I’m back from a trip to Sri Lanka.

One of my memorable experiences from the trip was climbing Sri Pada, a 7500 ft peak that pilgrims have been climbing for more than 1000 years. (It’s mentioned by Marco Polo.) I climbed it starting at 2am in order to watch the sunrise, which is indeed spectacular. We could see the sunrise stretching across the vast horizon, rock monoliths, lakes, and lush trees and tea bushes all around.

It’s a good hike but not extremely strenuous. I watched old grandmothers making the climb in bare feet and mothers carrying children down steep stairs, so I figure I ought to be able to make it.  (For me, fear of heights was more of an issue than anything.)

The one thing spoiling the beauty is the unfortunate litter on the way to the peak.  As the trustee of the peak notes, "Garbage bins have been placed at regular intervals, but we still see people just throwing things to the ground. It’s this don’t care attitude that they have to get rid of."  American’s aren’t really in a position to be judgemental, of course– we’re often obsessive about personal cleanliness, but on a societal level are happy to trash the planet on a mass scale as long as it happens out of sight.

While in Sri Lanka I got to read some good books on Buddhism. I found many of the ideas fascinating, pragmatic, and radically different from other religions/philosophies.

Buddhism treats the notion of a persistent self as an illusion, and a harmful one at that– what we call our "self" is, like all other things, constantly changing and shifting throughout our lifetime. Unhappiness is the frequent result of this attachment to self and to things, and of other mental habits like excessive planning or dwelling on the past.

Buddhists do not believe in a supernatural creator of the universe, in original sin, in otherworldly heaven and hell, and in divine enforcement of moral laws– "bad" acts are considered bad because they harm both the actor and others.

Sadly, the security and economic situation in Sri Lanka seems to be deteriorating. The government has withdrawn from the ceasefire with the LTTE and is effectively printing money to finance the war effort.  In the first two days of the new year there was an assassination and a bombing in Colombo, and the violence has since continued. It’s a good example of the harm to a nation that result from an unending war on terrorism which neither side can win. Some friends and I were noting that only widespread prosperity can make it in everyone’s interests to end the fighting, as has happened in Northern Ireland.