A full moon over Sri Lanka

Inside Buddhist and Muslim temples, I discover how Sri Lankans are coping spiritually with the disaster. Nothing has been more moving during my entire trip.

By Jeff Greenwald

Jan 28, 2005 | It's 6 a.m. and the streets are pitch black. Photographer Dwayne Newton and I, in the care of a remarkably fluent and urbane driver named Dilan ("Like Bob, or Matt") -- hit the road early, hoping to avoid Colombo's hellish traffic. We're heading 75 miles east to Sri Lanka's 16th century capital, a beautiful hill town called Kandy.

I've been obsessed with making this pilgrimage ever since I arrived, a seeming eternity ago, at the southwestern beaches of Koggala. Then, stilt fishermen told me they had survived the tsunami because it occurred during a poya or full-moon day. Full moons are sacred in Sri Lanka; legend holds that Lord Buddha's birth, enlightenment and passing to nirvana (extinction from the wheel of life and its suffering) occurred on full moons. Poya days are a monthly Sabbath. Shops are closed, alcohol is not served and any killing -- including fishing -- is forbidden. Today, the first full moon following the tsunami, will be a day of note at Sri Lanka's main Buddhist shrines.

Last week, Dwayne and I visited the ancient city of Anuradhapura, famous for Sri Maha Bodhi: a full-grown ficus religiosa planted from a sapling of the tree that sheltered Buddha during his enlightenment. Kandy has a very different attraction. Two and a half millennia ago, an incisor was recovered from the ashes of the Buddha's cremation. That tooth now rests in Kandy's Sri Dalada Maligawa: the Temple of the Tooth. A relic beyond price, it is locked within a series of seven solid gold and jewel-encrusted caskets. No one sees the tooth itself. Even the elite have only glimpsed the seventh, innermost chamber: a small, jewel-encrusted cylinder. (Once a year, in August, the entire reliquary is placed on the back of a gorgeously costumed elephant and paraded around the temple grounds with giddy fanfare.)

The number "seven" is a meaningful digit in Buddhism. The infant Siddhartha took seven steps after his birth and meditated under the Bodhi tree for seven weeks. Our visit, then, is coincidentally timed. As we arrive at the city's artificial lake, Dilan explains that exactly seven years ago -- on Jan. 25, 1998, at 6 a.m. -- a truck carrying 250 kg of explosives drove up to the entrance of the Tooth Temple. The ignited bomb killed at least 20 people, collapsed walls, and shattered stained-glass windows in a Christian church a quarter-mile away.

The psychotic attack (I remember being stunned by the headline) was staged by the Tamil Tigers in an attempt to destroy the tooth itself. The tooth was saved by the temple's huge iron doors but the temple edifice sustained enormous damage. Now the repaired structure is surrounded by a spiked fence, while police and Sri Lanka army troops patrol the area day and night.

Buddhism is a beautiful religion, based on the values of personal awakening and universal responsibility. Buddha's main teaching centers on impermanence, the undeniable observation that all phenomena are subject to dissolution. Nothing, in other words, lasts forever. It seems useful, on this full-moon anniversary of the tsunami, to take a break from my Mercy Corps duties and investigate how Sri Lanka's Buddhist majority (74 percent of the population) is dealing with the disaster on both practical and spiritual levels.

The Kandy sanga, or Buddhist community, is divided into two chapters. One, the Malwata, oversees a quiet and peaceful monastery on the eastern shore of the lake. The other, Asgiriya, has offices in the Tooth Temple itself.

Our first stop is the Malwata complex, where we wait quietly in a cool anteroom for the head monk to receive us. The room is lovely: worn, polished teak floors, with a breeze blowing through the doorway. The skylights are open to the sun, rain and wind. Portraits of smiling monks, all holding round palm fans, gaze from the walls.

While we relax, Dilan (who is from Kandy) tells us that the monk we hope to see -- Thibbotuwawe Sri Sumangala -- did something rather extraordinary, considering the events of 1998. Four days after the tsunami, he and his monks loaded 26 trucks with food, medicine and supplies. They drove the trucks due east and delivered the supplies directly into the hands of the Tamils near Trincomalee.

"It was a way of saying that religion doesn't matter," explains Dilan. "For the past 20 years, Sinhalese and Tamils can't find a chance to talk to each other. With this disaster, there is an opening to communicate. So we give help to them, from the bottom of our hearts."

Time passes and Dwayne and I wait and wait. After two hours, we're told that Sri Sumangala is indisposed and won't be able to meet us. Normally, such a turn of events would twist my mind-set into a balloon hat. But after our long rest amid so many enlightened faces, I simply wag my head and fetch my flip-flops.

Next Page: "Our life doesn't belong to us; it's like a flame that can be extinguished in an instant"

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