Wednesday, October 20, 2010

One night’s shelter – from home to homelessness - who said drugs and religion does not mix?

Picking up a book written by a monk to get information on drugs probably sounds completely unbelievable. But then sometimes fact is stranger than fiction. If I had seen this book in a bookstore I would have passed over it because the cover looks so boring. The only reason I started reading it was one of my colleagues described it as an almanac of Drugs in Sri Lanka and Asia and I wanted to know if there was anything that I did not know about. But what I found was an insightful and entertaining story about an American hippie who ultimately became a monk in Sri Lanka. He started searching for self realization with the help of drugs but ends up in finding it in something completely opposite: monk hood. This story is even more entertaining because most of it is set in Sri Lanka. The only down side is that this book is not available in any of the popular book stores in Colombo. If you are keen to buy it you would have to look at the shops which sell Buddhist Publications. It is a pity because the story rocks.