Bodhagaya

A dusty yellow town, with dusty roads, busy with dusty yellow rickshaws packed with more people than you would imagine possible, dusty cart horses and the occasional elephant.  Most of the restaurants were tarpaulin tents.  It is home to many Tibetan refugees, also living in tarpaulin tents.  Bodhgaya is in Bihar, the poorest state in India, and it shows.  There are dusty, dirty children everywhere, most asking for money or sweets.  So many beggars, charitable organisations, and orphanages.  We went to one.  An intelligent, gentle, boy approached us and after talking for a while, asked us if we wanted to visit his school and meet the children there.  He was so genuinely good natured we agreed.  It was an orphanage, run by a Christian couple, who couldn’t have children, so looked after the destitute ones.  They rescued babies left at hospitals and in rubbish dumps.  The building they taught and lived in was basic, rudimentary, bare.  But the children were wonderful.  It was quite a moving experience to enter such a happy environment, which is born from such horrendous starts.  

We went there as it is the place where the Buddha was enlightened, under the Bodhi tree, which is still alive, after various cuttings had been replanted.  The place of the Bodhi tree has a temple, which is tall, and simple; and is surrounded by gardens, stupas erected in important places in which the Buddha is said to have undergone different stages of meditation.  It is a calm place, with lots of green, and many monks in beautiful maroon robes.  There are also Wat’s from all the different Buddhist countries in the surrounding robes.  A 80 foot statue of the Buddha, which is benignly imposing.  And the Dali Lama turns up every year to visit.   

 

I don’t have so much to say about it here, we were only there for a day.  The town was poor and unattractive, in the temple area it was calm and lush, it was all a little depressing.  Maybe it is significant that human suffering is so blatant around the site where the Buddha was enlightened, to remind all the visitors that all life is suffering…..