Sri Lanka, unbeknownst to me before visiting is a heavily buddhist country. I was under the impression that it had many more Hindus. Again, well, I just don't know anything about anything.
As I'd mentioned I was going around with a man named Kamal. He's a Buddhist who basically believes in everything and took me around to see some temples while he prayed enough for Sri Lanka to sin the weekend away and still be clean.
I generally don't care to go visit temples. To me they are pretty and I know there is something spiritual happening, but I don't believe in much of it and generally find that I'm really missing the actual beauty of the place. Well, Kamal wanted to show them to me, and it's unusual to get that kind of opportunity, so I went.
Our adventure started with a hindu temple very close to his "apartment." Inside it was noisy as could be. They had an automatic drummer banging the hell out of a big drum rapidly with clangy cymbals crashing away and irritating me to wits end. However, despite the noise, this was an incredible temple. It is probably close to the size of chennai's huge temple in Mylapore. There are shrines to many gods and goddesses inside and smells of sweet incense, fresh flowers, fruits, and oils all being offered to the deities. I walk around with Kamal reading some of the Tamil names to him, and he is impressed, because although he speaks Tamil, he doesn't read it. He is sinhalese, and therefore reads sinhala and english, NOT tamil. We walk outside I wish the temple watchers happy pongal and they are very gracious for this offering.
The next temple up is a buddhist temple. WHAT THE HELL IS THAT?!? Is that... A LIVE ELEPHANT!? INSIDE THE TEMPLE!? Why yes, yes it is, and it seems to be eating very well these days. I got some pictures of him up close, but it was dark and I didn't want to use the flash, so they didn't come out very well. After getting over the shock of seeing in person, a live elephant (not a small one either, a 12 ft tall one, who could completely crush me with one step) I went inside. WHAT THE HELL IS THIS? My God, that's a big buddha statue. And another, and another! These buddha statues were close to 30 ft tall. I had a picture of myself standing infront of one of the standing buddhas and I'm barely above its ankles. Pretty impressive stuff. I walk through some more and see an enormous tree on which many people are pouring water slowly and walking around in circles. Some children come and touch the tree, light incense and say prayers at the tree. Kamal sits, and says another prayer for about 10 minutes at the tree, then the big buddhas, then more and more and more prayers. Whew, I'm getting worn out just watching him go. We leave that temple, and I'm completely in awe. I've just seen two amazing temples.
We continue on. At this point I'm thinking we'll get food. Hold your horses tanto, kamal's got more praying to do. He walks me to another buddhist temple, which he says is kept up by the same people and therefore is the same temple. However, this one is a few hundred meters removed from the first and is basically sitting in the middle of a lake. Again, another amazing temple with enormous buddhas, but no elephant. This time there were live pelicans swimming around. With the city lights reflecting onto the lake and lighting up the temple from behind it was an impressive scene.
We continue on. We're ALMOST done, except Kamal spots a catholic church. He's explained to me, that his wife is catholic and so he's big on jesus. He prays to every saint in this church and goes to the sanctuary, the lady chapel, etc etc etc. This man prays like an 11 year old plays. (Perhaps that could be a funny mistranslation if spoken with the chinese accent...)
That was my religious adventure with a very religious man. He told me at the end of all this to help him come to the United States. His Uncle lives there and wants to get a visa. He wants me to write him a recommendation letter. I'd be happy to do it, because I think he won't cause anyone harm. He just might irritate them with all his religious interests. In any case, he told me that army help couldn't get him a visa, so I don't think I can help him much. Perhaps his prayers will work their charm with one of the many many many many deities he admonishes.
Subscribe to:
Post Comments (Atom)
I hope that man makes his way to the US eventually. It's sad to think that people who mean no harm can't be where they want to be.
ReplyDeleteI think I might go back to church if there were more drums and live animals. "Know Jesus! See the elephant!" It would be a perfectly good excuse to have a lion, bull and eagle on display.