A pilgrim’s encounter
I encountered the idea of truth without needing to break it down into fragments: The whole truth, untouched by skepticism or doubt.
A preset route of a pilgrimage around the predominantly Buddhist Sri Lanka ultimately leads to Sri Dalada Maligawa in Kandy, where the most sacred relic, said to be a tooth from Buddha, is enshrined. Every day, the temple receives an extraordinary number of visitors, who celebrate the ideal life of the religious teacher and his timeless virtues in the same fervor as the Hajj in Arabia or any major holy expedition elsewhere in the world.
Photographs by Vernon Velasco for the Daily Tribune
I am not a Buddhist; I had always been skeptical of the spiritual fervor that so often sweeps across places of worship.
I am a mere a traveler, a curious observer, seeking the novelty of a far-off land. To me, religion is more a product of culture and history than any tangible, transcendent force.
I viewed it as something to be studied, but not fully experienced.
But, as I stood before the Sri Dalada Maligawa (the Temple of the Sacred Tooth Relic) in Kandy, Sri Lanka, it tugged at me — as if the temple was inviting me to shed my cynical veneer and open my mind.
The scent of incense floated in the air thick and sweet; ornate stone carvings and intricate woodwork adorned every pillar, each depicting scenes of Buddha’s life — moments of serenity, wisdom and compassion frozen in time.
The palpable sense of reverence that permeated the space — you could see it in the faces of the devotees, young and old, who inched across the packed halls that reverberated with the soft rhythm of their chants, the almost imperceptible hum of belief in the air around me.
Moving deeper into the temple, I found myself drawn toward the inner sanctum, where the sacred tooth relic of Buddha is enshrined.
The devotees stood before the gold-caged relic, their heads bowed, hands pressed together in prayer. It was the silence, more than anything, that stopped me.
The temple was busy — tourists and devotees alike flowed through its halls — but this small room, with its gleaming relic resting in a golden shrine, seemed to exist in a world apart from the noise. Time stretched here.
The air felt still, heavy with something more profound than mere tradition. It was as if the relic itself, the very embodiment of Buddha’s presence, had become a bridge between the earthly and the divine.
It was not just an artifact, not just a religious symbol — it was a living link to something far greater than any one person, place, or moment in history.
The relic held within it not just the memory of Buddha’s physical being, but also the deep, unspoken understanding of his teachings: peace, compassion, and the impermanence of life.
In that fleeting instant, I understood that Buddhism, in its truest form, was not a religion to be studied but a way of seeing and being in the world.
We had been trained to compartmentalize experiences, to dissect them and find logical explanations.
