Isurumuniya

Sometimes I Still Hate It Here

A few nights ago, just after Dan had turned out the light and we were both comfortably settled into our sleeping positions, I felt him starting to roll over to get back out of bed. “What’s wrong?” I asked, gingerly shifting my weight to let him up. I had injured my back badly in yoga lesson three days ago.
“I forgot to lock the door,” he muttered groggily. I considered for a moment if anyone had come or gone today. Then I thought about yesterday.
“Did you lock the door after the pizza delivery guy the night before last?” I asked.
“Yeah,” Dan replied.
“Well then, it ought to still be locked since that’s the only contact we have had with the outside world in three days,” I replied.
“You’re probably right,” Dan answered, sinking back into the foam mattress.
“I think we’ve been in the apartment since I came back from yoga on Tuesday, it’s Friday night now,” I remarked into the darkness.
“Yes, I think that’s right,” Dan replied thoughtfully. I was quiet, reviewing things that might have taken me outside. Running or walking? No, I was on self-imposed strict rest for my back to heal. Food shopping? No, we had stocked up on the way home from the Sunday run. Trash bin run? No, the little parcels of trash were building up in the kitchen alongside the old Sunday Times and the Pizza Hut box.
“Yup, we haven’t been out of the house in three days,” I confirmed.
“Well, do you want to do something this weekend?” Dan asked. “We could go to Dambulla for the day,” he offered. “I’d like to stop by the site of that suicide bomb up north on the navy convoy last week. It’s right there. I’d like to see what sorts of memorials are being erected on the site.”
“You know that if that happened in America they’d make it into some sort of park or shrine or something and people would pilgrimage there to leave flowers, notes, and all sorts of crap,” I commented.
“You know, with almost a hundred people killed, it was the biggest suicide attack in Sri Lanka’s history, bigger than the Central Bank,” Dan informed me.
“Well, and just think, we were here to see it. I can say I’ve been on that road,” I remarked sarcastically. “But seriously,” I continued, “So we’d spend two and a half to three hours each way on those horrible roads around Kandy to see some cave temple and the burned out shell of a military convoy? No thanks. I’d like to do the rest of the north all at once,” I finished.
“Yeah, and I can send Thilak to photograph the wreckage and memorials, I’m sending him up there to interview some monks anyway,” Dan agreed, falling into silence.

We feel asleep to the sound of the rain on the roof. We had fallen asleep to the sound of the rain on the roof every night for the past three weeks since it rained every day starting at around noon and not finishing until well after we went to sleep. It was the wet season and with roads washing out and full of debris we had holed up in our apartment. When I had ventured out to yoga lesson earlier in the week my three-wheeler driver had to serve around as many giant mangos and avocados in the road as you would find on the supermarket shelves.

Around midnight one of the dogs started to bark ferociously for what seemed like half an hour, waking me up. Parading around town in my saree and philosophical runs in the Botanical Gardens seemed like a shadow from someone else’s life now as I tried to find a comfortable position in bed and turn my mind away from the sound of the barking dog, finally drifting back to sleep. At 4 AM the polecat, a nocturnal muskrat, furiously dug its way back into the drop ceiling from the outside. It used the already alarmingly bowed tile directly over my head for access, waking me up and reminding me how much my back hurt. I reviewed my yoga lesson in my mind. There was no one moment when I had felt a bolt of pain. I had felt fine the rest of the day after the practice, but woke up the next morning in pain. I analyzed my arms balances at the end of the practice, motion by motion, searching for the error like a computer programmer studying lines of code for the bug in the program. By 4:30 AM I was just found a tolerable position on my side and was starting to drift back off when the drumming and chanting started at the area monasteries and temples. Lying awake I thought about how special it was to live in this World Heritage Site Sacred City. By 5:30 AM the monks had died down but the ten crows that live in the trees on the compound start to squawk. I imagined a scene outside resembling Hitchcock’s The Birds and pondered how they made all those birds sit so still for the movie.

By a little after 6 AM it was getting light so I just got up and started the usual breakfast: coffee from the Embassy Commissary, oatmeal with the peanut butter my dad sent from the states, and the one type of bananas I like here. One of my goals was for us to eat our five servings of fruit and veggies a day. This is tough because most of the produce looked either like some sort of strange sex toy, or something you would need a machete or bush-hog to get rid of in your yard. For snacks I tried to stick with apples. I got four apples at a time and usually two would be edible, one would be good, and one would be rotten. The apples are kept behind a glass case in the supermarket, so you cannot pick them out yourself. I also liked the mangos, but these are very difficult to cut. I do not cut mangos for my own safety.

I made breakfast with a routine honed to maximum efficiency. It was important to get Dan his first cup of coffee before making the oatmeal for example. That way I could fill up his cup after the oatmeal and then clean and dry all the dishes all at once, including the coffee pot. This morning was more challenging because I was basically unable to bend over from the waist. If I wanted something down low then I had to squat, which still didn’t feel great. I listened to a podcast as I do every morning while cooking and cleaning the annex. If it were not for podcasts to help me feel connected to my culture and inspire me to keep doing yoga, running, and eating right, I am sure that Sri Lanka would have eaten me alive by now. I would be a lump of fatty flesh quivering in the fetal position most of the day. Today I knew I needed maximum inspiration, so I clicked on “Hip Tranquil Chick, a guide to life on and off the yoga mat,” by DC podcaster and yoga instructor, Kimberly Wilson.

Wilson’s podcast covers a wide array of topics from time-management techniques, to yoga, to belly-dancing. This morning I listened to “Ayurveda 201,” in which Kimberly interviews an Ayurvedic practitioner, Anna. Anna stressed the importance of eating in season regional foods. “Like I have a choice here," I grumbled to myself. Anna also mentioned that cutting back on dairy was helpful. “Not a problem here either,” I thought. Cheese was hard to find and basically inedible. Dan had been excited when he located a brick of frozen “mozzarella” at the supermarket. Once he got it home he didn’t even try to talk me into it, he just threw it straight out. Somehow Pizza Hut had good cheese, but they sure weren’t getting it from the local market.

After cleaning up the apartment it would be easy to just go straight past personal hygiene and to the computer as Dan worked on his dissertation. I did this for awhile, mossy teeth and everything. Then I heard one of the “Hip Tranquil Chick,” episodes on personal care and I was reminded that how transformative getting dressed can be. On this day I knew that I needed to pull out all the stops. I did all of the basic stuff and then plucked my eyebrows, put on make-up, and draped my favorite saree. When I finally sat down in my desk chair, carefully padded for extra back cushioning, I felt ready to tackle another day as a recluse.

Ruvanvallisaya

The king of all stupas

West Virginia

Monks are everywhere in Sri Lanka. They are members of Parliament, they are educated and teach at universities, they go out to people’s homes when someone dies. I can hear their chanting and drumming at 6 in the morning and again at night. I see them every day out on the street, their forms ranging from skinny little school-aged boys to old fat old men. Dan and I even saw a monk urinating in public on the wall of the prison in the middle of town. There are even one or two white monks around Kandy town also who look a little too serene in their burgundy robes. Despite living in a sacred city and walking past monasteries every day, the only time I have ever interacted with a Sri Lankan monk was in West Virginia.

About a month after I met Dan in early spring of 2006, he needed to go and interview an ex-pat Sri Lankan monk in West Virginia, Bhante Henepola Gunaratana. He asked me to come along as his research assistant to share in the 3 hours of driving from our home town of Charlottesville. It was a clear and beautiful April day, still slightly chilly, when we set out across the Blue Ridge for Wardensville, WV, in the foothills of the Allegheny Mountains. The last major town was Winchester, Virginia. Just outside of Winchester we passed a Kingdom Hall of Jehovah’s Witnesses with its large picture window boarded over. I imagined that perhaps it had been smashed in. Once passing through Wardensville, we drove for a few miles on a dirt road appropriately named Back Creek Road. Occasional non-descript driveways marked only by faded mailboxes quietly branched off along the route. When we rounded a bend I spotted an eight foot tall white cross and an enormous American flag marking a driveway down the road, “Those must be the neighbors,” I commented to Dan. As we neared the blazing white cross we could see the demure granite marker of the Bhavana Society driveway 20 feet away. We parked in the paved parking lot at the front of the property and started unloading the alms that were suggested from the website as follows:

steel-cut oats, granola, jams (fruit), prunes, nuts (low in salt), sunflower seeds, olive oil, sesame oil, tahini, firm tofu, dry beans, canned beans (garbanzo, black, kidney) , whole tomatoes (canned), tomato paste, tamari, coconut milk

We started on foot up the driveway to the kitchen area with our four bags of groceries. Dan had been to the Center before and knew the way to the kitchen. Small buildings with dark salmon wooden siding and white trim dotted the wooded property connected by dirt foot paths. It reminded me of overnight Girl Scout camp. We removed our shoes to enter the main building and to drop the food off in the kitchen. A white man in robes exited the main meditation hall and greeted us as we started down the short hall. As I surveyed his robes for Eco-Explorer, Knot-Tying, and Cookie Biz patches, Dan was already on the floor bowing with his hands in prayer and his forehead on the floor. He made the move swiftly and deftly despite his dress pants and sport coat. The monk was obviously profoundly uncomfortable with the gesture. Dan had warned me before hand, “I might bow to some monks,” but I hadn’t envisioned something so drastic. Dan got up as quickly as he had gone down and the white monk cleared his throat, “You have some, uh, alms to give?” the monk asked. We nodded our heads, “yes.”
“You see I can’t accept them because it’s after noon, but you can put them here in the kitchen,” he explained, indicating a counter in the kitchen. “One of the lay workers will take care of them soon,” he re-assured us. Dan explained that we had an appointment to interview Gunaratana. The monk then showed us to the bathrooms for us to freshen up before our interview.

“Why the hell’d you do that?” I icily asked Dan about his bow when we met up outside.
“I think it is important to bow to the monks to remind them of what they are,” Dan replied. “The monks in the West aren’t used to it. Bowing is a really important part of their training as monks. It reminds them that they are representatives of the Buddhist tradition and should act the part. This is something that these monks just don’t get here. They may be ignored, tolerated, or respected, but Americans don’t like to bow,” he finished.
“You know, it’s weird,” I replied, “I bow to my yoga teachers like that when I think they are good teachers, but they sort of have to prove themselves for me. I’m not going to hit the deck for just anyone. I am not going to just bow to the robes. Plus it’s easier because I do it after Savasana, when I am already on the floor. What was the bowing like for you when you were a monk in Sri Lanka?” I asked.
“It was weird,” Dan admitted. “When a monk ordains, he bows to his parents before the ordination. After he is ordained they bow to him. When I was ordained I bowed to my Sinhala teacher and then he bowed to me. That really made me feel like I was doing something major. After that, with the lay people, I got used to it. My only thing was I had to really work on it not to look down women’s shirts when they bowed to me.”
“Good grief,” I replied, rolling my eyes, thinking about all of the women bowing to monks around the world and inadvertently flashing them. “How long again were you ordained anyway?” I asked.
“Four months,” Dan replied.
“What about the no food after noon thing, how’d that go for you?” I asked.
“People bring alms all morning long. They bow and you eat all of the food. That is the main thing you do as a monk, you do some chanting, but mainly you eat. I was pretty popular and it was like ‘more food for the white monk,’ all the time. So I would eat so much in the morning I wasn’t that hungry at night. I got used to it.”
“More food for the white monk,” I echoed him laughing as we went into the office area.

As Dan introduced us to the secretary I looked at the name-labeled Polaroid pictures of the monks and nuns arranged under the piece of faded red construction paper with the words “Monastic Community” written in black magic marker. Gunaratana was the only native Sri Lankan. There were five white monks, one black monk from Uganda, two white nuns, and a Vietnamese nun. All of their heads were shaved. I learned from their typed bios under the pictures that all and had entered into the monastic life as adults after significant lay lives on the outside ranging from auto mechanic to psychologist. My mind then wandered to the pictures I had seen of Dan’s ordination. My first impression had been that he looked really hot in robes. He had been a novice monk, living the same lifestyle as the fully ordained monks but without the stigma attached to disrobing. In Thailand for example it is common for all boys and men to live as novice monks for periods of time. This practice is not as common in Sri Lanka. The secretary showed us into a neutral sort of small conference room where we were to wait for Gunaratana.

Gunaratana entered after a few minutes. He was bald and also had no eyebrows in accordance with the tradition of the higher caste monastic lineage of Sri Lanka. Gunaratana struck me as someone whose presence was different. He exuded the sort of peace and serenity that I would expect from a monk or any well developed spiritual person. He was cooperative, straightforward, and even funny in the interview with Dan with topics ranging from the ethnic conflict, to religious matters, to the tsunami. My job was to run the digital voice recorder and take a few notes.

Dan slowly worked his way from politics to religion to his money-shot questions of Buddhism and war. As Dan predicted Gunaratana was unequivocal in his condemnation of war of all kinds. When asked if a soldier who had killed on the battlefield could in the future attain enlightenment, Gunaratana replied with the Pali Canon story of Angulimala. In the Sutras, the story of Angulimala is brief, presenting him only as a sadistic killer whose goal is to kill 1000 people. Later texts have fleshed out the story to give background causes for his actions such as being put under oath by a teacher. Angulimala had killed 999 people when he encountered the enlightened Buddha and decides to make him his 1000th victim. Once he speaks with the Buddha and hears his teaching he not only renounces and becomes a monk, but also an arhant, a spiritually perfect being that is released from the cycle of birth and death.“So nobody can really say,” Gunaratana finished.

The story of Angulimala stuck with me after the interview. “How could the murderer of 999 victims become an arhant? How was that fair?” I asked myself. Thinking over the story on the way home was my first step toward understanding that spiritual development according to the Buddhist tradition is not linear, nor is it a balance sheet of action and reaction. Both Angulimala and the Kali story taught me the emphasis placed on the idea of the Buddha as a transcendental teacher with the ability to reach even the most deranged heart and got me thinking outside the paradigm of poetic justice.

Misty Morning

Tour Guide

I started off wearing my saree around the house, using a diagram on the internet to learn how to drape it. The petticoat is the secret of the sari. The top edge of the sari and the pleats are tucked into a petticoat drawstring waistband. After a little trial and error and further study of women on the street I had it just right. I was surfing the web and washing dishes in my saree. I got used to the ways you had to hike it up to sit down, the ways it would loosen, and how to tighten and adjust it on the fly. I learned to unconsciously tuck the end that hangs down your back, the pallu, into my bra strap on the other side when washing dishes or cooking to keep it from falling into danger. I researched sarees on the internet studying fabrics, regional handlooms, and care. I bought a cotton Sri Lankan handloom for eleven bucks and wore that around the house also. The handloom didn’t have the heavy gold-thread zari work border and felt less bulky. I learned on the web that the gold zari thread usually aged badly after several washings, especially in cheap machine-made sarees.

When my friend Christine, about halfway through her NGO restructuring project, texted me for lunch and shopping with some of her friends I felt I was ready for a public saree run. For the outing I decided on the heartier Sri Lankan handloom saree, and with one safety pin for backup in the pleats I headed out for the half mile walk to town. For footwear I left my heavy Chaco sandals behind and wore my delicate new goat-skin gladiator sandals I had picked up for six bucks in the Alley of Many Things. Once out the door I could feel the wind blowing down my back causing the pallu to flutter across my body.

I met Christine, another British NGO import named Karen, and a Sri Lankan woman named Pushpa at the KFC next to the Food City. Christine had been in country for over a month and was wearing a bright red salwar. Karen had only arrived three days ago from England, and there wasn’t the slightest tan on her pale white British skin. She wore a white short linen tunic top with light khaki pants and was a blinding spectacle of clean. Pushpa was in her mid-fourties and worked with Christine at her NGO. She wore a tasteful saree with a matching choli top and a bindi on her third eye. I led the group to Flower Song for Chinese food. It was the first restaurant Dan had wanted to take us to in-country, but it had been closed for the Perahera on our first attempt. Since the Perahera we had been many times. I couldn’t take them to Rams for South Indian because I had been eaten alive by mosquitoes on my last visit. It is very dark inside Rams and they don’t have AC, so the restaurant is a day time mosquito reserve. The food takes forever there, maybe an hour to make a single veggie curry and rice. On more than one occasion I have seen them sending someone out for ingredients. Keep in mind that I never order from the menu; they just make me whatever they feel like anyway. The chairs are uncomfortable and one time when Dan and I went for dinner I saw a rat running around. Despite all of this, it is one of the three places in Kandy I would eat out and I know I’ll be back. I like the owner and the food is really good, but I wasn’t going to take my new friends there.

I led the way down the main street, drawing their attention to important places such as the good English language bookstore and the post office as we made our way down. Pushpa, although a native, had been living in India for several years and didn’t seem as familiar with downtown Kandy. She complimented me on my saree drape and told me that it looked very natural on me. “You have sort of, Indian features,” She explained. I thanked her and told her this was the first day I wore it out of the house. She laughed when I confessed that I had been wearing sarees around the house for weeks.

Flower Song’s AC environs, tatami mat walls, and waiters in tuxs were a world apart from anything else in Kandy. There were Chinese lanterns with small red tassels hanging down from the ceiling and tasteful framed Chinese prints on the walls. Christine and Karen gasped in surprise at such an elegant place hidden deep in the bowels of downtown Kandy. “I remember when this place first opened,” Pushpa commented. “It was like nothing else in Kandy, we used to bring houseguests here all the time before we moved to India.”
“So, was it always like this?” I asked as we took our seats.
“No, that was over twenty years ago, it is better now, they have made it nicer,” Pushpa replied. I was glad to hear that Flower Song was thriving.

I helped my friends peruse the menu and make ordering choices. Despite the plush surrounds the entrees were three or four dollars each. We decided to share a variety of my suggestions and I made eye contact with the waiter to indicate it was time to order. After ordering we dove into a conversation about the NGO landscape in post-tsunami Sri Lanka. “It’s like nobody gets it!” Christine exclaimed. “Pushpa here is the financial advisor and she is the only one that gets it, that you have to have a plan, that you have to organize.”
“Yes,” Pushpa responded. “People say ‘now it is time for Christine’s meeting,’ I tell them no, this is your meeting. In three months she goes home and we are still here trying to do these things.”
“Right, it’s like there is no ownership of anything,” Christine replied, frustrated.
“I’m having the same problem,” Karen agreed. “Everything is a mess. The project is a year behind. We are supposed to be installing toilets for the plantation workers and providing sanitation education. It ought to be a great project and help loads of people. Nothing has been done and they are still getting funding from the parent organization. There is no accountability.”
“That’s crazy,” I said, shaking my head in dismay. “So are you working in Kandy?” I asked Karen.
“Well that’s the thing,” she replied slowly. “They want me to familiarize myself with the organization here and then go to the site and work there. But there is no business plan here, nothing. It’s like everything was lost. They refer to it, but I haven’t seen anything in writing. I feel like I need to address the problem at the source.”
“So they just brought you in to go out to the plantations to do the dirty work because they don’t want to leave Kandy themselves huh?” I asked.
“I’m uh, trying to reserve that judgment for now,” she replied cautiously.
“I just don’t know what I am really accomplishing,” Christine said with dismay. “I really want to help these people bring a new structure to their organization and have something to show potential sources of funding. They have to divide into smaller individual organizations that each has their own funding because the overall donor has dried up.”
“That’s the thing about my organization,” Karen replied. “The people at the top are supposedly accountable to the parent organization. Then they hire other companies in the plantation area to actually do the installation and give those companies money, but they aren’t accountable in any way to the parent organization or me. Then they bring me in to get things moving on the ground but how can I get anyone to do anything? Nobody works for me.”
“You have to realize two things about Sri Lankans,” I explained. “First, nobody ever gets fired. That changes the professional landscape. Everything is based on these lifelong relationships in which people avoid conflict. Unless you do something really bad you can count on your job. There are no lay-offs even to save the company. Everyone sinks or swims together. As an outsider you have more freedom to give people a kick in the ass because you don’t have to live and work with them for the rest of your life. The second really important thing is that nobody will ever let on that they don’t understand something. They will just fake along and never ask for clarification...”
“Yes! I know exactly what you are talking about,” Christine interjected. “I was working on a project before this back home with some Bengalis. They would come to meetings and nod their heads. We would ask them if they understood and they would say ‘yes, yes, we understand, we can do it.’ When the deadline came they had nothing done. Nothing. It was a disaster.”
“You see,” I continued, “Nobody will ever lose face and admits that they don’t understand what you are asking them for when you request organizational information for example. You have to know people and watch them carefully so see when they are sort of glossing over the language you are using. They may not understand the vocabulary or the form you want the information in. Either way they will just shrug and move on,” I finished. I pulled on the pallu of the saree behind me to tighten it across my chest. The upper part of the border that should be in my right armpit was starting to sag.
“Yes, that is very true,” Pushpa agreed, adjusting her saree also. “That happens too when I do accounting work and I try to show people what I see in the numbers. It is hard for me to tell what they understand and what they don’t.”
“Right,” Karen replied, nodding. “I’m just assuming that if people don’t understand they will ask.”
“Yeah, that’s never going to happen,” Christine commented.

After lunch Pushpa returned to work. Christine and Karen had complemented me on my shoes, so I took them for a field trip into the Alley of Many Things. “You seem to know where everything is!” Christine exclaimed. “I’ve set up and maintain a household here,” I explained. “I’m out on these streets every week getting sponges, clothesline, food, everything,” I explained. I took them to the Ready-Made Choli Man, the Petticoat Man, and the Shoe Man. While they tried on shoes in the little stall I waited just outside the stall in the alley. An old woman in a saree approached me with her eyes shinning. Without a word she started to pet me by running her hand from my shoulders to the top of my butt all the way down my back in long strokes.
“You look so beautiful in saree,” she said as her daughter came out of another shop in Western dress. “See how pretty she is in saree?” she said to her daughter, clearly making a point. Just then Christine and Karen emerged from the stall with their wares. “Your friends must wear saree next,” she instructed me, still petting me. “I’ll work on it, I reassured her,” as she walked away with her daughter.

“Old women just have a real thing for me,” I explained to the slightly stunned Christine and Karen. “When I was in Turkey an old woman thought it was so cute that I had my own hijab on in the mosque she pinned me in there and physically took me through the entire salat during the call to prayer. Then she took me out into the courtyard and showed her friends how the little American had wrapped her hijab.”
“Did you cover your hair all the time when you where there?” Karen asked.
“No,” I replied, “I kept a yard square piece of silk in my bag and would break it out for the mosques,” I explained as we started out of the alley. They followed me in silence as we headed back up toward the Food City. “Well, you’ve been a great guide, but we’ve got to go before rush,” Christine said as we reached the top of the intersection.
“Sure, anytime!” I replied. “It was fun for me too. I have a pretty fluid schedule, so just text me next time either one of you is in town. I can walk down any time.” As they walked toward the three-wheeler depot I started back up the hill. Once the grade got steep the petticoat was a significant impediment. I had to hike the whole thing up in the front to achieve my normal stride. As I began to fight with the saree and its associated undergarments a bit I realized that this was the first time I had felt constricted or uneasy in my saree. I’d had to tighten the top by tugging on the pallu a few times during the day, but overall I felt very comfortable giving my tour of Kandy.

Monsoon Season

Our back porch becoming a pond last night.

Sunny Afternoon

Not too much in the way of fall here.

Cool Down

After our run around the perimeter of the gardens we walked down the center boulevard of skyscraper palm trees to cool down. I carefully analyzed Dan’s explanations of karma as I consciously took deep, slow breaths. “Ok but look,” I started. “What if you are a murderer, let’s say you murder your mother. I had an inmate who did that. Let’s say that at her moment of death she is somehow really happy and at peace. What happens then?”
“The idea is that if you killed your mother your mind would be such a disordered place that truly serene and unattached thoughts would not be possible. The hate that propelled you into that action would not be released by the action. You would only be intensifying the hate and appetite to kill,” Dan replied.
“Ok, that makes sense,” I conceded. “But let me tell you, for the most part, the long-termers at the prison are the best inmates. Except that one who killed her mother, she’s really creepy. She gives me a chill. But the others, you know, they’re all murderers, but they seem more at peace than the rest that come in and out, and in again on drug charges.”
“You are just comparing short cycles to longer ones,” Dan explained. “But who knows, maybe prison is a really transformative experience for the murders. It could be a really renunciant lifestyle when you think about it…
“Yeah, if you aren’t running a general store out of your cell or beating the hell out of another inmate with a padlock,” I interjected. “But it’s true. The feeling of the long-termers wing is sort of like a convent. The ladies are provided for just as nuns are provided for, they are removed from the pressures of the world, family, making money, everything. They wear a uniform and are withdrawn,” I mused out loud. “That reminds me of a long-termer I admitted to the infirmary the night before a colonoscopy. She had been a team hit-woman. Her male partner had been executed years ago. They had her all doped up in mental health before the execution. On the night of the execution they let her out on the yard to feel closer to his spirit or some crap. But that was years before I met her. By the time she was getting the bowel prep and all she was a really nice lady. Since the ladies don’t have wet cells we admit them to the infirmary for bowel preps and stuff like that. When they come over they just bring a little bag of personals and it gets searched. She had this glasses case that looked like a little purse. The officer was looking it over and the inmate commented that some of the new girls liked to carry it like it was a purse. That’s when the obvious hit me: They never carry purses. I mean, why? They don’t have money, credit cards, driver’s license, no makeup, nothing. But it was a weird sort of revelation for me because it is such a fundamental part of being an American woman. I have carried a purse since I was 12. Even going into the pen I had my little clear plastic bag of my stuff, I never brought my wallet in, but my plastic bag was my auxiliary purse.”
“Yeah and where do they go that they need a purse or could have one?” Dan asked.
“Right, I mean are you going to bring your bag out on the work gang or to your job in the kitchen?” I asked rhetorically. “So that was a moment for me where I realized how different the inmates lives are. No purses.”
“Sweetie, you had better stay out of prison then,” Dan joked. “No Coach? No Dooney Bourke or even Vuitton? How could you survive?”
“It would be a really difficult adjustment,” I admitted gravely, thinking back to the Coach Chelsea Envelope purse I had lusted after at the outlet mall before coming to Sri Lanka. “What would I need with a purse in Sri Lanka?” I had told myself firmly. Now I relished the ironic parallel between Sri Lanka and prison.

We walked in silence for awhile, moving out of the avenue of palms and reaching the great circle next to the mansion planted with an array of bright flowers. We branched around to the right of the 200 yard circle, about the size on an indoor track. I ruminated on my new understanding of karma and how it applied to my cancer patient.
“What we were talking about with the last thought thing does really make me re-think the things that I did for her that last night,” I replied. “I wish I could have been there with her the whole time, but I was slammed. I wish we would have talked out ahead of time what she wanted at the end. She was at the beginning of my career. With the next ones I was much more open and got them talking about what they wanted. I got to see my other cancer ladies walk out though. Granted one of them only lived three days as a free woman, but that’s better than dying in a cell in the middle of the night when everyone is too busy to sit with you.”
“Yeah and having to have some hippy-crap nurse chanting over you,” Dan teased.
“I know right?” I responded, laughing weakly. I paused to think over my other inmates and their crimes.

“Alright, but what if you are psychotic?” I asked. “NGRI is a big defense these days…”
“NGRI?” Dan asked.
“You know, Not Guilty by Reason of Insanity?” I replied matter-of-factly. “To qualify for NGRI you need to prove the defendant didn’t understand that what he was doing was wrong. To me it’s like circular logic. Obviously someone who puts their own kid in the microwave has some serious issues with right and wrong. The nature of the crime itself shouldn’t be the defense. They need to be out of society, end of story. I don’t care if you can stabilize people on meds or what. Who can make sure they take their meds when they get that early release? You got Hinckley getting off on the NGRI thing and he’s holed up at St. Elizabeth’s being taken out to Washington area bookstores and restaurants with hospital staff. He even gets extended weekend passes to visit his parents in Williamsburg. If it wasn’t for NGRI he’d be at Lorton and probably get killed with a sharpened toothbrush. I know people who worked at Lorton and they say it’s off the hook.”
“Alright, alright,” Dan began. “According to Buddhist philosophy there are five criteria for sin to be committed for killing. First there must be a living creature. You don’t sin by killing something already dead. Second you have to recognize that there is a life, I guess that could be affected by psychosis. Third you must intend to take the life, so if you kill someone in some sort of freak accident without intention the major sin of killing is not created. Fourth you must act to take the life, and fifth, the being must die. Going through steps one through four is still not good and your mindset is poisoned by all of that negative intention, but because the person didn’t die it isn’t quite as bad. Going through all of the steps except for number two, recognizing there is a life, is still pretty bad. Once again, if you are psychotic your mind is a really disordered place and not likely to move in the direction of compassion,” he explained as we completed the circle and started into the Banyan forest. The huge Banyan trees spread out their limbs almost parallel to the ground, dropping long fringes of roots down from the limbs. The swaying roots are thin and delicate until one finally touches the ground, then it grows into a thick buttress for the limb. The Banyan forest was a shady relief from the rising tropical sun.

“Ok, that makes sense,” I agreed. “But back to my cancer patient. So if the suffering isn’t paying some sort of debt, if she somehow got on the right track, she might not have to suffer for her crime then?” I asked.
“Maybe,” Dan answered. “Karma can come to fruition at any time, good and bad. In the story, Kali didn’t have to pay a debt for every life she has taken once she receives the Dhamma, renounced, and becomes a stream enterer. She does have to go through some small physical tortures around the town with boys shooting her with arrows and stuff like that before she finds her life in the forest, but she doesn’t have to compensate for each sin before she can exit the cycle of birth and death and enter nirvana. It’s not a balance sheet.”
“Well, that’s hopeful,” I commented.
“But it’s really, really hard to break out of those cycles,” Dan emphasized. “People get into these positive feedback loops of actions, anger and suffering where they re-enforce each other.”
“Like addiction,” I replied. “The addict wakes up in the morning feeling shame and hopelessness at the things he’s done and the life he has around him and so he uses. It’s a loop. Or I’m feeling fat so I say to myself ‘I might was well have that third piece of pizza and some M&Ms.’ Then I get fatter.”
“Right,” Dan agreed. “I mean, no, you’re not fat!” he said with mock sheepishness. “You tricked me!” he protested as I burst out laughing.
“It is a good way of thinking about it,” I admitted. “I have seen lots of people trapped in various cycles and it is really depressing.”
“It’s supposed to be depressing,” Dan replied. “The point of the teachings is to make someone understand that the world is basically hopeless so you should renounce and go live in a cave and meditate.”
“To me renunciation is too much like resignation,” I replied. “It feels too much like good old fashioned dysthymia, that toxic‘what’s the point?’ sort of reasoning. I fight that nearly every day. Like many Westerners I guess I like the surface teachings of Buddhism, the compassion, awareness of the moment, and the non-attachment. I like thinking about the complexities of karma and how people are caught in big and little loops. But I chafe at the renunciation and oblivion of nirvana that exists at the core of the faith. I could even go with nirvana defined in negatives because it is something beyond our understanding, but not renunciation. I feel like it is so much more important for me to get back into the prison or a hospital to help people when they need it most. That’s what gives my life meaning. That, jewelry, and high-end bags,” I joked.
“Yes sweetie, it’s ok to love your bags,” Dan replied, nodding his head mockingly. “But the spread of Buddhism to the West is an interesting phenomenon,” he continued. “People can think they are Buddhists and call Buddhism whatever they want because it isn’t set up as an institution over there yet. It’s starting to happen though.” He finished as we exited the Baynans, walking out of the shadows into the blinding light of the front gate area. I thought back to the prison orientation where we had a cultural understanding unit. The Sergeant made us go around the room and state our religious affiliation. On my row there were two Baptists, one Church of God, a Pentecostal Holiness, one Hebrew Pentecostal, and me. When I publicly identified myself as a Buddhist the Sergeant said “oh, isn’t that interesting.” My label had identified me as something other than Christian but with more punch than the wishy-washy title of Agonistic.

Walking back through the colonial-era 12 foot wrought-iron gates from the carefully tended peace of the gardens back into the throng of Sri Lankan life we were accosted by three-wheeler drives, a man selling spices, and a beggar. I could see myself now as the perfect example of the “neo-hippy,” as one of the night Sergeants called me, doing lots of yoga, making Buddhism into whatever suited me, and baking my own bread.

Unusual Sunset Light

note the little baby mangos in the upper right

Kali

On Sundays when Dan and I go running in the garden I tell him prison stories and he tells me stories of the past lives of the Buddha and the Buddha’s famous teachings. There are hundreds of stories of the past lives of the Buddha called Jataka stories. Some of the Jataka stories illustrate the Buddha’s process of perfecting himself. Some of the stories are the result of the incorporation of regional stories absorbed during the spread of Buddhism. When proselytizing monks encountered a local god they would tell the people that the local god was a previous incarnation of the Buddha and form a Jataka story.

“It’s your turn this week,” I reminded Dan as we got ready to head to the Botanical Gardens last weekend. The previous week I had told him an elaborate story about the first code I led on a suicide attempt. Highlights from that experience included the inmate unconscious in a pool of blood on the top tier and the assistant warden suddenly appearing at 4 AM in full suit, make-up, and hair immaculately coiffured, looming over me and my CNA as we struggled on the floor to dissect the Gordian Knot of the Velcro back board straps. The whole thing was video-taped also. “I told you a good one last week, so I am giving you some time to think about it,” I joked as we got into the three-wheeler.

Dan was quiet on the ride over. After he talked us into the garden on the local 20 Rupee local rate we started our run around the perimeter downhill toward the forest of big bamboo. This was the favored spot for local lovebirds to roost. I had never seen any of the couples kiss; they just sat next to each other and talked quietly. Sometimes they held hands but quickly let go when we passed. “Have I told you about the story of the demoness Kali?” Dan asked as we started up the short hill into the bamboo forest.
“No, that sounds good,” I replied, relieved. “But isn’t she a Hindu Goddess?” I asked.

“No, not that Kali, it’s a pretty common name. To my knowledge there is no connection,” Dan replied thoughtfully, as if carefully reviewing his entire education in his mind.
“Right, right,” I replied, nodding.
“So the story goes like this,” Dan started. “There was a man whose father died and left him to care for his widowed mother. His mom thought he was working too hard around the house and asked him if he wanted a wife to do the work instead. The man didn’t want to complicate things, but his mom wore him down and arranged a marriage. When the wife turned out to be barren the mother got worried about not having any grandkids and pestered him to get another wife.”
“Yeah, probably so she could have more people to control,” I commented sarcastically as we rounded the corner into the section where the green Mahaweli river is visible through the giant bamboo clusters.
“Probably,” Dan answered, snorting a laugh through his slightly labored breathing. “The first wife got wind of this and decided that it’d be best if she picked out the new wife herself,” he continued. “She found some nice young girl from a good family and made the pitch to the family herself, which was not really the norm. The first wife talked them into it though and brought the girl to her husband. No problems with the fertility with this time, Second Wife got pregnant right away. First Wife insisted on preparing all of special pregnancy foods herself…”
“And she totally poisoned the woman causing a miscarriage right?” I cut in excitedly. “I mean, that’s what I’d do. If Second Wife has that kid then it would be all over for me, I’d be like a servant in my own house.” I joked.
“Yup,” Dan agreed, “Then Second Wife got pregnant again and First Wife did the same thing. Second Wife was like ‘hey, wait a minute,’ and confronted First Wife when she got pregnant for the third time. First Wife got desperate and was not able to sneak in the poison until Second Wife was in labor. As both mother and baby were dying Second Wife made a death-wish to come back as a demoness to devour First Wife and any children she might bear. After she died, she was reborn in the same house as a cat.”
“Huh, that’s kind of lame,” I commented slowly, disappointed. We ran out of the big bamboo and past the pond shaped like Sri Lanka. There was a little island in the middle of the pond with a pretty tree on it to represent Kandy.

“No but wait,” Dan reassured me. “The husband beats First Wife, but he doesn’t kill her, he figures what’s the point? She dies eventually and is born in that same house as a hen. You see, they both get born back in the animal womb. So the cat is still around and eats the hen’s eggs three times. Before the cat eats the hen, the hen makes a death-wish to come back and kill the cat and her offspring. So the hen was reborn as a tigress and the cat as a doe. The tigress eats the fawns and the doe. At this point in the story it gets vague as to who is who,” Dan explained as we approached the Great Lawn portion of the Botanical Gardens. This area was frequented by families with picnics. The old cream colored colonial mansion with its red clay tile roof from the coffee plantation days still stood looking down over the Great Lawn.

“I see,” I mused. “So they are locked in this cycle together and it doesn’t even really matter anymore who started it. That’s really interesting.”
“So then the tigress was born in a nobleman’s house and the doe was reborn as the demoness Kali. When the daughter gets married and has a child, the demoness talks her way into the bedroom and eats the newborn. She does this the second time also. When the daughter gets pregnant again she tells her husband that she is going back to her father’s household to have the child. Kali has to do 5 months of water-bearing serving the king of Hell during this time, so she can’t kill the kid right away. When she is done she comes back to earth and tracks the family down. The child is a bit older and the parents are preparing for the name ceremony when the mother spots Kali. She takes off running with the child and runs to the local temple where the Buddha happens to be preaching.”
“Ah, it’s the Buddha angle now,” I commented, picking up the pace as we ran under the bat-rest trees teeming with squeaking bats.
“Yes, this is where the Buddha comes into it,” Dan replied. “So the mother lays the child at the feet of the Buddha and tells him that the demoness is coming to eat the child. The Buddha tells her not to worry and asks the head monk to escort the demoness into the temple. The mother starts freaking out but the Buddha just tells her to settle down,” Dan joked and I started laughing through my heavy breathing. When Dan caught his breath from laughing and the slight hill out of the bat area he continued, “The Buddha asked Kali why she did what she did and told them both they were lucky to run into him. If they didn’t meet the Buddha and hear the Dhamma from him their conflict would have continued indefinitely. Then he gave them both a sermon about justice.”

“So you have to have to right teaching from the right person or being,” I replied. “That makes sense. It reminds me of what my old violin teacher explained about the learning process. ‘Most learning takes place repeating the same things over and over again, like practicing your scales every day’ he told me. ‘But sometimes you have sudden, cataclysmic learning. This does not happen very often, especially in music,’ he used to joke. I guess those women could have heard the same lesson about justice, but it could only reach them when it came through the Buddha because they could see it with his clarity. That violin teacher was actually like that. He could take a musical concept that tons of other teachers had tried to pound into my head and put it in such a way that I could suddenly see it or hear it.”
“Teachers like that are great,” Dan replied nodding. “Kali became a stream-enterer, meaning she was put on the path to enlightenment. The Buddha tells the mother to let the demoness hold she child and Kali snuggles it like it was her own, then everyone is shiny and happy. Kali ends up living in the forest and the villagers bring her alms because she gives them good advice about their crops,” he finished.

“I really like that story,” I commented as we started on the less populated and more overgrown back stretch along the river heading back toward the front gate. “It really shows the complexity of karma, not just simple poetic justice. It reminds me of that cancer patient I had, the one down for murder. There was no way she was getting clemency because of her crime, and she hung on forever. I started a Super Bowl style betting pool on when she would die and we all lost because she so far exceeded everyone’s expectations. That’s how bad it was. Security and nursing both often commented that her prolonged suffering was her debt for taking a life...”
“I thought you said that everyone you worked with was Christian?” Dan interjected.
“Yeah, that’s what was weird about it,” I replied. It was like this simplistic idea of karma had filtered its way into American culture outside of religious affiliation. Anyway, since I had done Hospice on the outside I argued that perfectly decent people died in all sorts of horrible ways, and furthermore, there were inmates who had committed much more heinous crimes living healthy lives on the inside. I just felt like it was all so much more complex you know? Nothing’s that simple, like in the Kali story. There is all this cause and effect that we don’t know about. Eventually you lose track of who caused what. The fact that she had taken a life didn’t allow me to feel any better about her suffering. I didn’t want the other nursing staff to ease their minds with this explanation and have an excuse to not give her their best possible care. I didn’t want them to not turn her or spend the extra time to position her just right because she had killed someone.”
“Do you think people did that?” Dan asked.
“Maybe,” I replied. “I’m sure that the cancer spread to her hip, so she could be really tough to position, especially once she started to break down and develop pressure ulcers. You had to really take your time with her and get it right. One time toward the end when I was working with her she asked me about her dying process, “Why is this taking so long?” and I replied, “I don’t know, what’s holding you here?” She just shook her head, wincing in pain, and told me that she didn’t know. People said all the time that she was afraid to die because she knew she was going to hell. I used to tell them that she was already in hell. I just hoped for her that the suffering served some sort of purpose to burn away some of that sin she had acquired as a murder. I don’t even really know if it works that way. That’s just what I hoped for her.”
“That’s your yogic mind talking about heat and purification and all that. That’s not really correct according to Buddhist psychology,” Dan replied, almost apologetically. “The Buddhists believe that the rebirth is determined by the last thought. When you said that she was already in hell, that was more in line with Buddhist psychology. If her mind was a really chaotic place of anger and suffering she was probably building up the habit of being someone who kills and then dies painfully.”
“Man, that’s depressing.” I replied, pushing myself extra hard to run up the hill. “So all that suffering isn’t really serving any purpose. It’s not like credit then is it? Once you’ve paid off all your plastic you can get a better interest rate,” I replied, mulling it over.”
“No, it’s more like this run,” Dan replied. “When you push yourself up this hill you get stronger physically to run farther, but you also learn how to cope with pain. You train yourself to be a better runner. She’s becoming trained also,” Dan explained. “How did your patient die again?” he asked as we topped out on the hill and passed the modern orchid house with its concave roof hollowed out to the sky. We continued on the path running into the fruit tree grove at the top.
“I used to literally pray every day that she would die and be released into whatever was next,” I began. “Seriously. That was my wish for her. When she stopped eating and drinking we knew it was getting close. I came into work one night and the Watch Commander told me she was going to die that night. I think she must have had some sort of stroke that day or something, she was totally unconscious. The whites of her eyes were black. It was in the middle of a flu epidemic and I couldn’t spend a lot of time with her. I knew that she didn’t want to be alone from conversations we had before, but the infirmary was a freakin’ crisis. I wanted to sit next to her all night, but it just wasn’t possible. I tried to be with her as much as I could, watching her take little sips of breath. I prayed over her myself and said some mantras. I don’t know if she would have wanted all that weird Sanskrit crap but that’s what she got. We never really talked about it beforehand, I just knew that she didn’t want to be alone so I would put a hand on her. When she looked really still my CNA and I put the 12 leads on her for an EKG. I wanted 12 leads of flat-line, but her heart would beat every now and then, so we had to wait. Once we got the flat line, I pronounced her dead myself at 2 AM. Most nurses never pronounce anyone dead because most of the time there are docs around to do it. There was a 2 AM count, so they counted her dead body and then we bagged her. I called the family myself. That was basically it,” I finished as we reached the front gate, our stopping point after about 25 minutes of running.

The End Result

My sari on the back patio after a wash

Round Two

I had never experienced a shopping disaster like the one at Juneid’s. I had never found an item that I liked in my price range and then walked away empty handed. Walking toward the aircon sanctuary of the Mlesna tea shop I reviewed my Third World shopping resume. I had bought a Persian carpet in Syria, jade in the Hong Kong jade market, ruby earrings in India, and an antique watch in Istanbul. All of these transactions involved much more money and haggling. A fifteen dollar sari should have been easy. The thought of starting the whole process over again exhausted me. I knew that shop keepers like ones at Juneid’s design the experience to dazzle you, but also to wear you down so that the thought of going through it all again keeps you bound to them.

The Mlesna tea shop sells tea and tea paraphernalia. Its all female sales staff will allow me to sit down and drink my water unmolested whenever I need a break. Gazing out the second floor large glass window into the street I tried to understand the Juneid’s staff. Clearly they had gotten too greedy looking at my white skin thinking that I had just gotten off the last Cathay flight to Asia. They saw me as a rich mine they just had to pick-axe and blast their way into. They also operated on the principle that I had no idea that I could buy the same thing down the street. I reminded myself of the mantra of Third World shopping “is this item unique?” You have to know your local as well as the alternative market and know if there is a good internet direct seller or eBay power seller of your coveted item. Of all my international shopping I only consider one of my possessions unique, my 18K gold rose gold Art Deco Istanbul watch. I have never seen its rival in a store, on eBay, or on another woman before or since. An old Armenian man in the covered market just happened to have a few of these incredible watches. I returned to him a few years later and even he didn’t have that quality of inventory again. When the old man told me the watch was special it was the one time I knew the vendor was right.

From my soothing perch in the Mlesna shop I could see women thronging through the main street in their saris and salwars. I reminded myself of the other mantra of Third World shopping, “Nothing has absolute value. The question of value is personal, an item is worth a certain amount to you and that is what you should pay.” Maybe to some of the women on the street the salwars would have been worth the price. A sari is a strip of cloth whereas a salwar set has a tailored top, pants, and the scarf. More labor means more money I reasoned. The amount of money I was willing to spend on the sort of salwars I saw at Juneid’s was never going to fit with the price they needed to obtain. I wondered if the thin salwar-man got in trouble from the sari-selling man for blowing both sales. I was tempted to march back in there and haggle hard for the saris, but I didn’t want to support that store at all. Ever.

Was Juneid’s the typical sari experience here in Sri Lanka? I decided to go to another store I knew, Saraswati, to find out. Dan and I got our sheets there and they seemed like reasonable people. I said goodbye to the ladies at Mlesna and headed out, plotting my course to avoid the Juneid’s street.

I was hoping that the Saraswati staff would recognize me since I had gone with Dan and he spoke Sinhala to them. On arrival I didn’t see any of the same staff as I was shown to the sari pen upstairs. Most of the saris were neatly folded on shelves like Juneid’s, but I could physically approach the shelves myself. My sales attendant only showed me saris that I indicated rather than attempting to overwhelm me with a flashy show of fabric. When he unfolded a delicate dark rose cotton sari with a maroon and gold zari border I forgot all about Juneid’s. I made him unfold the whole sari for me; some of the Juneid’s saris had hidden flaws folded away inside. When the entire 6 yards was out on the counter I could see a stain the size of a softball on the second third of the sari. Whatever the substance was had even sort of eaten a small hole in the fabric. Three of the shop boys who were hanging around watching the sale clucked their tongues at the salesman for offering a defective product.

He showed me several others from the same collection, but the colors weren’t right. I decided to go for the stained sari, haggle it way down, and hope I could get the stain out. I could tell that the stain would fall into the front kick pleats of the nivi drape anyway. After a friendly exchange we agreed on the sale. The floor man did not try to show me additional merchandise. He then helped me pick out a petticoat and blouse piece, even insisting that I try on the all lycra blouse piece. I left pleased with my purchase, happily carrying my Saraswati bag past Juneid’s and up the hill back home. Now I just had to figure out how to put it on.

Aniwatta

This is the view from my friend Kathleen's backyard.

Sari Shopping

When I was five my parents started me on the violin. They chose the Suzuki Method of learning which places emphasis on public performance early and often. Coinciding with golden era of the Suzuki Method in the early 80’s, American canning companies were switching from the three-part can to the two part can. My grandfather was an executive with American Can Company charged with the responsibility of transitioning the three-part can technology to can plants overseas. Korea was one of his main areas of business and he brought home spectacular Korean dresses for all of his granddaughters. With their stiff, colorful silk, and embroidered flowers, my hanbok-style Korean dresses were some of my favorite possessions, and of course, I insisted on wearing them to my group violin recitals. I have seen pictures of myself, my blond hair contrasting my billowing, vibrant, Korean dress on stage amidst a herd of Asian kids in western clothes.

In my maturity my love of clothes remains intact, but self consciousness has developed into a strong sense that one must have a certain claim to wear regional dress. For example, despite a long period coveting cowboy boots, I never bought a pair until my mother moved to Texas and I had spent some time in and around Houston. Over the course of my two trips to India I admired the women’s saris, passionately studying the varieties of patterns, fabrics, and draping styles. Some of the younger, middle-class women wore acid washed jeans and cheap knock-off T-shirts while the women begging at my rickshaw were dressed in colorful saris elegantly draped on their thin frames with scores of bangles on each forearm, leading me to conclude that India has the best dressed impoverished population in the world. Wealthy women also wore saris, beautiful cotton and silk saris shot with gold and elaborately embroidered.

During my time in India I only saw one Western woman in a sari, an older woman with her grown children. I spotted her at a Delhi train station; she had that straight off the ashram lotus pond feel to her as she moved through the combination casino/homeless shelter of the Old Delhi train station with self conscious intention and serenity. Her hair was disheveled but her bindi was carefully in place. The sari looked wrong on her. It looked like she had taken a sheet from a 1950’s roadside motel and wrapped it around her body.

Here in Kandy some women utilize the classic nivi drape while others drape their six yards in the local Kandyan style. The Kandyan style is sort of backwards, upside-down and inside out compared to the nivi that features a ruffled edge circumnavigating the waist. After two months in Sri Lanka enviously watching local women of all social strata moving through the streets in their saris I decided that I was going to purchase and wear a sari, even if only in my house. My only obstacle now was the actual shopping experience.

I knew that when I entered a shop or market the sales staff would immediately shift gears from trying to form lasting positive relationships with the customer to trying to screw me as much as possible. Dr. Josh Weiss of the Negotiation Tip Podcast labels these types of negotiations as on-going interest based negotiations versus the isolated win-lose positional negotiation. The positional negotiation is an adversarial clash in which participants attempt to maximize self interest while in an interest-based negotiation the participants are concerned with each other’s satisfaction. The first time my Plastic Housewares Man wrote out a carbon copy receipt for me, leaving a record of the transaction, I knew that I had graduated from a positional to an interest based negotiation. Now I would never buy my sponges and hangers from anyone else. Unfortunately saris are not as simple as plastic buckets and I knew that the positional approach would be much stronger. My rug dealer in Aleppo, Syria explained to me that local sellers think foreigners have the money; they just have to dig it out of you. Like mining for sapphires, they just keep hammering away until they strike the vein and the gems spill out.

Lacking a local to take me around to inspire interest-based interactions, I opted for the next best thing. I asked one of the women at Dan’s think tank whose saris I had always admired for some shop recommendations. She had a plain face hidden behind large plastic-framed glasses but it was her clothes that made her stand out to me. Her saris did not strike me as more expensive but rather very well selected. I was hoping for an indication of merchandise quality as well as a place that might treat me somewhat decently. She immediately recommended a store called Juneid’s. As soon as she said the name I recalling having seen women toting their Juneid’s shopping bags around Kandy. Even better, the store was located very close to the axis of my existence in Kandy, the Food City. To quote The Bell Jar, “It seemed a lucky thing.”

On my next trip to town I took one of my US greenback fifties to the bank to exchange into Rupees. I wanted to use my own savings, not the money Dan gave me for food and transportation. I easily found Juneid’s, exactly where I had pictured it to be. They had a man stationed outside the store, like a Third World Wal-Mart greeter, to herd people inside. Normally the presence of such an employee would have sent me on my way on down the pavement, but I was secure in my recommendation. The men’s clothes were on the bottom floor and I was quickly ushered upstairs. The store was packed with locals, which I took to be a good sign. The saris were stacked on shelves behind a counter. I could look at the saris and point to the saris, but a man who had attached himself to me had to open the saris for me with a flourish, souk rug-dealer style. There were heaps of saris on the counter-tops and squads of re-folding men moved between them. The man behind the counter seemed decent enough. His English was good and I explained that I was not a tourist but a resident of Kandy. He showed me that all of the prices were marked, but I knew the locals didn’t actually pay those prices. He patiently showed me saris in a variety of qualities from rayon to cotton to silk. A pile quickly developed on the table and I was excited to realize that a beautiful silk blend block print sari was well within my price range. When shopping for a rug it is customary to narrow things down so that the shop boys can start putting things away and the sales floor staff can learn your taste. So I began indicating which saris were possibilities and which were not. Another thin man floated at my elbow, interjecting other saris from other locations for my view. This man seemed to have no concept for my taste, showing me loud large pattern after large loud pattern. He would never have made it in a rug shop.

I had it narrowed down to two saris when the man behind the counter nodded to two of the folding boys. I hadn’t planned to get two, but I could easily afford both as well as the necessary undershirts and petticoats without breaking my budget. The first pattern was a classic and detailed floral motif, predominantly eggplant and tan on a cream background. The second was an all-over coffee color with a delicate black scalloped pattern all over and a floral motif on the borders. As I watched my saris being folded the man behind the counter told me “go upstairs and look at salwars. Today just look, you can buy some other time,” as he gestured up the stairs. A salwar is the matching long tunic, pants, and long scarf ensemble seen frequently in India and Pakistan on the Muslim ladies. Even though I knew this was a ploy I was curious about the salwar stock. I could always come back after all if I did see something I liked. I lived here now.

Once I got upstairs I was greeted by the thin man who had shown me all of the ugly saris. The salwars he showed me were gaudy, with beading all over the front. There were no prices marked. When I showed slight interest in a navy blue salwar he said “oh very nice, new style.” I held it up to my body, “do you think it will fit?” I asked, hoping to be shown to a fitting room. “yes, yes, it will fit,” he reassured me. I asked how much and he told me 3,000 Rupees, about 30 USD, as much as my two silk saris and their associated underclothes combined. I put it down and it disappeared. He showed me a few more and I came across a pink one that I also liked but that also turned out to be expensive. I was disappointed in the inventory.

I was starting to get hungry, so I headed downstairs to the ground floor to pay. When I got down there the blue salwar and the pink salwar were folded next to my saris. “I don’t want these today, only the saris” I told them, taking my saris off the pile and pushing the salwars down the counter. “Look look,” the thin man from the salwar department exclaimed and began furiously writing with a red pen on a brown paper bag. “I will give you the salwars for this…and the saris for this…” he mumbled writing down the prices for everything. He wrote the figure 9,995 in large numbers and circled it at the bottom. “Credit card ok,” the sari selling man re-assured me and moved off to his department, assuming that his sale was closed. “No,” I repeated, I only want the saris. Salwars some other day,” I repeated, knowing I would never buy those salwars. The salwars were too expensive and not pretty enough for a novelty cultural item. “Ok, now look,” the thin man said leaning toward me as he put the salwars back on the pile, “Look Madame, the boss is out today, so I can do this,” he told me in a hushed tone, returning to the brown paper bag, scribbling down figures. I could feel that we were reaching an impasse; I could hear Dr. Weiss in my head talking about pre-decided goals. I was unwilling to spend more than 50 USD, which was my limit. The sales staff had decided to get a certain amount of money out of me, or to at least sell me items from two departments, and seemed confident that I had enough attachment to their sari product to acquiesce.

I knew they would never bully a local woman in such a way. As the thin man produced another similar figure I decided that I would ask one more time to just buy the saris and if he did not allow me, then I would go. I have walked out of rug shops and jewelry shops in the Middle East and India as part of a negotiation technique, but this would be different. “No,” I said sternly, pulling the saris off the bottom the pile and arranging them in front of me, “only the saris today,” I insisted. “But Madame, the salwars are very fine quality,” he started to push them back in front of me. I looked at him for a moment, stunned, before I turned around and started to walk. “Madame!” I heard his panicked voice squawk just once behind me as I started into the street. Thankfully I was not followed.

The Desk

Dan's Interview Transcript 3

At this point in the interview session tea and jaggery were served. Jaggery is dark, unprocessed can sugar melted at a high heat. Portion sizes vary according to how the mixture is allowed to cool. Jaggery is usually served with tea in rough, nickle-sized lumps. The first time I was served tea and jaggery I tossed the jaggery straight into the tea, which turned out to be a serious faux-pax. You are supposed to take a little nip of the jaggery and then sip the tea.
After tea and jaggery Dan moved his questioning on into family related issues. He also fronted the monk with the Yodhajiva sutra. In this sutra of the Pali cannon a warrior asks the Buddha "Venerable sir, I have heard that it has been passed down by the ancient teaching lineage of warriors that 'When a warrior strives and exerts himself in battle, if others then strike him down and slay him while he is striving and exerting himself in battle, then with the breakup of the body, after death, he is reborn in the company of devas slain in battle.' What does the Blessed One have to say about that?” Devas are gods. The warrior is asking if he is slain in battle will he go to heaven as in the Hindu tradition. The Buddha is reluctant to answer to warrior, replying “"Enough, headman, put that aside. Don't ask me that." Despite this warning the warrior repeats his question and the Buddha replies "Apparently, headman, I haven't been able to get past you by saying, 'enough, headman, put that aside. Don't ask me that.' So I will simply answer you. When a warrior strives and exerts himself in battle, his mind is already seized, debased, and misdirected by the thought: 'May these beings be struck down or slaughtered or annihilated or destroyed. May they not exist.' If others then strike him down and slay while he is thus striving and exerting himself in battle, then with the breakup of the body, after death, he is reborn in the hell called the realm of those slain in battle.” The Buddha explains that since the mindset of the warrior in battle is deranged, if he dies with his mind in this state he goes to hell. The warrior starts to cry because he has been mislead and becomes a follower of the Buddha. The Yodhajiva sutra only addresses what happens when a soldier dies on the battlefield. It does not address what happens if a soldier kills men on the battlefield, survives, and dies in his old age with a better mindset. Other stories in the Pali cannon suggest that enlightenment is possible even for former murders. The monk in the interview does not seem to be familiar with the Yodhajiva sutra.

Dan also questions the monk on the common practice of families constructing bus halts to commemorate their lost loved ones using compensation money from the army. Most bus halts are concrete run-in sheds on the side of the road with the dead soldier’s image inside. Formal bus stations are rare. Most people just wait by the side of the road and hail the bus. Even though buses are frequent, they are often full in between the cities and won’t stop so waits can be long. I can remember one situation in particular in Thailand during monsoon season when a Danish girl and I were trying to hail a bus watching the clouds gather and darken. A bus halt would have been greatly appreciated.

D: Do you remember a recent army funeral that you attended?

S: Three weeks ago a soldier died. Many soldiers are very poor. They don’t have houses.

T: What do you say in order to console the families?

S: Some mothers and fathers are accustomed to saying “Our son gave his son for the country, the race and unity of the country” so they don’t feel shocked. There are some like that, but there are also those that are inconsolable. We also say to a certain extent that this is a sacrifice for the country. This is not an individual death, but a sacrifice for the entire country. We talk about that. At that time, we say something in accord with the Dhamma. Hindus say that if someone dies on the battlefield they will go to heaven. But Buddhism doesn’t say anything like that (laughing).

D: The Yodhajiva sutta says that one goes to hell.

S: Hmmm.…

D: What sorts of problem does the family of a soldier face if he dies?

S: There are many poor and helpless people in the army. They go to the army for a job because they are poor. If they go to the war and lose their lives, it is true that they get a certain amount of money. Sometimes the dead soldiers have just married. Some have only been married for a year. Some of their wives are pregnant. Some have two-month old babies. Even though these people receive money, they can’t rise above these problems. Some are mothers who have lost their son. Some are wives who have lost their husbands. Sometimes they don’t know how to properly share the money and work together. They don’t have any understanding of such things. Our country does not give any solutions to those kinds of problems. They don’t know how to form an organization and distribute the money properly. There is no plan for solving this problem in Lanka. With the death of the soldier the family just falls to ruin. That is because disunity arises quickly and fiercely. Problems might appear between the wife of the soldier and his parents. The reason for this is money. Sometimes the parents throw out the wife. Lots of problems arise and become a chain of problems. It is a problem that must be solved.

T: Yes, this problem must be solved.

D: What do you think about Bus halts on the road?

S: (Laugh) I wish that they would do something better than that. That’s just how people in the village show off. “This is the great thing done by our son.” There’s nothing more to it than that. I think that the 10,000, 15,000 or 25,000 [100, 200, or 250 USD] rupees used to build such things should be used on more important things.

D: Shelter for You, Nirvana for Our Son...

S: Laughs.

D: Could you tell us about the army day ceremony at the army base?

S: That is where we remember the dead soldiers. The parents are brought. They offer robes with their own hands. We chant paritta [protection] and they give to around 100 monks. I also participate in that. Poor people can’t make offerings like that. Even if they receive money, they don’t spend it properly. Many can go there and join, thinking of their sons. It is good to do such things together as a group. In that way, one can appreciate this program sponsored by the army.

Since it is a group giving, we can appreciate it. We preach. All are invited: The mothers, the fathers, the wives...

T: Who started that?

S: No idea.

D: Have you ever seen an LTTE fighter?

S: Yes.

D: What was he like?

S: Many people in the LTTE are young people from Colombo. They have come and spoken with us, saying “Hamduruwo ne! We were in Colombo and went to Isipatana college [famous college] The people/government worked against us so we joined the LTTE. By saying so they disclosed everything. They were just people who had lived together with us. In the North and East, the young generation doesn’t know anything about us. At the beginning, the ones who started the war were young people who lived among us. They went to school here etc...

D: What do you think the difference is between the LTTE and army soldiers?

S: Army soldiers have discipline, rules and training. He can’t just shoot someone. LTTE terrorists aren’t like that. They don’t have any discipline, rules or training. They weren’t trained that way. Other than training for war, they don’t anything else done by the army. That is the difference between these two groups. The other difference is that hatred for the Sinhala people are encouraged among the LTTE. They have created this anger from the beginning. However, our army doesn’t have any hatred for the Tamils. Our army never does anything like that. But the LTTE terrorists do that. Their mental states are shaped in that way. They spread hatred so that they will take revenge. That is dangerous. That is how they are trained. That is why they kill children, cutting their necks, hitting them on the ground, swinging them against trees, and popping their eyes out. They do terrible things. A disciplined soldier could never do such things. Terrorists aren’t like that, they can do whatever they want.

D: In the American and British armies there are religious advisors in the armies called Chaplains...

S: There is nothing like that in the Lankan army, right?

D: Yes, why aren’t there any?

S: I haven’t seen anything like that. To a certain extent that service is done by Buddhist monks. That’s because 99% of the soldiers are Buddhist. This kind of thing is done by various institutions and organizations on the side. It is done indirectly.

D: I wonder who does the religious services at the battlefield.

S: There are temples in the different areas. They just get a monk and perform the religious service.

D: If Lord Buddha were alive today, what do you think he would say about the war?

S: He preached about war in those days as well. He said that harming beings is wrong and that we should have maitri (loving kindness) for all beings.

D: Is there anything that we haven’t asked but that you would like to say?

S: What I have to say is one cannot do anything without fixing people’s hearts. No end will come through hitting and shooting. The only thing that will happen is that people’s hatred, anger and desire for revenge will increase. We need to look and see that even though they are terrorists, we need to fix their minds. That is what we need. The solution to this problem lies in fixing people’s mentality. We have to rehabilitate them. We can’t do this with weapons. We can’t murder everyone. There are terrorists who have weapons and there also those who don’t. The terrorists without weapons are more dangerous. We can’t get rid of them. The only thing that we can do is fix their mental states. This is how we can reach a solution. That goes for both Sri Lanka and the entire world. There are problems everywhere in the world. People murder each other. They set off bombs. There is no end. There are problems everywhere. So, we must fix their mental states. Then we need to increase the spiritual strength of each person. That is what Buddha Dhamma says. That is what Buddha Dhamma teaches. Problems decrease through one’s internal development. That is how war can be ended. King Ashoka showed this to the world for the first time. He fought a war, saw the results of war and was disgusted. He saw the disadvantage of war and showed the way free of war.

D: Do you have any relatives in the army?

S: Yes, my older brother’s son died in the army. He was a good soldier. He was in the STF [paramilitary special police force].

D: When did he die?

S: About 8 years ago.

Trash Burn

A trash burn on the hill that somehow did not engulf the whole neighborhood.

Dan's Interview Transcript 2

In this section of the interview Dan explored the monk's analysis of Buddhist soldiers' psychology. The monk referenced the story of Elara during this portion of the interview. The story of Elara and Dutugemunu is useful not only for understanding the monk's comments, but also to understand the historical roots of the overall ethnic conflict. The Wikipedia entry describes Elara as a Tamil king who ruled a large area of northern Sri Lanka from 205 to 161 BCE. Elara is recorded in the 6th century CE Mahvamsa, or "Great Chronicle" of Sri Lankan history as a very just king. He is credited as treating the Sinhala with the same respect he gave his fellow Tamils during his 44 year reign. Despite his status as an excellent ruler, an upstart young Buddhist prince from the south, Dutugemunu, defeated Elara in a duel couched in a larger battle at the gate of the northern capital. Dutugemunu is revered today as a Sinhala hero for routing the Tamil king. His struggle is often cited by Sinhala nationalists as an ancient example of the Sinhala dispelling Tamil invaders and re-asserting Buddhist cultural identity. During his 25 year reign, Dutugemunu built numerous Buddhist sites of worship while patronizing and strengthening the monastic community. Despite the fact that the Mahvamsa specifically states in chapter XXV that the tanks of water ran with the blood of the slain on that day of battle, the monk tells Dan in the interview that Elara and Dutugemunu engage in a mano e mano duel in order to preserve the lives of their respective soldiers. This is a colloquial interpretation of the story I have also run across in some of the popular Sri Lankan press. I was surprised to see the story misrepresented by a well educated monk and questioned Dan about it. "If I derailed an interview every time a monk misquoted or misrepresented doctrine to me then I would never get anywhere. I am interested in the point he is trying to make about soldiers and the war, not accuracy," he told me.

D: What sorts of people do you think Sri Lankan soldiers are?

S: If they have learned army discipline well, they are good soldiers. They are respectful of laws, fair and respectful of their duty. They are people like that. Most Sri Lankan soldiers are Buddhists. As Buddhists, they are influenced by the Buddhist teachings which have been passed down through the generations. No matter how skilled a soldier is, that Buddhist teaching influences him.

D: Is there a difference between the sermons that you give to soldiers and those that you give to normal lay people?

S: Yes. I give courage to soldiers. “ārabhata nikkhamata ninjata Buddhasāsane” That is what the Buddha preached to the monks. Begin, go forth and act!” He gave the monks that sermon in accordance with the Buddha Dhamma. We can tell the army to be active and do duty, have courage and go forward. Do your duty perfectly. We can say such things. We can bless them so that they have mental and physical strength.

D: What sort of advice would you give to a soldier who has shot and killed someone on the battlefield and is feeling regret.

S: At that time we have to direct them towards religion. Religiously speaking, regret is a mistake. Religiously we must tell them that this regret is no good. If a soldier regrets what he has done on the one hand he will be a bad soldier. That is because if he feels regret it means that he hasn’t learned his discipline well. A perfect soldier cannot feel regret. It is not related to religion. It is connected to army discipline. He might say, “I thought that I couldn’t shoot. I felt bad. I felt this, I felt that. I felt bad. I felt compassion for the one I shot.” He could say that. Religiously we can give him advice.

D: Does a sin occur when a soldier shoots the enemy?

S: As for that, that is a problem found everywhere in history (laughing), whether it is a sin or not, it is a sin. One cannot prevent that. However, for a sin one must fulfill several conditions. Without that there is no sin. Army soldiers are ordered to go to war and shoot. This happens according to the rules of the army unit. That is their rule. Now. The executioner hangs people. There is a problem there also as to whether sin occurs or not. That is his duty. There is the problem of carrying out the law. In the same way, the army carries out the law. So they have to shoot people. A fierce thought and a sinful thought arises from this. This cannot be prevented. There a sin occurs by his hand. One cannot say that that does not happen (laughing). One cannot shoot with compassion and loving-kindness. That is a mental problem.

D: What kinds of qualities does one need to be a good soldier?

S: They need to respect the laws. They need to be disciplined. They must be well-trained. They must have fairness. If you look at the Sinhala method, the Sri Lankan conflict is a duel. The battle between Duttugamunu and Elara was like that too. They decided to fight a duel between each other in order to halt the loss of life of others. That is a special kind of battle in the Sinhala method. Imagine, for example, Elara’s sword or shield fell to the ground. The other person would never strike at such a time. If the sword were to fall he wouldn’t strike. He would tell him to pick up his sword and fight. That is the highest attribute of our system of war. A sword may be dropped accidentally, but it would do no good to strike at that time. That would not be skill. That would not be skill. One needs to fight fairly and face victory or defeat. If a soldier is skilled like that, they would not shoot when their enemy’s weapon has fallen to the ground. That is weakness of character not bravery. That is why soldiers are full of bravery, fairness, and duty. They need to have honesty, discipline and obedience. They also need to obey the laws. That is the perfect soldier. That is the perfect soldier. This has nothing to do with whether they are Sinhala or Buddhist; such a soldier could be sent to any army in the world. However, our young men are a little different when they go to the army because they are Buddhist. One cannot remove that foundation. They were brought up in a Buddhist environment with their parents until they were 18 or 20. One cannot change that foundation. I think that that nature is common to all armies.

D: What do you think the difference is between an American soldier and a Sri Lankan soldier?

S: Right. When a boy is brought up in the Buddhist tradition, they do not lose their identity as Buddhist even after military training. They do not forget the Maitri prayer, “May all beings be free from suffering.” They cannot condone the harming of any beings. Not even an army officer can suppress this. Even a leader of the army can see that Buddhist identity when they are amongst the soldiers. Even though they join the army, Buddhist boys can’t get rid of that. I don’t know how it is with other religions.

D: What is the biggest challenge to soldiers? That is to say, what is the biggest obstacle for soldiers trying to act in a Buddhist way?

S: I don’t think that there is anything. There are no obstacles in our country for those in the army. There is even a temple at the army headquarters. There is a temple inside the headquarters. That is a strange thing. I don’t know of anything like that in other countries.

D: They are there.…

S: Oh. There is a temple there. People take the precepts there. Monks preach there. There is a lot of room for soldiers to become inclined towards religion. They can spend their free time working at the temple. So there is nothing preventing Buddhists from being good soldiers and nothing preventing soldiers from being good Buddhists. Being a soldier doesn’t hinder being Buddhism. Being a Buddhist doesn’t hinder being a soldier. Neither of them gets in the way of the other. They can protect their Buddhist identity and their identity as soldiers. There is no challenge. It is not a challenge to say that a Buddhist has joined the army and gone to war. One can be a better soldier with the Buddhist thoughts of compassion and Maitri. One can be a better soldier.

D: What do you think a soldier thinks as he shoots someone else? What does the soldier think?

S: He shoots according to rules and discipline. He can’t refrain from shooting there. If at that time they were to think, “Oh No!” They wouldn’t be able to shoot. As he prepared to shoot, he would become shaky. He might shoot as a soldier, but afterwards he would have regret. He would think, “How many people have I killed with my hand?” and feel regret. On the other hand, he might not feel that way. He might just think, “I have fulfilled my duty.” In order to fix his mind he would tell himself that he just did his duty.

D: So what would happen to a soldier if he died on the battle ground? What do you think?

S: Even if the soldier next to you eats a bullet and falls dead, a soldier wouldn’t feel regret because of the training and discipline received as a soldier. What becomes foremost then is the discipline received from the army. At that time, army rules and discipline take over. Sometimes other things come to mind, but he suppresses them. War is something that we completely reject. We must not condone war as Buddhists. However, all countries have armies to protect the country. In our country too, even though there are Buddhists in the army, they will protect the country if they need to.

D: Yes, I am looking into the mental states of soldiers.

S: Yes, that is something that should be looked into and discussed.

D: What happens to the soldier who dies on the battlefield?

S: I can’t say. We can’t say that the same thing will happen to each person because we don’t know what their mental state was at that moment. According to Buddhist teachings, the last determines the next life: whether it is good or bad. According to that one is reincarnated. We don’t know what the mental state of a soldier is at that moment. We don’t know what kind of form it takes. Some may be angry. Some may not. We can’t say. It is determined by each person’s thoughts.

D: Can you remember a sermon that you recently gave to the army?

S: Yes. I preached a sermon last poya [full moon day] at the army base.

D: Could you tell us about it? What did you say?

S: I talked about the current situation. That is to say, now there is a war. We have started fighting with the Dravidian LTTE in the North and East again. We can’t go there and reduce their morale. If we were to do that there would be serious criticism from society. We can tell them to perform their duties properly and we can talk about the country and the unity of the country. We can tell them that their responsibility is this and that they need to fulfill it in a legal and fair manner. They could go to war and kill innocent Tamil people. We don’t want this at all. On the battlefield there is a war between two groups and people from both sides die. However if innocent Tamils, Muslims, or Sinhala are killed, we can’t condone that. We tell them to never do such things. We tell them not to harm a single animal whether it is a goat or a cow. There is no need to harm animals like that. They are innocent animals. Next are innocent people. There is no need to harm them. However, a war is between two groups of people and people from each of these groups die. We can’t prevent that.

D: You said before that you had gone to the north to give sermons.

S: Yes.

D: Could you tell us about going north?

S: I went to Jaffna right after it was captured to chant paritta [protection sutras]. I chanted paritta right after Jaffna was captured. They put up a lion flag and we chanted paritta that night. At that time we were invited to preach paritta. They were so happy. No one can be satisfied with the destruction of war. Lives, buildings, temples, churches, all are destroyed. That day we saw, we were taken around the area that had been taken, we saw that everything was destroyed. There wasn’t a building or a church left, all were destroyed. The destruction was huge. I can’t even describe it. Lives were destroyed and buildings were destroyed. I understood what a battlefield was like on that day. We saw the ferocity of war with our own two eyes. We asked them why they had attacked churches and Hindu temples. They told us “The LTTE had gone inside the church and attacked. We shot back at them. It was the same with Hindu temples. They would go inside and attack and we would attack them back. There was nothing to be done about that.” That is the ferocity of war. I went to Hiroshima and saw it. I saw the destruction of a nuclear bomb. In the same way, the attack of Jaffna was also a terrible thing. There is no way that we can condone such things. We cannot condone this kind of damage and destruction.

Downstairs Dogs

The Guard Dogs take 5.

Dan's Interview Transcript 1

So, why does Dan drive his 1968 Lancer down the Kandyian hills to stay at brothels or with creepy women? To get interviews like the following modified transcript of a recent interview. I have divided it up to 3 chapters with background for easier reading. The subject of the interview was a high-profile head of a large temple. He has been ordained for 50 years and at the time of the interview served as the chairman of a prominent council of 2500 monks. He held a PhD and has published several books including biographies of Buddhist and non-Buddhist figures. His residence was two stories, a demonstration of wealth in Sri Lanka. The interior had tiled floors and high ceilings, both luxuries. Dan and his research assistant sat on a sofa and the monk at in a chair. Behind the sofa was an ivory-handled monk's fan. I have removed all identifying information such as his name, his references to other individuals, the titles of his published works, and his geographical location. In Dan's transcription he leaves many Buddhist terms in Pali and Sinhala, which I have translated or defined. I want to thank Dan for allowing me to share this privileged view into his work.

Dan starts the interview focusing on the role of monks in society and their objectives in preaching sermons. The story of Ashoka is helpful in understanding some of the material in the interview. The Indian Buddhist King Ashoka lived from 304 BCE to 232 BCE, although the details of his life were not recorded until the 2nd century CE writings Ashokavadana, or "Narrative of Ashoka," and the Divyavadana, or "Divine Narrative." After a brutal early reign during which Ashoka took control of most of modern day India he converted to Buddhism. Ashoka is given the title "Chakravarti," or "Wheel-Turning King." If Siddhartha had never entered the world he would have become a Chakravarti. Once Ashoka had established his empire he renounced violence and proselytized Buddhism from Greece to Burma. After his renunciation the culture and infrastructure of his Maurya Empire flourished. He convened a significant council of Buddhism which enhanced the development of the Theravada monastic tradition and sent monks to all corners of the known world. He sent his own son, Mahinda, to being Buddhism to Sri Lanka. Ashoka recorded his accomplishments on pillars that he built all over India, several of which feature the Ashoka Chakra, or wheel, seen in center of India's modern flag.


Dan: What are your responsibilities as a monk?

Subject: I have four temples in this area. There are thousands of contributing families connected to these temples. I must participate in all of their religious and social activities. That is my primary responsibility. I provide leadership to those activities. I have seven or eight students living at this temple I am also a famous speaker so I go all over the country giving sermons. I am a writer. I have written books.

D: What are the qualities of a good monk?

S: According to the preaching of the Buddha. We need to be able to live according to the various climates and customs of different countries. We need to wear long sleeves in cold weather et cetera. However, according to Buddhist teachings, the life of a monk is uncomplicated and free. Now, monks these days have increased their responsibilities, taken control of temples and so that has changed. The Lord Buddha said that we should live in the charnel ground or under trees without any possessions. Now that has changed. We can’t change that. The Lord Buddha preached "Renunciation is like the sky. It is like a bird with no bonds." Now society has changed. It has changed in all countries. Renunciation is different in Thailand, Burma, and India. The food and drink are different. If it were done correctly, renunciation would be the same everywhere. The Sri Lankan monks, in particular, have a lot of responsibilities. From the day that the monastic community began, the monks have come to protect the country, race, language, arts, and culture. In other countries, monks are not like that. Monks in our country have an especially large amount of responsibility.

D: Why is that?

S: That is something that has come from the first day of the founding of this country. The kings of this country have served the community every since the day that the Venerable Mahinda came to this country. The group that arrived with Venerable Mahinda knew science, literature, language, arts, and architecture. Those monks had that knowledge. That is why they are the keepers of these things. While keeping monastic identity they have also acted to nourish literature and history.

D: On what occasions do you give sermons?

S: If there is a death, there is a sermon on the 7th day, three months and one year. Then there is the robes-giving ceremony. I preach on various inaugural/opening ceremonies in society. Other than that, I sermon at various religious and social events. I even go to sermon at the government departments and to government officers, demand for my sermons have spread everywhere.

D: What is the most common occasion that you give a sermon?

S: The most frequent occasion is when Buddhists die. One needs to preach on the 7th day, the third month and the one year anniversary. If a father or a mother dies, we have to go preach.

D: What is the goal of a monk in preaching a sermon?

S: To increase people’s knowledge of the Dhamma [teachings] as much as possible. People have flaws, you know? They drink and such. I aim to free them from such things. If people have economic disadvantages, I try to pick them up from that. Why do people become disadvantaged? Why do they do wrong? We must speak about such things. We must preach about all of these subjects. We also must preach about good behavior. In our country, good behavior is in decline. We tell them to respect their parents and their elders. Since such things have become rare in our society, I preach about them. I tell them to respect their parents and to take care of them. I preach many sermons with this goal in mind.

D: Imagine that I am a little monk. Tell me how to preach a sermon.

S: Little monks learn about this in the monastic colleges and other educational institutions. They learn about how to hold a sermon. We give the little ones advice about how to improve their lives. We have an old tradition of this. We teach them about this. They need to teach them to wake up in the morning, study their books and work in a certain way. We tell them the value of monastic life. This is the highest life in the world. If I were to ordain today I would bow to my mother and father. That is something that never happens anywhere else in the world. That is because of the special regard and respect for the monastic life. So, we teach little monks about that.

D: Could you tell us about the sermons that you give to soldiers?

S: We cannot approve of war according to Buddha's Dhamma. Do you understand? War is an unnecessary thing. This was made clear by King Ashoka. It is a destructive thing. Sri Lanka is like that also. The monks in Sri Lanka have not approved of the war. They have not approved of the war even to protect the country, the race, or anything else. Monks cannot approve of war. Buddhist monks cannot approve of war. However, this kind of thing happens: Monks can tell people to protect certain things. They can advise people to protect things. They cannot tell people to go to war. They cannot advise people to go to war and kill others. Monks cannot do such things. A monk is an individual who has Maitri [loving-kindness] for all beings. When one has Maitri for all beings one cannot say what the race, country, or caste of a being is. We have Maitri for all, whether Thai or Indian or American. It is not just people; we also have Maitri for animals. Our dharma does not condone the harming of any type of being. We show Maitri for all people and animals. When a war starts, we must only try to stop it. The Lord Buddha also settled such disputes. The Buddha stopped the war over the Rohini River. He stopped the war by asking what was more valuable, water or people’s lives. In the army they are trained in certain rules. In that way, all of the armies of the world are similar. Soldiers are controlled by certain rules in the army whether in Thailand, India, the USA, or Russia. In the army people follow various religions. There are Buddhist, Christians, and Muslims. Their religion cannot be separated from whatever training that they have received. They cannot completely separate it. People who join the army must do their duties as soldiers. Take for example a Buddhist soldier; he may have compassion and loving-kindness in his heart. He may have to shoot someone sometime. However, he tries not to do that. That is the internal spiritual power of religion. However, he must shoot according to army discipline. If not, he will be shot himself. While he bound by military discipline, he cannot completely get rid of his religious knowledge and feelings. There is an example of this, the story of William Frederick. The Frederick gardens are in Havelock town. Frederick was ordered to shoot Sinhala people. He said that he couldn’t shoot his own people. Afterwards, he was shot and killed. The Frederick garden is built at the spot where he died. He didn’t shoot even though he was promised his weight in gold. He didn’t shoot because of his religious orientation and inclination. It was because of that they he didn’t want to shoot. Moreover, he did not want to shoot his own people. No matter how much training one receives from the army, religion still influences a person.

D: Tell us about a time that you gave a sermon to the army.

S: We go to the army temple all of the time. We go there for religious activities. We perform temple chores and perform Dhamma teachings. We bless the army there. We do not tell them to go and fight the war. We simply bless them, telling them “May you have courage, may you have strength.” We also bless them, “May you have mental and physical strength.”