How Not To Celebrate 2600th Sambuddha Jayanthi: Music at Temples!

May 18, 2011 | By Rakhitha | Filed in: Me, Myself & I, Sri Lanka.

Ok! first of all I am not a very religious guy. But I do go to temples and worship once in a while. Most of that credit should go to my mother and my wife. And I normally avoid going to temples on poya days as temples tend to be too crowded, and lose their relaxing and peaceful environment which one would need to do religious activities.

How since this is our first Wesak festival after getting married and the 2600 Sambuddha Jayanthi, we went to the temple close to our house. It was a good thing that we left the vehicle at home and walked all the way. Traffic was like hell. Vehicles were jammed bumper to bumper. There was even an ambulance with sirens running but going nowhere. Hope whoever inside that is still alive. I also could not help noticing that the dansala with the longest queue was the one done by the local BBQ shop.

Once we managed to reach the temple, something seemed totally wrong. They were playing music very loud through loudspeakers mounted near the Boo tree. What the hell! It was too loud and was literally painful to the ear.  Ofcourse they were songs related to Buddhism but not the ‘Buddhan Saranan Gachchami’ by Mohideen Beg kind of songs. They were more modern songs that you can’t really categorize as Buddhist bathi gee or budu guna gee.  And it was way too loud, and completely destroyed the peaceful atmosphere that you would expect in a temple. Of course this is 2600th Sambuddha Jayanthi and every temple must do something special for it. But who in his right mind play such loud songs in a temple. We found the congested roads more peaceful on the way back from the temple. Hope this wasn’t the case in other places.

/Rakhitha


Tags: , , ,