The bishop then took me out to a village called Ibbagamuwa where there is an Anglican ashram on a coconut estate. It is the ashram of Brother Johan Devananda, a nice young Anglican priest. The official name of the place is Devasarana. Even the Ceylonese, as we approached the sign, had to read it out slowly the first time, syllable by syllable. The buildings are all very simple; in fact, they are nothing but the watchhouses, chicken runs, etc. that were there before. The chapel is in an open chicken house with a concrete floor. One sits on mats. The altar is a low table. The bronze lamps are Ceylonese. The Anglican bishop of Kurunegala was on retreat at the ashram and we spoke to him briefly. The atmosphere of the place is quiet, open, filled with concern for liturgical experiment and ecumenism, i.e., adaptation to a Buddhist type of spirituality. It is certainly “poor” and simple, a good example of what a monastic experiment in Asia should look like. There are no postulants at present, but an Anglican priest in the United States is waiting “enthusiastically” to come here. There were some postulants but they left. A few lay volunteers are helping and one of them brought us fresh green coconuts, of which we drank the sweet liquid before driving away.
A village on the way back: a movie house and a temple standing side by side at the foot of a huge rock, on the top of which a steel frame shows the outline of a Buddha figure. Apparently a giant statue is to be poured in concrete. I thought at first it must be an electric sign! I saw one elephant working with logs by the road on the way out, two on the way back. On the whole one sees fewer than I expected. (I saw none in India.) I hear they are slowly dying out.
A hot afternoon. I walked alone, glad to be alone, to the Kandy museum, a little up the road past the Temple of the Tooth. There are curious and delightful small things in the museum: ivories, lacquers, paintings, textiles, swords, bronzes, vessels, medical texts on strips of bark. The red-black-gold style of Kandyan painting I find very pleasing and the painted “ceremonial boards” are diverting. All essentially folk art, the paintings at least. The lacquers and ivories are very sophisticated. Fine carved ivory combs. There is a great sense of design in everything. Lovely lacquer boxes. Three especially fine lacquer jars from the Maldive Islands. The rest local. After that I walked a little by the lake in the cool breeze, thinking of my Advent sermon to be preached in the cathedral where I said the most crowded evening Mass.
December 3, 1968. Kandy
Heavy rain. A longer and louder drum continues in the Temple of the Tooth. It is pre-Poya day. My bags are packed and I am ready to leave. not sure whether or not the railroad is on strike, but everyone says it is not. (Ceylon was threatened with an almost general strike; the postal strike nearly turned into a bigger one, involving utilities, transportation and other public services. But now everyone says it is being settled.) Yesterday was spent entirely on a long trip to Dambulla and Polonnaruwa81—the most impressive things I have seen in Asia, and doubtless I would have liked Anuradhapura even better, but it was too far. I drove 186 miles in a car provided by the bishop. (The hired car rate of a rupee a mile would have heen for me exorbitant.) On and off, since I have been here, there have been suggestions and queries about the possibility of a contemplative Christian monastery, a small foundation from Gethsemani or a hermitage. It needs some thought. I hope to write to Fr. Flavian about it. There is much to be said for the idea. Also, should I come back, after Indonesia? The only thing is that I don’t want to get caught in endless talks and visits to novitiates and seminaries.
KANDY EXPRESS
Inward parcels
Outward parcels
(Chamber of Horrors?)
Lordly blue ponds.
Men standing in river pouring water over
themselves from beat-up pails.
Coconuts, bananas, everywhere.
A Baur & Co Manure Works (Kelaniya)
Grand Land Auction
Little boy in yellow suit too big hat walks
tracks with brother
Schoolgirls walk tracks
Everybody walks tracks.
“Trespassers on the Railway will be prosecuted!”
2nd class on Kandy Express much more comfortable than plane—entire compartment to myself-plenty of room, air, see everything, etc.
Enderamulla
Tall girl in green—lovely walks on tracks.
Bhikkhu with umbrella walks tracks.
Please refrain from
Traveling on footboards
Keeping carriage doors open
They are dangerous practices
Ragama
Man selling papers chants like sutras
“Never drink cold water lest the souls in it be injured.”
(Digha Nikaya)
Little boy in tall grass near tracks waves
back delightedly when I wave.
Straw i.e. palm-mat flags scarecrows (or scaredemons?) in paddy.
Train speeds gladly amid paddy and
coconut—saying “Mahinda, Mahindi, Mahinda!”
Buffaloes swimming, great muzzles
yawning up out of the green-brown water.
Great train monster—Buddhabuddha!
Sawing everything down to tea’s smallest leaf.
High Blue mountains begin to show
their heads in distance.
Magelegoda. Buddha shrine on station platform.
“The people, pleased with one another and happy dancing their children in their hands, dwelt with open doors!”
A white crane standing in sunny water
brietly shakes herself.
Another flies low over green padtly anti alights.
Now the creeks are faster—begin to have rapids.
Hills. Irrigation tanks.
Ambepussa—slopes, tunnels, jungle.
Steep black rocks.
A lovely swift-flowing river with large sandbanks.
Jungle covered hills.
More coconut and paddy—bamboo and banana
Yellow robed bhikkhu walking away in cool green shadow
Far ahead—a big stone block of mountain
standing as monolithic as a fat lingam.
Polgahawela. (new station built—obviously with endless delays)
Rambukkana.
A new side to the same mountain—it is two.
An interesting and massive shape.
White stupa in the midst of rice fields.
An enchanted dirt road winds (empty) into the hills.
Train slowly climbs.
Spear pointed peaks to the north.
Peaks everywhere—
Sweet cool smell of vegetation.
Tunnels.
Rock cluttered mountainsides.
Now we look down a hundred or two hundred feet
to paddy in the valley below.
Rock pools shaded by immense green leaves.
Longer and longer tunnels.
Deeper and deeper valleys.
Lovely pattern of terraced paddy
Waterfalls. White thatched houses far below.
Looking back—lingam from other side.
We have climbed the flank of it.
Ranges of peaks behind us. Deep valleys.
Two small boys with bundles on their heads
stand on path and watch train.
Black cliffs shine with water.
Small houses buried in masses of red flowers.
Kadugannawa.
Three pigeons sit motionless on the tile roof.
Men setting out rice seedlings.
First tea factory I’ve seen yet (about 1000 feet)
Others follow.
Man and dog walk quickly through paddy,
Fresh paddy set out in shallow water,
full of cloud reflections.
Women washing clothes in all the creeks.
We go faster—going down—the streams are with us,
rushing down the watershed to Kandy
(It is 10:30)
Tea set out everywhere in the shade of coconuts.
&nbs
p; Women in a stream cover their breasts as train passes.
Graceful girl looks up at train, turns away, throws a bar of red soap in the grass, takes bucket and stands in stream, pours water suddenly over her head once—then moves out and does it again and again rapidly, vigorously. Her wet shift clings to her body. She is very beautiful—in her gestures. Little boy comes to stream with a tiny puppy and a string. Ties one end of string to puppy’s neck, tethers him safely on the bank, goes to wash.
Girl is beautifully cool and wet.
Boy flings clods of earth at tethered cow.
Woman scrubs another woman’s back.
Bathers and launderers everywhere.
Peradeniya junction. Kandy soon.
New white houses
Shady gardens
Red earth
We come to Kandy.
University in valley
Stupa on mountainside
Temple on a ridge
Radio tower on the top.
On August 3, 1858, Sir Henry Ward cut the first sod for the railway line from Colombo to Kandy and forever ended a long drawn out discussion which had gone on for about 40 years
about a proposed railway connection to the hills.
Picks up spade, ends controversy
I now ride in car number 6700 (2nd class)
Amid the wet shadows of massive plantations
and cocoa trees.
Do not block corridors.
Proceed from talk to action.
“I am afraid, I am afraid of silence,”
Said the Vicar General,
“I was afraid af those Trappists.”
Dark night of the soul:
“I too am disgusted:
But how avoid illusion?”
What if the mind becomes one-pointed
And the “one point” is then removed?
Return journey—heavy rains—a line of red oil barrels—a crow flies down onto the rainy station platform—dances awkwardly along the edge, investigates a very wet sheet of newspaper. He tries to pick it up. It falls apart. He flies up again into the rain.
At the place where the girls were bathing the river is now red and swollen with up-country storms. Rain falls—no human being is to be seen.
The mountains are all buried in rain-mist. The valleys are full of it. The shadows of palms rise up in it near at hand, then vanish in the clatter of a black cut full of ferns and cobras.
Sanghamitta Poya. Full moon Poya day of Unduwap (December 4) marks anniversary of establishment of bhikkhuism in Ceylon at Anuradhapura, by Arhat Theri Sanghamitta. 245 B.C.
Rattling down the mountain the Kandy Express sings
Tsongkapa, Tsongkapa, Tsongkapa…
Praise of Yellow Hats.
Mirigama East.
Pink orchids among coconuts.
Veyangoda.
That which grew slowly toward me Friday
Flies rapidly away from me Tuesday.
I have seen that buffalo before
I have seen that boy before.
No man twice crosses the same river.
I have seen that felled coconut trunk before.
We rush blindly
In a runaway train
Through the great estates
Headlong to the sea.
That same sea which Queen Victoria
By a miracle of steam
Changed into sodawater.
Promotion of the essentials of religion is possible in many ways. “The root is this: guarding one’s speech, so that neither praising one’s own sect nor blaming other sects should take place…or that it should be moderate. Other sects ought to be duly honored in every case.
“If one is acting thus, he is both promoting his own sect and benefiting other sects….
“Therefore concord alone is meritorious, that they should both hear and obey each other’s morals….”
(—12th Rock Edict of Ashoka)
“Here no living being must be killed or sacrificed
And no festival meeting must be held
For King Devanampriya Pryadarsin saw much evil in festival meetings….”
(—1st Rock Edict of Ashoka)
December 4, 1968. Colombo
Today I fly to Singapore and the long day of sitting around has begun. I moved out of room 208, in the Galle Face, at 11:15 to pay my bill and wait for the Air Ceylon bus, promised at 11:45. At 11:55 a pretty Air Ceylon hostess tells me the bus will be at 12:30. So I open up the bag again.
Outside on Galle Face Green the kites rise and dip in the strong sea wind—wild and happy Asian kites—two like big black disheveled and long-legged birds that flap and jump in the wind. Others with long spotted tails twist in the air like freckled dragons or serpents. Others have unidentifiable shapes. Asia is a kite-loving continent; there were wrecks of small Tibetan boys’ kites on all the roofs and wires of Darjeeling.
BUZ SAWYER
(A whole new scene in the Paris Herald-Tribune of December 2)
Mr. Sawyer, here’s Mr. Price, U.S. Treasury Department.
Yes I’m interested in the kind of plants and flowers grown on the
Butterfly Ranch.
Now here’s an aerial survey. Did you get a good look at the flowers in the center?
No I landed on the side.
Or these tall plants growing at the upper end?
No, why, are you a botanist?
Confidentially, he’s from the Bureau of Narcotics.
Do you understand? “Tall plants”?
Mr. Tallplants are you growing narcotics on your rancho?
No I landed only yesterday on the butterfly.
But confidentially: take a look at this flower. What do you sniff?
Yes, it is growing immense at the upper end!
There must be something growing here Mr. Rancho!
I agree: and I give you full control of the department.
None too soon. There are criminals everywhere;
Fortunately there are also folks like ourselves.
Viva Mister Sawyer!
(After his visit with Hunter Rockwell, Rex Morgan returns home to find Keith already there.)
De Gaulle’s gold flows back—New clashes along the Jordan River—New fears grip Italy—Scientist probes riddle of night lights and babies (major breakthrough in improving the reliability of the rhythm method of birth control).
“Dr. Duvan said the idea of night lights came to him during research on the effects of moonlight…on the breeding habits of certain marine animals, chickens and rats. Sea urchins apparently had their sexual cycles ‘entrained’ by the cycles of the moon, he said. Thus at full moon the ovaries of sea urchins are unusually large in size.”
Smiling boy died from poison.
Week-long Koran reading contest will be telecast from the Herdeka Stadium, Kuala Lumpur.
“A soldier who pleaded guilty to causing hurt to ten children by rashly discharging his shotgun was told by a magistrate today, ‘This is a rash action on your part…’ The incident occurred when Private Ho Ngen, of the crow eradication team, was on his rounds in L. Sorong 3, Geylang…”
The Other Side of the Mountain Page 38