Sri Lankan Journal - Entry #10 - Final Pages

(With gratitude that you are still reading this Theo-Blog and apologies for the three month hiatus since Entry #9...I'll try to be more attentive now that my doctoral program is complete. To start at the beginning of this Sri Lankan Journal, scroll down to Entry #1.)

"Morning has broken..." .
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After the book launch, Bhante and I rode back through the dark but still bustling city. He asked the driver to stop and allow me time to run into a Chinese restaurant for take-out. Bhante does not eat dinner; apparently Buddhist monks eat only breakfast and lunch.

The restaurant could have been in Lee's Summit, Missouri. It sported the same el cheapo red lanterns with dangling red tassels and Wal-Mart watercolors of rugged mountains overlooking a river dotted with crescent shaped boats. I thought, Well, why not? Everything is made in China these days..

I expected takeout to come in the typical waxed-cardboard goldfish box with wire handle, but it arrived in a shoebox lined with thin plastic wrap.

Bhante dropped me at my apartment(picture, below left) outside the Buddhist Peace Center and I climb the flight of stairs to my buggy borrowed domain. I slipped under the mosquito net to eat my dinner, while infiltrating insects did likewise. Tomorrow I will get a fresh bottle of repellant and spend more hours on the beach.

This is a new kind of spiritual retreat. I begin every day sitting up in bed under the mosquito netting. I stretch, yawn, scratch a little, then sing "Morning Has Broken" and read the Daily Word. God and I are in constant dialogue in my head. Uh, sure. I know it's dualistic--God is inside, not out there. Ya-da, ya-da... Sue me. I am happily talking to God, who must be both "out there" and "in here" or the whole thing is a fraud. Besides, I need someone who speaks English. More later. .

FRIDAY 02-27-09

OK, I bailed on the adjunct-ashram-sans-window-screens and moved to the Mount Royal Hotel for the last three days here. It is located at the beach near the restaurant I've been attending with some regularity. Mt. Royal isn't classy--think of an aging Holiday Inn somewhere in Florida--but it's air conditioned, clean, and quite comfortable (see picture). The hotel is big, weather-beaten, and fairly inexpensive ($55 US for B&B). It wasn't the Sri Lankan humidity or heat that drove me from the free rent apartment overlooking Bhante's hide-away meditation center. I can get by nicely with electric fans and cold beer. It was--you guessed it--the mosquitos. Since visiting Sri Lanka I have become aware that a vast number of humans are exposed to the bites of blood-sucking insects every night of their lives. Many residences here have no window screens, yet they have lattice work and air vents permanently open to the occasional gust of cool air and the regular influx of mosquitos. Fortunately, some of the locals seem to be immune; Bhante gets bitten now that he's a non-resident most of the year, but the ladies who serve his meals out of doors under an open pavillion (see picture, right) seldom get bites, or so they told me.

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I am at my beachfront bistro now, watching a red-orange sunset over the Indian Ocean (picture, above). Sea breezes blow pleasantly from the direction of the setting sun. Young Sri Lankans are playing in the shallows near the shore, bobbing on the same plastic surfboards you could see on any beach in the USA. Behind me, landward, a train roars past not fifty feet from this table. The rush of metal on rails vibrates the warm, packed sand beneath my bare feet. To add to the surreal quality of this early evening by the Indian Ocean, my beacfront bistro just flicked on its string of colored lights overhead and switched on the music. Late disco tune, don't recognize the group. I keep an eye peeled for John Travolta to dance past in a white suit.

Back at the ashram, Bhante is attending a Buddhist flower-offering ceremony. I was invited, but just could not bear three more hours in the twilight with the mosquitos. Instead, I opted for a brief, self-directed meditation exercise on my balcony overlooking the moon-washed Indian Ocean, then retreated indoors for air conditioning, BBC news, and a cold bottle of Lion Lager. What a planet.

SATURDAY 02-28-09
I am flying home tonight. This has been an amazing week. If you had asked me to list the places I wanted to visit before I die, Sri Lanka would not have made the cut. But I am infinitely glad to have come here, to meet these gentle people who drive like a cross between Mother Theresa and a kamikaze pilot, who meditate and work on inner peace while fighting a civil war against insurrectionists, and who honor spiritual traditions East and West. I meant it when I said that Christians have a lot to learn from our Buddhist brothers and sisters, and I chief among the students. To me, their committement to compasion and inner peace sounds like Jesus on a good day. May we one day come together with all people as children of the One Presence/One Power, and recognize our Unity regardless of the belief system by which the several tribes of humanity have clothed the Christ-Buddha within.

Morning Has Broken, indeed.