Garvin Karunaratne

When I visited the Mollipotana monk the first time in January 2014 the temple was desolate. It was in the morning at around ten. The  Bo Tree, the small place of worship was  all bare of human beings. The Awasa, the residence of the monks was also desolate and I dared to move in looking at every room; the doors were open. I passed four doors and as I approached the fifth, I heard someone admonishing someone. I stopped in my tracks and listened and someone was telling someone how to take care of one’s parents. It went on and on in the manner of a  broken record, telling that person again and again, changing words and changing the tone to be more pursuant and more convincing. I relived reading the Buddhist texts in my undergrad days, where our Lord Buddha was admonishing laymen.

Later when I met the monk he said that the empty rooms were the abodes of the five monks that were gunned down by the LTTE when they attacked the temple in July 1986.     .

This was what I wrote in my Paper: The Buddhist Monk  at the 96 th Milepost on the Habarana Trinco Road:LTTE massacres & Economic Emancipation: The Need of the Hour.”, published in Lanka Web on 20/1/2014

This time when I visited the monk on   13 th March he was admonishing some laymen. There were two young monks aside and a school boy., reading a book. The monk greeted us. This time what was clear  was how  the monk had  handled the children whose parents were murdered by the LTTE. Both young monks and the schoolboy had  lost their parents and the monk had taken them into the temple, fed them, clothed them and sent them to the government school.  The children brought up by the monk had studied. One of his lads scored three As at the A Levels and is a student in medicine at Jayawardenapura  today. Another lad had scored three As and is waiting for admission to a University and that too in medicine. The schoolboy had scored 184  at the fifth standard scholarship exam  and had been selected for admission to Ananda College. The monk had no funds to support the child at Ananda in Colombo so he goes to the village school.

I was amazed at the work that the monk had put in to guide them.

What was evident in this visit is the role that the monk is playing to guide the people in the community.

In both my visits I have seen the monk in sheer action just in the manner told by Lord Buddha. Chatara Bikkave charikan,  mahajana hitaya sukhaya”

Here is a monk who with all available scanty resources is trying his best to guide the Sinhala community at Mollipotana. He hopes to get some grant from the Dharmavijaya Foundation.  Grants or not, in his own way he is at work, a monk to be admired.. I hope to visit him again on my next visit.

His temple in a Border Village, where the LTTE shot dead five monks and 16    people is at culvert 172/3 on the Habarana Trincomalee Road. The postal address is  Sri AgraBodhi Vihara, 96 Pedesa, Mollipotana.

The name of the monk is  G. Dhammasena and his phone number is 0262246068. Please note that the telephones are erratic and one has to try several times to get through.

Garvin Karunaratne

18/3/2017