They were the ‘border’ villagers during the thirty year war; they formed a human buffer zone, way up north beyond Padaviya. They comprised a ring of villages of small farmers and their families who sacrificed their lives for the sake of the nation’s unity. Those who came to visit them intermittently from Colombo and other places south of the so called artificial ‘border’, during the long years of the war, brought them provisions and moral support. They told the silent villagers that they are very brave. "Do not leave" they advised, almost pleaded.
l by Bhikkhuni Suvimalee
(22 July, 2012, Colombo, Sri Lanka Guardian) They were the ‘border’ villagers during the thirty year war; they formed a human buffer zone, way up north beyond Padaviya. They comprised a ring of villages of small farmers and their families who sacrificed their lives for the sake of the nation’s unity. Those who came to visit them intermittently from Colombo and other places south of the so called artificial ‘border’, during the long years of the war, brought them provisions and moral support. They told the silent villagers that they are very brave. "Do not leave" they advised, almost pleaded. "You are doing a great service by making of yourselves a human buffer. When you hear the Tiger terrorists coming, you can alert the army. Your presence here is vital to the nation’s defense"
The army, too, came daily to encourage them. "Never fear" they said "We are behind you all the time. We shall protect you always."
However, when the Tigers came at night, the villagers invariably found themselves facing the attack alone. They had no time to alert the army. The Home Guards were killed like sitting ducks. The villagers, even babies, were massacred, shot at and their homesteads blasted. Their blood ran freely over the sacrificial altar of the land, soaking, consecrating and dedicating it to the ideal of a unitary state, democracy and peace. Those villagers who escaped the scourge of ruthless genocide fled to the dark cover of the scrub jungle and came out timorously at dawn like frightened deer to encounter another day of fear, anxiety and hunger as they buried the dead and tried to put together their fragmented lives.
Some of these ‘border’ villages have disappeared, their inhabitants killed or decimated and survivors fled to other parts of the country or moved to refugee camps. Some villages survived and one such is Kalyanipura in Weli Oya to the North East.
A Buddhist nun from Siyambalangamuwa, Kurunegala, Venerable Sunirmala, fired by the ideals of the Buddhist society of which she is a member, decided to make Kalyanipura her ‘grazing ground’. Along with a like-minded dhamma sister, she set out into the desert of the Weli Oya wilderness. Their courage reminds me of Venerable Punna of the Buddhist texts who went to Sunaparanta, a region inhabited by a savage violent people. Not that Weli-Oya is a Sunaparanta. The analogy is with regard to the two nuns’ courage which is analogous to that of venerable Punna’s.
The sutta has it that Venerable Punna wanted to serve the people of Sunaparanta. When he expressed this wish to the Buddha, he asked Punna "But what will you do if they throw clods of earth at you or beat you up?" and Punna replied, "I will be happy, Lord, that they are only throwing clods of earth at me and beating me up and not cutting me up with swords or knifing me to death."
"But if they should do that?"
"Then I shall exert forbearance, Lord, and be grateful that they are delivering me from suffering."
"Good, good, Punna. You may go to Sunaparanta" the Buddha said, knowing that Punna had attained arahantship.
So Venerable Punna went to Sunaparanta and transformed the savage, violent people into gentle, peace-loving folk by the example of his forbearance and compassion. This is the fire of humanity that glowed in Punna, which reminds me of something else in the Samyutta-nikaya where the Buddha explained a question put to him by a brahman:
"I lay no wood, brahman, for fires on altars. Only within burns the fire I kindle..."
The Buddha was, of course, referring to the lighting of sacrificial fires by brahmana priests to invoke the gods but what was the fire the Buddha kindled within himself? Not surely the fire of lust, hatred and delusion for he was beyond all that. It was surely the fervor of his ‘mahakaruna’, the great compassion that motivated him to reach out to the ‘many folk’ to show the path of purification and peace.
Kalyanipura is situated about twenty five kilometers from Mulaitivu on the East coast. The inhabitants comprise a modest village of twenty-two families. The younger children have no memory of the war. The older ones have faint recollections. The adults of course, have vivid recollections. Every family has lost several members in the genocide unleashed by the Tigers. Only a handful in the outside world know and care that those surviving villagers need to be nurtured with love and gratitude for the sacrifice they made for the sake of the integrity and sovereignty of their country.
As one travels across the dried-up harvested paddy fields, one sees abandoned derelict cottages gaping at one through the dark open spaces where windows have been torn out like plucked out eyes. They are the mementoes of war amidst which the living must eke out their existence from the two and a half acre plots of land given them by a government of yester year.
The two nuns live temporarily in the Praja Sala (People’s Assembly Hall) and will start to build their avasa soon. It is certainly not a bed of roses living in those stark, stern surroundings. Along with the villagers they have to face many a hardship like lack of water and having to go miles to obtain food stuffs with bus services not running that smoothly on time. But the two nuns are happy because the villagers are happy they are with them.
It is hoped the small avasa with its Bodhi tree will be a beacon of light and peace for the villagers. It is also hoped that local donors will also help to maintain and develop the small aramaya – local donors from all over the island who remember the sacrifice made by the villagers in their valiant non-violent resistence to terrorism.
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