On Maha Sivarathri Day

A Hindu holiday on Tuesday, March 8th is the celebration of Shiva.

We traveled to Rakwana on this day as on the 9th, we listened to the presentations of student projects by A level students who have worked with AHIMSA staff over the last year.

It is true that Sri Lanka celebrates many holidays with the diversity of people and faiths here. Hindu, Muslim, Buddhist and Christian holidays make for many holidays in any given month.

Hindu faith is rich with diversity and colourful kovil (temple) are full of bright statues showing many different deity and their various modes of travel from a rat for Ganesh who resembles an elephant, peacock and a lion. Hindu faith is as diverse as its many gods and goddesses, estimated at over a million!

Here are some of the basic beliefs help by the majority of Hindus.


• The three-in-one god known as “Brahman,” which is composed of: Brahma (the creator), Vishnu (the Preserver), and Shiva (the Destroyer).
• The Caste System.
• Karma. The law that good begets good, and bad begets bad. Every action, thought, or decision one makes has consequences – good or bad – that will return to each person in the present life, or in one yet to come.
• Reincarnation. Also known as “transmigration of souls,” or “samsara.” This is a journey on the “circle of life,” where each person experiences as series of physical births, deaths, and rebirths. With good karma, a person can be reborn into a higher caste, or even to godhood. Bad karma can relegate one to a lower caste, or even to life as an animal in their next life.
• Nirvana. This is the goal of the Hindu. Nirvana is the release of the soul from the seemingly endless cycle of rebirths.


At the same time, Hinduism teaches that all living things are Brahman in their core. In other words, all living things are Brahman, or god. Enlightenment is attained by becoming tuned in to the Brahman within. Only then can one reach Nirvana. The release from the wheel of life that allows access to Nirvana is known as “moksha.”

Hindus recognize three possible paths to moksha, or salvation.

The first is the way of works or karma yoga. This is a very popular way of salvation and lays emphasis on the idea that liberation may be obtained by fulfilling one’s familial and social duties thereby overcoming the weight of bad karma one has accrued.

The second way of salvation is the way of knowledge, or jnana yoga. The basic premise of the way of knowledge is that the cause of our bondage to the cycle of rebirths in this world is ignorance. According to the predominant view among those committed to this way, our ignorance consists of the mistaken belief that we are individual selves, and not one with the ultimate divine reality – Brahman. It is this same ignorance that gives rise to our bad actions, which result in bad karma. Salvation is achieved through attaining a state of consciousness in which we realize our identity with Brahman. This is achieved through deep meditation, often as a part of the discipline of yoga.
The third way of salvation is the way of devotion, or bhakti yoga. This is the way most favored by the common people. It satisfies the longing for a more emotional and personal approach to religion. It involves the self-surrender to one of the many personal gods and goddesses of Hinduism. Such devotion is expressed through acts of worship, temple rituals, and pilgrimages. Some Hindus conceive of ultimate salvation as absorption into the one divine reality, with all loss of individual existence. Others conceive of it as heavenly existence in adoration of the personal God.
My blog is a chance to share the many diverse faiths and I appreciate those of you who have written to share your thoughts and experience.

I asked about who you turned to in times of difficulty as an adolescent. Thank you for your responses. It seems that many people speak with their peers, whether it is a sibling of similar age or a friend who is also a young person. The reason I asked this of you is that I am currently working with a peer mediation program here at AHIMSA. There is a culture of silence in that children do not often s[peak of abuse or difficulties to adults. If this program is to train peers to mediate they will be the front line for learning of much which is difficult and abusive in children’s lives.

I have pre-empted the peer mediation program with training for the whole group of young people in peer support. Peer support teaches skills to just what it says, peers support each other and learn listening and speaking skills and problem solving as well. I will describe one children’s club which shows how children fear getting adults involved because of their potential over reaction.

A young boy takes a girl’s gold necklace. The father threatens the boy who took the necklace. Another boy goes to the girl’s home to see if he can help work things out. The girl’s father, uncles and brothers attack this boy. He dies of an axe wound to the head. The various families on the girl’s side are burned out and driven out of town. Eventually an uncle serves time for the murder.

Children are wary to tell adults for fear of their strong reactions, and youth taking a third party role may not be well received. There are complicated issues in providing skills and support to children to support each other and at the same time understand the complexity of family and community roles in Sri Lankan society. The child who went over to try and settle the dispute over the gold necklace was not involved in any mediation training, or going with any particular training and support.

We will be heavily involved in field testing this program in diverse and also more homogeneous communities. Batticaloa is largely Tamil, and both Hindu and Muslim populations have fairly separate schools. Down south in hill country, in Rakwana, where we were this week, the population is mixed.

Monica grew up in Rakwana and as we met her family, she shared stories about hiding in the forest during 1971 riots. The riots found JVP forces attacking Jaffna Tamils, and Monica’s father was a Jaffna Tamil who was overseeing tea plantation workers. Monica said her father brought the families special clocks and the clocks made noise in the forest. Monica’s mother was raised in a Hindu family and there are ten children in Monica’s family. Monica met some of the teachers who she remembered as fellow students when she was in Rakwana. It is powerful to see so many girls in white school uniforms speaking with Monica. Monica was invited to Kennedy school of Management at Harvard to speak as a founding member of women waging peace and she has gone through out the world as she seeks to learn more about peace and share her experiences as well. It is true that many people leave Sri Lanka for education and work and immigrate to other countries, not to return. Monica will never leave Sri Lanka, she is as rooted here as the ancient Bodhi tree in her village. One of the young people’s presentations was about the Bodhi tree which is 200 years old in Rakwana. It grows just outside the rest house where we stayed.

This has been a bit of a wandering blog, without much structure. For the young person who wrote about various animals I have seen so far, I saw two crocodiles (not together) making their way across the road between paddy fields on the road down to Rakwana.

March 8th was International Woman’s Day, as we observed all the Tamil women carrying tea leave harvest on their heads down the hill to the factory. We gave a couple of women a ride up as we drove up to into the forest to a retreat centre. I am very sure that very few of the Tamil tea pickers had ever heard of women’s day. I expect they would have had a good laugh as they got up before dawn to get their children off to school and end the fast of Shiva’s Hindu holiday. Shiva is one of the God’s one would connect with for fertility. You can imagine all the interesting adornments to celebrate his holy day! As a Tamil tea picker I think my prayers would be the reverse of fertility!

So another blog week in Sri Lanka ends with crocodiles, tea pickers, children’s presentations, and the homey touches of fresh lime juice at Monica’s family home. I send you all my greetings and a special note to the Canadian woman sending home-made bears, I will let you know when and if the first brave 10 bears make it through the duty and excise taxes without getting confiscated by the government. If they make it, the other 350 can come!

Peacefully,
Martha
marthamcmanus@hotmail.com
(My email at Bradford is closed now, so please use this email address.)