A Place For Meditation
Meditating statue, Jaffna town.
I’m in the Sri Sambuddha Jayanthi Mandira now, waiting for a meeting. I have some time to kill and I’d like to meditate, but I feel embarassed. Which is weird. It is a Buddhist building.
In the same way, Sri Lanka is an ostensibly Buddhist country with little space for meditation. I remember when I worked in an office, there was always a prayer room, a closet really, with a photo of the Kabaa and some prayer mats. I thought about meditating in there sometimes, but it wouldn’t be right. But I do wish Buddhist practice had a place.
At various points I have meditated in stairwells, in airports, in lobbies and in crowded temples. Temples are often the worst. There is a magic and majesty to places like Sri Dalada Maligawa in Kandy and the sacred bo tree in Anuradhapura, but they’re not conducive to conventional meditation. They’re actually loud. You can lose yourself in the humanity, but it’s hard to be truly mindful there. Not that I don’t love and revere those places, I do. It’s just that sometimes you want a quiet room and the few square inches behind your eyes.
Muslims have that place, and that practice, which I’ve always respected. Many of my Muslim friends pray five times a day, wherever they are, and I think that’s a deep mindfulness as well. Allah is very real to them and the practice, I think, makes them better, kinder, more thoughtful people.
Every religion has some ritual of this sort, some sort of prayer. What I find curious about Asian Buddhism, however, is that – while meditation is absolutely central to the Dhammapada – it’s not central to lay practice. Lay practice is more frequently listening to monks, or tying charms or marching elephants through the streets. Not that I don’t like those things. I just think there should be more space for meditation.
As it is, if I meditate at work or in a lobby or even in temple, I look and feel strange. Yet I don’t think this should be. I think offices and public spaces should have spaces for meditation, like Muslims do. Meditation is of proven neurological benefit to anyone, whatever their religion, and it is the central exhortation of the Buddha’s path. If I was to summarize the Dhamma it would be meditate, meditate, meditate. The Buddha’s teachings offer what he found, but he was very clear that each person has to find and test these experiences for themselves.
I grew up with Buddhism my whole life, but I wouldn’t say that I was a Buddhist until I began meditating in earnest, around age 18. I actually sometimes found it easier to practice in the west than here. While Sri Lanka preserves the clear Theravada path and sustains a great many noble monks (who you don’t see in the news), our cultural practice of lay Buddhism is largely symbolic and ritualistic. Not that meditation doesn’t happen, of course. Though Buddhism is quite likely the fastest growing religion in the west, it still has a great many practitioners here.
I just wish we had a place, a closet really, and a sense that if someone is meditating in a waiting room, that it’s nothing strange or out of place. Though perhaps that’s just in my head. I do think that meditation is central to the practice of Buddhism. It should have a more central place in our Buddhist culture as well.
Mohsin Hamid, author of How To Get Filthy Rich In Rising Asia, has a nice 
I’m happy to be featured in Echelon magazine’s 40 Under 40 feature, profiling young people who contribute to the economy in some way, mainly in business but also in terms of innovation and thought leadership. It’s an interesting article not just in that I’m in it (mainly for work on indi.ca and 
I won’t add too much commentary, but just read I guess. The youngest Rajapaksa, Rohitha (Chi Chi) has given an amazing interview to the 
In 2009 this strange character appeared on the Sri Lankan Internet scene, getting angry, flaming, trolling whatever. Then he started naming anonymous bloggers, posting comments as people’s kids, nasty stuff, for which I removed him from 
You should try churches. Many of them, like the cathedral on Buller’s Rd, are open most times, and empty.
Well go to a temple in Colombo during the day and my guess is they would be empty too.
And after you get used to it, noises will not disturb you.
“to think, contemplate, devise, ponder, meditate”
Great post. I really get what you mean. I had a house-mate in Uni who was Malaysian- Chinese and he would meditate for about half-an-hour just before dinner. He was always so serene after no matter what other pressures were on him before. It would be great if there were spaces just for contemplation reserved in most public spaces – quiet rooms, no mobiles, no gadgets just quiet. I really think as Sri Lankans we have this thing with filling up quiet with noise.
Not a closet, a place with a connection to outdoors or with a high ceiling at least, I’d imagine.
Empty churches are nice, but these days my church is celebrating a feast and there is a daily dose of noise and bad singing (hymns) blaring through loudspeakers throughout the evenings. I’ve even had to resort to Panadol. I’d complain to the parish priest, but the villagers actually like it, and would lynch me if I did. The Catholic Church these days is terrified of fundamentalists stealing their congregation and think the answer for it is elaborate services and vulgar sermons.
I’m too timid to launch a covert operation to disable the sound system.