February 17, 2015

Valentine's Day saw my house warming brought to a wonderful conclusion.  Venerable Upatheesa did a great job.  He kept the chanting and the sermon very short and he did the 5 precepts in English so that I could respond.

Before the formalities, Veenitha and I went around the entire house with sambrani (powdered incense and camphor) and purified everything inside and out.  The Kawasaki's maid, Lily, brought immature coconut flower, areca nut, and betel leaf as did Sonali.  Kawasakis brought a lovely bowl for the water and the Buddha puja set which is used to offer all the food to the Buddha before feeding the bikhu (monk).

Here is the set up.  Flowers, incense, a lamp all in front of the Buddha.  The long things to the right are the immature coconut flowers.

Venerable Upatheesa with Ashoka fixing the nuwal (string that is held during chanting and then tied around each wrist along with a blessing)

On the table there is a bowl of water covered with a white cloth, betel leaves set out in a lotus pattern, areca nut and various vessels for the water part of the ceremony.

We all received blessed water into cupped hands that we then put on our heads and drank if we wanted.  Here is Rushma.

Lily

Veenitha

Sam, my tuktuk man

Ashoka, the Kawasaki's tuktuk man

Tullia, my landlady

Ken Kawasaki

Visakha Kawasaki

Sonali, who looked like a Sri Lankan goddess

I placed the excess coconut flower in the urns by the front door.

It was wonderful to have all those people participate.  Again, it was ecumenical as we had Buddhists; Ven. Upatheesa, Ken and Visakha, Lily, Veenitha, Sonali; Christians; Tullia, Sam, Ashoka; Muslims; Rushma; and agnostics; me.

After the ceremony, we had dharne (feeding of monastics) for Bante (a general term for a monk, like calling a Catholic priest Father) and then had lunch ourselves.  It was all over and done with even the clean up by 1600.  Veenitha very happily took the left over areca nut and betel leaf home for people to chew.  A disgusting habit.  The left over holy water can be used to sprinkle in every room, but I used it to water my hopefully germinating pot plants.  Let's see if the Buddha is a pot head.

Sunday was quiet, which was just as well as I was a bit tired and we had a water cut from 0900 to 2100 as they were fixing something down by the river.

Yesterday was film club which turned out to be a bit of disaster film wise as the equipment at the restaurant did not work even though the staff and I tried to get it going for 2 hours.  In the end, we gave up and just had a nice lunch.