Cluster 9 of 28. Ideas 191 to 200
The offering nobody else can make
The mechanism
What cannot be copied. Every competitor can build a beach hotel. No competitor can offer a Buddhist tradition more than 2,000 years old, still practised at the places where it first took root on the island.
Two things first, because they matter more here than anywhere else in this list.
The aim is to share this with the world, not to sell it. It must be led by the temples, not sold to them. A monastery is not a venue and a monk is not a guide, and any programme that treats them as either will be refused, correctly. What the temples need is not investors but translation, timetables, a way to be found, and someone to handle the practical arrangements that monks should not be handling.
And the point is not to change the visitor's religion. It is to let a person who has travelled across the world to sit in a 2,000-year-old monastery actually do so, properly, with someone who can explain what is happening in a language they understand. Everything else follows from that, including the week they stay instead of the afternoon.
This is, in my view, the strongest idea in this appendix, and it needs almost no money to start.
Sri Lanka observes Poya, the full moon, as a public holiday every month, and on those days lay Buddhists across the island observe Sil, a day of precepts, meditation and teaching at the temple. It is already happening, on a published calendar, every month, across the island.
The 10 ideas
- 191Sil programmes for foreign visitors at temples with English-speaking monks, offered on Poya days, with the observance explained rather than performed for an audience
- 192Residential meditation retreats of a week or more, which is the single most direct answer to a country whose average stay keeps shortening
- 193Structured courses in Buddhist philosophy and Pali for serious students, the way people travel to Kyoto or Dharamshala
- 194Monastery stays under proper protocol, with the rules made clear in advance
- 195Teacher training and certification for meditation instructors, so the standard is Sri Lankan rather than borrowed
- 196Pilgrimage routes properly interpreted: Anuradhapura, Mihintale, the Sri Maha Bodhi, Kandy, Dambulla, with guides who know the history and not only the route
- 197Ayurveda and meditation combined into a single wellness week, which is what many visitors from abroad are looking for
- 198Translation and booking services offered to temples, so that a monk never has to handle the arrangements
- 199The same offer, with the same respect, for the Hindu temples, the mosques and the churches
- 200Vesak in Colombo shared with the world, with the lanterns, the dansal and the meaning explained
Nobody else on earth has this. It is the clearest example in the whole book of something the island already has and has not yet shared.