Trip 2008-2009: Bodhgaya
Our Cal friends were quite concerned about us travelling to the state of Bihar, which is renowned for the 'dacoits' or thieves. They were even more concerned about us travelling on a night train ("they’ll steal your shoes!”) to get there but we stuck with our guns and did our first sleeper class train trip! It was fine, the main difficulty was waking ourselves up at 5am to get off the train!
Sleepily we found a rickshaw that took us to Bodhgaya where we wandered around for quite a while trying to find accommodation but most things were booked due to an 11 day Tipitaka chanting conference. Marc eventually found a nice place near the residential area where people didn’t bother us at all so it was a great place to escape the madness of the temple..
The entrance to the temple that contains that tree under which the Buddha became enlightened was crazy. Beggars, sellers, tourists, monks, everyone was gathered for one reason or another… I don’t know what I expected but it was something more peaceful and respectful than what we found. The temple area itself WAS more quiet but there were hundreds of monks sliding up and down their prostration boards, others with rice and other objects chanting, people meditating…. And the shrine at the base of the tree was a surprise too. From what I have learnt about the Buddha I don’t thin
k he would have been all that impressed with all the hoohah… bu
t anyway, I observed, accepted… then ran back home for some sanity!
Oh, and no, we didn’t get enlightened…mustn’t have given enough offerings!
A couple of days here and then it was time to head to Nalanda….
Sleepily we found a rickshaw that took us to Bodhgaya where we wandered around for quite a while trying to find accommodation but most things were booked due to an 11 day Tipitaka chanting conference. Marc eventually found a nice place near the residential area where people didn’t bother us at all so it was a great place to escape the madness of the temple..
The entrance to the temple that contains that tree under which the Buddha became enlightened was crazy. Beggars, sellers, tourists, monks, everyone was gathered for one reason or another… I don’t know what I expected but it was something more peaceful and respectful than what we found. The temple area itself WAS more quiet but there were hundreds of monks sliding up and down their prostration boards, others with rice and other objects chanting, people meditating…. And the shrine at the base of the tree was a surprise too. From what I have learnt about the Buddha I don’t thin
k he would have been all that impressed with all the hoohah… bu
t anyway, I observed, accepted… then ran back home for some sanity!Oh, and no, we didn’t get enlightened…mustn’t have given enough offerings!
A couple of days here and then it was time to head to Nalanda….
posted by Claire at 5:36 AM
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