Kandy

The lake is the centerpiece to this city. It contains monitor lizards and turtles and egrets and horrific devil geese, and provides a picturesque foreground to the Temple of the Tooth and the misty craggy hills of central Sri Lanka. The Temple of the Tooth is the pride and joy of Sri Lankan Buddhists--it is purported to contain a real live tooth of the Buddha. Sri Lankans don't care that, many years ago, Portuguese invaders claimed to have stolen the tooth and pulverized it. Apparenly such things as Buddha teeth are impervious to such threats. There supposed to be an elephant here to be mighty and look after the tooth. I have not yet seen this elephant.

So far Gabe and I have spent a lot of time walking around, trying to find interview subjects for our respective projects on socially engaged buddhism and loving relationships. This morning we traipsed into a monastery in search of English speaking monks, and later we plan on infiltrating a forest hermitage. "What about social action?" we will ask the hermits, "What about love?"

The "ethnographic field work" that I've been doing here in Sri Lanka has made me think a lot about the barriers that people construct between themselves and everyone else. It's funny, but I feel like my project has served as an excuse to talk to people about things that I would be interested in learning about anyway. Why do I need this pretense that I'm a student doing a project to approach my fellow humans and talk to them about something that everyone cares about? Why do we pass strangers on the street with barely a cursory nod? Why do I feel like I need an excuse to ask people what they think about love?

These are the things I ponder as I wander through Kandy being lost and brandishing a rainbow umbrella. Life is certainly interesting.