Time Is Running Out, June 22, 2025

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Time Is Running Out, June 22, 2025

This report is terribly late, but, at last, here it is! The year 2025 is both our 50th wedding anniversary and our 20th year in Kandy. We hope to have some sort of celebration later. Right now, though, this is the best we can do, with the hope that it will inspire old friends we've not heard from in a long time to get in touch and new friends to write so that we can get to know you better.


	The view of the valley from our roof terrace, with the two trees

Our house, sitting on a hilltop between Kandy and Peradeniya, overlooking the Mahaveli River valley and protected by the devas of two magnificent trees, which are regularly visited by crows and monkeys who feed on the flowers and fruit and cavort silently, is a haven of peace. Over the ten years we have lived here, a number of travelers have been so taken by the serenity and Lily's incomparable cuisine that they forewent islandwide sightseeing and chose to stay with us for a week or two. We feel blessed to be able to reside in such a splendid place and to offer hospitality to friends old and new. Nevertheless, we are well aware that outside these walls and beyond this small island--to the north, the east, and the west--chaos, violence, and suffering prevail. The world is beset by injustice, cruelty, poverty, war, famine, pollution, lies, greed, bigotry, tyranny, and fascism.


	Click the photo for an interesting YouTube

The expression, "No news is good news," is attributed to King James I, but even he could not have imagined the situation today in which virtually ALL the news--from TV, newspapers, and the internet--is BAD. From Al Jazeera alone, we get an hour nightly of the deadly strikes on hospitals and refugee camps in Gaza, the ban on humanitarian aid {except for the charade of the "Gaza Humaniarian Foundation, in which those seeking the trickle of food are wantonly gunned down), and the immanent death by starvation of almost one million children. And all this is happening right before the eyes of a world incapable of stopping it, or, rather, unwilling, to do so. Indeed, the US and other Western "democracies" are providing billions of dollars worth of weapons to Israel to carry out its genocide, ecocide, medicide, and scholasticide. Trump has ignored the genocide in Gaza, cut funding for refugees and for every other needy group in the world, and erased every legal protection for immigrants and activists in the US, only to then embarrass the President of South Africa with the preposterous lie about WHITE genocide in South African because a few white farmers have been killed in that country with its long history of exploitation and apartheid and which is still plagued by poverty and violence. Moreover, he has, at the behest of the world's richest man, Elon Musk, welcomed white colonialist Afrikaners as "refugees" to the United States.


U.S. President Donald Trump displays printouts of articles including from the far-right conspiracy site American Thinker to falsely argue that there is a "white genocide" in South Africa during a meeting with South African President Cyril Ramaphosa in the Oval Office of the White House in Washington, D.C. on May 21, 2025. (Photo: Jim Watson/AFP via Getty Images)

All of the above was written BEFORE Israel attacked Iran, setting off a new war that may have, by the time this is posted, induced Trump to enter the war which brings Armageddon even closer! Heaven help us!!

OMG!!! Last night he did it! Will the rest of the world be as outraged as we are? The situation in the United States is looking more and more like The Decline and Fall of the Roman Empire every day. Can we compare Trump to Caligula or Nero or is he something much worse? Is there any hope for humanity? What do you think? We would really like to know. <kawasaki@brelief.org>

Simultaneous with the genocide of the Palestinians in Gaza, 3743 miles away, the Burmese (Myanmar) military government, in league with the Arakan Army, has been committing genocide against the Rohingya since 2017. There are more than one million Rohingya refugees in one of the camps in Cox's Bazar, Bangladesh, the largest in the world. And yet the UN has declared that the worst humanitarian crisis today is Sudan, a former British colony, where 30 million people are facing starvation from the civil war which began in April 2023.

Against this backdrop of a world in chaos, the American administration is rapidly dismantling all the safeguards and social services of the US government and trampling on the Constitution and the rights therein guaranteed. (Remember, on ABC News, when Trump was asked whether, as President, he needed to uphold the Constitution, he replied, "I don't know.") This is how our friend Joe in the Midwest described the situation.

"The fact is Elon/Trump hollowed out the administrative branch of the Federal Gov't--both by mass firings and by appointing incompetent lackies to head shell agencies. For example: no Department of Education, no Federal Agencies to respond to emergencies, no CDC to speak of, no National Weather Service, no OSHA, no radiation clean-up or monitoring, no protections against racial discrimination--get out of jail free if you kiss Elon/Trump's ass and repeat his outrageous lies--and the judiciary is under vicious attack, as are universities. National Parks are for sale. Regulations protecting citizens from all things nasty and deadly are being curtailed. People of color are being deported without regard for their legal status and white supremacists are being imported at US tax-payer expense. The FBI and the DOJ are rendered subservient to Elon/Trump."

Another friend also described the horrific situation in the US, but he expressed a tiny hope that the thousands of "Hands Off!" demonstrations may have an effect.

"This is a difficult time for sure, but it is up to the Democrats to save democracy. People in red states are finding out that the cuts in government and services will impact them even more than they ever realised. Now we are hearing stories about small businesses and farms in those states are going out of business or shutting down. The blue states are resisting the most and the strongest at the moment. But even folks in red states are getting more upset and voicing their discontent."

In 2014, Bhikkhu Bodhi wrote as essay in which he decried what was then called "climate change" and declared that humanity should feel a sense of "Wise Urgency," much like the concept of samvega, in Pali. Here are a few excerpts from that essay.

"For the past two decades, climate scientists have been telling us that escalating carbon emissions are driving the climate ever closer to dangerous tipping points. Nevertheless, though we hover precariously at the edge of an abyss, we fail to respond with anything close to the haste and scope that the situation demands. Instead, world leaders try to pass the buck for emission cuts to other nations while securing privileges for themselves. Members of Congress, with straight faces, have even voted to reject the reality of climate change, doing so at the same time that droughts, floods and wildfires ravage their own states.

"What we need is to feel the sense of urgency collectively, on a mass scale. We must feel it horizontally, as a global community embracing all nations and peoples and life forms on earth, and we must feel it vertically, as directed toward countless generations as yet unborn.

"If we fail to take the momentous steps required of us, we risk losing nothing less than the Earth as we have known it, along with the human civilization that has evolved on its surface over thousands of years. …We risk mass extinctions, famines, droughts and floods, unpredictable epidemics and large-scale deaths. And we risk kindling more ethnic, religious and cross-border strife, thereby creating more climate refugees, more mass migrations, and more destructive eruptions of terrorism.

"Our collective sense of urgency must be infused with a compassionate concern for all life forms imperiled by the crisis and by a commitment to justice for those who bear the brunt of calamity out of all proportion to their role in causing it.

"We must act quickly and effectively while we still have a fighting chance. There is no more time for delay."

There is basically nothing surprising in any of that. Scientists have been proclaiming all of the same dangers of environmental destruction for more than thirty years. It is ironic that, it ten years ago, to read this call for URGENCY. Today, eleven years later, even after the Paris Agreements, very litttle has been done to reverse, or, at least, to mitigate the impending doom. There is no indication that any world leader or any power has developed a real sense of urgency.

"Climate change" became "climate crisis" and is now referred to as "climate catastrophe." Temperatures are reaching record highs all over the world. Hurricanes, cyclones, and typhoons are becoming much stronger and more destructive year by year. While desertification claims more and more agricultural land, agro-companies are clearing vast tracts of rainforest jungle, the "lungs of the world," to create mono-cultural plantations, for crops such as the insidious palm oil, and thereby destroying the habitat of the orangutan and many other endangered species. One needs only to scan the news headlines of recent years to verify "famines, droughts and floods, unpredictable epidemics and large-scale deaths." Covid-19 caused the death of more than one million people in the United States alone.

It is with a real, authentic sense of urgency that we must respond to the extreme dangers facing us today. Our world is fraught with more catastrophes than ever before―genocide, endless wars, environmental destruction, climate crisis, pandemics, the threat of nuclear war, and the possibility (probability?) of complete annihilation. The basic cause of most, if not all, of these dangers is that, for centuries, capitalism and imperialism have ruled the world. These inherently privileged, insatiable systems of greed have resulted in unspeakable exploitation, suffering, injustice, poverty, pollution, discrimination, bigotry, cruelty, lies, ignorance, and hatred. The culprits who profit from the mayhem want us to believe that we have plenty of time, so they pretend to make minor changes, or distract us by giving us phantom enemies to hate, but time is running out. If we do not act quickly, we are doomed. Everyone, both world and business leaders, educators, workers, and ordinary citizens, must wake up and feel the urgency to act in order to save our planet for the next generation of humankind.


Click the photo to read his speech.

Having written all of the above, we discovered that Bhikkhu Bodhi has again said what we want to say, but more clearly . Here is his Keynote Address, delivered at the UN Vesak Celebration in Vietnam, May 6, 2025. Please read it.

Buddhist Relief Mission Activities
These are the flyers which were periodically sent out announcing BRM activities and appealing for donations between January and June 2025. Click each flyer to view it in pdf.

"Inherent Strings Attached"
John Hampshire

Christine Tringali Nunes

Michael Moore's Blog and Trump Portrait Gallery

Click any book cover for a description and information on purchasing worldwide

In January, Professor David Loy and his wife, Linda, came to Kandy.Their visit is described in this flyer from above. His lecture at our house inspired the Mahaveli River cleanup described in these flyers.

.A few months ago, Visakha noticed two spots on her forehead which she thought the dermatologist should examine. A little later, a Bumese nun, one of our students, asked about an irregular growth on the side of Visakha's face, right under the stem of her glasses. We made an appointment with our friendly dermatologist at the Channeling Center, which is very convenient. You can easily make an appointment with a specialist on almost any day, and you seldom have to wait more than an hour beyond the scheduled time. Without insurance, the cost is only about $10 per visit. The dermatologist recommended that she see a cancer surgeon, and we were able to make that appointment for the next day. The surgeon prescribed removal and a biopsy at Kandy National Hospital. Two weeks later, we went to the hospital for onsultation. That cost 30 cents for a notebook to keep a record of diagnosis and treatment. Two weeks after that, she went one morning for the surgery. Three blemishes were removed in two incisions. Both the surgeon and the attending nurse were knd and reassuring .The operation took about thirty minutes. The nurse showed Ken how to clean and redress the wounds and asked Visakha to return in about a week to have the sutures removed. At that time, the doctors felt that the sutures should remain for a few more days. Rather than make another trip to the hospital, we visited our local physician, and he took out the stitches one evening in his office for no charge. He also contacted the laboratory at Kandy Hospital and got the biopsy results for us. The next day, we consulted the surgeon again at the Channeling Center ($10). He explained that the growth on the side, about which we were most concerned, was benign. One of the small blemishes on the forehead, however, was cancerous, but not seriously so. He felt that all the malignant cells had been removed, and, in any case, there was no danger of it spreading. He suggested we return in three months for a checkup. What a relief, and how fortunate that the entire treatment was so inexpensive. While we were going through this process, a friend in the US told us that had had a relapse of his cancer and that he needed two injections, each costing $17,000. (No, that is not a typo!) That is obscene!

For several months, the newspapers here have been reported the dramatic incease in cases of dengue fever, a mosquito-borne virus. It causes a lot of pain, and can be lethal. We both had in Thailand, and each suffered for about a week. Fortunately, our cases were not serious. Our boss, Bill Bliss, however, had contracted the hemorrhagic strain and was hospitalized. Here in Sri Lanka, the municipal authorities regularly come around to check for standing water, and impose fines whenever they find aegypti mosquito breeding places. We have two big pots of water lilies in front of the house, but they also contain tiny goldfish which eat the mosquito larvae. Our house is completely screened, and we spray liberally whenever we go out. Recently, a different virus, spread by the same mosquito has resurged after a lapse three years--chikungunya, which causes severe and perhaps long-lasting joint pain. Last month, Lily attended a family wedding in Colombo. The morning after she returned, she awakened in terrible pain, unable to get up. Shehan, her grandson, had to carry her downsairs, put her into the van, and drive her to Kandy Hospital. She was in the hospial for three days of palliative care. There is no specific treatment or cure for chikungunya. She spent the next three weeks in bed. She is back at work, but some joint pain persists. OUCH!

Several years ago, we read in the newspaper about Rohingya refugees who had been rescued by the Sri Lnkan Navy and had been brought to this country. We knew that they were having trouble surviving, and the article by Aljazeera pointed out that, with the closure of the office of the UNHCR in Colombo, the situation would become even worse. We tried for several months to locate those refugees so that we could offer some support. Finding them was very difficult. Finally, we learned that the National Fisheries Solidarity Movement (NAFSO) in Negombo was taking care of refugees, but not the Rohingya. In March, one of the Rohingya learned about our relief work and sent us a message, and we were, at long last, able to make direct contact. About a week later, Ewen had to go to Colombo for his visa physical exam, so he made a side trip to Panadura to meet some of them. He invited them to come to Kandy, and in May, four young men came up for the weekend. Our neighbor, Fahim, his brother, and a friend also came, and Ewen and Fahim's brother took them to the Royal Botanical Gardens in Peradeniya, which they enjoyed very much.


		Click the photo to watch the video on YouTube



Click this photo to enlarge it.

Last year, Hayeon, a woman who was staying at the Koreran temple in Ann Arbor, contacted us, telling us how much she was enjoying the Jatakas and thanking us for making the stories available in such lucid English. She mentioned that she ws going on pilgrimage in India and would be coming to Sri Lanka. We immediately wrote back, inviting her to stay with us. We also wrote to Sam, who stayed with us several years ago and joined us on a pilgrimage. We knew that he had stayed for some time at that temple, so we figured he must know her. We knew that he was also planning a trip to India, but, in that he was no longer at the temple, he might not know that she was going. We were right, and he was delighted. He immediately contacted her, and they arranged to travel together part of the time. In March, they came together, and we enoyed them both very much, especially, the smiles!

In April, Ven. NandoBatha came to Sri Lanka for the first time with his sister and niece. Their primary goal was a pilgrimage to Anuradhapura, but they spent a couple of days in Kandy, not only to visit us, but also to pay homage at the Temple of the Tooth. On the Sunday they were here we invited our students and Ven. Nanda for dana. We haven't been to India for about seven years, and heaven knows whether we will ever go again, so we were very glad that he could come. Accompanying them was Ven. Ratthasara, a Burmese monk from Colombo.



				Click this photo to enlarge it.

Many months ago, we discussed with our teacher-friend, Shiromi, whose husband is a professor at Peradeniya University. the possibility of creating a butterfly garden. Shiromi, her husband, and their daughter visited, surveyed our property, met with Lily and our gardener, and agreed to help. Our gardener cleaned away a lot of weeds, and, last week, Chathurika's Green Team brought fifty plants which attract butterflies with their flowers and nectar and planted them around our garden. We haven't noticed any butterflies yet, but we have faith. After all, there aren't many flowers yet, so we will be patient. The favorite food of the national butterfly of Sri Lanka, Sri Lankan Birdwing, is the flowers of the heliotrope, and its caterpillar feeds on the aristolochia. We have those, so we hope we can attract this six-inch beauty! The members of Green Team are offering to assist others in the Kandy area who are interested in creating their own butterfly garden. Send us a message, and we will put you in touch with them.




Click this photo to enlarge it.					Is this too much to hope for?

In almost every report, we have mentioned SERVAS, the international peace organization of hosts and travelers of which we have been members for fifty years. During that time we have stayed with hosts in or received guests from more than thirty countries. We don't travel anymore, but opening our home to travelers has always been a great joy. Since our last report, we have hosted SERVAS visitors from six different countries.

In January, Susan came from California. She had planned to stay only one night in Kandy, but after we pointed out how much there was here, she changed her mind, followed our itinerary, and stayed with us for three days. She left relaxed, refreshed, and thrilled with the experience.


	Click this photo to enlarge it.

Also in January, Amanda and Koji, a young but retired American couple stayed for a couple of days. We had never before met anyone who professed that "board games" was a hobby. Intrigued, we introduced them to Coopoly and had a lot of fun. Their other hobby is hiking, and they set out on the recently opened Pekoe Trail, a 300-kilometer trek through the Central Highlands Tea plantations. We followed their daily challenges on Facebook, and marveled that they were able to cover the entire route, some of the very few to do so. Koji's photo record of Sri Lanka's fauna was spectacular! We have also closely followed their subsequent treks and admirable volunteer service in Sri Lanka, India, Nepal, Laos, and Vietnam.

Marneo, our second guest from from Italy, arrived in February on his way north to meet a Tamil boy he had "adopted" and has been supporting. He followed Susan's itinerary and found it just as rewarding. He is fond of cats, and our two found his lap particularly welcoming and comfortable.

Wasuntara, or "Sue," as she calls herself, also visited in February. She is young, vivacious, and a lot of fun. She left a portrait of the three of us in our Livre d'Or SERVAS guest book.


Click this photo to enlarge it.

February was a busy month. Dr. Priya, her husband, Sanjay, and their son, Anshul, Buddhists from Mumbai, also visited. Before leaving India, they had arranged a two-week tour including Nuwara Eliya, the most popular city in the Tea Country, and Galle on the southern coast. After one night in a guest house in Kandy, however, they were so impressed with our city that they canceled all those reservations and stayed the whole time here in Paradise. They were very comfortable in their guesthouse across the river away from the city, but they deigned to spend a few days with us and we were very pleased with their company. Sanjay was so taken with life in Sri Lanka that he has enrolled in a psychology course at Sri Lanka International Buddhist Academy near Kandy. (Also in the photo are Hiroe, a meditator from Japan, and Chathurika.)


Click this photo to enlarge it.

Our very first guests from Poland, Vlodek and Ola, came in March with the most organized itenerary imaginable. From the moment they arrived in Colombo, it seemed that they would know exactly where they would be every hour until they flew back home. Hats off to them; they did it! We certainly enjoyed their visit and hearing the stories of their SERVAS travels all over the world. We felt particular kinship with Ola in that she is also an English teacher, and we are delighted that she gave us our first European translation, in Polish, of Maung Maung Thin's book, Born Free and Equal. Thank you, Ola!


Click this photo to enlarge it.

Cameron, from Canada, is certainly the tallest SERVAS guest ever to stay with us. He came in April with no fixed schedule whatsoever, and was ready for whatever happened. On the day after he arrived, our neighbor, Fahim, brought a young Japanese man, Daichi, to meet us. The two of them came the next day to a dana, and they hit it off so well, that they decided to travel together for a week or more. We certainly enjoyed the youthful energy they gave off the whole time they were here. (Also prominent in the photo are Daichi, Lorena, a meditator from Argentina, and Ven. NandoBatha's sister,)

One morning, Cameron left after breakfast to visit the Royal Botannical Gardens in Peradeniya, formerly the pleasure garden of the Kandyan Kings, and now one of the most beautiful botannical gardens in the world. About one hour later, we received a phone call, and Cameron explained that he had found an injured juvenile monkey, protected by his mother and surrounded by members of the troop. The small monkey seemed to have a broken leg (arm?) and was unable to run or climb. Cameron had reported this to the garden staff but was told that they could do nothing about it. He asked whether we could help. We asked him to wait, and we would see what we could do.


Cameron didn't take a photo of the monkey, but here is a 35-second video of monkeys in the Botanical Gardens from another visitor.

Our first thought was to call Ashoka and ask him to contact the Veterinary Hospital in Peradeniya. Unfortunately, it was a holiday, and no one was answered his call.

We called Mahinda, our "snake" man, but he informed us that, although he also rescued animals, being a private individual, he had no authority to rescue inside the Botannical Gardens.

We called our friend, Sylvia, and she contacted her husband, Indrajith, a Tourist Policeman. Indrajith replied that he had authority over the Gardens, but only with regard to tourists, not monkeys.

In desperation, we called Amal, who has helped in quite a few different situations. He made a few phone calls and was able to find someone in the Animal Control Department of the government. Amal asked Cameron to keep an eye on the monkey, and very soon a team arrived to rescue the creature, who had been left behind by the troop. Very grateful, Cameron continued his tour of the Gardens and enjoyed it very much.

A few days later, we learned that the doctors had found no internal injuries, but that the monkey's limb had been previously broken and had healed badly. They had considered the rebreaking the bone and resetting it properly but had decided that that procedure entailed too many risks. In any case, the little guy was being well taken care of. Kdos to Cameron!

Dr. Kyaw Thet Oo informed us that a Burmese monk, Ven. Cittara, was conducting a noviate training at a monastery in Indiana and that we were invited us to participate. We were asked to explain how we became Buddhist and to outline the orgin and activities of Buddhist Relief Mission. Preparing our presentations was an interestsing exercise for it forced us to review the past and to recall much that we had almost forgotten. For any who would like to review that history we have made the three texts available. We hope you enjoy reading them as much as we did writing them.

Becoming Buddhist, Ken

Becoming Buddhist, Visakha

Buddhist Relief Mission, Forty-five Years