BodGaya is a mish mash of cultures and of eras. There are temples to Buudha from every corner of the world. Wifi cafes, cell phones and way too many cars jostle with cow-paddy huts, plastic bag tented produce stands and monks and pilgrims and tourists and monks. And the dust! The couple of main roads are brick, and generate buckets of dust. Pitiful vegetation, limp with fatigue from battling dust, pollution and lack of water, marches across Larprakash Park. It's incredibly depressing to see what could be, what once was, a lush paradise garden in such a state of depravation. Honest attempts at cosmos, roses, dahlias, fade. Trees droop. After a brief turn-about, we beat a path back out the gate and into the culprit road.
I long for Rishikesh.
The Tai temple is delightful with its fantasmagoria of color, patterns, and the many masks of Buddha. Some of theses are downright monsterous while others glow, the familiar face of loving compassion. I like the energy in this temple, it resonates in my third eye and then my heart, light and pleasant. We stand a while.
Something keeps trying to push up in my mind, and finally the thought forms: the energy here is more one of absence than presence. Whilst the darghas of the Sufi saints had boldness to their energy that said "Here I am!", a force to be reckoned with, the Buddhist temple energies are notable for a sense of absence. Emptiness. Empty mind.
The Japanese temple energy is strange. What little there is is not in the chakras at all. In fact, doesn't resonate in a spiritual nor ven human way in the least. I feel it around and between my ears. A couple of us talked about it later. 'Cerebral.'
Reaching the main road, we enter a river of saffron-garbed pilgrims, monks and nuns all flowing in one direction. We don't have the lay of the land yet so decide to just follow them. They must be going someplace. About 2 miles later we decide to turn back - they stream on into the distance as far as we can see, with no apparent destination in sight. It was a joyous jaunt, but ours is a different path. So we turn back towards town. Now we're swimming UP stream. There's absolutely no sensibility of awareness of others in these guys. Similar to what I experienced in China. They'll just plow right into you. As do most of the other tourists and pilgrims, except those who, by their costumes, are known to be Hindu. It's not pleasant.
We vere off to see the 8o foot Buddha. Interesting photo op. Then we decide to take a secondary road across to our hotel's street for a pit-stop.
Uh-huh. Nearly two hours later, we emerge from the middle of now-where. In that spanse, Peg and I lost ourselves in a succession of villages and earth-bermed farm land, walking the narrow mud ledges between flooded and muddy fields. Now we're seeing something genuine.
Brick, straw, mudded and cow-paddy one-room hovels surround mud court yards. Cows, goats, dogs and naked babies play, graze and lounge together. Women grinding grain between rocks. Grandfathers turning clay, or rather, mud, pots on kick-wheels. Young men weaving rushes. A family bathing in an irrigation ditch, picking ... not sure what... out of each other's hair. Here, as in every diorama we've witnessed, is India's signature blend of desperation and hope.
There's a neatness to the squallor. Teen aged boys watch their elders turning pots, learning their own futures. Worn bits of once-brilliant fabrics drape in windows for more than shade and modesty. A stray dahlia has been lovingly tended. The animals, as the people, are groomed and obviously cared for. Here and there, children wear the uniforms of a charity-supported school.
Emerging from the narrow lanes of what we later i.d. on the map as Tandih Village, the vista opens to a grand expanse of cropland. Several villagers encourage us, "the road is that way," so we trudge along on the narrow mud berms for quite awhile, keeping in sight the spire of the Mahabodhi Temple way in the distance. Two little girls strolling from a squat of huts to our left converge with our path, and we ask them, just to confirm, "main road this way?" They smile, nod and beckon us to follow them.
A long march later brings us to the edge of another village. Uh, I'm losing confidence. And feeling like at this point, backtracking is not an option. Forgot to drop breadcrumbs.
As we follow our angels into the labarynth later identified, possibly, as Urel Village, a modicome of worry creeps in. We can't see our talisman landmark, the temple spire. The construction is meaner, lanes narrower, animals not as healthy, fewer family and industry tableaus. There are a couple of hot spots where western-garbed young men are hanging out. Thugs? I quip "Well, we're either being led home to meet moma, to the road, or to our deaths." Nervous humor. Peggy isn't amused.
Numerous hard turns into lanes we can't see past, then a quick right and another left and - lo! We are on the side-lane of Mahabodhi Temple Complex, leading to 'Main Street' and the main gate. Beggars and butter candles line the alleyway. Hundreds and hundreds of butter candles. Some rebirth. A life without risk is no life.
Our angels smile with us, shyly, and walk on their way. They never asked for money. Indeed, no-one in either village asked for money. Wish I could say the same thing for the town streets.
We called to them to come back and gave them each the equivalent of a US dollar. Probably more than their families see in one month.
Sharp contrast to the food caper. After lunch, I give a zip-lock bag of onion pandora to a urchin with particularly imploring eyes. And am promptly mobbed by grasping filthy fingers and shouting, shoving, mayhem. "No more food! Bas! Bas! Enough!" guess that's the last time I'll not throw away leftovers.
The world's navel is crowded, layered with iconetry and overt penance. There are spots of quietude, but I am really missing quiet. I get nothing in the temple shrine, where an auspicious gold painted statue draped in resplendent garb sits. The legend says that when the temple was built, no statue worthy of the place could be found. The doors were locked commanded to be locked for six months, encasing a pile of damp clay. When the seal was broken - an impatient 5 months and three and a half weeks later - there sat thsi statue. But because they didn't wait the full 6 months, one corner of his breast was unfinished. Apparently, it's the breast that's hidden by the royal robe. Nothing.
Later, sitting in front of the temple where it's believed the Buddha sat, I tune my chakras. The chanting of monks forms a base note for my own practices, vibrated low and private. Peggy tells me later that a battle raged behind me as a monk, chastising some tourist youth, was threatened by them with sticks and shouting. Even here.
We dine on some version of pad tai at a tai restaurant where the Dali Llama's second ate a few months ago. Rumor has it he's bestowing blessings at a more distant thai temple today, but I think I'll just bop about the closer minor temples for the day, save my intensity for our return to Delhi and the Sufi darghas and ors.
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