Creative Placemaking has come to Nuwara Eliya, brining vast improvements to the town, specially around Lake Gregory and all roads did lead to Nuwara Eliya, this ‘season’ too. The little town was bursting at its seams. A cultural tradition inherited from the ‘White masters’, is one more battle of nature vs. culture, a battle which nature is always losing.

What a crowd! A crowd of so many different kinds who had zeroed in on Nuwara Eliya. There were the regulars, who always came to this ‘Little England’, to ‘escape the heat’, ‘because servants had gone home for the new year’, ‘because we have always come to Nuwara Eliya in April’, ‘to enjoy the cool climate’, ‘for the motor races’.

There are those who come to Nuwara Eliya because they have heard it is the most beautiful place in the country. We tell this to our foreign tourists. What we do not tell them is that our hill country would have been one of the most beautiful places on earth, before the forests were cleared to plant tea. When we have a whole country that is really as beautiful as Nuwara Eliya, why do we all have to converge on this small town, is a question that always come to my mind.

We also have visitors who come to Nuwara Eliya because everyone else comes here for the season, and they feel left out. Those who come here to get away from the city and the people they meet day in and day out, end up with the same crowd here at the hotels and restaurants and the race track.

There were those who stayed in the most expensive hotels, who had arrived in the latest luxury vehicles. Others who rented the holiday homes scattered around the town, or had booked other hotels months ahead, and still others who arrive without any planning and go around looking for rooms.

We meet people who talk of our cultural heritage, but who have ignored the New Year cultural procedures to ‘enjoy’ Nuwara Eliya. Priorities keep changing. It it the way of life. Nothing is permanent. Everything changes. Anithya.

All of them contribute to the worst pollution of the town, some of which cause permanent damage and the town would take the next eleven months to recover from the lesser damage. If only our visitors could realize that we should make every effort to keep whatever is left of the natural beauty of ancient times, and we should not do anything to cause further damage. This is the kind of place where we should not even leave footprints.

We have seen and heard so much of the positive aspects of the Nuwara Eliya Season, but unless we try to look at the negative side today, tomorrow there would not be a Nuwara Eliya for all roads to lead to. Even this year, most visitors felt the effects of all the environmental damage we have been causing. There was so much rain during the season, when everybody expected sunny weather, where they could see all the flowers in bloom, around the hotels, home gardens and at Hakkgala. They had hoped to let the children play in the park and walk around the town.

Very soon instead of fire places and room heaters, hotel rooms would require air-conditioning. Instead of winter clothes, people would need light summer clothes, ice cream would be in greater demand than hot tea.

Worldwide weather patterns have changed, and will continue to change, and all because of the selfish greedy acts by man, a little of which we can observe at Nuwara Eliya during the season. Like the ‘flap of the butterfly’, the changes we cause here, could affect the climate at the other end of earth.

Some of the damage could be easily prevented. The scattering of garbage, polythene food wrappings, left over food, empty bottles and cans, need not happen. Yet it happens. People are not concerned. Even if we deploy all the Environment Police force of the country in Nuwara Eliya we could not stop it. There has to be awareness and the willingness, and also the support of the local authorities. There were very few garbage bins on the roads, and if people did not have a place to dispose of their garbage, many would not bother to keep them in their vehicle till they found a dump.

The influx of tourists, both foreign and domestic, creates a demand for more rooms, more restaurants, more entertainment. All this means more construction, in a town with limited land availability. Construction means clearing more land, more virgin forest cover. The buildings need more timber, meaning more trees to be felled, and more sand to be collected from rivers and tanks. Most of these buildings open during long weekends and school vacation periods, and would be closed up for the rest of the year.

The way this town is built, there is no room for the expansion of the road network, unless by pulling down the historic buildings, uprooting all the trees and leveling off hillocks. Then it will no longer be ‘Little Englnad’, but ‘What used to be little England’. Till then we are leaving a huge carbon footprint. We are doing permanent damage by contributing to global warming. The roads are so congested, parking space is so limited, all the vehicles stranded for hours in traffic jams. It is worse than the city at peak times.

One more crime we can prevent is the torture of the poor animals, with human beasts riding on them. Their backs had not evolved to carry other beasts on them, and not to walk on asphalt and concrete amid the dust and the noise. Even if a child could be carried on their backs, how could adults who are perhaps heavier than the creature they are riding on, consider it fun. If we do not teach our children to love plants and animals, how could they learn to love their fellow humans when they grow up?

All this is not to discourage people from visiting Nuwara Eliya during the season. April is the best time for the visit, and the most convenient because of the school vacations and New Year holidays. Let us think about all these issues over the next eleven months, so that 2013 season could be more enjoyable, more ‘fun’ and also more eco-friendly.

And let us not limit ourselves to Nuwara Eliya. We have beautiful beaches, over 2800 km of coastline. Then there are 21 National Parks, and over 70 bird sanctuaries, and 427 bird species. We have 51 waterfalls which are over 10 meters in height. The wonder we can see on a moonlit night or in the evening from the Parakrama Samudra, Minneriya or Tissamaharama could always match anything we could see in Nuwara Eliya.

Where ever we go, let us also keep in mind, that all this natural beauty does not belong to us. It belongs to all living creatures, and is for the benefit of all, and that we do not have any legal or moral right to harm it in anyway. Let us respect Mother Earth as we respect our own Mother.

“White Killer Whale Adult spotted for the first time in wild”. On April 23rd, BBC reported a sighting of a white whale, off the coast of eastern Russia. The article concludes, “The most famous white whale, though, is the fictional sperm whale that drove Captain Ahab to his eventual fatal fury in Moby Dick”.

‘Killer’ whales are not known to kill human beings, except when they are kept in captivity. Just like our elephants, the whales have no reason to kill people unless provoked. Whales belong to the dolphin family. They are known to be intelligent and very social, and use vocalization to communicate with each other.

Captain Ahab was after a Sperm Whale, the largest toothed mammal in the world. It was named Sperm whale, because of whalers mistaken belief that the wax found inside the head of the whale was coagulated sperm. Sperm whales were murdered indiscriminately to collect this wax to be used in manufacture of candles and cosmetic creams.

Such a sperm whale was ‘Mocha Dick: or the White Whale of the Pacific’. Described as a monster by Jeremiah N. Reynolds, because the whale attacked boats and ships. But it was the human monsters who had compelled the whale to attack his enemies in self-defense. When finally Mocha Dick was killed to yield “one hundred barrels of clear oil, with a proportionate quantity of head-matter” the killers also found more than twenty rusted harpoons on his back, showing how many times man had failed to destroy this majestic creature, and how much the whale had suffered.

Herman Melville probably got the idea for Moby Dick from ‘Mocha Dick’. Nathaniel Hawthorne had encouraged him to change ‘Moby Dick’ from a story full of details about whaling, into an allegorical novel.

Sena Jeter Naslund, based her novel about Una, wife of Capt. Ahab in Moby Dick. “But do you know me? Una? You have shipped long with me in the boat that is this book. Let me assure you and tell you that I know you, even something of your pain and joy, for you are much like me. The contract of writing and reading requires that we know each other. Did you know that I try on your mask from time to time? I become a reader, too, reading over what I have just written” (Ahab’s Wife p. 145).

Naslund’s Una begins the story, “Captain Ahab was neither my first husband nor my last”, a famous first-line to match Melville’s “Call me Ishmael”.

150 years after Moby Dick, perhaps Naslund is trying to hit back at Melville who had written to a female acquaintance that Moby Dick was not the kind of book for a woman. What he could have meant was that he aimed it more at men who were slaying whales and destroying nature in other dastardly ways. Stacy D’erasmo, in the New York Times wrote that Naslund is pursuing Melville, “…it may well turn out to be Melville’s worst nightmare. ‘Moby Dick’ rewritten by a woman..”. The nightmare would be because Naslund blurs the message Melville was trying to give us.

Melville does not let Ahab kill Moby Dick. He uses the story to remind us that man will never be able to defeat or conquer nature. Ahab is warned once, but he ignores the warning, and with typical human arrogance is determined to seek revenge. Ahab was not concerned about how many lives he has to sacrifice in his blind pursuit.

‘Ahab’s Wife’ was an immediate success, getting into best-seller lists, while ‘Moby Dick’ had sold only 3000 copies in Melville’s lifetime. Once again proving that not all great books become instant best sellers.

Was Una’s adventure as a cabin boy on a whaler an attempt by Naslund to relive Melville’s own adventure abroad a whaler, to describe the horrible scene. Yet Naslund could not empathize with Moby Dick and all innocent creatures exploited by man. Her book is full of irrelevant incidents and descriptions, spread over 600 pages, which overshadows the cruelty. The greatness of a book is not measured by its length.

There have been attempts to compare Ahab and Una with Adam and Eve, that Naslund created Ahab’s Wife from the few lines written by Melville, which is compared to Adam’s rib. Melville doesn’t even give her a name, just calls her girl-wife. Others considered Ahab’s Wife as feminist, but it is feminism that has missed something very important, that nature itself is feminine. Cannibalism and incest would never have been in Melville’s mind when he wrote ‘Moby Dick’. Naslund characters do not remind us of Adam and Eve, but of Cinyras (Thesis) and his daughter Myrrha and their incestuous relationship, in Ovid’s Metamorphoses.

Melville let only Ishmael be saved, out of all the inhuman whalers, so he could carry this message to the world, and then Naslund got him to be Una’s last husband.

Towards the end of the book, Ishmael tells Una,”My whole book is but a draft – nay, but the draft of a draft”, and Una feels the same about her story. Perhaps we can say that about ‘Ahab’s Wife’ and ‘Moby Dick’ too, that like all fiction and other creative works, it is the reader and the art lover who finishes them, the way they wish them to be.

That is why on this Wesak week, when we are thinking of Loving Kindness and love and compassion towards all living things, we should read Moby Dick again, to finish it the way we wish it to be, to understand the cruel barbaric nature of civilized man, and to learn from such weakness, how we could live in harmony with nature, without hurting or harming anyone. There are a few good things we can still learn from the West.

daya@saadhu.com

daya dissanayake

“Does the flap of a butterfly’s wings in Brazil set off a tornado in Texas?” was the title suggested by Philip Merilees to Edward Lorenz for a talk Lorenz was to present to the American Association for the Advancment of Science in 1972. The story goes, that Lorenz heard a meteorologist say “one flap of a seagull’s wings could change the course of weather forever”.

It is not that the seagull or the butterfly could change the weather or the climate, but just shows how a small initial condition could result in major changes.

The 8.7 Mwp earthquake off the West coast of Northern Sumatra on April 11th, 2012, brings our attention to the possibilities of when and where a butterfly had flapped its wings to bring about the earthquake and the tsunami threat.

A little over a month ago, on 3rd March, on ‘The Climate Desk’, Bill McGuire of The Guardian, wrote “The idea that a changing climate can persuade the ground to shake, volcanoes to rumble, and tsunamis to crash on to unsuspecting coastlines seems, at first, to be bordering on the insane.” McGuire goes on to show that it really happens, that the atmosphere, the oceans, and the solid earth, intertwine and interact.

We ignore that this solid earth we stand on, is just a thin crust, the tectonic plates that move and shift and grind. Mother Earth could be writhing in pain, or growling in anger, and once again the fleas on a dog comes to my mind. When the dog cannot bare the flea bites any longer, he would violently shake his body, as if to throw the fleas off. Or he would scratch himself, or jump into a river. Sometimes the dog owner would use a chemical to kill all the fleas.

We look at all changes in our world one at a time, piecemeal, and we refuse to look at the big picture. We refuse to accept the warnings by the Cassandras. Perhaps we should think of our Mother Earth as a living entity, as Gaia, “The entire range of living matter on Earth from whales to viruses and from oaks to algae could be regarded as constituting a single living entity capable of maintaining the Earth’s atmosphere to suit its overall needs and endowed with faculties and powers far beyond those of its constituent parts…[Gaia can be defined] as a complex entity involving the Earth’s biosphere, atmosphere, oceans, and soil; the totality constituting a feedback of cybernetic systems which seeks an optimal physical and chemical environment for life on this planet.” – (Dr James Lovelock – Gaia – A New Look at Life on Earth)

According to those who supported this hypothesis, Gaia has continuity with the past back to the origin of life and extends into the future as long as life persists. This idea was put forth when man was familiar only with his own tiny planet and had no idea about the rest of the universe. The idea could be extended to the entire universe. May be there is more than one universe, the Multiverse, as we can call it.

Six years ago, James Lovelock had claimed that Mother Earth, or Gaia as he preferred to call her, was seriously ill, and her condition was getting worse, and it is worsening minute by minute. In such a situation Gaia could be sending us these warnings, one after the other, but we are too blind to see them, or too arrogant to accept them as warnings. She warned us in 2004 with the Indian ocean tsunami, 2008 Sichuan earthquake, 2010 Icelandic volcano and 2011 Japan tsunami, which are just a few of them. Gaia has shown that nothing man-made can withstand her fury.

Even in the name of saving Mother Earth, in protecting our environment, we continue to abuse our fragile eco-system. We organize conferences in 5-star hotels about how to reduce global warming, we fly thousands of kilometers to meet and discuss how to cut down emissions, while we could do all this from our homes, or offices, at our desk, without burning any fossil fuel, without destroying trees to publish the papers discussed at these gatherings. We should make use of technology, communication facilities and our commitment to save our planet, to minimise the carbon footprint we leave from our eco-friendly activities too.

In reality, those who come out as eco-friends could be far more dangerous than real eco-enemies among mankind. We protect ourselves and out Mother earth from known enemies, but when they come in the guise of friends, we are helpless and powerless. One such example is all the talk and actions for what is called ‘Sustainable Development’. If by the term ‘Sustainable’ we mean a ‘sustainable environment’ and ‘Development’ means ‘material development’ then the terms are contradictory. All material and cultural development, progress of civilization, science and technology, always means destruction. Destruction of our natural surroundings and our natural resources. The only way ‘Development’ can be ‘Sustainable’ is if we consider our spiritual and humane Development, devoid of desire, greed and envy.

If we can accept that Mother earth is a living entity, then all we have to do is give her our loving kindness, practice ahimsa, try to treat her as our own mother. Then we will think twice, before doing anything that would hurt our mother, or her children. Her children are our brothers and sisters. We are all one family, all the human beings, all the animals from elephants to ants, and all the plant life from Vanaspathi trees to algae.

Like the proverbial cock who believed that the sun rises in the morning to hear it crow, we believe that the whole multiverse has been created for our benefit, for our exclusive use. We also believe that our intelligence and our technology combined can outdo nature and that we are today more powerful than God. It is that belief that gives us Dutch courage to defy nature, defy Mother Earth, defy God.

daya@saadhu.com

daya dissanayake

This is Wesak. The day symbolizing Buddha’s Birth, Enlightenment and Nirvana. Today is a day we could contemplate on Ahimsa, and why there should be a need for the rotting flesh of animals and fish in our diet, which leads to direct or indirect violation of the First Precept.

A recent myth promoted by meat vendors in our country is that Buddhism does not say anything against eating meat, but only about killing animals. But animals are killed because other people eat them. It is not just the killing, the meat eaters are responsible for, but the lifetime torture of the animals. In today’s meat factories, the chicken, the pigs or the cattle would never see the light of day, never breath fresh air from their birth to premature death. A pig lives in six square feet, a cow in 14 sq.ft. but a chicken only 130 sq. inches! The chickens are made to grow so fast, that hearts and lungs cannot support their bodies, so if they are not slaughtered they would die of heart failure.

In our country for a year we consume over 25,000 tons of beef, 45,000 tons of chicken and over 100,000 tons of fish. (Based on Sri Lanka socio-economic data)

I have always believed that man had originally been a vegetarian, that the myth of pre-historic hunter-gatherer had been created by the anthropologists from the West, who had grown up on a diet of rotting flesh, who could not believe that human beings could survive on a vegetarian diet. My belief was strengthened when I learnt of the forthcoming book by Prof. Raj Somadeva about Sri Lankan pre-historic cave art. Prof. Somadeva says that he had not found any cave paintings depicting hunting scenes in our country. He had found only two caves with drawings of bow and arrow, but there were no signs of any animals as targets. Our ancestors did not hunt their food, but only gathered fruit and vegetables and yams. They were true Buddhists even then.

When did our ancestors become carnivorous, we may never know. At least in other countries, it could have been at times of famines, when there was no vegetable food available, and when animals began to die too. Then man could have been compelled to eat the flesh of dead animals, as sometimes in more recent history too, man had been driven to even cannibalism.

The first recorded ‘vegetarian’ from the West is said to be Pythagoras, and until the term ‘Vegetarian’ was coined, those who abstained from meat was known as a Pythagorian. Pythagoras had believed not only that it was wrong to kill another being, but that meat eating disturbed the humors inside the body. Plutarch wondered why man does not eat lions and wolves, but only innocent defenseless animals. He challenged, “If you declare that you are naturally designed for such a diet, then first kill for yourself what you want to eat. Do it, however, only through your own resources, unaided by cleaver or cudgel or any kind of ax.”

Vegetarianism in Asia is a historical fact, but we should appreciate when people become vegetarian in the West. When they begin to think like Thomas Edison, who said, “Non-violence leads to the highest ethics, which is the goal of all evolution. Until we stop harming all other living beings, we are still savages.” And Jean Jacques Rousseau, who declared a universal truth, meat-eating animals are generally more cruel and violent than herbivores, Leonardo Da Vinci considered the bodies of meat-eaters to be graveyards for the animals they eat.

The myth that meat contains a high nutrient density and provides high quality proteins and vitamins for child growth is easily debunked, when we consider India. A majority of the Indian population had never consumed any form of meat during their entire life, for thousands of generations. Their children did not receive their nutrients and proteins from animal flesh. Yet India produced the Buddha, Mahavir, Valmiki, Kautilya, Tagore, and the world IT industry is a modern example of intelligence and technical capabilities of the Indian youth.

A few decades ago the haematinic syrups for iron deficiency contained animal liver extracts. But today the Pharma industry is able to manufacture haematinics without liver extract, which simply proves that man does not need any animal based products.

Since we should all practice what we preach, perhaps the first step to be taken by all environmentalists and eco-friends is to abstain from consuming any flesh of animals. They have to realize and accept that all meat-based diet is BAD for the environment. Even after prehistoric man began to consume animal flesh, the environmental damage caused by their livestock would have been minimal, because villagers would have used only locally available resources without exploitation. Like with all other forms of ‘development’ there is no possibility of ‘sustainable development’ in meat factories. There is only destruction. Commercial scale livestock contribute to climate change, by emitting green-house gasses, feed production process and effluents and deforestation. Oregon State University agriculture professor Peter Cheeke calls factory farming “a frontal assault on the environment, with massive groundwater and air pollution problems.” John Robbins, in his book ‘The Food Revolution’ says, “you’d save more water by not eating a pound of California beef than you would by not showering for an entire year.”

Today there are no animal farms. We only have meat-producing factories, where we measure development in terms of output. 330 eggs per year with a feed conversion ratio of 2 kg of feed to give 1 kg of eggs. broilers weight 2.5 kg at 39 days with a feed conversion of 1.6 kg per 1 kg body weight. in 2005, a total of 741 million tons of cereal had been fed to animals, with a total of 1250 million (brans, pulses etc) to produce about 250 million tons of meat. One argument by the meat eaters is that the cereals and other food, even if available to all the people, some may not have the ability to acquire the food, because of the cost. But if the demand for meat production dropped, the prices for other food items should drop and become more accessible.

All socialist minded comrades should give up meat and fish, because it contributes to a widening gap on food distribution among mankind, and contributes to greater inequality in food consumption and nourishment. In 2005, when the “developed” countries recorded 82.1 kg per capita meat consumption, South Asia was only 5.8 kg. But in South Asia too there could have been a few families who consumed even more than 82 kg, because majority of people in India did not consume any meat. In the developed countries, each person consumes about one ton of grain indirectly through the meat they eat. Frances Moore Lappe estimates that the cost of an 8 ounce steak could fead 45 to 50 hungry human beings. Harvard nutritionist Jean Mayer estimates that reducing meat production by 10 percent in the U. S. would free enough grain to feed 60 million people. Today people in Ethiopia are starving not because there is a worldwide shortage of food, but because of inequality in food distribution and food consumed by livestock. In the developed countries, each person consumes about one ton of grain indirectly through the meat they eat.

The Senior members of the World Food Program should abstain from consuming meat, because meat production AGGRAVATES global hunger. According to the FAO report for 2009, there were over One Billion human beings on earth suffering from chronic hunger, that 4 – 5 billion people are suffering from iron deficiency. The report admits, “the rapid growth of the livestock sector means that competition for land and other productive resources puts upward pressure on prices for staple grains as well as negative pressures on the natural-resource base, potentially reducing food security.” FAO is worried about food shortages, while reporting that “Livestock grazing occupies 26 percent of the earth’s ice-free land surface, and the production of livestock feed uses 33 percent of agricultural cropland”. In other words livestock is the world’s largest user of land resources, with almost 80 percent of agricultural land used for animal feed production.

Even in the U. S. where there are only less than 5 million vegetarians, The American Dietetic Association says in a position statement, “Appropriately planned vegetarian diets are healthful, are nutritionally adequate and provide health benefits in the prevention and treatment of certain diseases.”

The officials of the World Health Organization should set an example by saying NO to meat, because it compromises the health of all human beings. The meat-factories are the cause of many human diseases, spreading even to those who do not consume meat. Before WHO worries about anemia and other health problems, assumed to be due to non-consumption of meat, they should concentrate more on health problems created by the production and consumption of meat and the hormones, antibiotics and chemicals (including Arsenic) fed to humans through the meat they consume. There are diseases that arise in animals but are passed onto humans , like influenza. Food borne diseases are salmonella and E. coli. WHO is the first organization which should practice Preventive Healthcare. The FAO report continues to tell us, “At least half of the 1,700 known causes of infectious disease in humans have a reservoir in animals, and many new infections are zoonotic diseases. More than 200 zoonotic diseases have been described, caused by bacteria, parasites, viruses, fungi and unconventional agents (e.g. prions). About 75 percent of the new diseases that have affected humans over the past ten years are caused by pathogens originating from animals or from products of animal origin.”

There used to be a theory of measuring economic growth by the increase in sugar consumption. Since man realized the harm of excessive sugar consumption now they have identified sugar as a killer and do not talk about it. In the same manner till to-date we talk about increasing meat consumption in the developing world as an indication of their economic growth, while in the developed countries, people are beginning to realize that they are committing slow suicide by consuming rotting flesh of other animals.

The increasing consumption is mostly because of the demand created by food suppliers for their junk food, the ready to eat or ready to cook meat products. For almost 90 per cent of the junk food they use meat, to add “value” as they claim, but in reality to add “higher profits”. Most of the food we eat today, is decided by their availability. In our consumerist culture, an artificial demand is created by the supplier, who dictates to the producer and the consumer. Eric Schlosser in his book ‘Fast Food Nation’ says, “Americans now spend more money on fast food—$110 billion a year—than they do on higher education. They spend more on fast food than on movies, books, magazines, newspapers, videos and recorded music—combined.”

All animal lovers and members of organizations for the prevention of cruelty to animals should abstain from meat because there is no humane way to rear and slaughter animals for human consumption. Free range farm animals are a thing of the past. Today the meat factories do not consider the animals as living creatures, but as raw materials to produce meat. The producers are not concerned, if the animals never get a chance to lie down, to rest, or to play around. They are not concerned if the animals are in continuous pain, both in mind and in body. They are not much concerned if some of the animals die before they are processed. Such animals would be the ‘factory rejects’. When the time comes for processing the meat, the only concern is the maximum production at minimum cost. Human beings are using inhuman methods to provide food for other human beings, which they can do without.

Let us show loving kindness to all living creatures, not by abstaining from meat on this Wesak day, but everyday.

daya@saadhu.com

daya dissanayake

The tragedy of Humanity has always been due to ignoring the Cassandras among us and their warnings. Psychoanalyst Melanie Klein considered Cassandra as representing the human moral conscience whose main task is to issue warnings, while Apollo represents the destructive influence of the cruel super-ego. She talks about the universal tendency towards the denial which is a potent defense against persecutory anxiety and guilt.

Cassandra was the daughter of Priam and Hecuba of Troy. Apollo, infatuated by her beauty, gave her a gift of prophesy, but when he could not win her affection placed a curse on her, that no one would believe her prophesies.

The first tragedy which she tried to prevent was the destruction of Troy. She warned about the Trojan horse, but no one believed her.

The name Florence Nightingale brings to our mind what she did for nursing, but more important was her struggle on behalf of the suppression faced by women and girls in her time, in England.

She was probably the first person to identify Cassandra as the symbol of women’s limitations and as their voice. In 1852, Nightingale wrote ‘Cassandra’ as part of her essay ‘Suggestions for the thought to Searchers after Religious Truth’ which was only privately printed. She had conceived Cassandra as an autobiographical novel, developed as a dialogue between two characters Farisco and Nofriani. In One of her early versions of Cassandra she had written, “Oh! call me no more Nofriani, call me Cassandra. for I have preached & prophesied in vain. I have gone about crying all these many years, Wo to the people! And no one has listened or believed..” and again, Nofriani says “I, I alone am wandering in the bitterness of life without” She (Nofriani) had suffered so much that she had outlived even the desire to die.

Katherine V. Snyder has done a study of Nightingale’s Cassandra, and its transition from an autobiographical novel into an essay, published in ‘The Politics of the essay:feminist perspectives’.

Benjamin Jowett, Regius Professor of Greek at Oxford, in a letter to Nightingale in 1861, commenting on her essay Cassandra, said “I did not exactly take Cassandra for yourself, but I thought that it represented more of your own feeling about the world than could have been the case”. This happened with the transition of the original version in subsequent editions to become a non-fictional essay from what had begun as a novel. Nightingale had written this at a time when she was suicidally depressed, out of despair due to the objections of her parents for her determination to serve the public.

When at last she received an allowance of £ 500 per year from her father, in 1883 she had accepted a post as the Superintendent of an “institution for the care of sick gentlewomen in distressed circumstances” in London. This led her to the Crimean War in 1854 and Florence Nightingale became the legend.

Nightingale protested the “over-feminization of women into near helplessness, such as what she saw in her mother’s and older sister’s lethargic lifestyle despite their education” She saw a similarity with Cassandra as her ideas also were ineffective at the time.

Nightingale was only 32 years old when she wrote ‘Cassandra’. She had been educated at home, in Greek, Latin, German, French, Italian, in addition to history, grammar and composition all by her father, while a governess tutored her in music and art. Then she defied convention, by stating that her future was not in marriage but in helping the needy.

Her ‘Cassandra’ is mainly about “the role of women in Victorian England. As such, not only does it reflect upon gender equality, it also represents a powerful tool for Nightingale to express her concerns about her own future and lack of occupation”. (Laura Monros-Gaspar).

Nightingale had written many books in addition to the essay on Cassandra, but she was more a social reformer than a writer.

Many books had been written about Cassandra, before and after Nightingale. Christa Wolf retold the story of Cassandra in her book ‘Kassandra’ using the myth “as an allegory for both the unheard voice of the woman writer and the oppression and strict censorship in East Germany.”

Apache Software recognized Cassandra for what she was, and so named their NoSQL database in her honour because it is the future, and it is used by Amazon, Google, Facebook and Twitter.

A later day Cassandra was Rachel Louise Carson, the author of ‘Silent Spring’ (1962). She too had been cursed not only by Apollo, but also by Hiddukel (the god of ill-gotten wealth). That is why ‘Silent Spring’ was included in the “Ten Most Harmful Books of the 19th and 20th Centuries” and she was called a “hysterical woman”.

Cassandra too was considered mad. Her father Priam kept her locked up. Even Shakespeare had treated her as a madwoman in Troilus and Cressida. Robert Graves interpreted the name Cassandra as “she who entangles men”. That is the fate of any woman who refuses to play by the rules laid down by men.

Man had always preferred to hear only good and positive news from the prophets. No one likes to hear bad news, or bad predictions. He has listened to warnings only if heeding them was to his advantage. The Trojans did not listen to Cassandra. Then they probably developed the legend about Apollo’s curse, simply to justify their refusal to believe Cassandra. Ugo Bardi, at the University of Florence, says, “Today we still prefer a reassuring lie to an uncomfortable truth. It is the Cassandra Legacy.”

daya dissanayake

Dr. Michael Glock uses the term ‘Pseudologia fantastica’ to mean ‘Truer illusions, where stories are invented and tall tales are told. Such fictional narratives are also called ‘Munchausen syndrome’, after the fictional Baron and his stories.

Gilbert K. Chesterton, in his essay ‘The Maniac’ (Orthodoxy, 1908) said, “The fairy tale discusses what a sane man will do in a mad world. The sober realistic novel of to-day discusses what an essential lunatic will do in a dull world.” He continues, “Everywhere we see that men do not go mad by dreaming. Critics are much madder than poets. …Poetry is sane because it floats easily in an infinite sea; reason seeks to cross the infinite sea, and so make it finite. The result is mental exhaustion. …The poet only asks to get his head into the heavens. It is the logician who seeks to get the heavens into his head. And it is his head that splits”.

Some would consider Chesterton to have been mad. Several other writers and artists were considered to have been mad or somewhat insane, not only in the West, but even in the East, and even in our own country. Yet Creativity always needs a fertile imagination and it is always difficult to draw the line between sanity and creativity.

Researchers at Vanderbilt University in Tennessee, conducted two experiments to compare the creative thinking process of schizotypes, schizophrenics and normal control subjects. Schizotypes do not suffer many of the symptoms affecting schizophrenics, but exhibit their own eccentricities. Bradley Folley, lead author of the study says, Schizotypes “live normal lives but they often have idiosyncratic ways of thinking”. Folley speculates the schizotypes may either have more access to the right hemisphere of the brain, or there may be more efficient communication between the two hemispheres.

Michael Roberts, health reporter on BBC said on 29th May, 2010, “Brain scans reveal striking similarities in the thought pathways of highly creative people and those with schizophrenia”

Psychologist Dary Fitzgibbon says that those who have the ability to ‘suspend disbelief’ are prepared to believe anything. Mark Millard says “Creative people, like those with psychotic illnesses, tend to see the world differently to most”.

Sigmund Freud had considered daydreaming infantile and neurotic. Those who daydream are subject to fantasy-proneness.

Doctors and scientists have always tried to explain the unexplainable and in doing so, often displayed their own fertile imagination and creativity. It has been attempted by writers too. But if not for daydreamers, not only artistic creativity, but even scientific and technical progress would not have happened.

Jean-Paul Sartre wrote in ‘The Psychology of the Imagination’, that “Imagination is the ability to think of what is not”. Ediriwira Sarachchandra published “Kalpana Lokaya” (1958), which he called “The World of the Imagination”.

“It is only in his work that an artist can find reality and satisfaction, for the actual world is less intense than the world of his invention and consequently his life, without resort to violent disorder, does not seem very substantial.”, wrote Tennessee Williams in his introduction to The Glass Menagerie.

In the Stanford Encyclopedia of Philosophy, on Imagination, there is a reference from Kendall Walton “what is fictional is what is “to be imagined” given the conventions governing the game of make-believe or the world of the story”. But should there be conventions governing make-believe? Probably conventions are needed to avoid ‘Imaginative resistance’, “when a subject finds it difficult or problematic to engage in some sort of promoted imaginative activity”, like when watching a play or reading a novel.

Thanissaro Bhikkho, has written, “All phenomena, the Buddha once said, are rooted in desire. Everything we think, say, or do – every experience – comes from desire. …Desire is how we take our place in the causal matrix of space and time”.

Desire is what ensures the continuity of the human race and ‘development’, and desire is what feeds our imagination and what makes us produce creative works of arts and literature. It is man’s imagination which inspired him to paint the walls of his cave. It is imagination which made him sing his first song. It is imagination of the Sumerians that made them see a goddess in the moon, and it is Enheduanna’s imagination which helped her write the first poems.

Closer home, it is Valmiki’s imagination which helped him create the Ramayana, on seeing a hunter kill a ‘koruncha’ (dove) who was with its partner. It is also the imagination of Ravana, or Dathusena or Kassapa, who could create the wonder of Sihigiri, and the ancient poets who could use their own imagination to see into the hearts and minds of the lovely maidens on the rock wall.

The Jataka tales of Sinhabahu and Maname had been with us for over 2500 years, but it was Sarachchandra’s imagination that enabled him to produce the greatest Sinhala plays of the 20th century.

David Keef, or ‘Manuswara’, as he calls himself, in his book ‘Writing Your Way’, says that writing might be much more than the production of a competent, publishable poem, story, play, or novel. He believes that human imagination contains a kind of wisdom, a vision of wholeness, which we ignore at our peril.

Peter Turchi, in ‘Maps of the Imagination’, compares the way a writer leads a reader through the imaginary world of a story, novel, or poem to the way a mapmaker charts the physical world.

Even if creativity is driven by imagination and imagination is driven by desire, we can still try to use our creativity to make this world more peaceful, by making ourselves more useful. Just because we have very vivid, unlimited powers of imagination, unless we are really mentally sick, whatever we create using that imagination should be with good intentions.

daya@saadhu.com

daya dissanayake

The thought that ‘Women is to Nature what Man is to Culture’, was mentioned by Vandana Shukla, writer, poet and journalist from Chandigarh, at the 2012 SAARC Literary Festival. She was participating in a panel discussion on Environment and Fine Arts.

This is a universal truth, which unfortunately had been hijacked, distorted and misinterpreted by the male dominated society. In the same manner that the women of the subcontinent confined themselves within their own boundary, the Lakshman Rekha, some women too accepted the male idea that woman is close to nature because of her secondary, subordinate role, in family, society and development.

Sherry B. Ortner in her article ‘Is Female to Maleas Nature is to Culture’, is trying to open “as much of the human range of potential to women as is open to men”. But this potential has always been open to women, and all they have to do is recognize it. She too had fallen into the trap in trying to interpret primitive or early human society based on the present day tribal societies and the meagre archaeological evidence available.

We try to define ‘culture’ as a “product of human consciousness, by means of which humanity attempts to assert control over nature”.

This is where man is responsible for all destruction of our environment, with every attempt at trying to control nature, in the name of culture and development. Men talk of “sustainable development”, which is a contradiction of terms, which men are not prepared to accept, if we mean ‘development’ of material culture. Only sustainable development possible is in mental and social development, in the development of human values and loving kindness for all living things.

The concept that culture is superior to nature is a belief among mankind in the same manner as their belief that man is superior to woman. No human development, progress or technical achievement could ever surpass nature. Nature keeps on reminding mankind of this fact, throughout history. Nature and Mother Earth suffer all indignities and destruction in the same way most women suffer in silence, but when nature decides to hit back, it is to leave a lasting memory on man. It happened in Atlantis, Sodom and Gommorah, and more recently, the floods in China and Thailand, and hurricane Irene in Northeastern USA , just reminding us that all technology is at the mercy of natural forces.

The only acceptable reasoning is that woman is closer to nature because of her procreative and nursing powers, which are lacking in man. Thus man is the inferior animal, distant from nature.

It is a distortion of facts to say that woman is doomed to mere reproduction of life, while man has to assert his creativity externally. It is a misconception that “man creates relatively lasting, eternal transcendent objects, while the woman creates only perishables – human beings.” Nothing man ever made is lasting or eternal. They are all perishable, while creation of human beings ensures the continuity of the human race. Man is also inferior because for everything he creates, he destroys some part of nature.

A woman feels motherly love which a man could not feel. Man is not as sensitive. he believes in aggression, always ready to use his hands and any weapons he can get hold of. He thinks it is too womanly to to be sensitive towards nature and all things beautiful. When he sees something beautiful he wants to possess it. And in possession, to destroy it. When he sees a beautiful flower or a beautiful woman he wants to pluck it. He wants to preserve the lovely butterfly, to spread the leopard skin in his sitting room.

Feminists talk of ‘Man over Woman’, and environmentalists of ‘Culture over Nature’, the result of which was Ecofeminism. All these isms and concepts only try to hide the true problem, ‘Inequality’. Is not all men who dominate all women, or dominate and destroy nature. It is only a few men and a few women, who are ‘more equal’, who have the money and power, who exploit all other men who are less equal, and all women and all nature. It is the same ‘more equal’ men and women, who infect the minds of all others with the viruses named feminism, ecofeminism and all such isms, to draw their attention away from the real threat.

Murray Bookchin wrote in ‘The Philosophy of Social Ecology’, “…..the present ecological crisis has its roots in human social problems, and that the domination of human-over-nature stems from the domination of human-over-human”. It is this human-over-human domination which has to be eliminated. Then the struggle should be for ‘Humanism’ and not feminism.

If we are to go all the way, to really save nature, then we should follow ecoanarchism, or ecoprimitivism. Then we should reread Henry David Thoreau’s ‘Walden’, with an ecological view on anarchism. The Ecovillage is not a new concept. The small settlements dating back to about 3000 years, which have been discovered in the Haldummulla area were real ecovillages, within Robert Gilman’s definition, “human-scale full-featured settlements in which human activities are harmlessly integrated into the natural world in a way that is supportive of healthy human development, and can be successfully continued into the indefinite future”.

In such an ecovillage, living in perfect harmony with nature, there would not have been a duality of man-woman or nature-culture. The woman would have played the major role in food gathering and caring for the family. She would not have intentionally caused any harm to the eco-system. Even man would not have caused much harm because they lived in a culture where small was really beautiful and they would not have had any mega-visions.

These families would have been mostly vegetarian, and they could have lived happily even if man did not bring in an occasional carcass of an innocent animal for its decaying flesh. That would also have made the woman more independent in feeding her children. When such communities began to grow a few plants for food, it would have been real agri-culture, within their sustainable culture. It is only when man with his eternal greed, went into agri-business, that he began his war against nature.

If we are to have sustainable development, it could be possible to some extent in a modern day ecovillage, but never in a mega city. It can never be a part of an urban community, which cannot survive without asphalt, concrete, steel and plastic, and without burning fossil fuels. Such an eco-village would be like the myth of ecotourism, which is a more subtle and more expensive way of destroying nature. By trying to mimic nature we are only trying to fool ourselves, or fool the citizen and the consumer.

There is no need to mimic nature, if we can learn to accept and appreciate nature as it is. This is where the woman could play a major role, because she has always remained closer to nature. She could begin with going for the natural look, instead of giving into the cosmetics manufacturers and clothes designers, mud therapy and silicone implants. By trying to be more ‘feminine’ woman is allowing man to dominate her, place her in a subordinate role. Woman is the only female animal who tries to impress the male of the species, while with almost all other animals, it is the male who has to impress and attract the female.

Not only in an ecovillage, but even in a megacity a woman can be really independent, she could live and take care of the children without any dependence on a male. She can step out of the Lakshman Rekha. She does not need a feminist movement for that. Then she can get mankind to live closer and in harmony with nature, without any conflict of nature and culture.

Foundation of SAARC Writers and Literature (FOSWAL), the Apex body of SAARC, held the annual SAARC Festival of Literature in Lucknow, India, from March 16th to 19th.

FOSWAL, the brain-child of Ajeet Cour, continues to be nursed by her and her daughter Arpana Cour. It was during the turbulent times of 1986, just one year after the formation of SAARC, that Ajeet Cour had launched the idea of Cultural Connectivity for Peace in the SAARC region.

Ajeet Cour is a well known Panjabi writer of novels, short stories and drama who is also a translator. Arpana Cour, a co-sponsor of the Literary Festival, is a highly acclaimed painter, a true artist, who could empathize with her surroundings and the culture, and her paintings support many cultural projects.

This year too, writers and scholars, artists and intellectuals, academicians and media persons, performing and visual artists, folklorists and historians of the unique civilization of the region, theatre artists and cultural activists, peace and gender activists, and the creative-intellectual fraternity in general from nine countries : Afghanistan, Bangladesh, Bhutan, India, Maldives, Myanmar, Nepal, Pakistan and Sri Lanka gathered in Lucknow as one family.

The theme was ‘Environment : Our Earth : Our Only Home’, while the sub-themes included ‘Environment and Women’ and ‘Environment in Literature’.

It was in 1987 that a Conference of Indian and Pakistani writers was held, and the first SAARC Writers conference was held in April 2000, and FOSWAL was made a SAARC Apex Body.

Ajeet Cour had written, “Thus I launched my mad dream of catching that elusive golden sparrow called Peace through cultural and literary exchanges in the region”.

26 years later, in Lucknow, it was no longer a mad dream and the golden sparrow did not appear to be so elusive. Here we were able to breakdown most of the barriers we had erected by ourselves. The physical and geographical barriers cannot keep writers and poets apart and the modern day transport and communication facilities have helped immensely in this regard. It is only the human barriers we have to breakdown now.

One of the major barriers has been language, even though most delegates at the conference were able to communicate in Hindi, it was still not common enough to unite everyone. Once again it was English that has to be used as the link language, as the bridge across all language barriers. Fortunately almost all delegates were able to communicate in English.

As U.R. Ananthmurthy had written in the SAARC journal ‘Beyond Borders’, “Plurality of languages, cultures and religions has not in the past threatened the unity of our country. …the literature in our bhashas, with their history as well as their potential, has contributed to our sense of a Nation with a difference.” This statement could apply not only to India, but to all SAARC countries, and we should consider all of us as One Nation.

The poets who recited their poetry rendered them in English translations too. It was a great experience to see young poets reciting their work in their own language, and sometimes their professors, who had translated the poems into English, would come up to read the poems themselves. The relationship between these young poets and their Gurus was so naturally close, and the respect the students had for the teachers, was also heartening, because today this culture is seen only among musicians and dancers.

The cultural events never had any barriers, even the one act play by the Punjabi performing artiste Neeta Mahendra. The Maldivian delegate, Ibrahim Waheed, who could speak not only Dhivehi, but also Sinhala, English, Tamil and Hindi, had commented after the show that for the first time he could understand Punjabi. Neeta showed how a good theatrical performance could breakdown barriers of language.

Parvathy Baul from West Bengal, managed to bring all of us closer to each other, closer to the culture, art and music in our countries, by her one-girl dance and orchestra, using just the single string ‘Ektar’ and the little drum ‘Drugger’, while her voice enraptured all.

The ‘Whirling dervishes’ or the ‘Malangs’ of Shah Hussain’s Mazzar from Pakistan, kept us glued to our seats, with their whirling and swirling and their movements of their heads with their long hair, and the drummer whirling round and round with two drums around his neck. Prof. Tissa Kariyawasam, our scholar on traditional dance forms found similarities with some of our own folk dances.

We had our own poet, Samantha Herath, who sang a few of our own verses in Sinhala, which even if he had not translated into English the audience really appreciated.

Another golden voice was that of Mustafa Zaman Abbasi, from Bangladesh, who is a popular singer, in addition to being a writer and poet. He has published 50 research papers on traditional music and culture.

Sri Lanka was represented by our well known diplomat, Nihal Rodrigo who was also the Secretary General of SAARC at one time. The others were, Jayasumana Dissanayake, Kanthi Wijetunge and self.
The symbol on the festival logo was of a leaf and a pen. It was the leaf of our sacred Bo tree. The Peepal. The sacred Ashvattha, worshiped for the past 5000 years, from the time of the Indus civilization as we see in the clay tablet found at Harappa. Ficus religiosa has been worshiped by all communities, in every country the tree is found.

This logo tells us that the pen too is sacred, that the use of the pen is a sacred act, and brings us the message that what we write should be sacred too.

This is an opportunity for writers of the world to unite, and united we could change the world to be a better place, not only for humanity, but for all life forms.

daya@saadhu.com

Ravana has come back to life. Just as he had been claimed to have ten heads, he has been re-created in as many forms. The latest reincarnation in the ‘Ravana Meheyuma’ (Ravana Mission) is by Susitha Ruwan, a doctor at Sri Jayawardenapura Hospital. It is a futuristic thriller with a historical background. In this novel he takes us back a few thousand years to the time of Ravana and Kuvera and a cave complex on Mahaeliya.

Though this is a work of fiction, but fiction using a lot of historical data, there are also several studies published recently, based on the recent archaeological discoveries, on ancient ola books and in folklore in relation to Ravana. “Yakshagothrika Bhashava saha Ravi Shailasha Vansha Kathava” by Ven Manave Vimalarathna himi, is a translation of an ancient manuscript written in the language of the Yaksha race. Ravana is said to be the founder of the Ravi Shailasha clan of the Yakshas. They were well versed in seafaring, navigation, astronomy, aeronautics and irrigation technology.

In the earlier book published by Vimalarathne himi, “Yaksha Gothriakayange Aprakata Thorathuru”, he has given us more information about the Yaksha race. Ravana was also known as king Yagu Kauranamantaka. His son was Upendraminika.

Nagoda Ariyadasa Senevirathne, in his book “Sri Lanka Ravana Rajadaniya saha Sigiri Puranaya” , claims that Sigiriya was Ravana’s Lankapura. He believes that the Sigiri Frescos had been painted during the time of Ravana, and that some of them may have been restored or painted over during the time of Kassapa. He identifies the lady in cave 13B to be Mandodari, Ravana’s consort, and the lady with the deformed features is Shurpanaka, Ravana’s sister after her face was mutilated by Rama.

Ravana’s mother was Pushpotkata or Mahabiya, who was the daughter of king Sumali. Ravana was a scientist, a physician, and a writer. Among the books he had written are Udis Tantra, Shivathandava Sthothra, and on Ayurveda including Arkaprakashaya, Nadivignanaya and Kumarathanthraya.

One more idea presented by Senevirathne is that there could have been several princes and kings with the name Ravana, which has created confusion in our minds. Senevirathne argues that the name Ravana had continued even up to the 9th century. The pillar inscription found at Viyaulpota near Sigiriya mentions an official named Ravana (mekappar Kannami Ravanami).

Ravana belonged to the Yaksha. Kuveni was also a Yaksha princess. A. Suddhahami, in ‘Kuveni nam vu Yak Landa’ traces the ancestry of Dissanayake Herath Mudiyanselage Punchi Banda of the village Ranorava in Ambanpola. Punchi Banda claims to be a descendant of a Yakhsa named Mailavalana, who had escaped during the massacre of the Yaksha race by Vijaya. Suddhahami draws our attention to the Seruvila cave inscription, “Parumaka Yakadataha”. Paranavitana refers to him as Yagadatta, but says that it may also stand for Yakhadatta. A Yaksha as a Parumaka could not have been a cannibal!

Ravana name is continued by a family in a remote village named Ravanagama off Balangoda. They still use their family name ‘Ravana-ge’. The pebbles containing iron ore found in this region are known by the village folk as ‘Ravana Guli’. There is evidence today that people who lived in this region had used iron implements more than 3000 years ago. Then, according to Prof. Raj Somadeva, we have been using iron tools much earlier than the Indians.

There are other families in Sri Lanka, who do not wish to admit their ancestry. Vimal Ranatunge in his book ‘Polonnaruwe Pas Vasak’ mentions a person, who reminded him of his ancestral likeness to the Yaksha. But it is time for such families to come out. It is time that they realized they are the true Bhumiputra of this country, as Dr. Harischandra Wijayatunga believes, the true Adivasai. Adivasi means the original inhabitants. Ravana was a great Sinhala king and a true Sri Lankan. We should be proud of such a long ancestry.

When we start our search for Ravana, we have to be careful not to confuse our great ancestor with the character shown in the Ramayana. Ramayana and Mahabharata are the two great epics of India. Rama and Hanuman are worshiped as deities. In their story they have to show Rama as the maryada purushottam, the Ideal Person. Then it is inevitable that Ravana has to be the opposite, the personification of evil.

Even then, Ramayana writers failed to hide the power, the technology and the intelligence of Ravana and the Yaksha race. That is why Rama had to seek the support of Hanuman and his monkey army to fight against Ravana and his Yaksha forces. They could not hide that Ravana had a flying machine, or some form of machine that could enable him to fly across the ocean and across land to distant regions. They could not hide the majesty of Ravana’s Lankapura. They could not hide that they succeeded in defeating Ravana only through the treachery of his own brother.

Ramayana could be a work of fiction, or a story based on a religious legend. It is up to Indian scholars to search for the real Rama who had lived in India. But today we have sufficient evidence to believe that Ravana did exist. We could believe that a powerful Yaksha race lived in Sri Lanka alongside a Naga race, going back into deep history, at least 1.5 million years, since the finding of the Acheulean stone axe at Mayakkai, near Point Pedro.

We need to learn about our historic roots, because we can learn from them how to live in harmony with nature. We can learn how to prolong the lifespan of Mother Earth, which in turn would help us too to live longer and happier.

daya@saadhu.com

daya dissanayake

As I was seated on the beach at Unawatuna on the South Coast, my mind went back to an evening many years ago, on the beach near the border of the Yala sanctuary. I recalled seeing before me a true work of art. Today it reminded me that nature is the greatest creator of artistic works, which no man could ever beat. A sadness came over me, with the realization that in the name of progress and development we are destroying most of nature’s works of art all over the world.

Around me at Yala was not just a painting, but there was music and dance. The painting was the multicoloured clouds spread across the blue sky over a darker hued ocean. The music was of the birds, soaring over the ocean before me, and behind me on the trees, singing to the background music of the slowly beating waves. The dance was also by the sea birds with the slowly floating clouds as the backdrop.

I could enjoy this serenity, undisturbed, surrounded only by nature. It was so unlike sitting inside a theatre, however luxurious it could be, but with artificially controlled temperature and humidity, surrounded by other human beings, disturbed by their movements, their whispering, breathing air contaminated by the breath and body ordours of several hundred people.

On the beach at Unawatuna, crowded today with foreign and local tourists, I tried to recall other great natural wonders, which I had the good fortune to enjoy.

Kudiramalai point in Wilpattu used to be another of nature’s wonderful locations, disturbed occasionally by wildlife enthusiasts in the bygone days. There were no buildings, and anyone who wanted to camp had to take their own tents. In the night, I felt I was alone in the universe, if I tried to ignore the lights from the few fishing boats far away on the horizon, but I preferred to think of them as a few more stars. Down below me, the waves crashed against the shore and the salt laden cold wind blew towards me.

Forty years ago the Casuarina beach in Jaffna was another wonderful, peaceful place to be on a moon-lit night. On a weekend now, it is like a beach in Goa. Only Dambakolapatuna remains almost untouched and unspoiled because it is under the control of the navy.

Professor Bawa succeeded to some extent when he created the Kandalama hotel, but still the concrete jumps out of it jarring our admiration. The little natural pond and the small tank beyond it near the Neeraviya temple off Galkulama was a setting that a commercial venture could never achieve. Probably this rock was where the Buddhist monks in ancient days sat down to contemplate. Buddhist monks, and the lay followers realized the need of calm and serene places, as we find in the names of the caves which were gifted to the Samgha “from the four directions, present and absent”. Some of the names were, ‘Manapadasane’ (Pleasing View) a name given to over twenty eight caves, ‘Supaditite’ (Well-Sited), ‘Manorame’ (Delighting the Mind).

Other than the beaches I tried to recall any other sites where nature’s creativity still remained. One such place was the ‘Fishing Hut’ tucked away inside a tea estate. It was a log cabin, by a stream, at the edge of the tea estate. On the other side was the virgin forest. This was before the place became popular and began to attract all the urban elite.

We had the stream all to ourselves. We did not feel the cold, as we sat in the small pools, with the soothing water flowing over us, surrounded by the bird song, green vegetation, blue sky and the silence amidst all this because of the absence of man-made noise of vehicles, and machinery and most of all the idle chatter of man himself. Even the most luxurious bath or a jacuzzi could never match these pools. The night was so silent, we could hear the water flowing across the rocks in the stream.

Today we can only shut our eyes and try to imagine what it would have been like, before our virgin forests had been destroyed to make way for coffee and tea. Almost all tourist attractions in Sri Lanka or abroad, may have been really beautiful in ages past, but have been desecrated by man.

A few ancient poets scribbled on the mirror-like wall of Sihigiri, not about the paintings or the man-made wonders, but about the natural beauty of the place. Vira Vidur Bati, towards the late 9th century, wrote on the Katbitha,

“Sihil pini-bindin ad savand pavan gena mand hamule
Kond kumund vasat-avhi mal susadi vi hebi mulule” (249)

The gentle breeze blew – (the breeze) which is wet with cool dew drops – taking (with it) fragrant perfume; in the spring sunshine, the jasmine and the water-lily, being adorned with flowers, shone all over. (Sigiri Graffiti)

Masaru Emoto, is the man who discovered and shared the beauty of water, the different forms of water crystals as it freezes, which he managed to photograph. He believes, “the original idea of creation by the creator of this universe was ‘the pursuit of beauty’….when some vibration and the other resonate each other, it always creates beautiful designs. Thus most of the Earth is covered with beautiful nature.” Emoto found that water from rivers and lakes where water is kept pristine from development, he could observe beautiful crystals with each one having its own uniqueness.

It simply establishes that natural beauty, is created, persists, and is created anew, only when everything is in harmony with our universe. Such beauty is distorted, and often destroyed, when man interferes with nature, disturbs the rhythm and breaks up the harmony.

daya@saadhu.com