National Post (National Edition)
TROUBLE at the ZEN HOUSE
A Canadian’s adventure tour of Sri Lanka yields a crash course in Buddhism
When in Rome, do as the Romans do, goes the saying. And in Sri Lanka, I was going to do what the Sri Lankans do — or at least what the Buddhists do, since the country is 70% Buddhist. But how to be a holiday Buddhist respectfully? Cultural appropriation strides a fine line between appreciative and offensive. It’s one thing to take off your hat and shoes and cover your legs or shoulders as required at the nation’s holy sites, but when you observe other local customs, are you being sensitive or insufferable? Or am I bringing first-world problems to the developing world by even asking this question?
It was precisely this tourist quandary that brought me face to face with a hungry monkey.
I was carrying lotus flowers to the Dambulla Cave Temples, a collection of five Buddhist shrines carved out of a hilltop in central Sri Lanka and one of the country’s eight UNESCO world heritage sites. Flowers, our World Expeditions tour guide, Amitha, explained, were one of the traditional gifts that pilgrims brought to temples, at the suggestion of the 6th century B.C. philosopher. “They remind us of the impermanence of life: What is beautiful today will eventually wilt and die.”
Our group was about halfway up the 160-metre climb when we spotted the rhesus monkeys, ambling free along the paths and trees. Out of urban areas, monkeys seem as common as raccoons in Canada (and considered as pesky: At one hotel, staff threw lit firecrackers near the monkeys to drive them away). Only our third sighting of the animals, our group was still enamoured with them. Then, one of the little primates became enamoured with me.
Or more precisely, my flowers.
At first it was cute when the monkey followed me up the steps to the temples. But when he stood directly in front of me, blocking my path, I had visions of being swarmed and bitten, all because I wanted to pay homage to a spiritual movement that I hazily remembered from a first-year university course on world religions. With Amit’s help, I finally shooed the monkey away, and arrived triumphantly at the first cave temple, flowers in hand.
A 15-metre-long reclining Buddha statue dominates the first temple, which was built in the 1st century B.C. Approaching the table in front of the statue, I placed my flowers with those brought by earlier pilgrims and bowed my head.
Seconds later, a temple attendant came up to the table, cleared all of the flowers into a large garbage pail and left.
“Thank you, Buddha, for teaching me about the impermanence of life,” I thought grimly.
But the lesson was not quite over. On my way to temple two, the jewel of the complex with dozens of seated Buddha statues, I spotted the garbage pail next to the wall outside. It had been emptied, its contents scattered on the cobblestones. The monkeys were having a feast of flowers.
Sometimes, I realized, the monkey is going to win. Sometimes, perhaps you should let it.
Not all of Sri Lanka’s holy sites are crammed full of Buddhas like a statue factory outlet during a going-out-of-business sale. Sri Pada, for instance, merely has a rendering of Buddha’s footprint in cement, allegedly overtop his real footprint. This relative modesty in iconography may have something to do with the fact that Sri Pada, also known as Adam’s Peak, is considered a sacred space to three other religions: Hinduism thinks the footprint belongs to Shiva; Islam and some Christian traditions hold the footprint was made by Adam when he first trod on the earth; while other Christian claims suggest it’s the mark of the apostle St. Thomas.
The simplicity of the site may also have to do with the fact that the shrine perches on a mountaintop nearly 2,500 metres above sea level. It’s accessible only by a relentless seven-kilometre climb up many steep stone steps of varying heights, slopes and degrees of crumbliness. And the traditional start time for pilgrims hoping to reach the summit for sunrise is 2 a.m.
It’s not quite pilgrimage season when we make our climb, and, despite the fact that it’s a full-moon or “poyo” day, and thus a religious holiday, we encounter only a handful of people on the trail. Reportedly, at the height of the season (December to April) as many as 400,000 people will make the trip in a single day, inching along the path.
It’s hard to track your progress in the dark, even aided by the light of the full moon and the flashlights we’d purchased in a market. But after about three hours of sweaty, leg-busting climbing, we finally arrive at the temple. Keeping warm with cups of tea, we wait for the shrine’s gate to open at sunrise.
When the sun breaks over the horizon, the sight is a revelation. The pink-gold light bathes us and the valley below, at last revealing the extent of our climb. More stunningly, the sun casts the mountain’s own shadow on the clouds to the west. Maybe it’s the oxygen-depleted air, maybe I’m still recovering from the hike, but the sight of the ghostly triangle is profound and mesmerizing. When we’re permitted to genuflect at Buddha’s foot — off-limits except on poyo days, and a donation — I feel almost mystical.
“The road to enlightenment is filled with many steps,” says Alex Robertson, one of our group. “I should know because I’ve climbed 5,200 of them.” It’s certainly true that the trek felt like a metaphor for life, no matter what country you’re in: an arduous fumbling around in darkness with flashes of humour; not knowing or even seeing where we’re going, but hoping for the best; punctuated with flashes of glory.