Sri Lanka: Land of Water Lilies and Lotuses

January 17, 2010

I got into Anuradhapura around 4pm and went straight to the guesthouse. My camera battery had died down and I needed to recharge it before doing any more touring. The guesthouse was beautifully designed and situated right on the edge of a huge lake. It was run by a Sri Lankan woman who has lived in Canada for several years. After a long time I met someone on my travels who spoke like I did and thought like I did and felt like I did – a woman who looked South Asian but thought North American - a refreshing touch of home in the middle of rural Sri Lanka. We chatted over a cup of tea and she shared with me the book she was currently reading - Ekhart’s The Power of Now - and I shared with her the book I had been carrying with me - Hawkins’ Transcending Levels of Consciousness…

It’s 6am. I’m sitting in bed and writing. Daylight is just beginning to appear and through the french doors in my room the lake becomes visible in the pale light of dawn. My balcony overlooks this beautiful and peaceful sight – the large lake surrounded by trees, the morning call of birds that I cannot yet see, the grey slightly overcast sky whose color exactly matches that of the lake waters blurring the boundaries between earth and ether, the absence of any sounds that are the result of human inventions. I can clearly visualize the meditative auras of a thousand Buddhist monks who might have sat in these gentle forests and along this peaceful lake a thousand years ago in pensive silence. I am in Anuradhapura, one of the most sacred sites for all Buddhists, one of the ancient capitals of the Buddhist world in Sri Lanka.

Anuradhapura – flat lush land covered with ancient lake-like reservoirs and emerald green paddy fields, lake after lake teeming with water lilies and lotuses, and countryside dotted with hundreds of white-domed stupas. Huge buddhas rise up suddenly and unexpectedly from behind clumps of  bo trees and atop rocky mounds, towering above the mostly flat landscape, appearing to be levitating high above the human world, occupying that in-between space between heaven and earth which always seems so serene, so spiritual, so peaceful.