Gangarama Temple, Heaven and Hell
Slightly disturbing Buddhist Poster
Gangarama Temple is one of the weirder places on earth. I like it, but it is essentially the storage shed of a strange, eccentric and extremely worldly monk called Podi Hamuduruwo. The temple contains antique cars, about twenty printing presses, thousands of statues, artificats, coins and cabinets full of watches, lighters and assorted knick-knacks. My favorite temples are usually empty and isolated, but Gangarama goes to the opposite extreme. It is crowded and in downtown. Except for the poor elephants chained by two legs, it is an interesting place.
Lately, however, they have started putting up these posters (upstairs) describing Buddhist heaven and hell (eh?) in some detail. I believe one panel talked of a lady who observed sil once and god a retinue of a hundred maidens to serve her in heaven. Another described, with pictures, the horrible hunger and thirst of hell. In the past they had illustrated sayings of the Buddha which I thought were enlightening, but these latest are perhaps the opposite. As per the image above, I quote a comment from its Flickr page, by Deshan10:
If I understand it correctly, a deer holding a roulette wheel can not only deflect an atom bomb launched at it, but also transmogrify it into a disembodied hand that will shoot roulette wheel juice into starving and pregnant alien babies.
That’s marvelous.
Generally, I enjoy Gangarama for its kitsch value, but I think it veers farther and farther from demure Buddhist practice as time goes one. What a collection of wrist-watches has to do with faith I don’t know. Perhaps Sai Baba could explain. Nice place to visit.
Today on the 
Janith has updated 
This is highly dubious. Miss Travel is a travel/social networking site that connects ‘Generous’ and ‘Attractive’ travelers. To, like, travel together, I guess. It all seems a bit like arranged prostitution and trafficking. This is part of a broader online trend to connect rich men to younger, attractive women. Sites like 
Sri Lankan domestics never say anything, they just stop coming. My maid just stopped coming and when I finally pressed her she said I needed to get a washing machine. I was hoping to ride this one out, but I’ve run out of underwear and I have no choice. I finally caved and bought a washing machine, from 
Most of the “artifacts” are simply given in lieu of money, I believe, by people showing gratitude (I’m not sure to who – I have heard strange things about Ven Gnanissara aka Podi Hamuduruwo)
The story with the antique cars as I’ve heard is that in the 50-60s, the Loku Hamuduruwo had a brother who was a mechanic (I believe the present Monk’s father). When the temple daayakayas needed car repairs (not for run of the mill Beetle’s, but the more exotic cars belonging to the daayakayas, you would have noticed this if you took a closer look), there was obviously a pull from within for the mechanic brother to do the repairs. Somehow, the repairs were never done, but the daayakayas didn’t feel right asking for the cars back from the monk. In any case, they’re probably all dead now, and god knows what happened to the papers of the vehicles, so now they belong to the temple. Supposedly the present daayaka sabhawa is planning a “restoration campaign” but this is all info I heard about 3 or 4 years back (I think from a local automotive forum), and I have no idea if these plans ever came to be.
I’m not sure why they’re just clinging on to the cars or wasting time+money trying to restore them, instead of auctioning them off to raise funds for the temple and do more “temple-ly” things. A Buddhist temple is not the place I would expect to go to see a classic car collection, however eccentric its patrons may be.
This temple is generally a farce of Buddhism, shows the reality that the people who harp on about this country don’t know what Buddhism really is. I wish they would let that poor elephant go.
If you want to see bling, pop on over to Vatican City… they’ve already spent more than 3 BILLION dollars on child sex abuse claims and still manage to keep all their loot.