Starter Kit. Idea 191 of 500. Cluster 9
Sil programmes for foreign visitors at temples with English-speaking monks, offered on Poya days, with the observance explained rather than performed for an audience
The mechanism, from the book
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.
The first step
Visit a temple near you on the next Poya day and ask to speak with its lay committee after the observance. Offer, at no cost, to write a one-page English explanation of the day's precepts and timetable, which the committee approves word for word. Then ask 3 guesthouse owners nearby whether their foreign guests would come if that page sat at reception. The proof is an approved page and a count of guests who came.
- Who pays first
- A foreign visitor already on the island who wants to take part properly and will pay a guesthouse or guide for the explanation, never the temple for access.
- What leaves today
- Visitors pass temples on Poya days and leave having watched, not understood, so the island's deepest living tradition earns nothing and is known abroad only as scenery.
Ask first
- Department of Cultural Affairs. Ask whether they can introduce you to temples that already welcome foreign visitors on Poya days.
- Sri Lanka Tourism Development Authority. Ask whether they list temple programmes for visitors, and how a temple gets listed.
Check before you spend
Whether the chief incumbent and lay committee agree in writing to visitors on Poya days, and what dress, silence and photography rules they want kept.
Find out these three numbers
- How many foreign visitors does the temple already see on a Poya day?
- What donation does the lay committee think is fair from each visitor?
- How many visitors could sit Sil without disturbing those observing it?
A comparison from the book
Japan. Chapter Eleven
"And name the thing you will not trade."
Agree with the temple, before any visitor comes, what will never be changed for an audience.
The test
Does it keep value that now leaves the island, or build the proof that lets somebody else do so?
From the appendix of Why Not Sri Lanka? by Dr Maheshika Halbeisen. The idea and the mechanism are the book's; this kit was written for the site.