their identity. They endure by remaining sufficiently rooted in their own traditions to engage confidently with others. Patrick’s subsequent academic journey-from Sri Jayewardenepura to Minnesota and Harvard-can be understood, in part, through this principle.
The third mentor, Dr. A. T. Ariyaratne of Sarvodaya, offered another important lesson. Patrick first encountered Dr. Ariyaratne as a teenager through a Sarvodaya Shramadana camp in Polonnaruwa. In later years, he affectionately called his mentor ‘Ari Aiya.’
Since founding Sarvodaya, Dr. Ariyaratne demonstrated that national development begins with individual awakening, community participation, and public service. When Ariyaratne received the Hubert H. Humphrey International Humanitarian Award from the University of Minnesota in 1994, Patrick described his mentor as the ‘Gandhi of Sri Lanka.’
Their relationship was more than ceremonial. In addition to funding the Sarvodaya Peace Prize, Patrick helped connect Dr. Ariyaratne with educational and international networks in the United States and beyond. At the same time, Ariyaratne’s philosophy of village awakening and community development continued to influence Patrick’s thinking about globalisation, education, and service.
Years later, Dr. Ariyaratne contributed the Afterword to Globalisation. His assessment of his former young follower from Polonnaruwa was characteristically humane: ‘Dr. Patrick Mendis has identified issues that both bind us together and separate us from our fellow living beings.’ He was referring to Patrick’s global voyage as Professor of International Development and Economics at the University of Pittsburgh while teaching with Semester at Sea across Latin America, Africa, and Asia.
These words reveal a different dimension from Ambassador Jayantha Dhanapala’s assessment. Dhanapala saw balance, scholarship, and public spiritedness. Sir Arthur Clarke saw an academic and diplomat whose Sri Lankan roots remained an important part of his international identity. Dr. Ariyaratne saw a scholar wrestling with the fundamental question of how human beings become connected-and divided-in an increasingly interdependent world.
From mentorship to scholarship and service
There is powerful symbolism in Patrick’s relationships with these three mentors. But the greatest tribute to a teacher is not merely to praise the teacher. It is to transmit what one has received to another generation. This is where Patrick’s story becomes particularly meaningful.
Over the years, he established educational awards at institutions that shaped his own intellectual journey. At the University of Sri Jayewardenepura, where he earned a First-Class Honours degree in Business Administration and Economics, he established the Dr. Patrick Mendis Gold Medal and Prize. For more than three decades, the award has recognised academic excellence and leadership among succeeding generations of students. More recently, the University of Sri Jayewardenepura appointed him a Distinguished Visiting Professor and Honorary Fellow of the University.
Patrick has also established awards at three American institutions where he received his education: Perham High School, the University of Minnesota, and Harvard University. These initiatives carry forward the same principle: education should ultimately lead to service.
These initiatives matter not simply because awards bear distinguished names or are associated with renowned institutions, but because they create possibilities. A medal may inspire a student. A scholarship may make education possible. An award may tell a young person from an underprivileged family that excellence, leadership, and service are recognised and valued. One student encouraged today may educate, inspire, or serve thousands tomorrow.
From Polonnaruwa and Anuradhapura to a national renaissance
For those of us who live among the stupas, monasteries, reservoirs, ruins, and living traditions of Anuradhapura, Patrick’s story has another significance.
Anuradhapura and Polonnaruwa should never be regarded simply as archaeological sites belonging to a distant past. They are evidence of what Sri Lankan civilisation was capable of achieving through knowledge, organisation, spiritual values, engineering, agriculture, international exchange, and human imagination.
Earlier this year, Patrick introduced Sri Lanka as the ‘Grand Central Station of the Indian Ocean’ in a public lecture at the prestigious Warsaw School of Economics in Poland. Drawing on the ancient engineering achievements and global commercial networks of the Anuradhapura and Polonnaruwa periods, Patrick encouraged our policymakers to reflect more deeply on our own strengths rather than simply importing fashionable foreign development models that have become political rhetoric rather than practical solutions to contemporary challenges.
In his keynote speech at Colombo Port City in July, Patrick proposed an indigenous concept called the ‘Mahaweli Doctrine’ as a framework for Sri Lanka’s foreign policy-one that would connect local villages with global markets. He argued that the Anuradhapura, Polonnaruwa, and Kotte kingdoms thrived through rivers and waterways, including the Mahaweli and the Hamilton Canal, which connected local producers with wider markets and helped build the infrastructure necessary for national prosperity.
His innovative and refreshing thinking is hardly surprising to those who know his quintessential Rajarata character and his global experience in China, the United States, and international organisations. As a son of our motherland and award-winning citizen of the wider world, his integrated mindset-combining the worldviews of his mentors-is valuable for navigating an increasingly challenging and changing global landscape and for developing a policy framework for national rejuvenation.