Buddhism is about the potential that exists in the human mind. Independent of a Supreme Being, without preyer or worship, it shows the way of harnessing the potential of one’s own mind to discover the timeless purity, love, peace and wisdom that lies within each and every one of us. The end of that journey of discovery is the state of being an Arhat, “the perfected person” or “one who is worthy” – a person who has eliminated all the unwholesome roots which underlie the fetters and who after death will not be reborn, since the bonds that bind him to the eternal cycle of death and rebirth, have been finally severed.

Hidden away on a jungle-covered hillside in the arid Dry Zone of Sri Lanka is the ruined forest hermitage of Arankele, occupied as far back as the third century BC by Buddhist monks seeking the state of Arhat. Most of what is seen…