There’s controversy brewing over the building of a temple atop Bathalegala. Environmentalists claim that such constructions will have a detrimental impact on flora and fauna. Some say it’s ‘visual pollution,’ since it is an artificial construction that scars views of a natural landscape. The view from what is clearly the loveliest stretch of the Colombo-Kandy Road, between Mawanella and Kadugannawa would be scarred.
True.
Any human intervention that involves any kind of construction on any landscape is a scar it could be argued.
On the other hand, the fact that few if any have vented at other kinds of construction raises questions regarding selective angst. There’s been hardly a whimper about the planned construction of a road to an illegally constructed church in Pallekhandal within the Wilpattu National Park. There’s been some noise over the construction of hotels in similar landscapes, but nothing like the shouts and screams over this particular construction.
Perhaps it has something to do with the fact that Bathalegala was ‘christened’ as ‘Bible Rock,’ probably by some Englishman. Perhaps it’s just because Bathalegala can be seen whereas, for example, the Pallekhandal Church is not.
Those involved in the construction claim a legal right. The objectors would want such claims examined and, even if authentic, revoked. How things unfold is left to be seen.
So there’s religion. There’s ecology. There’s politics. There are clearly ego issues here. There’s perceived wrongdoing; desecration according to some of a touch-me-not landscape which others would call out the humbuggery of selectivity. It’s complicated. Nevertheless, the young poet Lahiru Karunaratne who says so much with so few words offered an apt comment in the following poem:
A splendid chaityaya
is the mountain
to which flowers can be offered
even without climbing the summit
but at its very base…
People find succour from religion in many ways. For some, it’s prayer. For others, devotional songs. For still others, deep reflection on the tenets of the particular doctrine. People have beliefs and beliefs are often at odds with one another. These are all subjective. No one has some kind of divine authority to order religious practices in terms of worth. Perhaps it is high time that laws pertaining to what can be, and cannot be built, where and where not are reviewed.
There are places of religious significance in all kinds of places — deep in the jungles out of deliberate need for seclusion or simply because the jungle has reappropriated territory, on top of hills, stand-alone rocks and mountains, in valleys lush and lovely. You find them by rivers, reservoirs and the ocean.
Religion and doctrine, let us not forget, are not coterminous. Both mean different things to different people. Lahiru is right, as far as I can understand Buddhist philosophy and in terms of my preferred religious practices. He could be dead wrong in someone else’s bible, so to speak. For the record, when I reached the summit of Bathalegala more than forty years ago with some friends, ‘worship’ of any kind was not in my mind. If at all, what was venerated was the silence, the calm, the view, a sense of achievement but more than all this, good times with friends.
And now, having read Lahiru’s poems, I feel compelled to say that reflection cannot be harmful. Reflection on the politics, the economic factors, the environmental concerns, names and naming. Reflection on the transient nature of all things. Most of all.
Tharindu Amunugama, for whom vandanaa is about feet and gaze, and who gives meaning to notions of connectivity by taking and sharing photographs, recently posted a sketch on Facebook.
‘A quick sketch,’ he said. A sketch that speaks of forest monasteries and hidden trails. It was inspired, he said, by a drip-ledge cave temple in Nathagane. Nathagane Aranya Senasanaya is located in the Kurunegala District and at the foot of a 350m high range of hills. Also known as Mundakundapola Nuwara with a history that goes back to the 2nd-3rd Century BC, it is speculated that it has at different times been a fort, a palace and a temple.
Time passes. Names change. The meaning of things get altered. We make mountains out of molehills and reduce monumental issues to ‘brushable’ specks of dust. Mountains are tropes. They are sacrificial altars. They are temples too.
Gaze is a flower, insignificant for some, meaningless for others, but an offering nevertheless. I prefer to stand with Lahiru Karunaratne. I prefer to meditate on impermanence.
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