Beyond the Full Moon

Worshippers pray around a sacred Bodhi tree to celebrate POYA, a buddhist holiday at the Temple of the Tooth in Kandy, Sri Lanka. Photo: © 2005 Dwayne Newton

It’s 6 am on January 24. The streets are pitch black. Dwayne and I – in the care of a remarkably fluent and urbane driver named Dilan (“Like Bob… or Matt”) – hit the road early, hoping to avoid Colombo’s hellish traffic. We’re heading 75 miles east, to Sri Lanka’s 16th century capital: a beautiful hill town called Kandy.

I’ve been obsessed with making this pilgrimage after my visit, a seeming eternity ago, to the southwestern beaches of Koggala. During that trip, the stilt fishermen told me they survived the tsunami because it was a poya, or full-moon day. Full moons are sacred in Sri Lanka; legend holds that Buddha’s birth, enlightenment, and passing to nirvana (extinction from the wheel of life and its suffering) occurred on full moons. Poya days are a monthly Sabbath. Shops are closed, alcohol is not served, and killing – including fishing – is forbidden. It follows that today, the first full moon following the earthquake and tsunami, will be a day of note at Sri Lanka’s main Buddhist shrines.

Last week Dwayne and I visited the ancient city of Anuradhapura, famous for Sri Maha Bodhi: a full-grown ficus religiosa planted from a sapling of the tree that sheltered Buddha during his enlightenment. Kandy has a very different attraction. Two and a half millennia ago, an incisor was recovered from the ashes of the Buddha’s cremation. That tooth now rests in Kandy’s Sri Dalada Maligawa: The Temple of the Tooth. A relic beyond price, it is locked within a series of seven solid gold and jewel-encrusted caskets. No one sees the tooth itself. Even the elite have only glimpsed the seventh, innermost chamber: a small, jewel-encrusted cylinder. (Once a year, in August, the entire reliquary is placed on the back of a gorgeously costumed elephant, and paraded around the Temple grounds with giddy fanfare.)

The number seven is a meaningful digit in Buddhism. The infant Siddhartha took seven steps after his birth, and meditated under the Bodhi tree for seven weeks. Our visit, then, is coincidentally timed. As we drive arrive at the city’s artificial lake, Dilan explains that exactly seven years ago – on January 25, 1998, at 6 am – a truck carrying 250 kilograms of explosives drove up to the entrance of the Tooth Temple. The bomb was ignited, killing at least 20 people, collapsing walls and shattering the stained-glass windows in a Christian church a quarter mile away.

The attack was staged by the Tamil Tigers, in an attempt to destroy the tooth itself. The Temple’s huge iron doors prevented this, but the Temple edifice sustained enormous damage. Now the repaired structure is surrounded by a spiked fence, while police and Sri Lanka Army troops patrol the area day and night.

Buddhism is a beautiful religion, based on the values of personal awakening and universal responsibility. Buddha’s main teaching centers on impermanence; the undeniable observation that all phenomenon are subject to dissolution. Nothing, in other words, lasts forever. It seems useful, on this full-moon anniversary of the tsunami, to take a break from my Mercy Corps duties and investigate how Sri Lanka’s Buddhist majority (74% of the population) is dealing with the disaster, on both the practical and spiritual levels.

The Kandy sanga, or Buddhist community, is divided into two chapters. One, the Malwata, oversees a quiet and peaceful monastery on the eastern shore of the lake. The other, Asgiriya, has offices in the Tooth Temple itself.

Our first stop is the Malwata complex, where we wait quietly in a cool anteroom for the head monk to receive us. The room is lovely: worn, polished teak floors, with a breeze blowing through the doorway. The skylights are open to the sun, rain and wind. Portraits of smiling monks, all holding round palm fans, gaze from the walls.

While we relax, Dilan (who is from Kandy) tells us that the monk we hope to see – Thibbotuwawe Sri Sumangala – did something rather extraordinary, given the events of 1998. Four days after the tsunami, he and his monks loaded 26 trucks full of food, medicine and supplies. They drove the trucks due east, and delivered the supplies directly into the hands of the Tamils near Trincomalee.

“It was a way of saying that religion doesn’t matter,” explains Dilan. “For the past 20 years, Sinhalese and Tamils can’t find a chance to talk to each other. With this disaster, there is an opening to communicate – so we give help to them, from the bottom of our hearts.”

Time passes. Dwayne and I wait … and wait. After two hours, we’re told that Sri Sumangala is indisposed, and won’t be able to meet us. Normally, such a turn of events would twist my mindset into a balloon hat. But after our long rest amid so many enlightened faces, I simply wag my head and fetch my flip-flops.

The Temple of the Sacred Tooth Relic of Lord Buddha, as it’s formally known, is an opulent place, with numerous chambers, ante-chambers, balconies, libraries, altar rooms and inner sanctums. During our visit the inner courtyard is decked with thousands of flowers, and jammed with devotees. Everyone is wearing white. Strings of gardenias surround the inner chambers, and incense burns everywhere. The smells and hubbub are intoxicating.

Dilan leads us out of the main temple and through a side door, avoiding the crowds craning for a glimpse through the opened door of the Tooth chamber. We cross a grassy yard where people light oil lamps in wrought-iron candelabras shaped like Bodhi tree leaves and eight-spoked wheels (a symbol of Buddhas “Eightfold Path” to liberation). Yesterday, we learn, 20,000 lamps burned in this courtyard – a luminous memorial to the tsunami victims.

To our right is a garden compound, removed from the bustle of the temple itself. Here, in a dark and cool room decorated with pictures of past Asgiriya abbots, we find the Tooth Temple’s Chief Monk. His name is also a mouthful: Reverend Warakawe Dhamaloka Thero.

Dhamaloka is one of those monks one loves at first sight. He’s a broad shouldered man in a bright orange robe, affable and perpetually amused. Dilan, who will translate for us, bows low, placing his hands together in respect. We follow suit.

“I’ve just returned from Colombo,” Dhamaloka, who is also a professor at the University of Peradeniya, states cheerfully. “And I was about to take a nap, and prepare for this evening’s rituals. But so many of you, from around the world, have given our country so much. My time is yours.”

My first query for the Reverend is this: How do you, as a Buddhist leader, counsel people who have lost so much in this disaster? What lesson can be learned from this event?

The answer is complex but sensible. Immediately after the tsunami the monks began a series of chanted blessings, performed every evening since. But that, Dhamaloka explains, “is like aspirin.” The next pressing need is food and shelter. On February 4 the prayers will end, and the monastery will concentrate on direct relief. And while the monks assist the refugees materially, they will work with their minds as well.

“We’ll try to explain to the people,” Dhamaloka says, “the impersonal nature of the event. This is the reality of karma. Our life doesn’t belong to us; it’s like a flame that can be extinguished in an instant, without warning.

There are two important terms in Buddhism, explains Dhamaloka, that relate to the tsunami. One is kalachakra, the Wheel of Time. The other is kalavipati: the naturally occurring disasters that occur on that Wheel. No one expects terrible things to happen; but good and bad events are inevitable facets of human life.

“The is the real medicine,” Dhamaloka explains. “But it’s not easily absorbed. It takes a long time to work.”

I have one more question: What is the main challenge for the monastery, and the Buddhist community, during the coming year? Dhamaloka nods, then points to my notebook, indicating that his next statement, more than anything, must be recorded.

“At this time,” he says, “so many countries have stepped forward, offering to help Sri Lanka and asking nothing in return. The government must learn to organize these people, and help them work together as a single team. Otherwise, there is only inequality, confusion, and resentment. In that case, the tsunami disaster will be never-ending; like a wound that never heals.”

As I rise to go, the monk asks me to write down one final thing. “Please,” he says. Make a special note. To everyone who has helped us, from any country, of any religion, of any age. As one human being to another: thank you.”

We leave the shade of the garden, emerging into the clouded dusk of the temple grounds. Fruit bats sail through the sky. Beneath a huge open-air shelter, thousands of devotees – housewives and teachers, taxi drivers and lawyers – chant prayers of salvation. Oil lamps flicker, and the full moon rises behind the Kandy hills.