The Flying Carpet

Friday, March 30, 2007

Anniversary

March 14th marked the day I sat eavesdropping on a conversation Dan was having with one of his advisors at a Charlottesville coffee shop. When we met, Dan had already applied for the Fulbright-Hayes grant to come to Sri Lanka. In April he found out that he had been awarded the grant. The shadow of the coming separation hung over us as we enjoyed dating and falling madly in love and we avoided discussing it. One evening we were sitting on the futon at his house discussing a recent dinner party when the subject of the grant came up, “Why don’t we ever talk about it?” I asked annoyed.

“Do you want to talk about it?” he replied.

“Yes, we need to figure this out,” I told him.

“Well,” he began slowly, “I see three options.”

“Ok,” I replied, nodding my head.

“First, we shake hands and say goodbye and say we’ll see when I get back,” he started. “But I don’t want that,” he quickly added. “Second, you could take a vacation and come to Sri Lanka soon after I got there and see if you liked it. If you liked it then you could stay,” he paused. “Or third, you could come with me,” he exhaled. “I don’t want a long-distance relationship,” he explained. “I’ve done that before and it just doesn’t work.”

“I agree,” I replied. “It’s not like you would be in California or some place I could reasonably visit on a regular basis. It would even be a pain in the ass to call,” I added. “No long distance relationship,” I confirmed. “If I am going to come along, then I need to just pack up my stuff, quit my job, and just come along,” I continued. “My lease is up in June. I need to either move out or sign a new lease. They won’t give me any time off from work anyway. Remember that I do mandatory overtime as it is. The only way is for me to quit, put my stuff in your basement, and just leap,” I finished, raising my eyes to look at him.

In June Dan went to India for a month on a program to study Jain religion and culture while I began to pack up my life and move it into his basement. In July he returned to Charlottesville to help me finished packing, moving out of my house, and driving my car to its new home in my mom’s garage in Houston. After visiting various friends and relatives along the way, we arrived in Sri Lanka on August first to begin our life together.

We were both in total agreement on how to spend our first Anniversary, two nights at the Galle Face Hotel, with lunch at Gallery Café and dinner at The 1864, the Galle Face’s fine dining restaurant. At check-in we got upgraded to the honeymoon suite again. After as afternoon splashing in the ocean-side infinity pool and reading under the cream-colored canvas beach umbrella on the seawall, I washed up in the garden tub and started getting dressed at the mirrored dressing table. I chose a white saree with a silver border and custom-made blouse-piece for the evening. The saree was much longer and wider than I was used to, requiring me to tuck more of the top hem into the petticoat and make more kick-pleats in the front of the saree. The cheaper sarees I wore around the house at least once a week to practice and master my pinning techniques were much shorter and stiffer. After draping the saree, I sat at the bench to apply my make-up as Dan watched a TV show on crazy Aussies who wrangle sea-snakes on the National Geographic channel.

When I was finished, we walked from the Classic side of the Galle Face Hotel, down the Verandah restaurant where breakfast was served, to the newly renovated luxury Regency side of the Galle Face Hotel. On the Regency side rooms started at $170 a night, ranging up to $600 for the deluxe suite with the hot-tub on the balcony overlooking the sea. The 1864 restaurant was an Asian fusion restaurant located in the Regency side with open-face brick walls and a tasteful modern wood carving filling the entire back wall of the restaurant.

The waiter asked us if it was a special occasion, nodding to my white saree.

“Yes,” I replied happily, “it’s our Anniversary, our first Anniversary,” as we were shown to our table. Each table had a square sunken area in the middle filled with water, rose petals, and a votive candle. Dan studied the appetizers as I studied the wine list. “Let’s get a bottle,” Dan instructed me.

After a delicious meal including a cold avocado soup, lobster tails, and the dessert sampler washed down with a bottle of white wine, I felt just full enough but still able to float back out of the restaurant in my white saree. Then the waiter and manager came out of the kitchen area with a small chocolate cake covered in white chocolate shavings with the phrase “Happy Anniversary” written in red frosting on the top and a single candle. All of the staff told us congratulations as they gave us the cake. I happened to have my camera with me so the waiter snapped a picture of us with the cake.

“I can’t eat this!” I confided to Dan when the restaurant staff had dispersed.

“Just, have a little,” he encouraged me. I felt terribly guilty as I cut a thin piece on the side to divide between Dan and me. The hotel had done this wonderful thing for us and we couldn’t enjoy it. I was hoping the cake would turn out to be the usual disappointing Sri Lankan mangling of cake, but devastatingly, the cake was excellent.

“We’ll just have to take it back to the room,” I rationalized. But we were leaving the next day and I knew that we wouldn’t eat it for breakfast.

We left The 1864 and walked back along the ocean before returning to the room with Dan holding the cake in it’s little box. “It’s been an amazing year,” I commented, stopping and looking out into the dark ocean.

“Are you glad that you came?” Dan asked, fishing for a little more validation.

“Oh course!” I replied, “Sri Lanka is tough though. It’s hard not to be able to just walk out my front door, get in my car, and drive to a coffee shop, the downtown area, or one of the parks by the Rivanna River. There’s nowhere that I really want to go anymore in Kandy except for the Gardens and it’s a six dollar three-wheeler ride to get there. I feel like a prisoner in my own house now,” I shrugged. “I feel like I’m sort of in the gas-giant phase of a supernova right now as far as being in public in Kandy is concerned,” I admitted. “I’ve given up. I feel like I can do the errands I need to do for the next two months before I totally implode and become this black-hole of anger and resentment, but I feel it coming a little more every day and I can’t stop it. I used to try and motivate myself to keep getting out and keep looking for that running route, that coffee shop, or that restaurant where I felt comfortable. I told myself that all of the little local bullies weren’t going to get the best of me, but now I’m over it. I’m done. I’m done looking for a yoga teacher, finding my way to Abhidharma meetings, and doing self-tours of Kandy,” I commented, squinting to see the lights from a big ship in the Gulf of Mannar.

“In terms of public culture,” Dan replied, “Most of the educated, English-speaking natives that haven’t managed to immigrate to Australia or the UK have very quiet social lives in their homes that center on their families and a few friends,” he explained. “Nobody is taking a walk after dinner, nobody goes out for coffee, and people don’t really eat out. Most people have servants to do the shopping for them and they rarely go into town themselves. If they need a tailor or whatever, the world comes to them. People live way up in the hills in their compounds like little islands on this big island. There is no demand for anything like Gallery Café in Kandy. Gallery Café is almost unique in Colombo, there is barely demand for it here,” he finished sadly.

“I’ll never take my freedom in the West for granted again,” I continued, feeling the sea breeze on my face and smelling the polluted ocean water as it crashed against the sea wall. “I will never take clean, safe, public places for granted again. I am going to embrace American public culture and events like never before,” I vowed. “But Sri Lanka has changed me in good ways also,” I furthered. “I used to think that all I could do was work as a nurse on the night-shift at that prison. I did my job very well and I got lots of positive re-enforcement from all sides but when I was off, I just sort of hung out with people from work. Now I feel like when I get home, I can do so many things. I could do yoga teacher-training and or further my meditation practice. I could go to a retreat at Yogaville. I could work part-time and go back to school for my Masters or for massage therapy. All of that seems possible now,” I paused. “In terms of getting a job when I get home,” I continued, “There’re so many areas of nursing in Charlottesville where I know people now; I’m networked into the Health Department, different departments at UVA, and even the Regional Jail. I feel like if I can do this, live here, I can do anything,” I finished.

“I’m really happy sweetie,” Dan replied, balancing the cake on one hand, putting his other arm around me, and kissing me on the forehead as I leaned against his chest.

After lunch at Gallery Café we headed to the Colombo Fort Train Station at 3:00 for the 3:30 Colombo-Kandy Intercity Express. The train arrived early, so we loaded onto the train and took our seats to wait. I felt relieved that we didn't have to stand on the platform anymore where we typically got frequent harassment. I felt protected in the train so I relaxed and was looking out across the other platforms when I saw a middle-aged blond-haired blue-eyed Western man, probably Australian, staggering down the platform led by a young Sinhala holding onto his arm. The white man was very tall, thin, and looked sun-burned. He wore a red shirt and long surfer-style shorts. "Look at that guy;" I said to Dan, "he's crazy as a shithouse rat." Dan nodded his head and we both continued to watch. The white man carried a cheap black nylon computer case that I doubt contained a computer. That was the only luggage carried by either of the two men. The Sinhala man was tall, taller even than the white man, and also thin. He wore jeans and a polo shirt. Strikingly, he was bald. In Sri Lanka usually only monks are bald. They walked to an area behind a small hut-shop on the platform, right across an empty set of tracks from my window. The white man seemed to know that they had arrived at their location, setting down his computer case and leaned against the hut-shop. A Sinhala woman and her daughter passed them and the white man made silly faces at them. The Sinhala escort man leaned against a column and put his foot up on one of the steps up into the hut-shop. Then another young Sinhala man approached, greeting the bald Sinhala man. He wore a dress shirt and dress pants. The bald man introduced him to the white man who grabbed the new Sinhala man in an awkward embrace; I thought for a second that he was going to kiss him. The Sinhala man pulled away, he and the bald man started laughing hysterically. The white man looked like a confused child trying to join in the joke. "This is evil," Dan commented, "Whatever is going on is truly evil." I nodded my head in agreement.

Dan left to go and tell the police that something was going on. I continued to watch as a third, shorter, Sinhala man joined the group. The white man tried to embrace the Sinhala man in dress pants again and they all roared with laughter. They way the young men laughed at him reminded me of the way the boys at the Botanical Gardens laugh at me whenever I run past them. Their laughter was painful to me because it reminded me of the countless taunts I endured when I went into public. I studied the white man, his facial features were even and well-balanced, he did not display traits of retardation from birth. He seemed aware enough of his environment to try and fit in with the Sinhala men and take his cues from them, so I didn't feel like he was having a psychotic or manic episode. His face was not puffy and he did not have a gut as I would have expected in an individual who made a habit of being drunk in the middle of the afternoon, but he could have been drunk or high.

Dan returned to the seat next to me and told me that he alerted the station police.

“I just told them that something was going on,” he shrugged, “I really didn’t know what else to say.”

“I know, I just can’t figure this out,” I replied. “Is he drunk? Or high? Did you see him hugging that one guy?”

“It really makes me mad that this, whatever this is, drugs, sex tourism, whatever, is going on in broad daylight, in the middle of the day at the busiest train station in the country. This station ought to be a hub for tourists to access the whole country, but instead it’s a nest of touts and crime” Dan commented angrily. “It just shows a total lack of control.”

“It is sad,” I confirmed. “Sri Lanka has so many amazing places to see, but it’s just really hard unless you’re on a package tour and don’t have to deal with any of this,” I remarked, gesturing out the window. “I was looking at the itineraries for those two or three week package tours,” I continued, “Those people see more of Sri Lanka than I will living here for ten months because they have nice air-con minivans to whisk them around and guides to smooth out the rough edges,” I added ruefully. As the train started to pull away to take us back home to Kandy, I saw the back door of the hut-shop open and the three Sinhala men step inside, leaving the white man on the platform.

“That was a strange end to a wonderful weekend,” I commented to Dan as the train pulled out of the Colombo Fort station, taking his hand across the dividing armrest.

“It sure was,” he replied stroking my forearm with his other hand.

Wednesday, March 28, 2007

Back Ridge Sunrise

First Meditations

I arrived at the meditation hall early so I could test-drive a few positions with the cushions. I settled on a system of two cushions the size of hub-caps under me and another one behind me so I could lean on the wall. I didn’t think I had any shot at sitting up straight for 90 minutes. One of the regulars hit the gong outside the meditation hall and other people started filing in and arranging their cushions. The woman I had mistaken for my inmate sat right next to me, chilling me. If I could have talked to her I could have seen her for herself, someone different than my inmate, but in the absence of other information she remained my inmate.

There didn’t seem to be a formal start to the proceedings. People just got comfortable and got right down to it. Six Westerners came into the hall, two Sinhala women and two Sinhala men. I took my cross-legged position, closed my eyes, and felt my breath come in through my nostrils. I felt the breath fill my chest, I felt my ribs expand. Then I felt the breath flow out of my body. I didn’t try to do anything to breath, I didn’t try to suck it in deeper, expand my ribs out to the sides to open my thoracic spine, contract my pelvic floor, or raise my soft palate. I just watched it flow in and out again. Then I started thinking about how I needed to change the date on my return ticket to the States and wondered if that was going to be a pain in the ass since I got the tickets of Cheaptickets.com. I wondered if there was an Emirates office in Colombo, or since the first flight was a code-share with Air Lanka, if I could make the change at the Air Lanka office in Kandy. “Ok, back to the breath,” I told myself. I focused my attention on the tips of nostrils and felt the air passing by at this point. I felt the air passing through my nares for a few cycles and then I started thinking about what Dan and I would do for our up-coming one year anniversary on March 14th. “Obviously we’ll go to the Galle Face Hotel, but what else?” I wondered until I brought myself back to my breath. I felt my breath at the back of my throat until I realized that my neck was getting weak and my head was dropping down.

I had no idea how long my head had dropped down and I was sort of asleep, my only clue was that my right foot no longer seemed to belong to my body it had gone numb so badly. I had to use my hands to mindfully inch it out from under my left foot in the cross-legged position. I rested on my left hip on the cushions as I brought my right foot in contact with the bench. The electric pain that burst up my leg was spectacular. I opened my eyes to look at my foot and half expected to see a sparkler burning up my flesh. The woman next to me got up and started to do a walking meditation down the meditation hall, moving exquisitely slowly and focusing on every little sensation. I still could not detect anything in her that told me that she wasn’t my former inmate.

I settled myself back on the cushions with my knees out to the side but with my right foot in front of my left foot instead of under it, and returned to my breath. I felt my breath pass in and out through my nostrils and felt very relaxed and calm. I then was aware that my head was bobbing again, down, and down, and down. I tried to reverse the direction and felt my head snap back and crack into the wall behind me, breaking the silence. I did not open my eyes. I straightened my spine without leaning on the wall and returned to my breath. I felt my breath pass in and out through my nose. My mind wandered to a high school crush, “Why was I so into him anyway?” I mused until I brought my mind back to my breath. Suddenly a singing bowl broke the silence of the room and it was over. I realized that 90 minutes goes pretty quickly when you sleep through a good chunk of it. I also realized that nobody in the room had experienced a seizure, so I figured that “Rick” had finally left Nilambe.

The meditators slowly came back to themselves and left the main hall for 4 PM tea. I eagerly poured myself a big mug of the milk tea and threw in a heaping spoonful of sugar. A far cry from my usual austerely plain green tea, but I knew that calories would be scarce tonight and I was desperate to jolt myself awake for the evening meditation. I took my mug to the outside benches and sipped it slowly. The only conversation I could hear around me was in German. The next thing on the schedule was yoga, taught in a small building above the meditation hall. After I had washed out my mug I headed up the flagstone steps to the little yoga hall, excited to get my blood moving.

There were two young British girls talking when I reached the yoga hall. Next to them was a young man with shoulder-length curly hair who added to their conversation with a German accent. I put my mat next to him. Another young Western man with close-cropped hair wearing all white put a mat next to mine and an older woman also in white, who I would later learn was his mother, placed her mat next to him. The woman who led the class arrived next, placing her mat in front of our row of mats. She was a middle-aged German woman with brown curly hair, blue eyes, and the lean build of a long-time yogini. She introduced herself as a short-term guest of Nilambe who had volunteered to teach the afternoon class. She told us she would lead us through an Ashtanga workout. Since Ashtanga was my mother school of yoga I was thrilled. I wondered what sort of instructor she would be. In my mind there were only two types of yoga instructors. The first, more common group did the poses and used their own practice as a framework for their teaching and calling the class. The second group did not use the class-time as their own practice time. They would demonstrate poses but spent most of the class walking around giving adjustments and counting breaths. This way was much more difficult because you have to keep track of everything in your head like what comes next, which side you have already told the class to do, and how long the class has been in a pose. If you practice along with them you know from your own body. The first time I taught a yoga class, I substituted in at the last minute for a teacher who was sick. During that experience I realized that I couldn’t breathe properly and speak out loud to teach, so I knew this method wasn’t ideal for the class or the teacher.

The German woman taught from her own practice. I was the only person in the class who already knew the practice, so it was good for the class to see the practice also. I felt unusually strong and was able to execute some complicated transitions in the practice more gracefully than usual. After the final resting pose the German man with the long curly hair next to me turned to me and said “you’re unbelievable!” I was stunned.

“Yes!” the British woman next to him chimed in. “Can you teach us tomorrow?” she asked.

“Sure, I can teach you tomorrow,” I agreed and started to roll up my yoga mat. The German man leaned down next to me and asked “Can you levitate?” I was so shocked at his question that I replied “Yes,” with a totally straight face as if to say “of course I can levitate.” I thought he would laugh, but he nodded his head and walked away.

Walking back down the flagstone path toward the stairs leading to the ridge I tried to remember how I felt when I first saw people executing the difficult postures and transitions of the Ashtanga practice. I had been amazed and it had seemed to me at the time that the practitioners were defying gravity and a few other natural laws. Now most of it had become commonplace to me. Many of the postures I had learned to do by combing tricks with strength. The things that I could not do, I was at least used to seeing other people do. When I reached the steps up to the woods I paused before heading up. “I could just go back to my cell,” I thought. But I did not come to Nilambe to sit in a cell. I went up the steps and then started up the ridge at the edge of the pine forest. It was 5:30 and I knew the sun would set at around 6:30, so I had some time to explore. From the Nilambe side of the ridge, the mountain fell away steeply down into the valley. I kept heading up and I could see through the trees that the ridge was narrowing. I could hear a strong wind rubbing the other side of the mountain just across the ridge. It almost sounded like a huge waterfall. The ridge narrowed to the point where two or three layers of trees clung to the top of it in between sides. I scampered up the short incline until I was on top of the ridge and able to look down into the valleys on both sides. The other valley plunged straight down on the other side of the ridge. No Nilambe, no road, I could not even see the side of the mountain it fell away so sharply. Gazing out into the valley it felt like flying, like I was being picked up by the wind rushing along the side of the mountain. On the Nilambe side of the mountain I could see ridge after ridge extending into the horizon. On the other side there was only a deep valley contained by tall mountains on all other sides that I could not see beyond. Looking down into the contained valley, Sri Lanka was peaceful and beautiful to me. I realized that the meditation must have some how primed my mind to have this heightened experience.

The light was starting to fade so I crossed back to the Nilambe side of the ridge and started back toward to center. Close to the staircase I found a rock with a commanding view of the valley, the Mahaweli River, and the sun slipping down behind one of the adjacent mountain ranges. I could see the same mountain ranges that I could see from my patio at home in Kandy, but from another perspective. I watched as they started to blush pink and purple, the river between them glowed golden, and the wisps of cirrus clouds smoldered fuchsia. I felt incredibly content and satisfied looking out over the surrounding landscape and watching to first lights twinkle on the valley. The satisfaction I felt eclipsed anything I had ever experienced, even after weeks of daily intense, immersive, yoga asana practice where I tried to pound myself into submission.

I hadn’t brought my flashlight up to the ridge and when it started to get dark I knew I had to head back to the center or risk a misstep that might destroy my ankle again. Looking back at the pine forest I saw the first stars, probably planets, flickering above the black outlined treetops. I carefully headed back to the center and to my cell where I got my flashlight and my fleece for the evening group meditation. When I left my cell I found that I didn’t need my flashlight as I found my way back to the meditation hall. I waited outside in the darkness until the long-termers finished their chanting. When I arranged my pillows, I knew that I could not lean on the wall. No matter how many times I hand to change position, I knew that I had to stay off the wall or I would sleep. It was time to test the seat that asana practice had forged for me. I layered two large pillows and a smaller one on top so that I could either sit cross-legged or in a supported seiza position, a sort of kneeling with my butt back on the cushions. I figured between those two seats I could make it through the 45 minute meditation ending at 8 PM. I started off in supported seiza, closed my eyes, and felt my breath. My mind wandered back to the ridge and I brought it back. It wandered to the yoga class I would teach the next day, I brought it back, it wandered to the woman who looked like my inmate, and I brought it back. My right knee started to ache so I changed positions to the modified cross-legged with my right foot out in front of my left ankle rather than under it. I marveled that my back felt fine, and then I brought myself back to my breath. I wrestled my mind back to my breath over and over until I heard the singing bowl ring out.

The meditation room was completely dark except for a few candles at the altar featuring a Buddha statue and a photograph of the founder when I opened my eyes. Upul sat in meditation next to the shrine and the rest of us lined the two longer walls. One of the junior teachers stood up and informed the group that there would be a discussion at after the snack at 8 PM in the small hall. Then the longer-term Western residents began to get up slowly and one by one prostrate first in front of the photo of Godwin, and then in front of Upul. It struck me that these people were not bowing to robes or the Sangha, but rather to lay individuals. Neither Godwin nor Upul were monks. When a monk receives a bow he knows that the lay person is bowing to the Sangha, but for Upul, these people were bowing to him as an individual, as their meditation teacher. “Some people just like to bow,” I reasoned as I looked around the room. I noticed that the nun had not come to either meditation session. “This is probably a retirement home for her,” I decided as I exited the meditation hall and went into the kitchen for the snack.

The snack turned out to be round, rock-hard, hunks of Melba toast the size of a silver dollars. As the group sat around on the benches in the kitchen mindfully eating the toast I wanted to laugh out loud at the slow, loud, crunching sounds circulating around the room like a fugue. Every so often someone would bite into a new chunk of Melba toast and add another voice to the cacophony.

After crunching my toast I followed the herd down to the small hall past the men’s quarters. The other participants settled themselves on round cushions on the jute mat covered floor. The little room was lit only by a few candles around a garishly painted Buddha statue with bright concentric rings behind the Buddha’s head to render his halo. A German woman with chin-length wavy hair wearing all white introduced herself as one of the long-term residents and asked us to go around and introduce ourselves. The woman who looked like my inmate sitting next to me turned out to be Swedish. On my other side was the German yoga instructor woman, then Jeanne, then the German man with the long curly hair, next to him sat one of the British girls, then a quiet Canadian man, then the young German man with short hair sitting next to his mom. The older German woman leading the group informed us gently that she was going to read a transcript of an interesting explanation Upul had given her one day for “saddha,” faith in the Buddha and his teachings. She spoke slowly and kept her head angled toward the floor. I recalled seeing her in the meditation hall sitting in modified seiza on a small wooden bench meditating with her head cocked to the side and a strange blissed-out expression on her face.

She began to read the transcript slowly. The talk started in second person with an analogy that the listener is an individual ignorant of the Dharma wandering in the desert parched with thirst until he sees a man who looks clean and refreshed. The man says that he has been to the water and you can go to the water as well, that you can be like him. The refreshed man points you in the right direction. Because you see that he is clean and refreshed you trust him and go in that direction. “That’s really nice,” I thought to myself. “It expresses saddha, Buddhist faith, not as blind faith but faith based on perceptual evidence.” The talk went on to utilize a conceit of the mind as a garden and a little space must be cleared in the garden to plant the seed of the Dharma. “If the seed is envy then the harvest will be disappointment,” she read. “If the seed is hate then the harvest will be pain,” she continued. The talk then returned to the importance of the wanderer in the desert assessing the man giving him directions, the saddha. “In the Bhagavad Gita Krishna brainwashes Arjuna until when Krishna asks Arjuna what type of bird it is in the sky Arjuna answers it is such-and-such bird, but if you say it is another bird, then it is another bird to me,” the German woman read on, “and this is why a Hindu killed Gandhi,” the talk continued. The German woman serenely continued reading the next words as though she had not read anything unusual. The words “and this is why a Hindu killed Gandhi,” burned in my ears. I could not focus on anything else that she was saying.

“So,” I said to myself “because Krishna gives Arjuna this long lecture about doing your duty and it’s ok for him to go to war with his relatives because it is his duty and Arjuna goes on the win the battle, Upul is saying that a Hindu was enabled to kill Gandhi presumably thinking it was his duty?” I wanted to stop her speech and say “So, did the Dhammapada, some of the popular verses of the sacred Pali cannon, enable a Buddhist monk to kill SWRD Bandaranaike, the second Prime Minister of Sri Lanka?” I recalled that Godse shot Gandhi in protest of Gandhi’s support of the partitioning of India and creation of Pakistan while in Sri Lanka a monk, frustrated that the Prime Minister was not filling his promises to Buddhism, shot Bandaranaike for “the good of my religion, my language, and my race,” as he had explained it to the press. The rest of the words passed in a blur until I realized that the German woman was repeating the phrase “and that’s why a Hindu killed Gandhi.” I was amazed that she said it not once but twice.

“For me,” the German woman commented when she had finished reading the transcript, “It was really moving the idea of the invitation to become like the Buddha. In my Catholic upbringing, nobody ever told me that I could become like God. Such a thing would be heresy!” she exclaimed happily.

“Yes,” began the young German man with the short dark hair sitting next to his mother, “but I’ve been in Kandy for awhile before coming here. Most people here, even monks, they don’t know anything about the Sutras!” he relayed in annoyed disbelief. “How else can you learn about what is truly Buddhism?” he asked rhetorically. “I went to the University at Peradeniya,” he continued, “I talked to people there and they relate to Buddhism just like the Christians back home,” he finished angrily. I recalled my statement to Dan at the Charlottesville Target back in July that I was “looking forward to living in a Buddhist country.” Like this young man, I was hoping to find a community of like-minded people. I felt compassion for the naïveté and disappointment I shared with him.

“I haven’t read the Sutras at all,” the Swedish woman who reminded me of my inmate commented, “I have received my Buddhism through wonderful teachers, wonderful teachers that have touched my heart,” she concluded. Hearing her speak, even with her slight Swedish accent, did little to break the illusion for me that she was my inmate.

“Well, you must not have had a teacher that truly touched your heart,” the young German man shot back. The Swedish woman looked stunned. “If you had a teacher that truly touched your heart then you would be enlightened,” he reasoned. The Swedish woman was looked at him in silence. I decided that I would engage this arrogant second-generation intellectual Buddhist for her.

“When were the Sutras written?” I asked him, knowing full well that the Sutras were not written until 300 years after the Buddha’s death.

“Well, they were written 300 years after the Buddha’s death,” he admitted broodingly.

“But back then the monks had amazing powers of memory,” his mother assured me.

“That’s 300 years that the Pali cannon is passed through human minds and formed by the culture around it,” I asserted. “Parts of it were developed out of the necessity for early Buddhists to define themselves as separate from the Jains and Hindus running around India at the time,” I explained.

“No,” the German man retorted, “They are the words of the Buddha. It is the only way to know the words of the Buddha,” he shot back.

“It’s the words of the Buddha huh?” I asked rhetorically, “What about the Abhidharma?” I asked. “Wouldn’t you say that the Abhidharma was created with strong culture influences to catalogue information for the purpose of the style of debate popular at the time?” I asked.

“Oh, forget the Abhidharma,” he waved his hand in dismissive frustration.

“So you have some doubts about the validity of the Sutras?” his mother asked me more calmly.

“My point is only that the Sutras are human, not divine. They are written by humans in a certain cultural context and you have to keep that in mind. They are just a tool, another form of a human teacher. The Buddha was the ultimate teacher of the Dharma; he could preach the Dharma to a demon and make her a stream-enterer. The Sutras do not contain that power,” I asserted. I told myself that I had made my point and I would let the conversation go someplace else now.

“Hmm…” the mother replied. Silence fell over the little room.

“I have to say,” Jeanne began, breaking the silence. “I don’t really like what he’s saying about the Bhagavad Gita, I think there is a lot more to the Gita for many people.” I was relieved that she brought it up, I wasn’t going to bother. The German woman leading the group looked back at the transcript on the floor in front of her with her head cocked and a slightly confused look on her face.

“But what’s wrong is wrong and you have to condemn it,” the young German man with the short hair insisted.

“The Gita is a spiritual book for many people,” Jeanne repeated. “Lots of people derive great meaning from it and make it part of their path,” she added with a nervous laugh.

“The Buddha himself told us to try other paths and see if they work,” the German woman added tentatively. Then looking at her watch she quickly added, “It looks like we are out of time.”

Walking back to the women’s quarters I felt profoundly disturbed. All of my peace, satisfaction, and gratitude seemed to have vanished. “This is why these things are supposed to be silent,” I realized. After brushing my teeth in the dark I crawled under my blanket and pulled the mosquito net down around me. Perhaps because of my nap in the first meditation session, perhaps because of the hard bed, perhaps because of the mosquitoes I could hear dive-bombing my head just outside of the net, I could not fall asleep. I kept thinking of better, pithier things I could have said to the young intellectual Buddhist man. “What guy travels to Sri Lanka with their mom when they are like 23 anyway?” I wondered. I envisioned a scene tomorrow where I told him that he needed to go to some hard-core monastery or dharma center in Burma and do a three month silent retreat and put all of the energy to work for him before it ate him up.

At 4:45 the wake-up gong was sounded. I roused easily from my fitful sleep with a sense of excitement and went to the sinks to wash of my face and brush my teeth to wake-up a bit. The sky was completely black and the stars were spilled out across the sky in incredible density. The air was very cold, but I remembered that the meditation hall had been warm, so I didn’t take my fleece blanket as I headed up the walk in my black sweatpants, black long-sleeve thermal shirt, and red fleece jacket. With everyone else wearing white it suddenly stuck me that I was wearing all-black with some red. When I reached the meditation hall I arranged my cushions in the fashion I had settled on the day before, two large round ones and one smaller round one on top. I noticed that all of the long-termers as well as the fresh fish packed the hall for the AM meditation.

When I closed my eyes to meditate, it was still dark. I started in seiza position and fought the usual deviations of the mind until my right knee started to hurt and I started to get cold. I knew that it was too early to get cold, so I sat with my knees huddled up to my chest for warmth. I debated whether or not to go back to my cell to get my blanket, but I brought my mind back to my breath. I debated again whether to get my blanket and I decided no, all thoughts of blanket were just distractions, all feelings of cold were distractions. Minute by minute I ground through it, bringing myself back to my breath again and again until I heard the singing bowl ring out. When I opened my eyes it was light outside.

I hurried back to my cell to get my blanket and then hurried back up to the kitchen for tea. I tried to hurry mindfully. “I am hurrying,” I told myself while walking down the path. I poured tea into the biggest mug I could find and took it out onto the terrace to sip with my blanket wrapped around me. I marveled that despite all of the other physical discomfort of the morning practice, I did not feel hungry. The young German man came and sat at an adjacent bench, but didn’t make eye contact.

After cleaning out my mug I headed up to the yoga hall. The Swedish woman led a basic series of stretching postures for an hour for me and the two British girls and then it was time for breakfast. I hungrily filled my bowl with the reddish-brown kurakkan porridge, other wise known as Finger Millet porridge, sweet dates, and sliced a tiny sour banana over the top before heading back outside to a seat on the terrace. I tried to eat slowly and mindfully, occasionally putting down my spoon as I had read to do in the magazine Cosmopolitan years ago. “You never know when Cosmo advice is going to come into play,” I thought to myself as I looked out into the valley. After washing my bowl and spoon I knew it was time for karma yoga from 8 till 9:15.

In Sri Lanka something always needed to be raked and swept, so I grabbed the broom resting in the corner of the housing block made from long, stiff, bambusa fibers. I had seen Daya, the downstairs servant, raking the yard with a similar broom. I slowly raked the leaves out of the path in the garden and off the paths around the women’s quarters. Sometimes I would rake the leaves under large bushes and sometimes I would rake them into larger piles, push them up on the broom, and carry them to the edge of the property. The other residents carried rocks from one pile to another, burned trash, and cleaned the bathrooms. I figured that I would have to be on a higher level of meditation practice and karma yoga before I was going to clean someone else’s squat toilet. While I was raking in the sun I felt tired and fatigued.

After an hour I put the broom away and retreated into my cell to get ready for the 9:30 meditation. As I was arranging my pillows I noticed that the crowd was thinner at the late-morning meditation. The only participants seem to be the new people and no long-termers. I climbed onto my pillows, closed my eyes, and started the now familiar battle. I mind repeatedly drifted to the yoga class I was going to teach that afternoon like a bad dog that loved to run into the neighbor’s backyard and terrorize their cats. I had to shift positions more often and seemed more easily irritated my small aches and pains. I stubbornly kept my eyes closed and dragged my mind back to my breath again and again. I began to hear the sounds of pots banging in the kitchen, anticipating lunch, and I brought my mind back to my breath until I heard the singing bowl cry out at 11 AM.

After the meditation I immediately headed back up the steps, past the thick pine forest to the narrow ridge. I crossed the ridge and headed a few more steps down toward the valley on the other side. My exploration was rewarded by a huge rock that jutted out of the side of the mountain into open space. Sitting on the rock looking out into the bright valley I felt happy, relaxed, and satisfied. Time seemed to move deliciously slowly, the only thought cutting through my pure enjoyment was the nagging idea of when I could return to Nilambe. Sitting on the rock I realized that on one hand I could never really return. Even if I physically came back, it would not be the same, but I realized that this was not important. My enjoyment of meditation was the important thing, the one thing that I could take back down the mountain with me. I knew that my grasping wish to return to Nilambe would fuel other retreats and meditation groups when I returned to the States.

After another delicious vegetarian lunch I knew that I had to finally face the reality of a cold shower. I had waited until the heat of the day to undertake this operation. All of the women at Nilambe were bald, had boy-cut, or chin-length hairstyles. I knew from experience that a cold shower was not too bad until I had to address my hair that reached down between my shoulder blades, creating a thick river of ice running down my shivering spine. The water in the shower felt as though it was drawn straight up from the chilly bowels of the inner-most reaches of Hell. I carefully exposed one body part at a time until it was time for the hair at the end. I tried to back-bend while rinsing my hair so that the water would not run straight down my back, but it was still a bracing experience. “Now I know why all of these women living the Dharma have such short hair,” I thought ruefully as I toweled myself off.

After my shower I rested in my cell reading Godwin’s collection of talks in Hong Kong until the 2:30 group meditation. Walking back to the main meditation hall I reflected that this meditation had been my first group meditation in years the day before. Now I felt like a veteran. I stacked my pillows and took my seiza-style seat with confidence. I knew that my knees and ankles would get tired faster than my back, and it was easy to alternate with my knees and ankles. I plunged into the meditation, whenever I found my mind planning my yoga class or thinking about my new favorite rock, I brought it back to the air moving at the tip of my nostrils. I changed position when I needed to and before I knew it I heard the singing bowl and it was time for 4 PM tea. Drinking my tea on the terrace I realized that I had just survived my last 90 minute meditation. I had only the evening 45 minute meditation and the early morning hour meditation before Manju came to fetch me the next day. I saw the bald German woman again and thanked her for the packet. “You find it helpful?” she asked.

“Yes,” I replied. “It’s very everyday, just right for me.”

“It is very practical,” she confirmed, nodding her head.

“I am really enjoying it here,” I commented, “but I have to leave tomorrow. I was just thinking about how I am sorry to have to go.”

“Why do you have to go?” she asked in a blunt tone intended to jar me into re-evaluation.

“I have a household to run,” I replied, shrugging. “But this place is very special to me,” I continued. “I want to return, but even if I never do I will seek this sort of experience again and that’s the important thing. I am grateful to the people who live here full-time to keep it up and running for people like me to spend a few days and discover something about themselves,” I finished with a slight nod of my head. The bald German woman nodded in return, smiled, and headed down the path to the women’s quarters.

I headed up to the yoga hall to arrange myself and get the room ready for my afternoon class. I picked out one of the center’s mats, opened the windows, and reviewed my intention for the practice in my mind. “I’ll take them through the standing series, then one or two postures on the ground, a few finishing poses and then finally resting pose,” I told myself as the two British girls, a Sinhala woman, and the Swedish woman unrolled their mats to face me. I did the first sun salutation with them to demonstrate as I narrated. After the first sun salutation sequence of poses I continued to call the poses, count the breaths, and remind the class of their gaze points, but for the reminder of the warm-up I circulated around the room giving adjustments and suggestions. As we progressed through the standing series I would stop wherever I was in the room and demonstrate a pose or modification as I thought was necessary, but I spent very little time on my mat. Sometimes I would go down the line and give the same adjustment to everyone and sometimes I would work with one person on one pose. My primary fear was holding them in poses too long, especially since none of them were familiar with the Ashtanga style of practice. I felt sympathy for the class and sometimes like I was punishing the class because I was not practicing along with them.

At the end of the class I introduced handstands against the wall. The Sinhala woman and one of the British women had never done handstands, so I showed them how to face away from the wall and back up the wall to start building the arm-strength and the confidence. When I felt that it was time to move on I re-gained control of the class and brought them back to their mats for a few gentle finishing poses. While the class took final resting pose I went to each student and took their head in my hands, encouraging them to relax and extend their necks before placing their heads back down on the mats. While they soaked up the practice in final resting pose I watched over them sitting in lotus at the front of the room wishing them each a good stay at Nilambe.

When I called them out of final resting pose at 5:30, they all thanked me for the class before we dispersed for our sunset activities. I had brought my fleece and my flashlight up to the sunset stop on the Nilambe side of the mountain. Walking up the stone steps to the pine forest I still felt giddy from the adrenaline of teaching the class. I remembered how the student’s shoulders had softened and opened in response to my adjustments for them in forward-fold. I reflected that I had never done a teacher training. I had started teaching yoga to my family and friends almost as soon as I had started yoga myself. I simply replicated the adjustments I experienced at the studio. Before I had come to Sri Lanka, I had substituted for a few sick teachers at my home studio, but I didn’t have a regular teaching gig. If I wanted to get serious about teaching I probably should do some sort of certification when I got back to the States, I reasoned. When I sat down on the rock on the Nilambe side of the ridge my mind was racing about possible teacher training schedules. I weighed the pros and cons of gradual training programs versus immersions until I realized that I was not seeing the sunset. The sunset was not as vibrant as the previous evening, a more subtle wash of lavender on the mountains, pink across the sky, and a slight straw-colored glow to the river. When I focused on the changing landscape I suddenly felt grateful that I took the chance and came to Nilambe. I knew that back in the States I would have never gone on a two-day two-night retreat. Only the limited social options and threat of extreme boredom secondary to being left in the house for three days alone was enough to surmount my fear of meditation. “In the States, there would have always been something seemingly better to do,” I thought to myself. I watched as the sky faded to black, and the stars spilled out from behind the pine forest, and the lights in the valley winked on one by one. “If Sri Lanka has given me nothing else,” I acknowledged to myself, “It has given me this. It has given me the knowledge that I can create this sense of serenity in myself.”

When it was dark I turned on my flashlight and found my way back to the main meditation hall. The evening meditation was already in full swing as I arranged my pillows, took my seat, and focused on my breath. Upul sat in meditation next to the candlelit Buddha shrine at the front of the room. The candles next to the Buddha provided the only light for the room. Upul sat with an unwavering smile on his face formed by pulling back the back corners of his lips. When my mind wandered to whether or not I should undertake a 10-day retreat at a Vipassana meditation center outside of Kandy I brought my mind back to my breath. When I wondered what sorts of retreats they offered at Yogaville in central Virginia I brought my mind back to my breath. When I thought about yoga teacher trainings I brought my mind back to my breath until I heard the singing bowl gently rub to life. One of the junior meditation teachers announced that there would be no discussion tonight. I watched as the long-termers took turns prostrating before the photo of Godwin and before Upul before I headed to the kitchen.

The evening snack turned out to be much tastier and quieter ginger cookies. I nibbled my cookies mindfully under the stars before returning to the women’s quarters. I brushed my teeth and washed my face in the dark before tucking myself into my mosquito net and blankets. I fell into a deep, dreamless, sleep as soon as I settled into the straw mattress.

I immediately woke to the sound of the wooden gong, brushing my teeth and washing my face again in the dark before pulling the fleece blanket off my bed and wrapping it around me before heading to the meditation hall for my final meditation. After I stacked my pillows and took my seat, I swaddled myself in the blanket so that only my head emerged from the top of the wrapped fabric before closing my eyes to meditate in the utter darkness. I fought the battle of mental re-direction for an hour, opening my eyes to the sound of the singing bowl and the delicate light of the dawn.

After a quick mug of tea, I headed up the stone steps to the pine forest, fleece blanket and all. For my last morning I decided to forgo yoga for dawn on the opposite ridge. I reached my favorite rock on the side of the ridge opposite Nilambe just as the sun was cresting up over the ridge across the deep valley. I wrapped the blanket around me on the cold rock and watched as the light spilled down through the fog and eucalyptus plantation on the opposite mountainside. The breeze was light and I could smell fragrant wild lemongrass somewhere near the rock. I could hear monks chanting at a monastery in the valley as I savored the sunrise. The time moved slowly as I refused to allow myself to think about returning to Nilambe or anything relating to the past or the future for an hour on the rock. After an hour I knew that I had to leave to wash out my sheets and hang them up on the line, sweep out my room, and return my keys and the packet to the office per Nilambe protocol all before Manju came to get me at 8 AM.

In the office Jeanne asked me how I had liked Nilambe.

“It’s wonderful here,” I replied sincerely. “This place is really special, thank you for keeping it going after Godwin’s death,” I finished. Jeanne nodded her head approvingly as she wrote out my receipt, 800 rupees, about eight dollars for two nights. I was finished eating and ready to go when Manju pulled the three-wheeler to the top of the hill. Without saying goodbye to anyone I hopped in the back of the three-wheeler and we headed back down the mountain.

Nilambe Views


Tuesday, March 27, 2007

The Journey to Nilambe

After a month at home enjoying the pleasant weather of the cool season, Dan announced at the beginning of March that he and Thilak needed to go back up north do conduct more interviews. For this trip, he had an intense schedule of rituals and interviews planned. I considered coming along and lounging by the tank, but I felt I would only be in the way. Not wanting to be alone in the house for several days, I opened my Lonely Planet Sri Lanka and began to review my options. Looking at the “In and Around Kandy” section I was reminded of the various meditation centers tucked into the hills of the tea country. All of them required at least a ten-day time commitment except for one, Nilambe. “I can just go for two days and two nights,” I told myself. “If I hate it then I can always call Manju and he will come and take me home,” I reasoned with myself.

“I went to Nilambe as as ISLE student when I was here as an undergrad,” Dan commented when I relayed my intention to him. “There was some crazy British guy named Rick there. He would start to have seizures and things when he was meditating. I asked him how often he got into town and he looked at me as though I had asked him how often he gets over to the Moon,” Dan paused, rolling his eyes. “A group of us went up there for the day and stayed for the evening conversation when all of the sheltered little hippies talked about how threatened they felt that we were there,” he finished disdainfully. “But it is really beautiful up there, I think that you should go,” he added encouragingly.

“I think it’ll be good for me,” I agreed. “I feel like it’s time for me to get out and see something. Plus, if I hate it there, Manju can always come and get me and bring me home.”

That evening I went to Nilambe’s website to get an idea of what to pack. The website had a “Day at Nilambe” link. I clicked the link and found the following schedule illustrated with a few candid pictures:

4:45 wake-up gong

5-6 group meditation

6-6:30 tea

6:30-7:30 yoga

7:30-8:00 breakfast

8:00-9:15 working meditation

9:30-11:00 group meditation

11:00-12:00 individual outdoor meditation

12:00 lunch served

12:00-2:30 library open/free time

2:30-4:00 group meditation

4:00-4:30 tea/right speech

4:30-5:30 yoga

5:30-6:30 individual outdoor meditation

6:30-7:30 chanting and group meditation

7:30-8:00 snack

8:00-9:30 discussion and metta meditation

“If I hate it, then Manju can come and get me any time,” I told myself again after reading the schedule and feeling a worried knot form in my stomach. It seemed like spiritual boot camp. Wouldn’t it be better to work up into meditating four times a day rather than plunge into a retreat clinging the side of a mountain? Wouldn’t it be better to be a meditator at all to start with? I rationalized as I threw a blanket, flashlight, and some warm clothes into a small duffle bag.

Dan arranged for Manju to come for me at 8 AM, the same time Thilak was coming to get Dan to go to the north. Nilambe was only 13 km outside of Kandy, but Manju predicted that the trip would take an hour and a half due to road conditions. Looking at the familiar back of Manju’s head as we started out of town in the three-wheeler I forced myself to review the ways in which I might be prepared for the experience, attempting to combat my deep sense of utter dread. I reminded myself that I had been doing yoga for five years and currently practiced yoga for 90 minutes a day four days a week. None of the meditation sessions were longer than 90 minutes, so I reasoned I already had the ability to focus for that length of time. In the eight-limbed path of yoga, posture practice or “asana” practice, is supposed to prepare the body for meditation. The translation of “asana” literally means “seat.” In theory, by practicing yoga I should have been preparing my seat for sitting practice of breathing and meditation. As the road wound up into the tea country I also reminded myself that I was no stranger to meditation. I learned and practiced my first meditation techniques when I was 17 years old and still in high school. I had a tape that I would play on my walkman that instructed me to envision myself at the bottom of a pond and watch my thoughts go up like bubbles and vanish at the surface. I had done my tape on and off until I got to college. Once in college I had found a meditation group I had participated in a few times, but my main memory of this group was back fatigue from trying to sit up straight for half an hour. After my second year of school, my seated meditation practice had fallen away completely.

Manju negotiated the three-wheeler around huge Tata buses, lorries, and cars on the slender but paved road that wound higher and higher into the mountains. I recognized the tall tea bushes of an abandoned estate lining the sides of the road. At a functioning estate the tea bushes are cut almost back to the ground every seven years. I also reminded myself that Nilmabe encouraged the practice of yoga whereas many Buddhist centers expressly forbid it on the premise that yogic austerities run counter to the goals of Buddhism. I was encouraged by Nilambe’s more liberal approach.

When we made the turn-off to Nilambe, the road seemed to disintegrate completely. In some places the paving stones held together, and in other places gaping ruts traversed the road. I felt horrible for the wear and tear on the little three-wheeler as I listened to the strain on the engine and loose rocks flying up to hit the chassis. When we left the main road, I realized that we had obviously turned into a managed tea estate with well-trimmed bushes flourishing under the shade of a few tall trees and jasmine bushes flaunting their delicate white flowers.

When we reached the top of the terrible incline at around 9:30 AM, I saw a tiny garden and a few low buildings built into a natural shelf in the side of the mountain. When an older British woman who looked like a spinster librarian in a small English town came out the greet me, I said goodbye to Manju and he headed back to Kandy. “Hello there,” she said, looking at the ground. I introduced myself and told her that I wanted to stay for two nights. “Right then. I’m Jeanne. Let’s go to the office and get you set up,” she replied, continuing to look at the ground. I followed her to the first of the small buildings. She had a seat behind a desk and I sat on a bench across from her. “There’s a copy of the schedule there on the wall,” she told me, indicating to the laminated itinerary outlining the day as I had seen it on the website. “It’s pretty ambitious,” she commented. “But not as ambitious as some.”

“Yes, I saw the schedule on the website,” I replied.

“Ah yes, I see, that’s very good,” Jeanne remarked. “So you have some idea. When I first came up here and saw the schedule I headed right back down the mountain!” she laughed and met my gaze for the first time.

“Well, you must have come back up at some point,” I replied. “How long have you been here?” I asked.

“I go home to England in the summers, but other than that, for 18 years,” she replied. “Do you have any questions about the schedule?” she asked.

“Yes,” I answered. “What is the outdoor meditation?”

“That’s when you are meant to go out and enjoy nature on your own,” she replied matter-of-factly. “Lots of people here skip it, but I think they shouldn’t do that. That is your time to really be alone. Most people aren’t used to being alone you know. The founding teacher here, Godwin, used to say that meditation is seeing how long it takes to get bored with yourself,” she paused to chuckle at the memory. “I think that the outdoor meditations, being alone in nature, are a good way to try that out,” she finished and handed me a form on a clipboard to fill out. I suddenly felt very re-assured.

After I filled out the check-in forms, Jeanne began to assemble a key, a lock, mosquito netting, candles, sheets, and a pillow into a bundle. As she pulled various items out of the cabinets in the office I looked at another laminated sheet thumb-tacked to the wall. It read “Skillfull Intention” at the top and contained the following bulleted list:

I aspire to truth, beauty, goodness

I don’t expect contentment from this worldly life. I realize that Samsara cannot provide it.

I aspire to know the truth and realize that this planet earth is not my real home.

I am not the body, thoughts, or emotions, these things are just passing phenomena.

“Truth, beauty, goodness, that’s all pretty straightforward,” I thought to myself. I found it ironic that so many people, myself included, flocked to meditation practice and retreats like Nilambe to develop a sense of peace and contentment and this “Skillfull Intention” was telling us not to expect it in the second point. “That is a really weird paradox,” I thought to myself, “Perhaps it all hinges on the word ‘expect,’” I reasoned. The third point asserting the “earth not being my real home,” had a bit of a Scientology ring to it for me. “The earth is my home for now,” I thought to myself incredulously as Jeanne completed my pile and nodded her head to indicate that it was time to go to my new home on this earth for the next two nights.

“That’s the men’s quarters down there,” she indicated to the left as we stepped out of the office. “Up there is the main meditation hall and past it, the library,” she informed me, pointing up to a higher terrace cut into the side of the mountain. “And down here through the garden in the women’s quarters,” she finished as I followed her through the low hedges to two low buildings in an L-shape joined by the bathroom area. Each building had a block of four cells on the front and four on the back. I followed Jeanne to the first building to the third cell down. The cell was all concrete with two concrete benchs poured into the side of two of the walls, each covered by a thin straw mattress. “So, this is your room,” she remarked cheerily, placing my pile of bedding and candles down on the mattress along the back wall. “You can arrange it any way you like,” she assured me benevolently. “The next sitting meditation is at 2:30, so go ahead and get settled in and then join us for that then,” she finished before leaving the cell.

My first action was to pile the two straw mattresses on top of each other on the side wall and deposit my bag onto the exposed concrete bench along the back wall. Then I tucked in the top sheet, pulled out my blanket, arranged the pillow, attached the netting to a hook in the ceiling and everything was ready to go. I then decided to go and explore my surroundings. I stepped out of my cell and noticed that the fourth cell down was inhabited by an old Buddhist nun who I assumed was Sinhala. Her cell was stuffed with blankets, bolsters, and plastic containers. When she saw me she smiled and I could tell immediately that she suffered from some sort of dementia. She gave me the smile of someone who wasn’t sure if she was supposed to recognize me or not. I could tell that she was thinking “how long has this one been here?” I smiled back re-assuringly before walking around to the back of the building where all four of the cells were occupied. I saw Jeanne in her cell and a young woman in another. The other two cells were locked. On my block the first cell on the end contained another long-term resident, an older white woman with a number of books in her cell. Then an empty cell, and mine again.

The bathroom area was very clean featuring a concrete floor, two squat toilets, one Western toilet, and a shower all enclosed in separate stalls under one large run-in shed roof. Two sinks were set into the side on the stall containing the Western toilet. I then headed back up through the garden, past the office, and up the stairs to the upper terrace. The 11:00 meditation was just letting out and a few meditators mindfully drifted out of the main meditation hall, past the kitchen, and toward steps that led up to the pine forest on the top of the ridge. Suddenly I saw one of my former inmates amongst the meditators, the one who had killed her mother, and I felt all of the blood drain away from my lips. Of all the inmates I had ever worked with in my job as a prison infirmary nurse, she was the only one who scared me. It wasn’t the knowledge of her crime that influenced me; I worked with lots of murders, from women who murdered strangers to women who those who murdered their own children. None of the other murders ever bothered me. This inmate’s presence was so cold and evil I nearly shook whenever I had to work with her. Lots of other staff at the prison told me that she was a coward and nothing to worry about, but being in her presence never got any easier. The woman walking perpendicular to my path did not remind me of this inmate, she was the inmate for me in my mind. The inmate always walked with a detached and mindful air, as this woman did now. Her whole presence was the inmate, way beyond the strong physical resemblance. She headed up the steps toward the pine forest, so I decided to go to the library.

I walked past the now empty meditation hall. Gazing into the windows of the long narrow building I saw an array of round cushions on long concrete benches that had been poured as a part of the concrete wall. Continuing down the flagstone path I came to a small building with books visible in the window. A middle-aged woman with a shaved head wearing all white sat out in front of the library. She stood up and followed me inside. “Are you looking for something?” she asked in a heavy German accent.

“Um…I don’t know. What do you recommend?” I asked.

“Well, that depends,” she replied coyly. “What are you looking for?”

“Something for, you know, new people?” I answered tentatively. She walked over to a corner of the library and pulled out a spiral-bound packet.

“I like to give people this to read,” she told me, handing it to me. “It is the transcripts of Godwin’s teaching in Hong Kong, it’s a good place to start,” she explained, smiling kindly. I started to flip through it, nodding my head. The contents looked like really good, practical information.

“Sara?” I heard a male voice from behind me.

“Yes?” I replied, turning around to see a young Sinhala man wearing all white.

“I am Upul, the one of the meditation teachers, Jeanne told me that you got here today?”

“Yes, that’s right,” I answered.

“Would you like a little instruction before your first meditation?” he asked.

“Sure,” I replied. I handed the packet back to the bald German woman. I figured I could do the check-out details later.

I followed Upul farther down the flagstone path to a small meditation area with a few rocks to sit on covered by a canopy of orange and yellow pitcher-shaped flowers hanging down on large vines. “Please sit,” Upul invited me, indicating to a rock. “Have you ever meditated before?” he asked me as he sat down on a rock next to me.

“No.” I replied. “I have done yoga for a few years, so I am used to focusing on my breath,” I added.

“Ah, I see,” he replied. “In meditation we do not control the breath as you do in yoga. You just breathe and observe. Observe where your mind goes and then bring it back to the breath. Don’t try to force or control anything,” he instructed gently. I nodded my head. “Let us try it for a few minutes shall we?” he asked. I nodded my head again and closed my eyes. I focused on my breath. I felt it go into my nostrils and then out. When I heard Upul say “how did it go for you?” I realized that I was trying to remember all of the names I knew for the Hindu god Murugan, “Murugan, Skanda, Subramanian, Katragama Deviyo…”

“Fine,” I opened my eyes and replied.

“Good,” Upul told me. “In the group sitting it’s OK to change positions or even mindfully walk if you need to,” he re-assured me as I heard the sound of someone hitting the hollow wooden gong with a stick. “And that must be lunch!” he told me happily.

“Thank you for your time and guidance,” I told him as I jumped up off the rock as if it were burning hot and headed back toward the library. When I reached the door of the library it was closed and there was no bald German woman in sight, so I headed down the path past the meditation hall to the kitchen.

The food was served in large metal pots set out on a white tile shelf. Each person took a plate and helped himself to green beans, carrots, red rice, and a sweet tapioca dessert. Most people took their food to a series of concrete and brick benches outside of the kitchen in front of the main path to eat their food slowly and mindfully while looking out over the valley. I counted ten Western meditators, all slowly chewing their food around me like cows in a field placidly chewing their cud. After eating each person washed his own plate, utensils, and cup, before returning them to the wooden rack.

After lunch I returned to my cell. When I walked down my block I saw the packet of Godwin’s speeches propped up outside my door. I looked around for the German woman but I didn’t see anyone except for the old nun petting a calico cat sleeping in the sun. I felt grateful for her thoughtfulness and retreated into my cool cement cell to read the packet. I felt relaxed as I settled into my straw mattresses on top of my black fleece blanket from home. I started with the first speech in the book, a piece on self-talk. Godwin discussed how most people are grading themselves all the time, just like teachers in school. If they get good marks then they think they can be happy, he told the audience. “But some people live in a hell they have created, a hell where only minuses exist,” he told the group, which I thought was an interesting idea and made a note of it in my journal. I listed areas in which I gave myself marks and decided to try and be more aware of this practice in my daily life. I was happily journaling and reading the packet when I realized it was 2:15, almost time for the first 90 group sitting.

Wednesday, March 21, 2007

Kandyian Style Groom

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Eva

“You’ll like Eva,” Dan promised as I sat at the dressing table in the honeymoon suite at the Galle Face Hotel putting on my make-up. I regretted that I had such a short toilette as I sat gazing at my finished face in the old silver-backed mirror. Lunch had been the usual delicious, leisurely affair at the Gallery Café, starting with a cold Gazpacho soup, moving into crusted tofu, then to ginger ice cream and Sencha green tea. Now we were going across the street to an Italian place to met one of Dan’s oldest friends in Sri Lanka, Eva. Dan explained that she had her PhD in Sociology, but rather than teach she chose to live Sociology and publish in international journals from Sri Lanka.

We arrived at the restaurant before Eva. She entered the restaurant walking quickly and purposefully wearing a fitted white shirt with a delicate, all-over floral red embroidery, frog font-closures down the front of the shirt, and a mandarin collar paired with tan slacks and low tan heels. She shook my hand firmly on introduction before taking her seat. I watched Eva as she and Dan caught up. With her perfectly coiffured medium length blond hair worn down, tastefully made-up face, and slender build you could have told me that she was a Madison Ave advertising executive and I would have believed you.

“So, what projects are you working on now?” Dan asked.

“Well, I have a grant to fund Sri Lankans to do their own Sociological research,” she began. “We put together a group of 25 for a month-long training period at the end of which they would submit project proposals for funding. Most of the participants were tenured professors at major universities in Colombo. Of the 25 that started the program only 10 finished, and I only have about 4 workable proposals that I am actually going to fund,” she explained. “Now I mostly have a bunch of money and nothing to do with it,” she added.

“What happened?” I asked as the waiter brought our menus.

“We would get them into these classes to try and teach deductive reasoning,” she began. “We would ask the group for a possible research topic, just a premise to start with. One of the participants would say ‘The tea plantation workers are the poorest in Sri Lanka,’ I would say ‘OK, how to you know?’ and he would reply ‘because that’s where I’m from.’ Then another participant would say ‘what about the people in Jaffna? They’re pretty poor.’ Then the first participant would very simply say ‘No, the tea plantation workers are the poorest in Sri Lanka.’ Then I would say ‘have you ever been to Jaffna? How do you know that people aren’t poorer up there?’ Then the first participant would become angry that we were insulting his intelligence and personal experience and quit the group,”

“Wow,” Dan and I breathed in unison.

“I know,” Eva continued. “Things didn’t get better. One day we finally had a premise. The premise was that there is less child abuse in families with strong family ties. I said, ‘OK, now we need to define the term “family ties” so that we can measure it against rates of child abuse. So what are family ties?” The participants said ‘we have strong family ties here in Sri Lanka, not like you in America where you have weak family ties and only visit your parents on Mother’s Day and Father’s Day.’ I tried to get them to define the term ‘family ties’ all afternoon in a way that had nothing to do with comparing themselves with the West, but they were unable to do it. I finally lost control of the group and we had to just end for the day.”

“And these are professors at universities?” Dan asked.

“Yes,” Eva confirmed as the waiter came over to take our orders. “I’ve heard that the pizza is good here,” she instructed us. We each ordered a variety of personal pizza.

“It’s so interesting how they couldn’t define themselves except as in opposition and superiority to the West,” I commented.

“And these are the people teaching at the best universities in the country,” Dan reminded us, shaking his head.

“That’s just sad,” I replied. “So, what did you end up with?” I asked.

“I have a woman working on children whose mother’s go overseas to work as maids,” Eva answered. “She has a group of children in a certain village whose mothers are in the Middle East and children the same age whose mothers are home. She is giving all of the kids a repeated set of psychological testing over the course of a year as well as factoring in grades and other subjective data like classroom performance. That’s the best thing we have, her study size is small and I’m sure that some families will drop out of the study, but it was the best we could do,” she replied, shrugging.

“Are you still working up in Mannar?” Dan asked.

“Yes, I go up there for a two weeks and then come back to Colombo for a break and report to the head office,” Eva replied.

“And what’s the nature of your work up there?” I asked.

“I do housing development as well as food security,” she began. “I don’t do nutritional security,” she emphasized. “You have to weigh babies and all that shit for that,” she added, wrinkling her nose and waving her hand dismissively.

“So what’s the difference?” I asked.

“In nutritional security you need objective evidence that the population is getting adequate nutrition,” she explained. “In food security you just help them to have food. Whether or not they are nourished by the food is not your issue,” she paused, watching Dan and I nod our heads seriously. “Basically I give people seeds,” she added.

“When I was on the tsunami tour we would go to a certain village to assess their needs,” Dan began, “and people from all of the surrounding villages would come to the village to try and get stuff. If we were arranging to put in a sewer they would come and say don’t we deserve a sewer? Do you have problems like that?” he asked.

“Yes, and I just tell them that I am working in this village, this district, and they are outside of the area,” she replied firmly. “That’s a big part of what I do up there. Mostly I set limits like that and oversee the local staff and go over all of their account books,” she finished.

“What do you do for housing development?” I asked.

“We used to give people money for the parts of the house and they got more when each part was finished,” she answered. “They would get money for the floor and when the floor was done we gave them money for the walls. This led to a lot of unfinished houses. They would get the money for the floor and put in a floor. Then they would get money for the walls and use it for something else. They couldn’t get more money for the roof until they did the walls, so it wouldn’t be finished. Now we deal directly with the contractors and we don’t pay anyone until the job is done.”

“Who are the people getting these houses?” Dan asked.

“This is a re-settlement project,” Eva answered. “These are Tamils who fled the north and lived as refugees in India for ten or so years and now they are re-settling back here,” she told us.

“Do you ever worry that they will have to flee again?” I asked.

“No,” Eva answered decisively. “This is not a conflict affected area.”

“Conflict affected area?” I echoed mockingly, “Is that what you NGO people call a war-zone?” I asked.

“Yes,” she replied, laughing at her own jargon. “Of course there is the ‘non-violent peace force’ busily engaged in ‘peace-building’ up there also,” she replied devilishly.

“It sounds like the ‘peace-building’ is going about as well as the house building where people who end up with a floor and spend the money for the walls,” Dan interjected, laughing.

“Speaking of the conflict,” I said. “What do you think can bring peace to this area?” asked.

“I don’t know,” she answered as if it were of no consequence. “I just help people build houses. People who were living in a mud-brick have a house now and that’s all I care about. I don’t get involved in the big picture.” She explained as the pizzas arrived. My veggie primavera was covered in cheese, too much cheese with a few little tomatoes poking out of the avalanche of cheese. I knew that I wasn’t going to eat much as I enviously watched Dan dig into his extra mutton special.

“I love all of the jargon,” I commented rather than eat my pizza. “I love terms like ‘cash for work’ and ‘microfinance.’”

“I have another good one for you,” Eva replied eagerly. “capacity development. You’re probably doing capacity development and not even knowing it. I am trying to do capacity development with the Sri Lankan scholars, trying to develop their capacity for deductive reasoning.”

“So when Dan and I made a worksheet for Dan’s research assistant to use to gather data at the Mihintale Army camp we were capacity developing and didn’t even know it?” I asked.

“Yup,” she replied happily as she enthusiastically cut into her pizza.

“What’s microfinance?” Dan asked in between bites of food.

“Isn’t that like the Grameen bank?” I asked.

“Yes,” Eva confirmed. “The Grameen Bank is in Bangladesh. They give very small loans for a family to buy a sewing machine to start to make handicrafts for example.”

“I read about one woman who used a Grameen Bank load to buy a cell phone,” I added, scraping the cheese off a small piece of pizza and cutting it into small pieces. “She is the only person in her village with a phone and she makes a small profit off of everyone that uses it.”

“I have a colleague who does something here like the Grameen Bank,” Eva replied. “It’s pretty common twist, what he does is bundle a group of five women together. He gives the loan to the first woman and the other four can’t get their loan until the first woman pays her loan back,” Eva explained.

“What a brilliant use of village politics!” Dan exclaimed. “It’s really getting the competition and envy of the village situation to work for you instead of against you.”

“Yes, it really is,” Eva verified. “That’s called ‘community development,’ if you are looking for another term,” she joked.

“Community development,” I repeated. “That’s not as good as conflict affected area,” I said with mock disappointment.

“So, have you talked to other NGO types here?” Eva asked.

“Yes,” I replied. “We talked to a woman, we forgot her name so we just call her Typhoid Mary because she was in Colombo at our hotel waiting evaluation for Typhoid,” Eva nodded her head and chuckled. “This woman worked up in Trinco doing cash for work to rebuild the roads after the fighting had torn them up.”

“What organization did she work for?” Eva asked.

“I’m really not sure,” Dan replied apologetically.

“She was the first career NGO person I’d met,” I continued. “That’s when I realized it’s a big business for foreigners and locals alike. Before her I had just met some women in Kandy who were doing projects for a few months as a break from their normal jobs. In those cases the local NGOs were bringing in a foreigner specifically to do their dirty work for them like write a new business plan or go figure why no new toilets had been built up in the tea country after one year of funding from the parents organization.”

“It is a big business,” Eva nodded her head approvingly. “People ask me why I don’t get a regional manager job. Then I would never have to leave Colombo and I could afford a really nice apartment here. For me going into the field and seeing progress is what keeps me going. I don’t want to sit in an office all day,” she emphasized.

“That’s exactly the sort of job that Typhoid Mary is working her way up to,” Dan added, setting down his fork after having devoured half of his pizza. I gave up on my pizza and set my fork down as well.

“I think I’ve gotten my nutritional security for the evening,” I commented. “And since we’re at the Galle Face I’m pretty sure that my food is secure tomorrow morning,” I quipped.

“Yes, we’ve got to go and get to bed,” Dan added. “We’ve got to get up at 4:30 AM to watch the Superbowl. That’s the whole point of our coming to Colombo.”

“Oh, that’s so funny!” Eva replied. “Who’s playing?”

“Colts-Bears,” Dan replied.

“Well, have fun with the Superbowl at 4:30 AM then,” she replied. “It was really nice to see you both. Call me when you are in town again for the World Series or whatever” she added with a mix of levity and sincerity. Eva then called her driver and walked briskly back out into the warm Colombo night.

“So, what’d you think of Eva?” Dan asked as we started back to the Galle Face.

“She’s remarkable,” I replied, shaking my head in awe.