Road Trip: Kandy

The night sky over Bentota is filled with a thousand prayers.  Each one drifts along upwards on the moonstone blue scented smoke of a hundred burning quills of incense, curling and purring ever higher towards a flat, full moon; each one from a single candlelit courtyard inside a silent – but busy – temple.  Cats and dogs mingle, resting together.  Shackles of Time dissolve beyond vaults of darkness in this sacred light.  And the depths of Deep Peace begin to move out again into an endless Eternity, part of an aria that sings out into the alpha and the omega of Being and now.

 

The day has been spent journeying to Kandy, to see Sri Dalada Maligawa  (the Temple of the Sacred Relic of the Buddha).  A fourteen-hour round trip: there and back to Bentota.  The Temple was constructed from around the late 1600s, and is sacred to the Sinhalese Buddhists who strive to complete at least one pilgrimage here in their lifetime.  In the countless hours wishing, planning, and even imagining what this feels like – for some, the journey itself will become as memorable as the destination itself.

 

Travelling back to Bentota, one cannot help but be amazed by this beautiful land.  No gimmicks are needed in order to appreciate its beauty.  Deep, green valleys fall away into oceans of mist, all still, all silent.  Forests climb up along the roadside, ranging out and across the harvests of tea and peaks and mountains and clouds.  This is some of the most beautiful countryside I have ever seen and will ever see.

 

Journeying back, then, through the dusk, then twilight, then evening, I began to think of what’s left of my time here.  Time is running out.  There are numerous other destinations I am desperate to see here in Sri Lanka: the mystery of Sigiriya, the beaches of Unawatuna and even the peaks of Sri Pada (where Adam first set foot on earth, and where now the butterflies come to die).  But time is running out; so, too, the money.  Pilgrimage is not necessarily done in a single trip, rather its essence is a long, transforming journey unwinding at its own accord. 

 

And if we come to view our lives as a similar type of journey, then, perhaps, the smart money is on enjoying what we have, what we can do, what is in front of us… now.

 

Maybe the time has come to give up the chase; instead, spend more time journeying slowly, rather than rushing to destinations, appreciating the things in … and if I have to come back to a place like Sri Lanka to see the things I’d like to, then so be it.  For now, this amazing night in Bentota will more than suffice.