if your mind is rich enough to understand the Lord Buddha’s teaching, then we can clearly imagine what a great person he was. But, when we visit a Sri Lankan Buddhists temple in Sri Lanka, can we imagine greatness of this dignified person? Simple answer is no.
Just imagine, in Lord Buddha’s days, how was it look like Jethawanaramaya, Weluwanaramaya and Isipathnaramaya. Thousands of Bhikkhus could have moved here and there.
But, now a days, if you visit Sri Lankan temple, what we can see is a temple with so many Devalayas. I have read that this ‘Devala’ culture begun in Kandy era, just to facilitate Indian Queens (yes.. most probably Tamil queens) to worship with the King. In addition, from time to time, there were persons emerged from the society with special powers and special capabilities. Eventually, they were honored by the society by naming them as a god and venerating them.
So, we are continuing that practice even though there is no requirements to facilitate indian’s queens.
I asked one of our chief incumbent of our village ‘Why you are interesting to build so many devala at the temple premises?’. His immediate answer was ‘Otherwise people won't come to the temple and we don’t have enough money to develop the temple.
They are using very cheap, popular tactics to ‘develop’ the temple. This is the very sad reality. Instead, they need to popularize these places by adding novel concepts that suite for new knowledge era. For example, cleaned and landscaped premises, isolated rooms for meditation, programs for dhamma discussion etc...
