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Bodhgaya Running around the temple is the rectangular inner walkway, measuring about 180 by 150 feet, and a hundred more people are circumambulating this. At the back of the temple is a enclosure containing the legendary Bodhi Tree, reputedly a descendant of the very Bodhi Tree under which Buddha sat when he achieved Enlightenment here over 2500 years ago. Already the faithful are standing with their foreheads pressed to the bark of the Bodhi Tree as they silently pray, and two young men are applying small postage stamp-sized sheets of gold leaf to sections of the tree already coated with gold by previous visitors. Mounted in a low base between the Bodhi Tree and the back wall of the temple is a 4.6 x 7.8 foot slab of Chunar sandstone-the same material from which Ashoka's pillar was made-know as the Outer Varjrasana, or Diamond Seat. Many people seem to think that this is the sandstone slab on which the Buddha was actually sitting on when he achieve Enlightenment, although historians believe that it was probably fashioned during the time of Emperor Ashoka, several hundred years after the Buddha's death. This does not lessen the veneration with which it is held. Dozens of people are lined up to press their foreheads to the cloth-covered sandstone, or to hold their prayer beads against it, and the surface of the slab is already covered with lotuses, oranges, bowls of rice, and coins and bills. The inner walkway continues along the north side of the temple. Here is a long stone table known as the The Ratnachankrama Chaitya, or Jewel Walk Shrine. This marks the place where Buddha paced back and forth during the third week of his Enlightenment. It is now covered with hundreds of candles, smouldering sticks of incense, and elaborate statues fashioned by monks from butter dyed in various colors. By the time I have finished my third circumambulation of the inner circuit the temple doors have been opened and the crowd surges in. Through a long hallway can be seen a large statue of Buddha seated on high platform. This is the Inner Vajrasana believed to be built on the very spot where Sidhartta Gautama attained Enlightenment in 527 BC, and a slab of sandstone built into the platform on which the statue sits may be the actual seat the he was sitting on. This is the very axis mundi of Buddhism, the most holy and sacred place in world, if not in the universe. Indeed, when this universe finally winds down and returns into the Void which it came, the Varjasana, according to Buddhist legend, will be the very last thing to disappear, and when a new universe appears from the Void, it will be the very first thing to materialize Although the crowds outside are remarkably well mannered, here within the inner sanctum there are the first signs of pushing and shoving as the faithful, many of whom have come here from faraway countries and continents, force their way forward. Approaching the shrine on which the Buddha statue sits they fall on their knees and press their foreheads against the cool stone, their lips moving in silent prayers. Their devotions completed they back away slowly, reluctant to leave this hallowed space, while other quickly move forward to take their places. My own orisons and invocations completed I struggle out through the crowd pressing forward into temple, past the dozens now prostrating out front, and climb the stairs to the gateway leading out of the temple complex. Hundreds more are pouring in, merging into the processions around the outer walkways or joining the lines into the temple. The sun is not yet up but the sky to the east is turning pearly white. Another day is about to dawn in Bodhgaya, the site of the Buddha's Enlightenment. I head out into the street in front the temple for my first tea of the morning. |
Flower offerings
One of many stupas around the temple
(ditto)
Nyingma monks debating in the courtyard just west of the main temple. |
