SRI LANKA: A VISIT TO ANURADHAPURA

There are eight UNESCO World Heritage sites in Sri Lanka compared to 23 in the U.S. (which is almost 150 times larger than Sri Lanka), and we were able to visit six of them. 

Our first was the city of Anuradhapura, declared a UNESCO World Heritage site in 1994. It was the capital of this part of Sri Lanka from the 4th century BC until the 11th century AD. It is also one of the most sacred Buddhist pilgrimage cities in the country. Covering 16 square miles, the ruins are some of the most extensive in the world.

After moving us quickly through the Jetavanarama Museum, which contained glass display cases full of small artifacts from the city . . .

. . . a site guide took us to visit the first of four stupas we would see that day. A stupa is a domed structure built around a relic--typically the remains of a Buddhist monk (or in some cases, the remains of Buddha himself)--and used as a place for prayer or meditation. Another name for a stupa in Sri Lanka is a "dagoba" (sounds like "pagoda").

The Jetavanarama Dagoba (Say that three times really fast) was built in about the 3rd century AD. Originally over 325 feet tall and made of 93 million (yes, million) bricks, it is the largest brick structure in the world. At the time of its construction, only the Pyramids of Giza were taller, but they are made of stone, not brick.

A sash or belt that belonged to Lord Buddha is buried somewhere in this solid hump.

The stupa is surrounded by monastery ruins that once accommodated 5,000 monks but now are only home to egrets and other animals.

A monastery needs a shrine where prayers can be offered. This shrine has a reclining Buddha, eyes appearing open . . . 

. . . drooping . . .

. . . or closed, depending on where you are standing.

Flowers are always left as offerings to Buddha:

The shrine features a crazy conglomeration of symbolic images and wild colors:

Here is a standing Buddha, distinguished (as always) by his long earlobes, which are somehow a symbol of his rejection of the material world in favor of spiritual enlightenment. (The blue-skinned fellow on the right is a little creepy, don't you think?)

There is also a sitting, meditating Buddha:

That cloth on his lap is a version of the Buddhist flag. We saw it everywhere:

Check out the beautiful painted ceiling (left) and the intricate tiled floor (right):

Buddhist artists are not subtle at all. This grouping reminds me of Disneyland's Pirates of the Caribbean ride:

One of my favorite stops in Anuradhapura was the Kuttan Pokuna, or "twin ponds," which were built as ritual baths in the 8th century. Steps on each end of each pool lead to what appears to be brackish water, but there were no mosquitoes (or at least we didn't notice any) and no foul smell:

The larger of the two pools is 131 feet long:

. . . and the smaller pool is 92 feet long:

There is a well-ahead-of-its-time filtering system on the far end:

These pools appear to be a pilgrimage site. No one was actually bathing in the water, but everyone seemed to want to go down the steps and touch it:

We noticed a lot of macaque monkeys hanging around in the surrounding jungle:

We saw one of them scamper down the stairs to get a drink:

Moving on. 

This was a common sight all over Sri Lanka. They love their watermelon!

These three-wheelers are everywhere too . . .

. . . as are monkeys. This a different species of monkey than the macaques we saw at the pools. These are langur monkeys, distinguished by their black faces:

Our next stop in the ancient city was the Samadhi Buddha, a 4th century AD sculpture depicting the Buddha in a meditation pose.  Even out here we had to remove our shoes quite a distance from the shrine:

The granite statue is eight feet tall and shows Buddha sitting with one hand laid on top of the other, palms up, a typical pose known by all Buddhists.

Unfortunately, the nose on this statue was broken off or maybe wore off during the centuries, and the rebuilt nose looks like Buddha should have found a better plastic surgeon:

The Abhayagiri Dagoba was renovated with $3.9 million in UNESCO funds. Work was completed in 2015. When it was built, this stupa was the 4th tallest structure in the world, behind only two pyramids at Giza and the previously mentioned Jetavanarama Stupa. We had burned the soles of our feet earlier at the J. Stupa, and the day had gotten even hotter, so we did not go in here.

The Mahapali Refectory monastery surrounding this stupa was even grander than the last monastery. This long trough, for example, was built to be filled with rice to feed the monks. That's a LOT of rice, which tells you how many monks there were.

Here is another view of the trough (on the left):

Footings and outlines of rooms have been restored:

We were particularly impressed by Eth Pokuna, aka The Elephant Pond. It measures 520 ft x 173 ft. To give some perspective, an Olympic-sized swimming pool is 164 ft x 82 ft, which means SIX Olympic-sized pools could fit in this pool. The water to fill it comes through brick-lined underground channels.

As we continued on our way, I had a very, very rare experience: I spotted a wild animal before either our guide or my husband saw it. That doesn't happen, well, ever. As we were walking along a road in a park-like area, I spotted an enormous land monitor lizard skulking across the grass. We estimate it was about six feet long.

Yep, this fellow was longer than I am tall by at least half a foot.

We passed this "guardstone" at the entrance to another monastery--the Ratna Prasada. It shows the "cobra king" sheltered under a seven-headed cobra and is supposedly the finest guardstone in Anuradhapura. I wonder how this would look next to our front porch. What do you think, B

Or how about this one? It would be a reminder of that cool monitor lizard, right?

One of my favorite stone carvings was this moonstone and others like it that served as a kind of door mat. The innermost half-circle is a lotus bloom, which is enclosed in concentric bands that contain, working from the inside out, a ring of swans; a ring of intricate foliage; a ring of elephants, lions, horses, and bulls that symbolize growth, energy, power, and forbearance; and a ring of flames.

Seen from the other side:

There are lots of carvings found in random spots:

Here is one of my favorites. Check out those earrings:

Yes, as a matter of fact, we DID feel like Indiana Jones:

Time to visit the third of four stupas: the Thuparamaya Dagoba, which was built in 247-207 BC, making it the very first Buddhist Temple in Sri Lanka.

But first, there is the shoe thing AND the color of your clothes thing.  Luckily, we were both wearing light-colored clothing. I had on tan pants and a white shirt. Perfect.

In their heyday, all of the stupas were whitewashed like this. The first two we saw were left un-whitewashed when they were restored so that the construction and brickwork were more obvious. In addition, rather than a hemi-sphere like the first two, this stupa is bell-shaped. Besides being the oldest, this stupa's claim to fame is that buried deep within its solid core is the right collarbone of the Buddha. No wonder you have to take off your shoes to go up those steps.

Before going in, we stopped to admire a Buddhist shrine. The set-up reminds me of the smaller temples to various gods and goddesses that surround the Acropolis in Athens:

Then we took off our shoes and went up the stairs . . .

. . . and onto the hot granite pavement where a barefoot monk was paying tribute to the Buddha:

As usual, the Buddha is surrounded by lotus blossoms:

Another meditating Buddha in another niche:

We didn't stay long. Our feet just couldn't take it.

Outside the fourth and final stupa, we noticed young men braiding coconut leaves to make some kind of containers.

We stopped at the shrine to see a second resting Buddha. Our guide noted that the splayed toes indicate that he is near death.

Like the shrine we visited earlier in the day, this one also had a little Disneyland-ish feel to it:

 

One of the important items in this shrine is a stylistic representation of the footprint of Buddha, carved in shallow relief on a stone slab that is perhaps three feet long. (Now, THAT'S a big shoe size.) There are dozens of similar footprints scattered around Sri Lanka

Looking back at the reclining Buddha on our way out:

. . . and passing by another shrine with a meditating Buddha as the focus:

We passed by this flower market and finally understood where pilgrims and other worshipers were getting the gorgeous blooms they were leaving as offerings to Buddha:

We would see many more of these flower markets in future visits to other Buddhist sites:

And finally it was time to visit the grand-daddy of all the Anuradhapura stupas: the Ruwanwelisaya Dagoba. It's not its size that makes it important, but rather a tree, which I will get to in a minute. However, the size is impressive. It didn't start out to be the 338-feet-tall structure (circumference 951 feet) that it is now. In fact, the original stupa (c. 140 BC) was about half that size, but as each king renovated it, he made it a little larger until now it is one of the world's tallest ancient monuments.

This stupa has a bunch of Buddha relics buried inside it, but I don't know what they are. Maybe someone who reads this can tell me.

One of my favorite things at this stupa was the frieze of elephants that encircled it:

Supposedly there are 1,900 elephants walking out of this wall:

We would see many more such walls on our travels through Sri Lanka, sometimes even on the walls surrounding personal residences. I think it was here that my love for Sri Lankan elephants really took hold.

We were seeing a lot of people arriving at the stupa. It seemed that something special was about to happen.

After seeing some greenery growing between the bricks at a previous stupa, we had asked our guide how the stupas were maintained. Here, he was able to show us. He pointed to a man at the top of the dome who had been cleaning the bricks:

Roped up like a mountain climber, he worked his way down to the top of a ladder affixed to the side of the structure:

Once at the top of the ladder, he slowly, slowly climbed down.

Meanwhile, down below, there were more and more people milling about, and some monks and their helpers were tidying up the orange band of fabric that encircled the base:

Unlike Japan, where there is incense burning all over the Buddhist sites, we hadn't really noticed a lot of incense in Anuradhapura--until now.

Offerings to Buddha also included food and flags:

More people dressed beautifully in white clothing kept coming, some carrying crates of fruit or flowers:

And then the "parade" began. We felt so fortunate to be there to watch. We had no idea what any of it meant, but we were touched by the clearly sacred nature of the event. One of my friends who saw a video I posted on social media commented that the women reaching out to touch the orange cloth (from about :35 on) reminded her of the woman touching the hem of Christ's garment in the New Testament.

It was a seemingly unending orange river, and the fabric did not appear to have any seams. From what I can find on the internet, I believe this was some kind of harvest festival, and this strip was going to be added to the one already wrapped around the bottom of the stupa.

By the way, evening was approaching and that stone floor was still warm, but nothing like it would have been earlier in the day.

The sun was starting to set, and our guide was hurrying us along because there was more to see, so unfortunately we didn't get to see what happened to the orange river.

Does this look like a movie set?

Near to the stupa is the reason many Buddhists journey to this site: the Sri Maha Bodhi Tree, which can be reached by going through a large gate that has separate entrances for women (on the left) and men (on the right):

We made sure to remove our Helmets:

We passed a building full of people dressed in white praying quietly and meditating, a scene familiar from my own religion (albeit without the Buddha at the front of the room):

And finally, the big draw, the reason tens of thousands of pilgrims from all over the world come to this spot every year: a sacred fig tree said to have been grown from a branch of the tree under which the Buddha sat when he attained Enlightenment. Wikipedia says the Buddha was born in either 563 or 480 BC, and he died in either 483 or 400 BC.  This tree, planted in 288 BC, is (again, according to Wikipedia) "the oldest living human-planted tree in the world with a known planting date."

The tree has other trees planted around it to help hold it up, and it is protected by the Sri Lankan government.

Pilgrims wait in line to pay homage to the tree:

They make offerings here just as they do to statues of the Buddha:

They gather around a teacher and learn:

And like worshipers all over the world, they sing:

I was very moved by our experience at these sacred Buddhist sites. I was touched by the respect shown by the visitors and by their clear devotion and reverence. They were polite to each other, well-behaved, and happy. I was reminded of how much good can be found in many ways of life that are so different from my own.

Well, it's time to head back to our hotel. (Bob, can I have an elephant gate like this? PLEASE?)

The sun was setting on an incredible first day in Sri Lanka.

This has been a very long post, but it was a very long day. Feel free to sing "Hallelujah, the day/post is over."

READING
I tried reading Herman Hesse's Siddhartha when I was in high school, but I think most of it went over my head. I knew absolutely nothing about Buddhism or any other kind of Eastern thought, and the writing style was somewhat foreign to me.

Fast forward to the present. I just reread the book to try to gain some enlightenment (pun intended) about the Buddha and Buddhism. Having just had a lot of exposure to Buddhism, I found it really helpful in understanding a little bit more about what I had seen.

The story, translated from German and written in a simple, flowing style, follows the exploits of Siddhartha, a rich young Nepalese man who leaves his home in search of spiritual growth. He is joined by his friend Govinda. They become aesthetes, renouncing all worldly possessions and taking up fasting and meditation.

When they have a chance encounter with Gautama Buddha (THE Buddha), Govinda joins the order, but Siddhartha continues on his own, eventually connecting with a courtesan and becoming once again a very wealthy man. Eventually he realizes there is no fulfillment in his life, and he returns to his humbler life. Other things happen as Siddhartha ages, but by the end of his life, his enlightenment is complete.

Siddhartha's journey highlighted many of the beliefs, practices, and traditions of Buddhism that gave me some perspective on the various encounters with Buddhism that we had on this trip. Certainly it's not the best source of information on Buddhism, but it was one of the more readable one!