Saturday: Intentional Elephants, Dog Tales and a Doppelganger

Chapter Four of The Thousand Faces of the Smiling Buddha

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Thy loving smile will surely hail, the love-gift of a fairy-tale. -- Lewis Carroll

Saturday I am awoken by what sounds like the impact of one thousand buckets of water being simultaneously discharged against the roof. The torrential deluge is shed in unbroken waterfalls to the all sides of the room and I picture canals of roiling rainwater being carved in the dark. Through the shimmering curtain of water outside the front window I am able to make out the blurred colored lights of the resort's main office, but nothing else. I open my laptop to check the clock. Thirty minutes past three ante meridiem. The clamorous complaint of the corrugated metal roof under the downpour is constant during my early-morning pranayama and sit.

Maybe it's the all-pervasiveness of the pinks in the room, or an association made with the sound of cascading water, but for whatever reason, elephants keep coming to mind. First Disney's "Pink Elephants on Parade", then Jean de Brunhoff's "Babar the Elephant", then Hannibal's Alpine crossing on elephant-back, and finally those incongruous canned shots of African elephants from Tarzan movies. This pondering on pachyderms inspires me to try an experiment suggested by Dr. Joseph Dispenza in the movie "What the Bleep Do We Know!?" In designing my day I voice the intention to be shown a wild elephant. Like an enfant terrible I am unequivocal in my demand. No chained elephant, no laboring elephant, no porting elephant. I will only be satisfied with a wild elephant in its element. Period.

I continue my quest for smiles as soon as a number of guests emerge from their rooms for breakfast in the wall-less dining room. My three pieces of slightly charred toast with saccharine jelly go down roughly, but the nine smiles I harvest in the dining hall give me energy that food cannot heading into the day. A cloying, largish dog stands on my foot while I am trying to take notes on my laptop and looks up at me with eyes that say, "I love you so much it makes me wanna whine." I smile sympathetically at the tawny-colored retriever which only encourages him to double the doe-eyed intensity of his gaze. "I bet if you loved me one tenth as much as I love you, Mark, you would offer me an insignificant morsel off your plate." I toss some bits of burned crust to my unrelenting petitioner, who wolfs the offering down with salivating gratitude.

Lafir, refreshed from a good night's sleep and looking entirely pleased with the morning's inaugural cigarette, joins me at my table after dismissing my four-legged friend with a deft flick of his foot. He informs me that we will depart for Sigiriya in twenty minutes even though the rain is incessant. Go with the flow.

Still nervous from the previous day's debacle, I ask Lafir if I will be allowed to get down from the vehicle in a timely fashion should my bladder threaten to give way. He scrunches his brow as he contemplates my request and then counters that the trip should last less than half an hour. "We are quite close from here. Not taking long time. You using toilets now, before going. Not finding toilets or papers on the road." It is not the long-term solution I was hoping to come to, but it's a start.

Sigiriya is a ruin-topped citadel that rises from the jungle floor like a weathered pencil eraser of gargantuan proportions punched through a sheet of deep, wet green. It looks suspiciously like Richard Dreyfuss' fork-sculpted mound of mashed potato from "Close Encounters of the Third Kind"--perhaps it is a harbinger of an extraterrestrial jam session, but I've neglected to pack my synthesizer.

The minute we drive up to the expansive garden that serves as a terraced preamble to the impressive rock, the rain halts. Save for a handful of umbrella-wielding guides at the ticket booth, the sea of greens surrounding the massive magma plug is completely unpeopled and eerily silent. Lafir bids me goodbye at the gate, and as I pass over the small bridge spanning the placid, mud-brown waters of the moat, I get the impression that I am an unwitting champion being sent forth to face some mythical menace. "Aye, the legend reads that it be a bandana-bedecked outlander who shall topple the monster, but this boy be so frail..." I am even appointed an animal sidekick in the form of a short-haired mutt that guides me through the misty garden landscape replete with hulking boulders and rectilinear, low-lying pools. My guide dog patiently waits as I stop to gawk at the immense scale of the looming rock ahead and admire the vista revealed at each new elevation. Higher and higher we ascend until we are on the rusted iron staircase appended to the giant rock itself. It is here that the pint-sized pooch sees fit to cut me free, but not before he strikes a regal pose on an stage of masoned stone and allows me to snap a photo. He quite naturally possesses the stuff that pure breeds are conditioned to ape with empty exactness at the annual shows of the Westminster Kennel Club.

Occupying a chain-linked cage, two apathetic security officers serve as reluctant gatekeepers for the natural tower. Beyond them the sinuous stairs of rusted orange-brown iron hugs the rock and spirals up out of view. My persistent smile confounds the seated guard, but his upright partner lets his guard down (ta-dum) and surrenders a tight-lipped grin before I pass and embark upon the stairs.

Midway up the western face of the rock I encounter a third guard who is charged with watching over the few remaining flesh-hued frescos of the panoply that once decorated the wall. His smile outshines my own and he is overjoyed to present the lissome, topless maidens for my perusal.

"You see here," he asks, while pointing at the nipple atop a perfectly spherical breast. "The placement is perfect. If you look closely you will see that earlier the artist painted the nipple lower, but then he moved it, so it would be perfect."

"Even the old placement looks pretty good to me," I confess.

"Pretty good, yes. But not perfect. The artist could not rest until it was perfect."

"Could not breast, you mean."

"Could not?"

"Could not breast, until it was perfect."

The official begins a rapid-fire wheezing that taken out of context could easily be mistaken for an asthma attack. "Oh yes, joking. I was not expecting," he gasps. I am tempted to grab hold of his shoulders as he rocks back dangerously near the centuries-old renderings of buxom babes.

"Bad joking," I correct him. "Well, I breast be getting on my way." The guard is sent into a fresh tizzy, but this time he steadies himself with arms akimbo. As I make my way up an incline to the next set of steps, I cannot resist the urge to turn back to fire one last salvo of puns in the direction of the now obscured guard. "Breast in peace, my friend. The breast man won." Fresh peals of his distinctive laughter mingle with the wind.

Three quarters of the way up Sigiriya, a sizable outcropping serves as a viewing platform and is occupied by a smattering of nervous monkey mamas clutching wide-eyed babes. Bull monkeys, chests puffed out, pace back and forth on the rock above--unofficial sentries guarding whatever treasure may await at the summit. A monumental pair of lion's paws frames the steps leading to the final ascent, and gives the milieu the doomful feel of an Indiana Jones or Harry Potter film. At the far side of the landing, a signboard, lacquered green, warns 'Noise May Provoke Hornet Attacks' and features a terrified hiker being pursued by exactly twenty thigh-sized hornets--the biggest of which is an antenna's length from biting the runner's hind end.

The final set of steps is the steepest. Mirroring their ascent, two or three meters superior, are man-made grooves in the smooth face of the rock that in the days before the stairs was installed, were used for tenuous foot and hand holds. I cannot resist but to find a spot on the steps nearest the olden grooves and do a bit of climbing. To reach the lowest of the indentations I am forced to stand on the outer iron handrail and lean against the rock. Although the path is just a short distance below to arrest a fall, the perceived exposure is nonetheless dramatic. The rock curves away both above and below such that I feel like I am clinging to the edge of a smooth moon suspended recklessly high above a verdant orb. For the seasoned free climber, high-rise construction worker, or barefoot palm-tree harvester, the ancient route might constitute nothing more than the quotidian gravity-defying workout. For the less spider-like, however, it's a hair-raising experience. With my diet-withered physique, I count myself squarely among the latter group, and quickly negotiate my way back to the stairs after the most modest of traversals.

Atop the rock I am utterly alone with the hoary bricks that outline the floor plan to a once-palatial splendor. The monkeys that had watched my ascent with considerable interest have ominously peeled away and there is only the sound of the wind to keep me company. The jungle canopy below is broken at intervals by ponds that are not hard to imagine as the still-steaming footfalls of a recently-passed colossus. Nevertheless I am inclined to reflect that if any beast remains here to do battle with, it is but myself. In my focus on hitting the goal of one thousand smiles I stand to lose sight of the potential uplift each individual smile offers. Like so many of the projects initiated over the past year in India, this exemplifies the ongoing battle; to do justice to each fragile moment while weaving together larger projects with the potential to resonate beyond the original impulse. Goals, however grand or noble, tend to pull the aspirant from the here and now. Depth is traded for breadth. Holding this thought, I watch the mite-like sprinkle of newly-arrived tourists--three, followed by ten, then five more--drawn along the circuitous garden pathway to the rock. The sun threatens to pierce the gray underbelly of sky. Come, there are smiles to collect. One at a time. Just one at a time.

After encountering the first half dozen or so groups on my descent, I note that the ever-present drive for more smiles is providing a window onto choiceless awareness. The minute I exalt in garnering a couple of smiles, the next person will remain stoic. When I despair at encountering several non-smilers in row, suddenly a smile crops up out of nowhere. I exalt once more, and the pattern repeats. When, instead, I see each response as an equally viable aspect of the divine play--flip sides of the same coin--I am released briefly from my desire to grasp or push away the fruits of my dimple-rippling labor. A fragile bubble of equanimity arises, at least for a few fleeting moments, in which I am free of expectation or fear of what might or might not happen. I'm just smiling at that which is, again and again, without judgement. The action alone is enough. I take refuge in the smile, my smile, shining forth without discrimination. But this mode is short-lived as I inevitably get excited again. I get a little high when I realize everyone is smiling, one after the other. No sooner than this thought forms and suddenly no one is smiling anymore. My bubble is burst and the roller coaster of emotions begins anew. Hardcore training from the great beyond.

Back at the car I find Lafir sound asleep on the fully-reclined front seat and I take advantage of his dormancy to empty my bladder in the shadow of a looming, rain-streaked boulder. A tap on the door rouses Lafir from his slumber and when he comes to he informs me that our next destination is the ancient city-kingdom-capital Polonnaruwa--just over an hour's journey east-by-northeast. The second I take my place next to Lafir in the Tempo the sky opens up and unleashes wave after wave of rain against the suddenly teary-eyed windows. The furious car wash is unrelenting for the duration of our drive. When we stop at Polonnaruwa, the rain stops. Just like that.

Lafir uses an invisible map on the Tempo's hood to indicate how I am to make a loop of the site before returning to our parking spot near the colossal half eggshell of the spike-crowned main stupa.

"Not taking guide," Lafir says while removing the wrapper from a fresh pack of cigarettes. "Big wasting of money and our times. If guide coming you not talking, just walking. Just making loop and coming here again." He is unmoved by my invitation to join me on the tour. "Many times seeing. Now smoking and waiting."

I leisurely stroll about the ruins--reclaimed from the smattering of jungle that is still evident in domesticated patches about the site--and marvel in particular at the crumbling walls demarcating where the royal palace stood. The bygone seven-storied palace was purported to have had no less than one thousand rooms (how many of these were half baths is a figure lost in the annals of real-estate lore). I amuse myself by imagining each of the ghostly chambers as a unique and subtle container for one of the one thousand smiles I will collect. Ideal material for a Hayao Miyazaki animated feature.

In front of the palace I am descended upon by an tattered-umbrella-wielding man with a powder-white mane of hair. He brusquely grasps me by the arm and leads across a lane to where a small group of Asian tourists is standing. "Staying together, staying together," the seasoned guide scolds disapprovingly while glaring at me. His unwarranted rant complete, he uses his umbrella to motion down a flight of steps at an attractive terraced pool trimmed with right-angled stonework. "This is where Parakramabahu and other Kings are having their bath. To the right of the bath you are seeing Royal Changing Room."

Perhaps it is inspired by the guide's use, like Lafir's, of the present tense for the past, or the fact that no one in the tour group is deigning to look in my direction, but a sure-fire bit of smiling-winning drama quite suddenly presents itself to me. "Cheerio," I say to no one in particular then descend the steps toward the Royal Changing Room at a brisk clip. I step over a moon stone (foreshadowing, mayhaps?) engraved with concentric rings of elephants, creepers, and horses, before scampering up the several weathered steps to the open-aired platform. I surreptitiously ascertain that I have my audience's undivided attention, then make a big show of removing my flip flops and placing them neatly on the raised stone border. This is followed by wiping my bandana from my head, neatly folding it into diminishing triangles, and patting it to rest atop my footwear. I turn my back to the onlookers, before working my t-shirt over my head in an exaggerated pantomime and flinging it to the convenient branch of an overhanging tree. Next I shimmy out of my sweat pants and toss them nonchalantly to join my precariously hanging t-shirt. Finally, I cross over to the bath with nothing between me and the curious eyes of the guide and tourists, other than a thin layer of Old Navy 100% cotton gym shorts made in South Africa and worn for far too long in India.

The murky rain water of the bath appears pregnant with microbial menace, so I alter my original plans to immerse myself, and instead conceal my lower half behind the short wall that borders the pool while removing my last bit of modesty. Crouching out of view, I simulate bathing by taking large handfuls of water in cupped hands and animatedly throwing it overhead in glistening arcs. I stand slowly, backside to the audience, while mock scrubbing one armpit, then the other, with theatrical vigor. A casual turn of my head in the direction of the onlookers initiates a cartoonish double take (What are they still doing here? I'm being watched!) before I sink out of view while frenetically crisscrossing my arms and hands to cover myself. I pull my shorts from the wall and don them from a sequestered squatting position. I emerge slowly, with mock sheepishness, and call out, "Right then, who's next?". The guide looks hopelessly perplexed, but the others span the gamut from bemusedly smiling to outright laughing. Feigning embarrassment, I gingerly tiptoe across the divide between the bath and changing room to retrieve my clothes from the tree limb. While I am pretending to dry off with my shirt, two teenage girls from the party of tourists are emboldened to descend the stairs and ask in broken English for permission to take photos. I oblige by striking dramatic poses during a reverse strip tease and can only assume the photographers will have the common sense to show their slides in last-taken-first-shown order. Regardless, I consider my one-man show to be an unqualified success, as less than five minutes work has yielded nine more smiles.

On my way back up the stairs I am surprised to see what looks like myself sans bandana looking back at me and looking just as surprised at seeing myself looking like him. My doppelganger has his arm draped around a fetching blond girl who looks like nobody I've ever dated before, and I find myself begrudging him this bit of dissymmetry.

"Hi me," I say nonchalantly in passing, as if I fully expected my spitting-image to be in attendance all along. My bettered-half lacks my cleverness and can only smile and stare dumbly as I walk on by and continue down the path without turning. Maybe he doesn't speak English, I muse.

A hundred yards up the path and to my left, a labyrinth of ancient stone footings offers mute testimony to where bustling shops catering to pilgrims, monks and ministers once competed. Partially overgrown with long-bladed grass in multi-hued greens, the low-lying masonry appears as a frozen snail trail left by Nature in her relentless crawl of reduction. To my right, clusters of snack and souvenir sellers compete for attention among the anemic smattering of tourists which they outnumber four to one. I wonder if the modern-day merchants ever reflect on the fate they share with their long-gone neighbors on the other side of the path.

I pause in front of a phalanx of cold drink vendors that immediately start vying for my business while seated on a ramshackle collection of lawn chairs arrayed around similarly decrepit folding tables. One enterprising salesman snatches a bottle from an age-worn cooler and raps it with an iron bottle opener in an attempt to beguile me with the resultant headache-inducing cacophony. Sensing another opportunity for multiple smiles, I begin a hyperkinetic jitterbug to the frenetic beat established by the temporarily-befuddled vendor. Fearing that their potential customer is being won over by the clank maker, a couple of competing tables start bottle beating of their own. I move like a hapless marionette with unseen strings pulling me erratically from one group to the next and am able to induce laughter in all. Ultimately I settle on purchasing a bottle of Coke from an old-woman that appears to be a sole-proprietor. In a joyful fit of germ-sharing, I insist on letting each vendor have a sip, before I down the last bit of highly-commercialized amber-colored ambrosia. My body remains relatively dehydrated, but I am quenched by the nineteen additional smiles produced.

Near the grand central stupa I spy a monkey and dog grappling on a hillock. I jog over with the intention of separating the combatants, only to to have my peacekeeping mission cut short by the realization that there was never any fight to break up. I watch slack jawed as the monkey rides atop the frolicking dog, slapping his flank like some furry-faced, long-tailed rodeo cowboy. The bucking canine manages to throw his simian rider and proceeds to pin him to the ground with paws atop shoulders and a muzzle pushed firmly against his chest. The monkey, utterly unfazed, remains supine while snacking on fleas extracted from the scruff of the dog's neck. A minute later the impatient dog nudges the monkey's butt with his nose to initiate another round of friendly fracas. Just adjacent to the wrestling duo, two dogs growl menacingly at a pack of monkeys that scramble for the trees as if to remind prying eyes of the normal order of things.

I fumble for my camera and can only manage two badly composed and blurred snaps before the battery dies. I motion Lafir over from the car where he is taking a drag off a cigarette. I point out the odd couple that is still engaged in mock combat under the pines. He is similarly dumbfounded by the pairing.

"I driving here for the past 35 years and have never seen anything like this," he says. "Dog and monkeys, they not liking each other. It's really good, no?"

"It really makes me curious as to how they became friends. I mean, it's impressive how they overcame the hostility the others exhibit toward one another."

"You snapping picture?"

"No, nothing good. I tried, but the battery died."

"No picture? Because this is really good, no? People need learning this. Hindus, Buddhists, Muslims, Christians. Really good, no?" Lafir takes a thoughtful drag on his cigarette while studying my face. "You taking bath this morning?"

"Why, do I look dirty?"

"No, no. Just more drivers saying that maybe someone like you taking bath, like king taking bath in palace." Lafir allows his half smile to grow to three quarters.

"I had a shower back at the hotel, but it was pretty plebeian. The water was freezing cold."

"Okay, no bath?" His smiles waxes to full. Unfortunately, the informal, unwritten, and self-imposed rules of the Thousand Faces of the Smiling Buddha project prevent me from tabulating more than one smile per individual.

"Well, the shower seemed to do the trick. Maybe the other drivers had me confused with that guy over there with the blond girl." I point to a bend in the path where my doppelganger and his girlfriend, hand-in-hand, have just come into view. Lafir is visibly confused by the uncanny similarity of the stranger's appearance to my own. He works his half moustache impulsively between his thumb and index finger.

"Is it your brother?" he asks.

"We are all brothers, isn't it?" I tease Lafir impishly. "But this fellow is more like my parasitic external twin." Lafir's smile fades by degrees as he squints his eyes in the direction of my body double. My doppelganger and the girl smile as they pass, but do not speak. Lafir's jaw drops in dumb disbelief.

"He not speaking to you?"

"He has always been jealous of me for getting to stay at home when we were kids. Mom and Dad forced him out of the house even before he could walk to toughen him up for the mean streets. They didn't want my doppelganger to be a milquetoast." Lafir listens to my ridiculous introduction with concerned nods of his head, which only encourages me to continue the narrative with increasing gravitas. "He was raised by an unruly pack of wild dogs in the jungle. A bona fide feral child. When he finally returned home after several years, he terrorized the mailman by snapping at his heels and would go wee-wee on the sofa. It was a complete mess. Nevertheless, I had just started to bond with him when one day my parents spied him humping the babysitter's leg. For my parents, it was the final straw and he was forever banished from the house. He hasn't spoken to or barked at me since."

The unraveling of my yarn leaves Lafir perplexed. It's clear that he has gotten the gist of my story--if not the particulars--and is troubled by it. "So, maybe he taking wild bath in royal palace," he offers after some lip-chewing deliberation.

"Sadly, yes," I say, while squeezing Lafir's shoulder comfortingly. "And I will bet you anything that the girl he's with is simply an escort he hired to mask his loneliness. He is one sick puppy. But, then again, doppelgangers usually are a bit off."

Lafir sucks deeply on his cigarette as we weighs all he has seen and heard. The sight of the mirror-image man combined with my unrelenting deadpan has either sold Lafir on the veracity of my tale or cemented my place in his head as a lunatic. Unable to decide, Lafir points me in the direction of the path that curves past each of the ruins, and tells me he will drive the car around to the parking lot on the other side to meet me. "Following brother for second half tour."

A kilometer long walk along the red-clay path culminates in a gentle rise that reveals three handsomely larger-than-life Buddhas exquisitely coaxed from a massive sweep of rock. It is Sri Lanka's own Mount Rushmore, or perhaps more aptly, Mount Rushless. The leftmost Buddha, in full lotus posture, is lost in a centuries-old samadhi atop a throne adorned with lions and thunderbolts. Buddha number two, no less persistent, stands serenely statue-like, contemplating the countless thousands who come to marvel at the artistry evident in his granite-hewn form. The last and largest of the Buddhas, almost fifty feet from tip to toe, lies supine, his stacked feet protruding from the bottom of his robe and exceeding me in stature (by no less than two feet). A dog lies on the walkway in front of the last Buddha in a pose that approximates the enlightened one to a surprising degree considering the inherent limitations of fissiped anatomy. Her body is so inert that I begin to wonder if she is among the living and I am prompted to kneel to administer strokes to her forehead. "Hey little one, are you alive?" She is startled from her slumber and rises to sit in spite of my comforting cooing. The apparent lack of threat and the narcotic heat of the midday sun compel her, in time, to resume her original attitude. I can't help but think that, like her, the Buddha too is simply in repose before rising again for a sit.

PDSC Previous Day's Smile Count
SPH Smiles Per Hour (calculations based on a fourteen hour work day or seven hour half day; reflects the previous day's tally)
STG Smiles To Go (smiles remaining to reach 1,000)
RSR Required Smile Rate (SPH needed over remaining day(s) to reach 1,000)