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I greeted the New Year in Bodhgaya, the town In northern India where Siddartha Gautama achieved Enlightenment and became the Buddha. I had observed a temperate New Year's Eve alone in my room in a small guest house two blocks off the main street. I doubt if there was a magnum of champaigne anywhere in the town; in fact, in the few days I had been in Bodhgaya I had not seen any alcohol of any kind for sale. Anyhow, I was not in Bodhgaya to party. I was here to participate in the Kalachakra initiation presided over by the 14th Dalai Lama. The Kalachakra teachings had, according to Tibetan Buddhist belief, originated in the land of Shambhala, and according to the Guidebook to Shambhala, written by Lozang Palden Yeshe, the Third Panchen Lama ((1738-1780), Bodhgaya, the axis mundi and navel of the world, was the starting point on the path to this semi-mythical realm. Thus Bodhgaya seemed like a good place to begin my own explorations into the Legend of Shambhala. At midnight volleys of firecrackers erupted from the direction of the Chinese monastery a few hundred yards to the north, following by the brief sounding of gongs, bells, and drums from the Thai, Bhutanese, Japanese, and Sikkimese monasteries just to the west. The deep sonorous tolling of one bell at fifteen minute intervals was the last sound I heard as I finally drifted off to sleep at about two o'clock. I rise at five o'clock. It is still completely dark and the street outside my guesthouse is shrouded in thick fog. Rickshaws hauling monks from the monasteries down the street materialize out of the gloom and then disappear again. Although the temperature is in the mid-fifties, it is considered mid-winter in northern India and the rickshaw drivers are swathed like mummies in an assortment of turbans, scarves, shawls, and blankets. Several rickshaw drivers accost me, but I prefer to walk the half mile or so the Mahabodhi Temple. The temple compound opens at four in the morning and a steady stream of people is pouring down the broad boulevard leading to the entrance. Most of the hundred or more beggars camped out along the outer wall of the temple complex are still wrapped up in their rags and asleep on pieces of cardboard but a few of their bare-footed children draped in shawls are already up and importuning the early arrivals. Older children from the town of Bodhgaya hawk lotus flowers, incense, prayer scarves, and candles, while teenagers sell bags of ninety one-rupee coins for 100 rupees in bills for those who wish earn merit for themselves by appeasing the beggars. Sturdy Tibetan women who have monopolized the area just outside the gate sell flats and twists of Tibetan bread made just that night and still hot in cloth-covered wicker baskets. Indian men pump up kerosene stoves and heat pots of milk tea which they sell in small glasses, three rupees (6.3 cents) for a whole glass and a rupee and a half for half a glass. I turn into the outer courtyard, thread me way through the last souvenir vendors-these selling huge stylized footprints of the Buddha imprinted on cotton cloths-and turn right again into the main temple complex. Directly in front of me looms up in the fog the immense pile of the Mahabodhi Temple, surely one of the most imposing religious monuments in the world, and arguable the most sacred to Buddhists. Made almost entirely of brick, it consists of a base perhaps twenty-five feet high topped by a elongated pyramid rising 170 feet. At the top of each of the four corners of the base are smaller pyramids. Just inside the gateway I turn left onto the outer khora, or walkway, about the temple, and join the hundred of other circumambulators. Most at this early hour appear to be Tibetans. Present are all ages from babes at the breast to old tottering men held at the elbows by relatives and ancient bent-over crones with canes. Maroon-robed monks and nuns of all ages, muscular, stocky men in jeans and cowboy hats, middle-aged matrons in colorful Tibetan aprons, teenagers in jogging suits and nylon windbreakers, wild-looking mendicants in traditional Tibetan dress with huge coils of hair wrapped around their heads-all join the procession. Many are fingering malas-strings of 108 prayer beads-and a steady drone of mantras reverberates in the damp morning air. The outer walkway is a square about 525 feet long one each side and about 10 feet wide. When it is not too crowded and I can walk at my regular meditative pace it takes me exactly eight minutes to make one circuit. Coincidentally, this is also the exact amount of time it takes to repeat one mala-108 recitations-of the basic Buddhist mantra Om muni muni maha muniye svaha. By the time I have completed my third circuit several hundred more people have joined the procession. The ten-foot wide pathway is now almost shoulder-to-shoulder with people and the pace begins to slow. The outer circuit begins and ends in the middle of the east side of the temple complex, where a stone staircase leads down to the sunken inner courtyard and the Mahabodhi Temple itself. At the end of my third circuit of the outer walkway I descend the stairs and at the bottom turn left onto the middle khora, or walkway, which is on the level of the Mahibodhi Temple, about ten feet lower than the outer walkway, and separated from it by a grassy sloping bank. This middle walkway, about 500 feet long on each side, is less crowded in the mornings than the outer walkway, and I am able to quickly complete three circumambulations. At the end of my third circuit around the middle walkway I turn right and enter the inner courtyard of the Mahabodhi Temple, but not before taking off my shoes and placing them in my shoulder bag. There has recently been a major set-to about people, in particular Tibetans, who have worn their shoes within the inner precincts of the temple grounds, in flagrant violation of the rules and to the intense irritation of the committee who oversees the temple. There is now a fine imposed for wearing shoes in this area. The huge doors to the temple have not yet been opened for the day, but several hundred people are gathered out front. Some are praying or reciting mantras while fingering malas, some are doing full length prostrations, some hold big lotus flowers, others candles, prayer scarves, thick bundles of burning incense, baskets of fruit, and bowls of uncooked rice. 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 sandstone 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 most 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 in 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. Stories of people intensely affected by the Vajrasana and the Bodhi Tree are legion. Take for instance the famous Chinese pilgrim and translator Xuanzang, who visited Bodhgaya in 637 A.D while on a sixteen year pilgrimage to India. "The moment he had been waiting for," wrote Huili, Xuanzang's biographer, who also worked with him as a translator. Finally Xuanzang kneels down before the sacred tree. . . . With the most sincere devotion, Xuanzang casts himself face down on the ground. Filled with grief, he sighs and says, "At the time when the Buddha perfected himself in wisdom, I know not in what condition I was in the troublous whirl of life and death.' To him it is inescapably clear his evil deeds mean that is condemned to live in this lesser age, when Buddhism is in decline, instead of the golden age of the Buddha's life on earth. His eyes overflow with tears." Although Xuanzang lived several centuries before the appearance of the Legend of Shambhala in India, as we shall see he visited in the course of his soujourn many places which later became identified with the mythical kingdom. Then there was the Japanse pilgrim and scholar Ekaei Kawaguchi, who arrived here on January 20, 1899 while on his way to make an incognito journey to Tibet. Kawaguchi:
Kawaguchi here neatly sums up several misconceptions about the Outer Vajrasana still held by many visitors: that the Bodhi Tree is the original Bodhi Tree and not a distant descendant; that the Buddha actually sat on the "very stone" now present; and that the Buddha preached at this location. His first sermons came later. Anyhow, Kawaguchi finally did arrive in Lhasa, the capital of Tibet, where he was to make a most curious contribution to the Legend of Shambhala. The inner walkway continues around temple. Near the front, to the right of the entrance is a niche containing a three foot high stone statue of Tara, the female deity who in one of its various manifestations often serves as a inspiration and guide to travelers on their way to Shambhala. Several women are prostrating before the statue and other worshippers have placed marigolds and lotus flowers at its base. I add a few sticks of incense before moving on to the huge doors of the temple, now open. Entering I can see through a long hallway 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 he used. 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, some of whom have come here from faraway countries and continents, force their way forward. Approaching the altar 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. I shuffle forward, spend three minutes on my orisons, and then quickly retire. Like the Outer Vajrasana the Inner Vajrasana has had a remarkable affect on people. Perhaps the most notable of these was a young, devout Sri Lankan Buddhist named Anagarika Dharmapala who arrived in Bodhgaya in 1891. Following the Islamic invasions of the twelth century and the decline and almost virtual disappearance of Buddhist from India in the subsequent centuries the Mahabodhi Temple had by this time fallen almost into ruin. Officials of the British Raj had made various attempts at restoration of the temple itself, but Anagarika Dharmapala was still appalled by the condition of the temple grounds, which were being used by local people as a garbage dump and outdoor toilet, and was chagrined that there were no Buddhist monks or even caretakers in attendance at the temple itself. Like so many pilgrims before and after him he entered the temple, approached the Inner Vajrasana, and knelt down before it. "As soon as I touched with my forehead the Vajrasana a sudden impulse came to my mind. It prompted me to stop here and take care of this sacred spot-so sacred that nothing in this world is equal to this place where Prince Sakya Sinha gained Enlightenment under the Bodhi Tree." [quoted in Dhammika, 1999 #61, p.19] Later, while meditating in the temple, he had a further brainstorm. He would, he decided, devote the rest of his life to restoring the temple complex to its former glory as a Buddhist pilgrimage site. His main opponent in this was a local man known as the Mahant, the descendant of a Hindu swami who had settled in Bodhgaya several centuries before. Eventually the Mahants came to consider the Mahabodhi Temple and surrounding grounds as their own private property. Now a rich and powerful landlord, the current Mahant, who lived in a huge compound just east of the temple, realized that the restored temple, potentially a magnet for Buddhists from all other the world, was a cash cow that could be lucratively milked and had no intention of relinguishing his control over it. Thus started a decades-long legal wrangle between the Mahant and Anagarika Dharmapala. Attempting to gain support for the revival of the temple and ultimately its control by Buddhists, Anagarika Dharmapala founded the Mahabodhi Society and the Mahabodhi Journal, the first international Buddhistic publication, and embarked on a world-wide campaign to publicize Bodhgaya and other Buddhist pilgrimage sites in India, even travelling to the United States to attend the Parliament of Religions held in Chicago in 1893. Although he devoted the rest of his life to the cause when Anagarika Dharmapala died in 1933 the Mahant still controlled the Mahabodhi Temple and Buddhists visited there at his forebearance. The Mahabodhi Society lived on, however (as it still does; its current headquarters are just down the street from the entrance to the temple grounds), and due to its efforts and the support of Mahatma Gandhi, Nobel Prize winner Rabindranath Tagore, and other prominent Indians, in 1949 control of the temple and surrounding grounds was placed in the hands of a standing committee made of up four Hindus and four Buddhists, and the legal right of Buddhists to worship in the temple was finally recognized.
For more photos and information on Bodhgaya ©2003 Don Croner |
A Depiction of the Mythical Realm of Shambhala Up-to-date news about Bodhgaya
The Mahabodhi Temple, site of the Buddha's Enlightenment, from the main entrance at the eastern side of the temple complex
The Outer Khora (top) and the Inner Khora (middle)
The enclose containing the Outer Vajrasana, or Diamond seat, just behind the main temple
The Outer Vajrasana, or Diamond Seat
The Outer Vajrasana
Statue of the ever-popular Tara to the left of the main entrance
Entrance to the Mahabodhi Temple
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