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Published: March 7th 2006
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Sarnath - Feb. 21, 2006
Sri Lankan Mahabodhi Temple Today was with Buddha at Sarnath, on the outskirts of Varanasi, where he delivered his first sermon, “The Foundation of Righteousness, circa 525BC.
After clearing the bowels of Old Varanasi, it was onto Sarnath in the hands of a skillful auto rickshaw driver. First, negotiating the mad crush of morning traffic in New, or rather, Less-Old Varanasi; then bouncing along, on some seriously bumpy roads, over iffy-looking bridges, that span kilometers of heavily silted rivers, almost devoid of water pending the next monsoon season.
We began our visit, on the site dedicated to all things Buddha, at the Sri Lankan Mahabodhi Temple, that holds relics of the great man found in Pakistan, pre-partition. The walls of this temple also display a series of frescoes depicting his life. The abbreviated version of what is shown says: born Siddhartha Gantama, in 563BC, a prince of the warrior caste, thirty-five years later he earned the appellation of Buddha, a perfectly enlightened soul for the salvation of human kind. Sitting under a Bodhi tree, in the neighbouring state of Bihar, he resisted temptations of the world proffered by the demon, Mara; and emerged with deep insights into the nature of life. Between birth
Sarnath - Feb. 21, 2006
Interior of temple. Relics are under the golden statue of Buddha. and enlightenment, he had been declared a sage and seer in-waiting, married at sixteen and fathered a child, left home at twenty-nine on his steed, Kanthaka; and wandered in search of truth for six years, as a beggar and an ascetic. In the years after enlightenment, he routinely gave alms as part of his morning rituals, his mission fore-swore the doctrine of caste and he did not see ascetism as the way to salvation; but,forgive me, I am getting ahead of the story.
To the right of the temple holding his relics, is the spot where Buddha preached his first sermon to five friends from his days an ascetic, who henceforth became his disciples. The sermon is reproduced, engraved in marble. Essentially he spoke of a middle way, avoiding either extremes of plunging into sensual pleasures or practicing austerities that deprive the body of its needs. Warming to his subject, he spoke of four noble truths: life is rooted in suffering, suffering is caused by craving for worldly things, eliminating craving releases one from suffering, and the way forward is found along the noble eightfold path. The constituent parts of the path are: right understanding, right intention, right speech,
Sarnath - Feb. 21, 2006
Buddha receiving enlightment right actions, right livelihood, right effort, right awareness and right concentration. Any person can travel this way, as a matter of direct experience, on herhis own volition; the path is not reserved for selected castes. Walking this path ultimately takes one to a state of Nirvana, the extinction of ego-driven self, so that only truth remains; and there is peace and joy in the soul. The Buddha preached many other sermons on the way to his final nirvana; but this was the seminal work.
Statues of the Buddha, and his audience of five, stand as a group on the spot where the sermon was spoken. Close to the spot is a bodhi tree, that is a sapling, of a sapling taken to Sri Lanka from the original bodhi tree, where enlightenment occurred in 528BC. Around the bodhi sapling of this site are visages of some thirty other Budhas, pre and post Siddhartha, who we, I anyway, have been conditioned to think of as Buddha, period. Fact is, many others were similiarly enlightened. My Buddhist monk, just outside of Darjeeling, would advise me, if I could ask him, that each one was an incarnation of his predessessor.
Also on
the site is Deer Park, a fauna reserve for a wide range of birds and animals, including a large population of rack-horned deer. The park is said to be the place, where Buddha and his adherents often came to concentrate, as respite from their travels spreading the middle way.
Another stop in the Buddha complex was a Jain Temple. It drew my attention, because it presents like a Hindu Temple on the exterior; and, today, I had seen and read enough about Buddha's critiques of Hinduism to sense that a Hindu temple would be an oddity on this site. Fear not, we enter and there is a whole new different story.
The religion of Jainism was founded by Mahavira a contemporary of Buddha. In historical perspective, both Siddhartha (Buddha) and Mahavira moved away from Hinduism as their spiritual way, because they rejected what they saw as overbearing strictures, imposed by the Brahmin priests of their time. But, where Buddha preached the middle way between pleasure and pain, Jainism saw the way of achieving purity of the soul, as through fasting, meditation, retreating to lonely places; that is, ascetism.
Jainism's major contribution to our world view is ‘ahimsa’,
we know it as non-violence, reference Gandhi to Martin Luther King, fundamental in their belief system to the right mode of conduct in word, thought and deed. Seven million practice Buddhism in India; four million adhere to Jainism.
Once inside, I found the Jain temple to be highly decorative within, much more so than Hindu Temples, where not a lot distracts from the deities. This up-beat show on the inside of their places of worship, seemingly inconsistent with the Jain embrace of ascetism, is resolved by the principle that true beauty comes from within.
It was a heavy day. I struggled mightily, on the rugged ride home, to find a way for all of this inform me for future behaviour. I knew that the burning ghat outside my window would give no respite.
Dinner was of bananas, sweet limes and mineral water. I could not digest much more this evening
Vernon
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