Dr. Janet Levalley
(Sri Lanka)
Dr. Janet Le Valley is Associate Professor and Chair of
Psychology and Personal Development Counselor, at American National College,
Sri Lanka. She did her Ph. D on Tibetan Buddhist development
perspective from CIIS, San Francisco, CA, USA in 1993. and M. A. Sociology
from University of California, Riverside, CA, USA in 1978. |
An excerpt from
Kanya Dreaming by Dr. Janet Levalley
It is a movement meditation, her own form of t’ai qi, that she does, has done
since shortly after the troubled times. There was no one to do it then, of
course, no one to lay the stone circle, no one to accept the dreaming. Everyone
had nightmares then. Everyone was felled by pain. No one survived the memories.
She heard the voice and was bitten. Taking in venom, she faced the dark angel,
the open box of Pandora, the swinging sword of Damocles, the raging giant, the
terror beneath the bridge, reptilian armies marching in feverish fury, the
uncloaking of wrathful deities. She was disassembled and, with what was left to
her, she fashioned tools in the flame. These she offered to Kali, whose hands
clutch the severed heads of demons, and whose embrace is the salty ocean mother,
the ancient flowing of rivers, the youthful exuberance of fresh springs. In the
venom she is marked and she who has called her takes notice.
She walks slowly, bare feet stirring the dust gently, a corner of her sarong
tracing a circle in the fine golden powder. She stoops to plant a stone,
straightens to take rounded steps, stoops to plant a stone. In her rhythm, the
tracing is complete. She lies down in the center of golden dust, the stones in
protective witness circle about her. She hears the drumming of ancestors. She
shivers with the rattle of elders.
She looks into the eyes of she who gave her birth, she who stands on coils
upright, she beneath whose naked breasts a book is held. She reaches for it and
accepts the reading. She sinks from this place to that one, floats and dreams.
Red eyes and jeweled daggers swirl in flames. A rider on a white horse watches
from shadowed hood. Blood is seeping from a fair neck. A white stick leaps, then
convulses in the throes of death.
A monkey is playing with poison, teasing his mate by carrying the deadly vial to
the top of a coconut tree. Their crying baby scurries after him, but everyone
falls, and in the falling is everyone’s end, except for the infant. But the Holy
Virgin smiles her sorrow, and the coconuts become Vesak lanterns and the
tropical forest is washed in white light.
A sofa is floating in dim yellow shadows. A man and his son are entangled there.
On a hairy belly is a used needle and a bent aluminum spoon. They are covered in
vomit and feces. A young girl is dutifully scrubbing them clean with one hand,
while holding a book with the other. Math formulas and the faces of founding
elders of social science swirl above her head. She is reciting the mantras that
will one day open a door and invite her out of this place forever.
Two lovers are joined. Their ecstasy is challenged by his mother. She shakes a
bloodless severed head until it nearly speaks. The teeth are rattling. Her
father is rotating a gigantic wheel of fortune, on which every slot is labeled,
“slutâ€