Buddhist iconography is both simple and complex. Its simplicity comes from the fact that it divides [Buddhist history] into three phases, each separated by roughly six centuries: simple, colossal, and profuse. Its complexity comes from the fact that it is a rich blend of the spirit of the Buddha Gotama’s original teachings [combined] with Mahayana and tantric influences, gods from the Hindu pantheon, folk deities, and legends from the 547 literary tales describing the Buddha’s past lives, called Jatakas.

For the first two or three centuries after the Buddha’s last breath and passage into parinibbana in the 5th century BCE, Buddhist monks paid homage to the Bodhi tree under which he had attained enlightenment and whose cuttings were the source of many sacred commemorative Bodhi trees all over Asia.

Eventually, more permanent monuments began to be constructed. The first were architectural, notably the stupa. The earliest stupas were simple mounds of earth, complete with a wood pole sticking out the top. This has been interpreted as a symbolic representation of Mount Meru, the cosmic mountain at the center of the universe as described in South Asian legends that long predate Buddhism. Over the next three centuries, the stupa acquired more and more symbolic meanings and in ancient Lanka became formalized as the dagobas (shrines) one sees all over the island today. 

The first sculptural images carved to remind monks of the Buddha were pairs of footprints cut shallowly into stone at the monks’ retreats. As dagobas evolved into their present form, these pairs of footprints came to be included in the overall iconography of the shrine. Most often they are set into the immense flat plain of stone slabs, which serves as [a place to walk] for multitudes of the faithful during religious festivals. It is a breathtaking experience to stand atop one of these and realize your footprints have been added to those of visiting pilgrims who walked here as far back as 2,200 years ago. Sri Lanka is full of reminders that there is a single invisible thread binding the past with the present and the future, in which every human being is part of a continuity.

For some reason, the people in southern Sri Lanka have taken the most liberties with Buddhist imagery. There, Buddhist iconography adapted modest amounts of imagery based on local deities as well as Hindu, Mahayana, and some tantric motifs into temple architecture. But, by and large, its complexity tended to develop more along the lines of increasingly complex artistic embellishment as motifs were added by artists of one era onto the ideas of the preceding generation. 

As Buddhist art became more complex, so also did the conventions surrounding its creation. One rule that seems to have arisen in the 19th century was that painting the Buddha’s eyes—a ritual named netra mangalya—was the last act in decorating a new image, and there was a special spirit or protective chant of passages from the dhamma that [were to] accompany that act. What’s more, certain artists specialized in the task, and they alone must be employed.

Hence, when I learned that a Buddha image was to have its eyes painted at the Makandura Vihara, near Negombo, I wouldn’t have missed it for the world.

***

I awoke spontaneously at 4:30 a.m. The room was so dark I could see the glowing hands on my wristwatch at arm’s length. I got dressed as quietly as I could and made my way past the dog, growling so lowly I knew he was terrified that I might growl back. Out the door, down the path, onto the road bordered with paddies on one side and a lotus-filled lake on the other. Above, Jupiter, Mars, and Saturn were strung along the ecliptic from Taurus through Virgo. 

Looming in faint whites amid the dawn-still air and a lumino-phorescent horizon-low moon, the vihara was Buddhism at its most mystic. The temple complex grounds were spacious even by the standards of the generous rural Buddhist faithful. A large three-tiered arch opened onto two acres of sandy promenade that felt deliciously cool on my bare feet in the predawn—although sensory tranquility probably takes a little more meditative willpower at noon in the middle of July.

Ahead was the image house, its great doors still closed. I could hear the bhikkhus stirring in the pansala (monks’ quarters) behind, washing themselves, sneezing, speaking lowly. To the shrine room’s left was a rickety reinforcing rod tower that looked like Dali let loose in the Bronze Age. Its seven ascending wheels were each festooned with dozens of colored streamers and flags in the Buddha’s five colors—neela (blue), peetha (yellow), lohita (red), oojata (white), and manjestra (orange), in that order. These are the colors of the Buddhist flag. They represent the radiant colors of the aureole that surrounds the Buddha’s head in all sanctuaries. 

To the immediate right was the dagoba, a structure containing a relic of the Buddha. This dagoba was built in 1945 to commemorate the end of World War II. The funds came from a wealthy widow who, just before her death, had all her jewels removed from their gold settings and the gold melted down into a statue of the Buddha. This went into the central relic chamber of the dagoba. The jewels paid for its construction.

Dagobas always contain such valuables—and often a relic of the Buddha or holy man as well. One need not see them to know the images are there, any more than, upon seeing a white feather floating on the water, one needn’t see the egret to know that it has been there. This dagoba was a mere thirty feet high. The great solid dagobas of Anuradhapura, built 2,000 to 1,500 years ago, are 300 feet in diameter and 400 feet high—the third- and fourth-largest solid structures on earth after the first two pyramids of Giza.

Sri Lanka is full of reminders that there is a single invisible thread binding the past with the present and the future, in which every human being is part of a continuity.

Next to the dagoba was the sacred Bodhi tree, this one at least 100 years old, shading an area a quarter of the size of a football field. It was planted as a cutting from the Bodhi tree at Anuradhapura, which is itself nearly 2,200 years old, and was grown from a cutting of the original Bodhi tree under which the Buddha achieved enlightenment three centuries before.

In front of the tree was a small vihara (veneration shrine) with a two-foot pure white seated Buddha behind glass-paneled doors. Ironically, in every temple I have ever visited, the tiny shrine before the Bodhi tree attracts more worshippers than the profusely decorated “image house”—a much larger building that contains images of the Buddha in the meditation, standing, and reclining forms, at a minimum.

People arrive at these Bodhi tree shrines at all hours of the day or night. The ritual is always the same. They clasp their hands together and touch them to their foreheads in a prayer-like gesture that the Theravadans of Sri Lanka, Burma, and Thailand call anjali. They then bow low in the vandinawa gesture of veneration, and finally kneel into the pasanga (five-touch) position in which the toes, knees, elbows, palms, and forehead simultaneously touch the earth.

Then they rise to place jasmine and lotus flowers inside the glass doors, and light a lamp—made of a little earthen saucer with a wick out one end—filled with coconut oil. Then they recite phrases from the dhamma. Meditating near one of these little viharas, especially on poya day, when billowing clouds of incense float out of the tiny enclosure along with the coconut-oil scent, is olfactory heaven.

The stars were beginning to fade, although there was not yet the loom of light to hint at the day. People first arrived in ones and twos. Soon, without it quite seeming to happen, there was a crowd of dozens. Streamers bearing Buddha flags and foot-long strips of yellow raffia radiated from the entrance of the assembly hall out to every tree in the garden. The entrance to the still-locked image house was decorated with arches of palm fronds lashed to posts of bamboo. The fronds hung down like a raffia bridal veil.

Everyone wore white—saris for the women, skirts and socks for the girls, shorts for the boys, and, for the men, sarongs surmounted by a cape that looked like the fondest dream of an archbishop. Seventy-five percent of the people were women and girls, and, of the males, not one was a teenager.

A young girl moved amid them with a large copper tray. Out from sari sleeves and waist pouches came flowers in the Buddha’s five colors—blue gentian, red hibiscus, orange marigold, yellow gardenia, white jasmine. These went on the tray to be placed before the Buddha.

Now, as the first birds began to sing, there came, from the refectory, the long low opening chant of homage to the Buddha:

Namo Tassa Bhagavato Arahato Samma Sambuddhasa
Homage to Him, the Blessed One,
the Worthy One, the Fully Enlightened One.

Their voices bent to the wheel of The Mirror of the Dhamma, an hour-long circle of song in spirit tones of a droning tonic line with a microtone immediately above and below, coupled with a second tone a quarter octave above and below each of these. They began with the Three Refuges, followed by the Five Precepts, then a number of homages and recollections, as is tradition in Sri Lankan ceremonies.

The image house bell rang thrice as its great carved wooden doors opened. Coconut oil lamps flickered dimly inside, and I could see faintly the red robes of the great reclining Buddha within.

A woman unwrapped a paper that covered a dish full of sweet cakes made with rice and coconut milk and went to the Bodhi tree vihara to offer them to the Buddha. She opened the vihara doors and laid the food before the statue, then lit an incense stick and stuck it in a sand-filled cup. A little dog navigated the cloth canyons above him, bewildered by all the activity. Women knelt in the sand, lifted their hands to their foreheads in the anjali, then sat side-saddle-style on folded newspapers to keep their saris clean. 

A man emerged from the image house with a cloth-covered tray. He walked among the people, who reached out to touch its edge with their fingertips. The peace after the end of the chants was replaced by crows, songbirds, nightingales, and distant roosters.

Then an elderly bhikkhu stood before the image house entrance in his saffron robes. He uttered a few words, and the people responded in union. Sounds of leaves trembled from the Bodhi tree. Three cormorants thrust up in their steep climb of flight, wings whistling furiously, and their necks craned out. The bhikkhu then turned to the opened image house doors and shouted, “Sabbe satta sukhita hontu!—May all beings be happy!”

With that, the newly painted but eyeless Buddha, about four feet tall and made of plaster, was borne out from the image house on a platform resting on the shoulders of six of the temple’s laymen. Carefully, they lowered it to the ground facing the assembled audience, which by now numbered in the hundreds.

At this, a man, who had hitherto been totally anonymous within the crowd, rose, went to the Buddha, prostrated himself before the statue, turned, and sat facing the crowd. The man who had come from the image house came and knelt alongside him, holding on the tray of the cloth that everyone in the crowd had touched. The bhikkhu came before them and placed a bowl filled with milk and a tray with betel leaf and ash in front of the two.

The artist, still facing the crowd with his back to the Buddha, drew a small box from under his robes, and then a mirror. From the box he took an artist’s paintbrush and a small pot of black paint.

Then, holding the mirror and painting over his shoulder, because it would be presumptuous to gaze directly on the Buddha while creating his eyes, he painted the Buddha’s eyes with half a dozen strokes.

Immediately, the other man placed the cloth over the artist’s head so his face was hidden from view.

The artist said some phrases I couldn’t hear, then leaned forward and washed his face in the milk and rubbed his eyes with the betel leaf and ash. Only then, thus purified, did he lift the cloth away and look upon the crowd.

I looked at the Buddha’s eyes. It was uncanny–the artist had managed to perfectly capture the serenity of looking into eternity without a worldly thing distracting the vision, in twelve strokes with a paintbrush. [It was then that] I knew why [this] was such a specialized profession.

The people sat quietly while the bhikkhu repeated the invocation “Sabbe satta sukhita hontu!” From the garden surrounding the vihara came jasmine and hibiscus and gardenia smells. Some women were so moved that they dabbed their eyes dry with the hems of their saris.

Then the bhikkhu delivered a sermon facing them. Off to one side, beyond the wall of the inner sanctuary, a little boy—in a white shirt and blue shorts—looked on, afraid to come in because he was late. The bhikkhu ended the sermon, rang the bell thrice, and the six laymen shouldered the platform and returned it to the image house. It disappeared there within and the bell rang three times again. The crowd sat with their heads bowed in silent worship. From the Bodhi tree came the sharp cooing cry of the Seven Sisters, and beyond them the fields were alive with the caws of crows.

The bell rang again, only once this time. The people bowed one last time, rose, greeted one another, smiled, and began to talk excitedly. Some laughed. Children looked out from behind their mothers’ saris. They all moved toward the assembly hall for the ritual feast.

The ritual feast was the one enjoyed at all special temple events; if it takes place in the morning, the feast is called heeldane, and if before noon, davaldane. The man who had placed the towel over the artist’s head now used it to wash the feet of the temple’s thera (chief elder) and the other two bhikkhus in residence. The hall smelled of cumin, ginger, garlic, coriander, nutmeg, and the oddly musky rice travelers find only in Sri Lanka. The monks sat on low seats, also covered with a white cloth. The thera dedicated the food to the Buddha, dhamma, and sangha with a ritual formula named sanghika karanava. They [then] began [the feast]. The first food was offered to the thera and his bhikkhus. Then curries were served to the monks on plates; the people ate theirs from packets made of banana leaves, which, moist from the heat and steam of the food, now acted as smooth plates. Everyone ate with their fingers, mixing all the ingredients into a mass. Then came the sweets, the fruit, the pudding, and a buffalo milk yogurt called curd.

The final event was the presenting of gifts to the thera and his bhikkhus. The thera received an atapirikara, a wrapped package that is given to a young monk upon ordination—no other gifts are allowed. The package looked like a pillow surmounted by a helmet, wrapped all around with brown paper and tied with string. It contained three sets of robes, a sash, a begging bowl, a razor, a needle, thread, and a water strainer.

The other monks received new robes and small gifts of use to them. One of the bhikkhus had broken the thermos he used to take water with him on his rounds to instruct the temple’s children; he received a new one. Another received a special pillow to support his aging back as he read before retiring. [Others] received toothpaste, soap, milk powder, sweet cakes, and other foods that wouldn’t spoil. All these gifts were given by people as they finished eating and made ready to depart.

At the end, the thera gave a short sermon on dana, the practice of almsgiving. He conferred blessings on each mother and each head of the extended family—great uncles and grandfathers and cousins of in-laws’ sisters.

It was 8:00 a.m. The sun was already warm on the paddy fields surrounding the temple on all sides. The people were beginning to get anxious to be on with their day. It was the middle of the growing season. They had to weed the fields today. They would throw the weeds off to the edge, where children would collect them into rough-woven sacks, to be taken home that night for the cows. Sky-high and cloud perfect, a flock of birds winged out from the eaves of the image house into the day of thin blue.

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First published: 1992. BPS Online Edition © (2014). Digital Transcription Source: BPS and Access to Insight Transcription Project.