Decorating one of the walls of the Jesuit dialogue centre of Tulana outside Colombo is a moulded terracotta sculpture by the Buddhist artist, Kingsley Gunatilleke. His subject is the finding in the Temple. Various characters, from Greek philosophers to Jewish prophets (and including a relief of an old woman to depict the suffering poor), surround the central figure of the young Jesus who, with his parents hovering anxiously in the background, is listening intently to the wise elders. Among them are prominent teachers from different religious traditions: Krishna, Muhammad, Confucius. But this is no manifesto for normative pluralism. We are in Śri Lanka – and Jesus is looking directly at the figure of the Buddha.

The frieze is a beautiful act of homage by a lay Buddhist to the tradition for which he has developed great respect and no small understanding. For the observer it brings together two moments of truth, one Christian and one Buddhist. Luke’s story marks a point of transition when the child Jesus leaves ‘home’ and must be about ‘my Father’s business’ at the very centre of the Jewish world. Luke finishes the infancy narrative by telling us that Jesus’s parents failed to understand, though Mary ‘kept all these things in her heart’. Jesus meanwhile ‘increased in wisdom and in stature, and in favour with God and man’ (Luke 2:52). The other story is related by Walpola Rahula in his version of the ox-herding pictures. The Buddha, taking a lotus blossom, enacts a moment of wordless communication. None in the assembly understood what the Buddha had done except the elder Maha-Kaśyapa. The holding up of a flower symbolises the perfect relationship of teacher and pupil that is so central to the Zen tradition. ‘I have the True Dharma Eye, marvellous mind of Nirvana’, says the Buddha. ‘This now I commit to you, Maha-Kaśyapa.’