Finding Peace at Year's End ...

I just returned from a 4 day meditation retreat at Amaravati, a buddhist monastery near Hemel Hempstead just north of London. A calm and reflective way to round off a year which has been rather full of frantic activity. From finishing my PhD to getting engaged, and organising a wedding 2005 has been a pretty big year! In less than a week I will be heading back to Sri Lanka to be reunited with my wife Uthpala (we registered our marriage in August) and will be returning to the UK towards the end of January.

Spending this time of year in quiet contemplation has been an ambition of mine but various circumstances have conspired against actually doing it. Last year I was struck low by the 'flu just a few days before due to go on retreat and the year before that it was something else. It almsot was the same story this year as I had a really bad sneezing fit just a few mintues before leaving the house, but thankfully it passed and I made it to the retreat centre without incident.

It was snowing the first tow days of the retreat, and as the teacher Ajahn Nyanarato noted, this provided an unusually still atmosphere at the monastery. The crunch of snow under foot as I did my walking meditation has the odd effect of punctuating this stillness even further. While the movement and noise were obvious, as I focussed on these, the silence in between each step became more pronounced. I really wanted to take some pictures of the snow-laden scenery but unfortunately I kept putting it off in the hope of some better light and conditions - a lesson in appreciating the completeness of the present moment :-) In the end, my camera battery was dead, so pictures had to be postponed for another time.

Overall the retreat was a great experience. As usual, doing so much meditation at a stretch was somewhat challenging. Particularly since I have not done this for a while now. The problems ranged from general restlessness, aches and pains and missing Uthpala - all good opportunities to experience Dukkha first hand! Through all this there were also periods of calm and concentration during which it felt almost effortless to experience each moment with clarity. By the end of it all, I left today feeling truly refreshed.

I will leave details of some of the dhamma teachings and stories told by the teacher to later postings. One in particular struck a chord - relating to the past life recollection of a young boy who was found to be able to recite entire suttas at the age of around 6 years. We listened to a recording of this boy chant the Dhammacakkapavattana Sutta (Discourse on turning the wheel of Dhamma) which was the first teaching given by the Buddha to five ascetics who helped hime during his quest for enlightenment. Hearing these words chanted by this yound child, with disarming innocence, I found my heart elevated beyond expression. My joy was such that before I knew it, my eyes filled with tears and I was overwhelmed. The reason for this reaction is still unclear to me - this has never happened before - all I can say is that hearing the Buddha's words in this form was a really wonderful experience.

Hopefully I will have some time to post more while I am in Sri Lanka. I will try to include some more experiences from the retreat as well. Until then, wishing everyone a very happy new year.

May all beings be happy and secure, may their hearts be joyful!

Season's Greetings & Happy New Year

Wishing everyone peace, prosperity and joy in the coming new year!

Take care,
- Arosha & Uthpala

Road blues ..

Taking a cheap coach service from London to Manchester proved a little more trouble than the money saved this weekend. Fed up of paying the seemingly extortionate rail fares being charged to travel between London and Manchester, over the past few months I have opted to use the coach services when going to visit my parents. Overall I have to say that the experience has been fairly positive, and I have been able to make good use of the long journey time for catching up with reading, sleep and other low priority activities :-)

However, this past weekend I decided to downgrade the cost a little further and chose to travel by the 'no-frills' coach service - Megabus. The cost was less than 1/3rd of the normal coach service, but came at the cost of arriving at my destination over an hour later than the scheduled time. Also, because the service is run to a tight budget, pick up and drop-off is done just outside the coach stations - so it involves standing around in the cold waiting for your bus to arrive. I shouldn't complain too much though - 'You pays your money and takes your chances'

On tenterhooks ..

Uthpala has her interview with the British High Commission tomorrow morning, so I am on tenterhooks waiting to hear if her visa has been approved! Certainly hope this is the case since I really want to her to be able to come over the UK as soon as possible

Fingers crossed !!! x0x0x :o) 

They call me Dr. Bandara! ... :-)

Arosha's PhD Thesis
Originally uploaded by akbandara.

Well, after 4 years of hard work (and a little bit of relaxation), I have finally been awarded my PhD.

Last Friday (on 30 Sep 2005) was the day of my viva where I was required to defend my thesis. The whole process took over 2 1/2 hours, but at the end it was a great feeling to be informed that I got through and am now allowed use the title, Doctor :-)

A bit of Dhamma Fun ! :-)

A friend sent me this cool website (www.dharmagames.org) which has a bunch of fun flash based games that combine teaching of the Buddha. The Dhammapada game is particularly good!

Getting back into old habits ...

After almost a month away on vacation, getting back into the old routines of work, rest and play have been a slow process. Of course it doesn't help that the month or so just before I left were an atypical haze of frantic activity where I was rushing to get my PhD thesis completed. Now thaat this is out of the way, coming back from a long break means that I no longer remember the old routines I had for the smooth day-to-day running of my life. So the past week has been an exercise of remembering the old and experimenting with the new.

The old habits I have rediscovered is the simple act of sitting down in the morning for a few minutes and meditating. It is not a daily activity at the moment, but by doing it whenever I can (and remember!) means that I am being reminded of the benefits of taking 20-30mins each morning to train one's mind to really concentrate on one thing. Of course, the mundane day-to-day stuff continues to come to mind during this process, but as time goes on it does become easier to let go of all that baggage and just relax into the moment. My sitting this morning was particularly refreshing, and at the end of the 30 mins I was almost unwilling to get up and break the concentration :-)

A new habit that I am developing is to eat more healthily and also get a lot more exercise. I say this is a new habit, but in reality it is just a long forgotten one. Why is it that getting back into a healthy lifestyle is always more difficult than leaving one behind and indulging ones laziness and food cravings! Anyway, I am getting into the habit of satisfying my snack cravings by having fruit (instead of biscuits and chocoaltes) and also getting some extra exercise by cycling between home and the tube station. The cycling is a bit of strain at the moment since I am really out of shape but I am slowly getting back into the swing of things.

Well, it is getting towards the end of Friday and the weekend beckons with more activity to ingrain these good/better(?!?) habits. Tomorrow I plan to drive up to Amarvati (a Buddhist monastery close to my house - www.amaravati.org) for a meditation workshop, and also visit the London Buddhist Vihara in the evening and enjoy some pirith chanting. In between all of this, and catching up with house cleaning / laundry stuff, I should get some cycling and swimming done as well :-)

Have a good weekend!

Uthpala and Arosha

On August 17th 2005, Uthpala and I were married in Kandy, Sri Lanka. It was a small occassion attended by family and close friends, and a very enjoyable and memorable day was had by all.

Unfortunately, Uthpala is unable to join me in the UK until her visa is processed by the British High Commission in Sri Lanka. Hopefully this will get done in the next couple of months and she will be able to come back with me when I next go to Sri Lanka.

You will be able to see some more pictures of our wedding by clicking here provided you have a flikr account (www.flickr.com) and I have made you a friend or family member. E-mail me if you would like to get access to the full album.

Trouble in paradise ...

Arrived back in Sri Lanka a few days ago - which is a really welcome break after the past 3 months of hectic activity. Now that the thesis is written, this is agreat weight off my mind. Of course the other happy news, and event I am looking foward to is that Uthpala and I are getting married on Wednesday! :-)

However, this morning there is some sad news from Sri Lanka - the foreign affairs minister, Mr. Lakshman Kadarigama was assasinated last night. This is a truly sad event since with his loss we have lost one of our most intelligent, articulate and able voices on the world stage. Kadarigama was one of the few Sri Lankan politicians who had real integrity and credibility both amongst Sri Lankans and the international community and I am sure his loss will be sorely felt. I can only hope that those responsible for this cowardly act will be brought to justice as soon as possible.

The job is done!!

Arosha's PhD Thesis
Originally uploaded by akbandara.

Finally, after months (well actually years!) of hard slog the end is here. Today I put the finishing touches on my PhD thesis document and the plan is to hand it over to the printers tomorrow and then finally submit the bound version to the university on Friday.

Of course this means that I shall be celebrating this weekend :-) ... actually it will be a double celebration since I will be going home to Sri Lanka the following Wednesday and Uthpala and I will be married the week after that. A period of great changes - but all good ones.

I have been telling all my friends how close I am to finishing the PhD .. and they probably think it was all over .. well, it is now!

Given that it is 9pm and I am still at the office, my stomach is starting to rumble. Time to head home and get some food in my belly.

3 days in Portugal ...

Palacio Freixo, Porto
Originally uploaded by akbandara.

Well, I have had the somewhat dubious experience of being a tee-totaller in the Port Wine capital of the world - Porto, Portugal!

Arrived here on Sunday for a conference organised by HP. It has been good fun, with the chance to meet lots of other researchers from both HP and other universities. I presented some of my work as a poster yesterday, which went quite well. There have been a number of excellent social events as well, although the repeated late nights and early starts have been a bit of a drag.

On the PhD front, the trip has been quite productive - I have fixed some of the performance problems with my tool and managed to go through the corrections to my thesis with my supervisor. There are still a number of things I need to address, but I don't expect it will take more than a week or so to get done.

You can find all the pictures from my trip here

A sad day ...

Underground, Overground
Originally uploaded by akbandara.

It's been a sombre day in London after 4 bombs exploded across the city. I was late getting out of the house this morning and by the time I got to the local tube station, the network had already shutdown. It was only when I got home and switched the TV back on did I discover the extent of the problem.

The morning was spent catching up with friends and family and making sure everyone I knew was OK, and letting others know that I was safe at home. I know I am one of the lucky ones - first because I wasn't involved in any of the blasts, and also because I wasn't stuck at work faced with the prospect of a difficult commute home.

I notice that the tube network is slowly coming back online, so I should be OK for getting into work in the morning. It is impressive how London is living up to its reputation of stoicism in the face of adversity. Hats of to all those people in the emergency services and the transport services for stepping up and making it count when it really matters.

For all those affected by this terrible atrocity, be it directly or through friends and family - my sincere condolences and hope that you are able to put this behind you in time.

May everyone be well, happy and peaceful!

Another one bites the dust ...

Phew, just finished writing another chapter of my thesis - only another 5 more to get done!

The situation isn't as bad as it sounds though since I have already written a fair bit of the remaining chapters. For example, Chapters 4 and 5 just need some corrections and a pass through expanding each section with a little more detail. At most this should take 2 days to get completed. Similarly, the bulk of the content for chapters 6 and 7 have been written. Just have to go through and clean it up. I don't expect to need more than 3 days for this. Finally I need to write out the final conclusions chapter - add another day, and in total the end of my thesis is just 6 days away!

I hope my supervisors are happy with the two revised chapters (2 & 3) that I sent them today. I think I have addressed the bulk of their concerns, particularly with respect to methodically explaining each aspect of my work. These two chapters have expanded from a combined length of 30 pages to a whopping 60 pages now! Which should account for about 1/2 my thesis.

OK, time to go home and have a break. Chapter 4 beckons ...

Wanted: revolving door

At the rate at which new people seem to be coming and going through my office, it seems I should consider asking the college to replace the door with a revolving one. Over the past 6 months, 2 of my colleagues have left and 2 new folks have arrived to take their place. And then earlier this week I learned that one of the new guys is planning to leave as well - after only about a month of being here! I hope it isn't anyting I said :-)

The thesis writing is going pretty well now and I am confident I will be able to get it done over the next week. Of course there still might be some corrections to be done here and there, but these should be just minor typos and rephrasing to make things read better.

Well, I guess I shouldn't spend any more time updating this blog - even though it is one of my more pleasurable displacement activities! Other fun thing I am doing these days is to take lots of pictures with my new digital camera - will try and post some of the recent photos with my next entry.

Help is on its way!

As I am in the final two weeks of intense activity to get my thesis completed, I not too keen on taking time out for those domestic necessities of cleanig the hourse and cooking food etc. So, it is great news that my mother is coming down to stay with me for a couple of weeks to take care of all these requirements! The really touching thing is that I didn't even have to ask her for help - my parents decided that they wanted to do this on their own initiative, and I have to say it is *really* appreciated. Whilst it is unlikely I would have starved, or been buried under piles of dirty laundry, or anything even remotely similar, having Ammi around is going to really improve my QoL (Quality of Life!) in these last two weeks of frenetic writing :-)

The other good news today is that my cousin Aruni (who lives in Bermuda) just gave birth to a baby girl. My newest niece was born yesterday morning and I am glad to say that both mother and baby are doing great.

Today is the celebration of the Queen's official birthday, so London is a bit of a mess with roads closed off for the parades etc. If I had a little more time on my hands I would have liked to go along myself and try and get some pictures, but this is going to have to wait until next year.

Oh well, I should get back to work now. Just popped into the office to get the power pack for my laptop before heading to the coach station to meet my parents. Then back home, and back to work!

Bring me sunshine ...

Djurgarden, Stockholm
Originally uploaded by akbandara.

The weather here in Stockholm has taken a turn for the better - another reminder of the impermanence of nature! - so I have been able to take some better pictures of the city. We have to take a ferry ride to get from our hotel to the conference venue, which is definitely more pleasant in sunnier weather. It's still pretty cold out on the water though.

The conference is going quite well, with a very interesting keynote talk this morning.

I haven't been able to talk to Uthpala properly for the past couple of days and I am really missing her a lot. Hopefully I get back to the hotel at a reasonable time this evening so we can have a good chat and catch up.

Cloudy Stockholm ...

In Sweden attending a conference at the moment. Weather is not that great - but at least this means I have not much incentive to use up time by going outside and walking about. Instead I can focus on getting some more writing done on my thesis!

Will try and take some pictures and post them here at some point though.

P(ermanent) h(ead) D(amage) ...

P(ermanent) h(ead) D(amage) ... aaagh! Who said PhDs are fun?!?! This writing thing is one of the most soul-crushing experiences of my life. OK, I realise nobody will really relish the thought of sitting at a desk for days on end trying to write about stuff they've been doing over the past 3 years - but I am getting close to the end of my tether! Just got back another bunch of corrections from my supervisor and have major additions to put into the two chapters I finished last week. My supervisor thinks that the end is in sight - but he must have better eyesight than me!:-)

Oh well, enough ranting about it. Just have to get heads downs and plough through this... it is not an insurmountable obstacle, but rather one of those experiences when you climb half-way up a peak and realise that 2/3rds of the mountain's height was hidden from you until that point!

Off to Stockholm on Sunday but I can see that I will have to spend as much time as possible on the writing up. Otherwise this will never get done.

Web sights ...

Bhuddhanet.net is a great website for information about Buddhism and related books, articles etc. I recently was able to find some really nice children's stories with buddhist themes by visiting this site.

Making progress ...

Despite the attractions of lots of warm, sunny weather in London this past week I have been able to knuckle down and make some real progress with my thesis. I sent some more stuff to my supervisor for review and comments today and now the biggest task ahead of me is to do all the corrections he gave me a few weeks ago. Hopefully I will be able to give him the remaining chapters by the end of the week!

Haven't had much chance to take any more photographs - or upload existing ones to Flickr. Will be heading of to another conference at the weekend. This promises to be a really great location - Stockholm - and since I have never been to a Scandinavian country I am really looking forward to it. Also, I have the added luxury of not having to give a presentation (although I do have a paper accepted at the conference). Convinced one of the co-authors to present instead :-)

Nothing particularly exciting to report at the moment. Back to more writing and writing ...

Exhaustion is no fun ...

As the deadline for getting a completed version of my thesis to my supervisor draws even closer, I am finding myself working harder than ever. It is not that I am a stranger to long hours - when I worked for Sapient, 12 hour days were pretty much the norm - but I can't say I enjoy this. Particularly when I find that writing about stuff that has already been done and written about (in papers) is the most boring thing imaginable. Trying to come up with new ways to say the same old things is harder than it sounds. I am now at the stage where I am no longer concerned about producing an elegant turn of phrase, or wording the explanation of a technical concept 'just right'. Instead I am just going to churn out the necessary material for each chapter and edit and play around with it once I have let my supervisor read through it. This is probably the approach I should have taken from the outset - but what can I say, you live and learn I guess :-)

Oh well, only a few more weeks of this slog - hopefully after that I can relax a little and this feeling of constant exhaustion will pass.

Thinking inside the box ...

Thinking inside the box ...
Originally uploaded by akbandara.

Finally got some time to walk around Nice and take some pictures - check out the album linked into the previous post for the complete set. There are a number of interesting sculptures and architectural features that caught my attention so I thought I would share. My particular favourite was this one - a head in a box!

Nice is nice! :-)

Old Quarter
Originally uploaded by akbandara.

This is a picture of the Old Quarter of Nice as seen from the roof terrace of the Grand Hotel Aston. The welcome reception of the conference I am attending was held there last night.

In warmer climes ...

Spending a few days in Nice at the moment, attending a conference for work. I have a presentation to give tomorrow afternoon and tryong to write up some more of my thesis in between the various sessions. What can I say about Nice?? ... well, it is very nice! :-) Weather is warm but not oppressive; the surroundings are really pretty and I am trying take as many pictures as possible. Will get around to posting some here soon.

Well, I should focus on the presentation that's is going on right now - so will sign off for now. Hopefully will make some progress with my thesis over the next couple of days and be able to post some more stuff soon.

New toys ...

Well, I bit the bullet and bought myself a digital camera (Sony S40) today. Main reason for urgency is the upcoming trip to Nice (followed by trips to Stockholm and Portugal later in the summer) and the desire to start maintaining a photo blog. Inspiration for doing this is from Soumya (see www.soumya.org) who has created a beautiful photoblog site - I highly reccommend it.

Look forward to more pictures and travel blogging here :-)

Writing, Travelling ...

These days I am completely bogged down in writing up my thesis - having a really hard time motivating myself to get going with this. Have to go to a conference next week, which hopefully will give me some time away from the office to get going with my writing.

Hoping to turn these pages into more of a photoblog - although I do have to get into the habit of taking more pictures if I want to do that :-) ... Perhaps I should invest in a digital camera of my own so that I can do this properly.

Well, time to go off to work now. More writing to get done - pity it won't happen on its own!

Bringing some New Year cheer ...

On a recent trip to Sri Lanka I had the opportunity to distribute some New Year gifts, books and money to some tsunami victims in the Pothuvil area of Sri Lanka. I have to admit that this was one the most humbling experiences of my life - it is hard to explain the amount of gratitude people showed for the simplest of gifts that we gave.

We visited two schools, Ulla Sinhapura Viduhala and the Pothuvil Sinhala Viduhala, and in each place gave the children a gift of some uniform material, excercise books and chocolates. Additionally we gave their families money (worked out as Rs. 250 per family member) to help celebrate the New Year.

New Year Care Packages - Week 1

I arrived in Sri Lanka just before a Friday that was also full moon poya day, so not much that could be done until the long weekend was past. However, I was able to make contact with Prof. Malkanthi Chandrasekera at the University of Peradeniya and make arrangements to meet her as soon as I got to Kandy. She was also able to confirm that the funds sent from the Vihara Relief Fund had already been credited to her account.

My first priority was to make arrangements for the cloth and other gifts to be purchased so that we could get moving with the task of packing these ready for distribution. Prof. Chandrasekera had already given some thought to this and was confident that it would be possible to get some volunteers to help with this. I learned that she did her social services work under the name of the ‘Gemi Sarana’ project (Refuge for Villagers). We agreed that it would be appropriate for her to use this project as the local sponsor of the New Year Care Packages we were going to distribute.

I got to Kandy on the Saturday (26th March) and was able to meet the Professor on Sunday evening to discuss the details of what we would be distributing as gifts and how we would allocate the available funds. We agreed that in addition to providing the cloth/books to the children and cash donations to the families, it would be good to give something to each of the teachers since otherwise they would feel left out. Additionally, we would give text books to the Ulla school which had lost everything in the tsunami. The other school in Pothuvil was not affected by the tsunami, but the families of the children attending this school were all affected. Therefore we decided that we would not buy textbooks for this school since it already had a reasonably stocked library. Finally, we decided that if the budget allowed, we would get some sweets/chocolates for each of the children since they would really appreciate this.

Having gone through the budget and agreed on what needed to be purchased, I undertook to buy the cloth from Colombo later in the week and also find something suitable for packing the gifts into. Brown paper bags were rules out because they tear too easily, but regular polythene shopping bags were also not suitable since I wasn’t keen to add to the environmental problems! It was left to me to find something suitable.

On Tuesday I set off for Colombo and braved the streets of the Fort to locate the cloth wholesaler that my cousin had put me in touch with. The streets were teeming with people all trying to get a jumpstart on their New Year shopping and parking in that area was an absolute impossibility. So, I chickened out and headed to the relative calm of Colpetty and the Crescat shopping mall where I was able to park and then took a rickshaw ride back to Main Street. After a bit of searching I was able to locate the wholesalers and made the deal for the fabric. There was some confusion about whether the price originally quoted was Rs.45 per meter or yard, but in the end we agreed on Rs.43 per yard and I was presented with 11 bolts (each containing 60 yards) that now needed to be transported back to my car. We managed to load it all into a rickshaw, and with me sitting on top made it back! 

Long time, no write ...

It's been a very long time since I've had the inclination to post anything here. One of the reasons is that I decided to move some of my writing to a old-fashioned paper journal, but the other is that I have just been too lazy to write. Even the paper journal has not received many new entries in the last couple of weeks and I have been generally feeling a little low-spirited.

Since I last posted a lot has happenned - I went to Sri Lanka for 10 days, one of my best friends got married, I was down with the 'flu and a tsunami has devastated large parts of south Asia, including Sri Lanka. The trip to Sri Lanka was a nice break, and very enjoyable. Especially it was good to be able to attend my friend Hiran's wedding. Once I got back I had big plans to really get stuck into writing my thesis but within a couple of days I was knocked out with a really bad bout of the 'flu. I think it was made worse by just being tired after all the travel etc., but this really made me start thinking seriously about the wisdom of this single life that I am leading. When illness strikes, one really misses the companionship of having someone nearby who cares for you and would help you get better. I know this seems rather selfish, as in, it sounds like I just expect my hypothetical wife to be my nurse, but I do feel that this is one aspect of being in a loving relationship - you feel happy to be able to take care of one another. Indeed in Buddhism we learn how the Buddha using the simile of a mother taking care of her sick child as the epitome of compassion. Of course there are many other parts to love and marriage, but the experience of being ill and my so called 'independence' being a hindrance to my well-being have got me to thinking that there are definitely some advantages to being married :-)

After recovering from the 'flu, I had to deal with the shock of the tsunami disaster. Luckily none of my family were affected by it, but I know many people who cannot say the same. The scale of this disaster is unprecedented and it is hard to know where to start in the effort to help people and rebuild the affected areas. I have been trying to do my part by getting involved with the relief efforts organised by the London Buddhist Vihara - check out http://www.lbvrelief.com for information about what we have been doing. Now that the holiday period is over I find I have less time to go and help with this stuff, but I am keen to do as much as I can.

Anyway, that's my first post of 2005.
Wishing everyone a new year full of peace and joy, may all your hopes and dreams be fulfilled!