Vesak and THE WORD

Vesak. Vesak in Sri Lanka. Vesak in Sri Lanka in a Covid-19 frame of being. Thinking of Vesak I am reminded of the Buddha Vacanaya, in particular the thilaksana, i.e. anicca, dukkha and anathma (impermanence, suffering and the untenable nature of the concept ‘self’).  We don’t have to dwell on all of that, just anicca alone would make for much commentary. 

Vesak is a religious holiday, celebrating the themagula or three significant moments in the life of the Buddha — birth, enlightenment and the parinirvaana, the ascendance to the ultimate blissful state of nirvana. Now one might say that consequently celebration ought to be about reflection on The Word. Perhaps.

On the other hand, Vesak is also cultural. It is about affirming that element of a community’s religious identity. Such affirmation evolves interacting with changed social, cultural and economic circumstances and of course perceptions of the dhamma. And so Vesak today is not what Vesak used to be and is unlikely to resemble Vesaks yet to come. True of Vesak as it is true of any religious holiday or celebration.

Now we have come to associate Vesak with a lot of festivity which, to be fair, does not detract or distract from less worldly religious practices. There’s a time to make vesak koodu and decorate ‘home’ with them, a time to organize or partake of dansal and rejoicing in the amazing cultural moment where almost the entire island is turned into one massive carnival of giving, a time to walk city streets to revel among the more elaborate Vesak decorations, and there’s a time for sober reflection — observing sil, the lighting of a lamp, offering flowers and the chanting of gathas affirming the decision to seek refuge in the Noble Triple Gem. 

This year, we are distanced socially. Such distancing, obviously physical, does not forbid other kinds of proximity. For example, Covid-19 made for a subdued aluth avurudda, but this did not rob anything from the wholesomeness. Indeed, it might have made people more acutely appreciative of the most significant cultural meanings of avurudu.

It is the same with Vesak or rather it is likely to be no different. Nothing grand is possible and this is not necessarily a bad thing. There won’t be massive thoran, but there will be koodu, far more humble, far less pretentious and yielding simple joys to the young and old. There won’t be dansal but there will be giving. No one will suggest 'vesak balanna yamu' (let’s go ‘see’ Vesak), but journeys are not rendered impossible; one could reflect on the themagula and obtain insights hitherto missed. The devout will not flock to the island’s temples but then again in each household where belief in the logic, relief and possibility of emancipation embedded in the Noble Triple a lamp will be lit, some flowers gathered, rinsed and offered and hands come together in worship that is at once meditation. 

Perhaps, Covid-19 has persuaded people to realize the true dimensions of all things, given the vision to see beyond frill and created space for a return to The Word simply because the cacophony of festival is absent.

And so, we can reflect on the thilaksana.  And so we could resolve to affirm in word and deed the sathara brahma viharana (compassion, loving kindness, the capacity to rejoice in another’s joy and treat with equanimity the vicissitudes of life).

Socially distanced, self-isolated, sequestered and subject to all manner of restraint we may be, but the mind is free — free to lose itself in wild indulgence in sound, fury and all that glitters or to find for itself the most profitable deployment, that of deep reflection and the true discovery of the ways of things and processes. Yes, the anicca, dukkha and anathma clearly evident and yet unseen in everything around us including customs acquired and practices confused with doctrine.

If focus helps, we can light a lamp and reflect on the wavering flame. We could offer flower and meditate on the inevitability of perishing, the withering of petals and fading of fragrance. And since Vesak is about the themagula, perhaps there’s no better way to ‘celebrate’ than to reflect on the incomparable qualities of the  Buddha and through such reflection resolve to shape a sense of being that is free of evil and affirming of the good and wholesome.

Araham (having eradicated all defilement), Samma Sambuddho (having discovered alone and understood fully the Four Noble Truths), Vijja Carana Sampanno (endowed with knowledge and conduct, theory and practice), Sugato (adept at choosing the right word at the right time and always to the benefit of the listener), Lokavidu (having understood absolutely the nature of the world), Anuttaro Purisa Dhamma Sarathi (a teacher incomparable), Satta Deva Manussanam (a leader unto one and all, people and the gods), Buddho (awakened from delusion and ignorance) and Bhagava (endowed with special powers on account of merit acquired).

This Vesak, a lamp can be lit. Two, in fact. One made of clay, with oil and a wick, and the other a resolution to abide by the dhamma. That would a celebration of the themugala that is at once a resolution to reflect deep on the thilaksana. It cannot be anything but wholesome. 

Other articles in the series 'In Passing...':  [published in the 'Daily News']   

 

The dignity of a kos-kola otunna

Avurudu in enhanced circumstances 

The Theory of Three Chillie Plants

The story of an aththamma and an aththa

The underside of sequestering

Potters, named and unnamed

Eyes that watch the world and cannot be forgotten 

Gunnepana: Planet Earth's new name

Melodies in and out of the 64 squares

Let's raise an army of rain-makers

Happy birthday Raj Amirthiah

Let's not stop singing in the lifeboats
When the Welikada Prison was razed to the ground 
Looking for the idyllic in dismal times    
Water the gardens with the liquid magic of simple ideas, right now    
There's canvas and brush to paint the portraits of love    
We might as well arrest the house!
The 'village' in the 'city' has more heart than concrete
Vo, Italy: the village that stopped the Coronavirus    
We need 'no-charge' humanity 
The unaffordable, as defined by Nihal Fernando

Liyaashya keeps life alive, by living 

Heroes of our times Let's start with the credits, shall we? 
The 'We' that 'I' forgot 
'Duwapang Askey,' screamed a legend, almost 40 years ago
Dances with daughters
Reflections on shameless writing
Is the old house still standing?
 Magic doesn't make its way into the classifieds
Small is beautiful and is a consolation  
Distance is a product of the will
Akalanka Athukorala, at 13+ already a hurricane hunter
Did the mountain move, and if so why?
Ever been out of Colombo?
Anya Raux educated me about Juvenile Idiopathic Arthritis (JIA)
Wicky's Story You can always go to GOAT Mountain
Let's learn the art of embracing damage
Kandy Lake is lined with poetry
There's never a 'right moment' for love
A love note to an unknown address in Los Angeles
A dusk song for Rasika Jayakody
How about creating some history?
How far away are the faraway places?
There ARE good people!
Re-placing people in the story of schooldays   
When we stop, we can begin to learn
Routine and pattern can checkmate poetry
Janani Amanda Umandi threw a b'day party for her father 
Sriyani and her serendipity shop
Forget constellations and the names of oceans
Where's your 'One, Galle Face'?
Maps as wrapping paper, roads as ribbons
Yasaratne, the gentle giant of Divulgane  
Katharagama and Athara Maga
Victories are made by assists
Lost and found between weaver and weave
The Dhammapada and word-intricacies
S.A. Dissanayake taught children to walk in the clouds
White is a color we forget too often  
The most beautiful road is yet to meet a cartographer

malindasenevi@gmail.com

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Vesak thoughts

Inmates of the Magazine Prison, Welikada get ready for Vesak.
Pic by Rukshan Abeywansha

‘Dan ithin Vesak balanna yanna baya nehe; bomba pipirenne nehene (Now, after all, we can go to see the Vesak decorations without fear; there are no bombs exploding).’  This is what a neighbor who sells betel, sweets and sometimes king coconut told me a short while ago.  True.

There was a time when parents did not travel in the same bus.  Indeed, a time when families deliberately split themselves wherever they went.  This is one of the key differences between LTTE-time and post-LTTE time.  That, however, is not what I want to write about.

Today (May 17, 2011) is Vesak.  It’s a special Vesak. It is the 2600^th anniversary of the Enlightenment, the moment when a prince destined to rule the world who became an ascetic discovered the dimensions of sorrow, the reasons for sorrow and the pathways to eliminate sorrow. It is a momentous occasion for all Buddhists but especially for those who place (too much?) value on dates, anniversaries and celebration. 

Today, most of the island is decorated with Buddhist flags. There are banners across the roads, pennants too, with quotes from the Dhammapada as well as other sections of the vast archive that holds the Word of the Buddha and the incredible output of commentaries over the past 2600 years.  The temples are clad in the white of sil and devotion, good intention and peace.  Tonight there will be light. There will be pandals, lanterns and vesak koodu, ‘bulbed’ and ‘candled’. There will be tiny clay lamps placed neatly on walls and doorsteps, with tiny flames swaying. Temples and houses will be fragrant with flowers, incense sticks, kapuru and burning oil, in humble veneration of a doctrine whose perfume outlasts all in akalika of the eternal verities. 

This is also a country that gets lit at Christmas, is made of non-Muslims who look forward to Ramazan, non-Hindus believe that ‘Vel’ is part of who they are. This is a country that on Vesak day and the day after turns into a nation or dansal (giving-stalls?), where each and every passerby, whether in a vehicle or not, is offered a soft drink, koththamalli (coriander), manioc with kochchi sambol, kadala (chick-peas), herbal brews, plain tea, coffee (hot and black or cold and with milk), bread or rice. Wherever you go.  This is a country that becomes a dansala twice a year in fact, with Poson (the full moon day in June), marking the arrival of Arahat Mahinda, being as colourfully celebrated as Vesak, and as devotedly too, i.e. in the temple-white of sil and offering flowers.

I can’t help thinking that this is also a country that on an auspicious day in April, almost every hearth (or cooker) gets lit at the exact moment and one where in most homes at another auspicious moment millions of people partake of kiribath.  That’s unity and unification that no constitutional enactment or emergency rule can decree and obtain. Or forbid, for that matter. 

There is something about this flawed land of ours that made Sinhalese people who had ‘bomb’ and ‘explosion’ hanging over every wakeful moment, spontaneously collect food and other essentials when the tsunami struck and send lorry loads of relief items to areas held by the LTTE.  These very same people, vilified outrageously for the crimes of politically motivated thugs, gave whatever they could, volunteered to provide medical attention etc., to civilians who were rescued from the clutches of the LTTE, even though it was known that there were LTTE cadres among them.  This is a country where the tax rupees of Sinhalese were regularly sent to LTTE-held areas, either as cash or as goods, even though it was well known that the terrorists either got a cut or helped themselves to everything sent. 

This is a country where Tamil people in the Jaffna Peninsula warmly welcomed visiting Sinhalese, even though they knew that the vast majority of soldiers who had in the battle caused the death and dismemberment of fellow-Tamils.  This is a country where Tamils and Sinhalese were and are ready to put aside identity-markers and unite against draconian laws and unfair regulations that impact particular communities or everyone.  This is not a country that is un-flawed, where chauvinism is absent. It is a country where suspicion often has deep roots.  It is also a country that can rise above these things on occasion, especially in times of trouble.  

This is a country that knows how to suffer and how to rejoice, how to err and learn, how fight and how to make peace, how to live and let live, how to forgive and forget.

I believe there is a particular ‘something’ about this nation that allows us to be like this, to fall but pick ourselves and each other up, to rise above hatred, to embrace enemy, to forgive conqueror for all excesses and embrace his/her progeny and accommodate his/her faith and related artifacts.  This ‘something’ is not there for anthropological picking or for journalistic description.  Those who know it, see it. Those who don’t see it are convinced that it doesn’t exist. This is good. 

This is a land made of hope and that’s because of this ‘something’ which is made to make us do certain things in certain ways.  This is a land, which, for all its many flaws, is still a paradise on earth.  I, for one, would not wish any other home. Not in this lifetime or in the next. This is good enough. No, this is more than ‘good enough’.

And not just because I can go to ‘See Vesak’ without having to worry about bomb explosions.

Sabbe Satta Bhavantu Sukhitatta. May all beings be happy.

msenevira@gmail.com

 *This was originally written for the Daily News three years ago. It's still valid, I believe. 

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The 'polythening' of Vesak*

I remember, way back in 1978, watching a programme on ITN.  This was just after we got ‘TV’ in Sri Lanka.  We didn’t have enough programmes back then to fill the day or even half a day. There was a lot of Sesame Street and other such shows.  I remember watching what would not be called a ‘teledrama’.  It was a Vesak-related story.  This is how it went.

A little boy makes a vesak kooduwa with great effort.  He makes the frame, pastes the saukola (tissue paper), makes the frills and pastes these too, fixes a candle, lights it and hangs it on the branch of a tree.  It is a pretty picture.  It rains.  There is wind.  The vesak kooduwa catches fire.  The little boy is distraught.  Time passes.  He moves from child to adult to middle-aged and old.  He acquires things, loses things and in the evening of his life remembers the vesak kooduwa.  The images of its making and its burning, the joy and the sorrow flash across his mind.  The lesson is impermanence. 

I remembered this ‘teledrama’ a couple of days ago when I saw vesak koodu (frames as well as fully decorated ones) for sale on roadside stands. 

This is the month of Vesak.  It is therefore a month of festivities and religious activities associated with the birth, enlightenment and parinibbana of Siddhartha Gauthama, Lord Buddha.  It is also a month of rain.  This is perhaps why the vesak koodu that line either side of Bauddhaloka Mawatha are cased in polythene.  When cased that way the vesak koodu lose their charm.  I know there are costs involved but I have never understood the fascination or let’s say intent to preserve a vesak kooduwa in this manner since one of the fundamental tenets of Buddhism is the condition of impermanence.  Among the vesak koodu that I saw for sale were ones that were decorated with polythene.  That’s what took me back 32 years and to the living room of Lucky Nanda and Neelan Mama. 

We are living in the 21^st Century.  The world knows about polythene, about plastic, about the impact on environment.  There is no lack of communications about the importance of reusing, reducing and recycling.  These are known. And yet we defer to convenience over the health of the planet.  We want it easy right now and forget that what we do will reduce the quality of life of our children and indeed possibly turn this beautiful planet into an uninhabitable place for their children. 

I do understand that people don’t have as much time as their parents did and suspect this has less to do with the times than one’s lack of understanding of the times. And time.  You can buy the frames and also the tissue paper, make some paappa with flour and warm water and do your thing.  You can hang it wherever you want.  You can and must understand and reconcile yourself to the inevitability of decay and death, the result of subjecting vesak kooduwa to elemental play, the possibility of wind pushing flame to lick paper, the dissolve that monsoonal shower produces and the de-colouring power of sun. 

You don’t have to teach children all this. They will have their joy, they will break with break and they will move on. Stronger. 

We make a choice when we use polythene and plastic.  We don’t have to.  I remember interviewing an amazing artist, a graduate from the University of Kelaniya, and an award-winning maker of vesak koodu. This was 7 years ago. The relevant article can be found at the following link: http://www.island.lk/2003/06/22/leisur01.html. 

There was something in Vidyartha K. Indradeepa Yagachandra’s koodu that was different and this is not the colour, shape, elaborate structure, attention to detail, decoration and creative lighting.  It’s the fact that his award-winning creations are made of 100% traditional raw materials.

The following paragraph from that interview says it all: ‘Since the year 2000, Indradeepa has dealt solely with traditional material. It had been a conscious decision on his part to celebrate what is intrinsically "ours". He often lists by his pahan kooduwa the raw materials used, along with specimen. And so, by the side of the Bauddhaloka 2003 kooduwa, a list read, "nava patti, puskola, matalu, pol kola, habarala kola, kaduru, lanu, naga darana eta, ging pol, dorana thel, and kithul rehen". The use of natural materials has philosophical meaning to the artist. "Buddhism, to me, is an environment-friendly doctrine. This fact I try to exemplify in my creations."’

For Indradeepa, the Aloka Pooja or the "light offering" is not merely a religious ritual, it is a meditation. And the meditation does not begin with the ceremonious opening of the kooduwa, but at the first stage, that of collecting the ingredients. "Today one finds many rotating koodu, but most of mine are stationary. I have seen people stand before my creations for half an hour, transfixed in meditation. This is the kind of response I want to provoke. While being a celebration of our traditional raw materials, art forms and aesthetic sensibility, a Buddhist story must also be told, a message must exude from the whole and its parts."

Not everyone is an Indradeepa.  However, that kind of thinking is not beyond anyone.  He speaks a simple philosophy, easy to embrace and one which rewards immensely.

The Buddha Vachanaya or doctrine can be articulated in many ways.  It can be celebrated in many ways.  In whatever form of expression one chooses it makes sense to embed the tenets of the dhamma and not it’s disavowal or contradiction.  I will light a pol thel pahana (coconut oil lamp) and will watch the flame waver with wind and die on account of gust or exhaustion of fuel.  I will not be ‘polythening’ this Vesak. 

msenevira@gmail.com

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Thushara’s Vesak

This is a re-post of a kind.  I've added pics from 2014 to this piece, written in 2013.

We live in an era of ‘flexible capital’.  Money moves, industries move, people move.  Things are supposed to move around and fit together in locations that make for best returns.  Theoretically.  Typically of course capital moves to resource rich places where resource-extraction is cost-effective and where no-sweat of less-sweat extraction of labor power is possible. 


Companies are like that.  They are made of hire-and-fire.  They are made of people who have left poorer contracts and are looking out for better ones.  Newspaper offices are no different. There was a time when people stayed, grew into and with editorial offices.  That was way back when. 

The pic in the center was taken for
an article on Vesak commercialization. Ironic,
considering it was Thushara's work!

Then again there are those who for many reasons are not favorably ‘optioned’.  ‘The Nation’ will celebrate seven years a few days from now.  ‘The Nation’ has changed hands, changed direction and focus, thanks to those who were or are part of it.  Of those who joined at the start way back in 2006, only 5 remain. That’s how newspapers are.  People come, people go.  It is not a phenomenon peculiar to ‘The Nation’.  Some arrivals help, some don’t.  Some departures cost, some do not.  Anyway, of these 5, only one, a photojournalist, belongs to the Editorial Staff.  Among the other three is Sundara Arachchige Don Ananda Thushara, officially an ‘Office Assistant’. 

At it again, a year later

The word ‘assistant’ does a lot of injustice to Thushara.  Everyone ‘assists’ – that’s how any product comes out of a production process.  ‘Assistant’ has connotations of ‘adjunct’, an add-on and even an entity that is not ‘central’ to the main functions of an office.  That’s so wrong. 

Thushara is a Jack-of-Many-Trades and Master-of-Several.  He makes tea like no one does.  There are people who do not drink tea on Thushara’s off-days.  He cuts birthday cakes, farewell-cakes and first-salary-cakes perfectly, i.e. so everyone present gets an equal share. 

He is a self-taught type-setter.  He is a self-taught archivist.  He alone knows where to find what in issues from several years ago.  He is that meticulous.  He has a sense for space, furniture and anthropometrics and that’s part of the reason why the contraction of editorial space hasn’t cramped anyone. 

He alone knows about the ins and out of the entire staff, keeping track of who has taken how much leave.  Indeed, the leave-takers themselves would not know where they stand in relation to that point beyond which the HR Department raps them on their knuckles. Ask him about freelance payments and he will tell you who gets paid how much and what the relevant costs were for each section of The Nation in the month of April.  Come March-April when people apply for Journalism Awards, it is Thushara who will have the glue and the scissors, find the relevant articles from the archives, photocopy the same and put it all together neatly in presentable form.  

You can trust Thushara to collect anything from and deliver anything to any destination, any office or any individual. Thushara knows things.  A lot of things. 

Come Christmas time, and the entire place is full of decorations.  Happens overnight.  Where the material was obtained from, whether there were costs involved and if so who paid the bills – no one knows.  Is it because he’s a Catholic?  No.  It’s not a has-to-be-done thing but it’s something that’s nice.  The Nation has its share of Christians.  They did not think of decorating the place and neither did they ask Thushara to do it. It’s not part of his JD, anyway (like most things he does). 

Thushara is an expert at getting such things done.  So this is Vesak.  Nothing to do with his faith and not his festival. The Buddhists in ‘The Nation’ didn’t think of decorating the office. No one told Thushara to make Vesak Koodu.  Not part of his JD.  But he does such things. Makes things look nice.  Adds color.  Makes people smile.  Perhaps that’s the expression of ‘Christian Charity’ that he has internalized.  Perhaps it’s just him.  A nice man. A make-everyone-happy man, an always-with-a-smile man.  Or perhaps he owns ‘The Nation’ and because he belongs to ‘The Nation’ in ways that no one else does. 

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