BLOG POST 5
After visiting the temples of Gaya, we decided to see Bodh Gaya where our hotel was located. Compared to Gaya which was comparatively crowded and had many Hindu temples, Bodh Gaya was relatively clean and well maintained.
It is famous as the place where Gautam Buddha attained enlightenment under the Bodhi tree and has remained the object of pilgrimage and veneration for both Hindus and Buddhists.
For Buddhists, Bodh Gaya is the most important of the main four pilgrimage sites related to life of Gautam Buddha, the other three being Kushinagar , Lumbini, and Sarnath .
Traditionally, Buddha was born in 563 BC, on Baisakhi Purnima. As Siddhartha, he renounced his family at the age of 29 and traveled and meditated in search of truth.
After practicing self-mortification for six years at Urubela in Gaya, he gave up that practice because it did not give him salvation.
Then he discovered the Noble Eight-fold path without help from anyone and practiced it and attained Buddhatva
His disciples began to visit the place during the full moon in the month of Baisakhi (April–May), as per the Hindu calendar. Over time, the place became known as Bodh Gaya, the day of enlightenment as Buddha Purnima, and the tree as the Bodhi Tree.
The history of Bodh Gaya is documented by many inscriptions and pilgrimage accounts. Foremost among these are accounts of the Chinese pilgrims Faxian in 5th century and Xuanzang in 7th century.
About 200 years after Buddha attained Enlightenment,Buddhist Emperor Ashoka visited Bodh Gaya in order to establish a monastery and shrine on the holy site.
After building the temple, Emperor Ashoka sent his heirs to Sri Lanka and various parts of India to spread Buddhism. He also sent a sapling of the original tree to Sri Lanka.
When Muslim invaders destroyed the temple along with the original tree, a sapling from the Sri Lankan tree was brought back to Mahabodhi to grow.
In 2002, Mahabodhi Temple became a UNESCO World heritage site
We went to the temple as the sun was setting , we were not allowed to take our car maybe to avoid traffic congestion ,so we took a quaint auto called phat phati we could not take our cell phones inside the temple but were offered lockers
The Mahabodhi Temple is also known as the great awakening temple and is one of the oldest brick temples in India ,stretching over 5 hectares
The temple is 55 metres in height. Its pyramidal tower has several layers of niches, arch motifs, and fine engravings.
Once we got inside, our travel fatigue disappeared and the serenity seemed to encircle us. There was pleasant wind blowing, everything in contrast to the strict and tight security outside was surprisingly accessible!
There were crowds of people but something seemed to tell everyone to stay calm and quiet because this is a holy place
As we engaged a guide to show us around, we could garner more information from him
The first thing we did was take a kora, a walk around the stupa, the area had 3 levels to do the kora, first 2 levels we could walk with shoes on but the inner area where there is the Bodhi tree, we removed the shoes.
I was looking around at the statues and sculptures of Goddess Laxmi, Surya God, several chariots and Garuda could be seen in the railing around the temple, apparently only the railing remained of the original temple
We could see monks, nuns and tourists meditating everywhere on the grounds or circumambulating the temple. Stray dogs were sleeping snuggled up to people , many of them were wearing white robes and were sitting with mosquito nets around them probably to escape the ever present mosquito menace
We then went to see the golden Buddha statue made of yellow sand stone and encased in glass
As there were many people we could not sit inside in front of the statue but there were plenty of places near the ancient Bodhi tree where Buddha achieved enlightenment
There was a lotus pond in the temple, closer to the Bodhi tree. The passage running around the pond had many stone lotuses carved. Our guide told us that Buddha spent seven weeks of his life meditating in this region.
He performed walking meditation, by walking 18 steps back and forth, till this day the stone lotuses hold faded foot prints of Lord Buddha and were decorated with flowers
The highest form of ritual in this temple is to walk around the Bodhi tree and offer prostrations one lakh times, at a stretch. We could see several monks raptly performing this ritual. Just sitting and going around the temple premises gave me a magical feel
The Bodhi tree was directly behind the main shrine, to the west.
The shrine faced east, which was the direction Buddha was facing when he was meditating under the tree on the Vajrasana or diamond throne
We came out of the temple our hearts filled with intense peace
We next visited the Great Buddha Statue one of the favorite places in Bodh Gaya. The magnificent figure was 80 feet high, resembling Lord Buddha in his meditation pose known as the mudra on top of a blooming lotus, carved from red granite and sandstone. This statue is the tallest one and the first Buddha installed in India
It was commissioned to signify the meeting place of Buddha with his disciples. There was a beautiful garden with a long walkway
The construction of the towering Buddha took 7 years to complete, involving more than 12,000 masons and was consecrated on November 18, in 1989 by the fourteenth Dalai Lama.
The statue, facing East is best visited in morning, when the sunlight falls directly over it and creates a wonderful effect. The mammoth statue of Lord Buddha could be seen from far
The Chinese Temple in Gaya stands nearby the Mahabodhi Temple and is a spectacular Buddhist temple built by Chinese-Buddhist monks. The architecture is an amalgamation of the beautiful Indian and Chinese designs, especially the temple exterior, which resembles a Chinese monastery.
The Buddha statue inside the Chinese Temple is more than 200 years old and is believed to have been made and imported from China. The temple has three marvelous golden statues of Lord Buddha. Another attraction to the temple is the rich and detailed travelogues drawn by Chinese religious scholars who traveled to India for the pursuit of spirituality and wisdom.
Our next agenda was to visit Sarnath which is located just 12 km from Varanasi, it is popular because this is where Gautama Buddha first taught the Dharma after his enlightenment and gave his famous first sermon at the deer park here in Isipatana.
In the 3rd century BC, Emperor Ashoka erected magnificent stupas and monasteries here, as well as an engraved pillar.
When Chinese traveller Xuan Zang dropped by in AD 640, Sarnath boasted a 100m-high stupa and 1500 monks were living in large monasteries. However, soon after, Buddhism went into decline, and when Muslim invaders ransacked the city in late 12th century, Sarnath totally disappeared altogether. It was only ‘rediscovered’ by British archaeologists in 1835.
Most of Sarnath could be covered on foot, we carried umbrellas to protect ourselves from the heat
The Chaukhandi Stupa originally constructed in 5th century AD is regarded as one of the most divine and important monuments of the Buddhist culture. This stupa has been built on the exact spot where the great Lord Buddha first met his five ascetics whom he preached his first teachings.
The structure which stands atop a terraced rectangular plinth, is capped by an relatively new octagonal Mughal tower. It was built by Akbar in 1589 AD to commemorate his father Humayun’s visit to the site.
In the garden adjacent to the stupa, there were lots of tourists in their colorful robes chanting Buddham Saranam Gacchami to make their journey successful
We could feel the divinity and piousness of the monument in the surrounding air. It left us contemplating as to how beautiful it would have looked in its best days
We then went to the Dharmekh stupa which we found very impressive. Dating around 200 BC the pillar was 128 feet high, and 93 in diameter.
It was in a peaceful park containing monastery ruins, it marks the spot where the Buddha preached his first sermon. We could spot a few monks meditating around the compound. The entire complex was filled with lush green lawns and benches occupied with young couples
Nearby was my much awaited 3rd-century-BC Ashoka Pillar, engraved with an edict. It once had stood 15m tall and had the famous four-lion capital perched atop, sadly all that remained were five fragments of its base. A bull, a lion, an elephant and a horse were depicted on the base of the Ashoka Pillar which symbolizes the four different phases of Gautam Buddha's life.
However now the capitals are displayed in the archeological museum of Sarnath which is India's oldest archaeological museum
The museum was housed in a modern air-conditioned building and was cool after the intense heat outside.We left our cell phones in the car as they were not allowed in the museum. The museum had a legendary collection dating back to ancient times.
There were many galleries inside the museum and were given names on the basis of their exhibits.
Among the important exhibits in the museum were a huge stone umbrella, 2000 years old with ornate carvings of Buddhist symbols, two impressive life-size standing Bodhisattvas from the 2nd Century AD, a fifth-century figure of Buddha, sitting cross-legged with his hands in mudra gesture exuding calm and perfectly poised, and eyes downcast in deep meditation and a halo.
Buddha was seated above six men, with the Wheel of Law in the middle signifying his first sermon.
We could see the very well-preserved, 3rd-century-BC lion capital from the Ashoka Pillar with the wheel beneath representing Buddha’s ‘wheel of dharma’ , The lion capital, is today the national emblem of India and also mark of Emperor Ashoka's visit to Sarnath. It is maintained by the Archaeological Survey of India.
Our next visit was to Digamber Jain temple. Built in 1824 the temple houses a large image of Shreyanshnath, the 11th Jain Tirthankara who was born in a village near Sarnath
and there were attractive frescoes depicting the life of Bhagwan Mahavir, founder of the Jain religion.
The path to this Jain temple was lined with gardens and greenery on both sides. According to history, four Tirthankaras were born close to Varanasi and therefore many Jain devotees visit Sarnath to pray.
Our final visit was to the now famous Thai temple .The temple was set amongst beautiful gardens and was being managed by Buddhist monks
We were told that Thai dignitaries had visited Sarnath in 1993 and they were the ones who built this beautiful temple which had beautiful green gardens.
We could see from the main road itself a huge 80 foot statue of Buddha, in standing position, it is a replica of the Bamiyan Buddha statue that was destroyed by Taliban in Bamiyan, Afghanistan in 2001 Seeing it somehow healed the anguish I had been harboring since I saw the visuals of destruction of the Bamiyan statue
There were three other statues of Buddha in the temple in different postures under a tree. Also called Wat Thai, the temple complex also included an old tree covered up with a shawl of gold leaf.
Just before the entrance of the main temple, there were images of laughing Buddha which many of us love to keep on our desks
Another statue of Lord Buddha was in Bhumisparsha mudra where he is touching the earth to summon the mortal spirits could be seen in the temple.
There were beautiful fountains with gorgeous lotus flowers. Thai songs and slogans could be heard along with scenes of gurus preaching rapt disciples .
I felt going around the lanes of Gaya and Bodh Gaya, exploring its ancient temples and rich culture, with a blend of Hinduism and Buddhism was a very cleansing spiritual journey for me .
