I hope you’re enjoying the Vesak weekend, celebrating the Buddha’s birth, enlightenment and death. I went to a calm and beautiful temple, took one of the new city buses downtown and walked around the Beira Lake. It hasn’t been a huge Vesak thus far, but the streets are packed with cheery and friendly people, lining up for dansal (free food and drink) and piled into the back of pick-up trucks and Dimo battas, to see the lights. Sri Lankan Buddhism is fundamentally a positive and beautiful thing. It’s nice to see it in the light.

Recently, certain people protested outside a mosque in Dambulla, under the false aegis of Buddhism. They are, of course, deeper in attachment to transient identity than Buddhist practice would encourage. My friend Navin Weeraratne recently went to Dambulla to get some pics and talk to people, and he tells a great story on Facebook. I’ve included a few pics and his captions here. Each image is clickable back to the original Facebook page.

I was heading towards Dematagoda and I saw some Muslims protesting down the street. Apparently they were joining a bigger group around Town Hall. I don’t think the mob evicition of a mosque in Dambulla is a good thing at all, and it’s got to hurt. Whatever’s said and done, to accost someone while worshipping is pretty terrible. I mean, you don’t do that. The government seems to think that moving the mosque solves the problem, but it doesn’t.

Muslims can’t catch a break. Publicly discriminated against in America, bombed or oppressed in the Middle East, and feared in Europe. Even in Sri Lanka, can’t catch a break. In the East, I’ve met Tamils who’ve said they’d rather sell their land to a Sinhalese than a Muslim, and when a candidate there tried to get Muslims and Tamils to run on the same platform, it was trouble. In Colombo – a majority minority city – Muslims growing public face has also led to resentment. So much so that now, in Dambulla, ‘Buddhist’ protesters seem to have succeeded in closing a 50 year old mosque.

In the face of protests, a 50 year old mosque in Dambulla is set to be moved (Ceylon Today). This follows negotiations with Muslim leaders, but it still leaves a bad taste. I disagree with this move as much as I disagree with all sectarianism. Buddhist spaces almost always include a Hindu shrine. In Sri Lanka, we need to make room for Islam and Christianity as well. I think the faith is that big.

Muslims are Sri Lanka’s invisible minority. In Colombo they are one of the biggest communties, as they are in many coastal towns. In Dambulla, however, they are more of a minority minority, and un-Buddhist forces there are protesting and calling for the demolition of a mosque (Ceylon Today).

Sri Lankan (origin) Rohan Gunatillake has been named to Wired’s Smart List (of people about to change the world). He was nominated by a video game designer for his work on Buddhist meditation, primarily, and moves to sort of gameify that, notable through the Buddhify app.

In Kilinochchi I saw this Buddhist monk who spoke in fluent Tamil. I don’t know what he was saying, but I was quite impressed. At the same time, I met a former government servant who was assiduously documenting Buddhist sites in the North for southern tourists. I asked him gingerly if he thought that might offend or at least hurt some Tamils, and he just shrugged it off. I guess Sri Lankan Buddhism has those two sides.

I read Andrew Sullivan every day, thus I was chuffed to see a link to an article on Colonel Henry Olcott, a founder of modern Sri Lankan Buddhism. The article, by Stefany Anne Goldberg, is full of some interesting and surprising details. I reproduce a few here.

Been reading Confessions Of A Buddhist Atheist. Interesting quote here, about how the Buddha reoriented the position of the soul in the cosmology. Before and still, the soul, or self, was thought of as something constant, even beyond that. The Buddha challenged and practiced something called stream entry, becoming aware that we are ever changing, and finding freedom there. Here’s the quote: