Back to Bihar, India: Enlightenment Grove

HIDDEN GEM IN BIHAR, INDIA! 🇮🇳 Magical Bodh Gaya

(Let's Meet Abroad) March 31, 2024: Join us in Bodh Gaya (aka Buddha Gaya), a hidden gem in Bihar, India.🌟🇮🇳 We explore the Mahabodhi ("Great Enlightenment") Temple, walk around the Japanese Great Buddha, and enjoy delicious vegetarian and vegan Tibetan food.

• Budh (or bodh) is the root of Buddha ("Enlightened One") and bodhi ("enlightenment, awakening"), and gaya is grove, so this place is Enlightenment Grove or the Place of Awakening.

Bodh Gaya is really worth a visit during any trip to India. We highly recommend hiring an e-rickshaw to get around to all the famous sights. #bihar #india #bodhgaya

First time exploring Bihar: MY FIRST TIME IN BIHAR! 🇮🇳 Exploring...

• 00:00 Bodh Gaya in Bihar, India: Center of the Buddhist World
• 00:35 Marasa Sarovar Premiere, Bodhgaya
• 01:43 Vegetarian Tibet Om Cafe, Bodh Gaya
• 04:45 Mahabodhi Temple, Bodh Gaya
• 07:17 Great Buddha (80 foot) statue, Bodh Gaya
• 08:58 Exploring Bodh Gaya in Bihar
• 10:40 Tibet Om Cafe, Bodh Gaya again
• 12:25 Bihar road trip

Subscribe for more travel videos. 💛 Hope you enjoyed it. Thumbs up if you liked it and want to help YouTube notice us 👍🏼 • Subscribe to channel to help us keep creating videos bit.ly/lmasub • IG: Say hi and follow our daily adventures. bit.ly/lmainsta 🔥 Learn to create videos like a pro. Adi is an online videography teacher. Ready to learn how to create amazing videos? Try it out here: skl.sh/3JRNbDu. 📸 Gear we love • video camera: https://amzn.to/3OlAZym • photo camera: https://amzn.to/499t6nt • Insta360: https://amzn.to/3vKD9kw • backpack Myra: https://amzn.to/3HwjlUR • Little backpack: https://amzn.to/3Sdj4es 📮 Say hello. • Any business inquiries? Get in contact at hello@letsmeetabroad.com. • We also work as freelance videographers and photographers. Can we create something for you? Please leave any tips, ideas, or questions in the comments. 😙 Lots of love, Adi & Myra

Then, the allegory goes, the wandering ascetic, having eaten and regained his bodily health thanks to the lady Sujata and her maid, wandered on in search of enlightenment. He realized that he had blamed the body for the faults of the mind/heart, punishing it needlessly.

He determined to try another approach, abandoning austerities and self-mortification. What, he wondered, if he were to allow himself the supersensual pleasure of meditative absorption (jhana). Such bliss is blameless. He wondered if this might be the way to awakening.

An inner-knowing came over him that it was. He went to the river to bathe, using his alms bowl to predict if he would succeed. Then he found another tree, having left behind Sujata's banyan.

He entered a wondrous grove and found a marvelous fig tree (Ficus religiosa) under which to sit. There he enjoyed the bliss (piti) of letting go, simply mindful of his in-and-out breathing until it became soft then still, as he entered into single-pointed focus and samadhi, purifying heart/mind.

He remembered past lives and continued to ponder the question that had prompted his spiritual quest: Why do we suffer? He followed the chain of causation (Dependent Origination), realizing that the root of present disappointment and pain (dukkha) was in the past, affecting the present and setting the future.

He broke through the 12-links to understand that, "With this, that comes to be, and without it, it ceases." He understood those factors that had led to everything and saw a means of escape from this round (samsara, simulation) of countless rebirth.

He went back and back through past lives (reappearances, relinkings, rearisings), further exploring all that had happened, with great gratitude for the tree that sheltered him.

Our journey to India

A few years after in San Francisco

Like the video above, we were two Americans traveling through the whirlpool of humanity that is India, she a blond, I blending in. But our Tevas gave us away. Everyone knew we were foreigners and were surprised to find out we were Americans. There were people from all over the world here and extraordinary temples in a little town that represented the whole world. My favorite was not the great Mahabodhi Temple at the center, nor the Sri Lankan vihara, not the Thai wat, nor the Japanese zendo and massive Butso Buddha. It was the wooden Bhutanese shrine room, with woodcut devas on the wall. It was dark and like being in a tiki wood treasure house. What was this? We never knew Bodhgaya, near the Patna Airport, was this jewel. Everyone else it. It was the off-season, but Tibetan monastics were everywhere doing 108,000 prostrations on smooth planks of wood to increase their devotion. Hindus were in control of the walled area around the Bodhi tree, wearing orange and panhandling, exploiting the devotional feelings of pilgrims on entering. We sat next to the stone "throne" slab under which Siddhartha is alleged to have sat. Could it be that very gilded stone? One could imagine this was the exact spot, although there is room for doubt. A monk in Los Angeles I know very well got his Ph.D. in Asia on the archeology of the exact site and the Mahabodhi tower/pagoda cetiya. They were discovered by a British scholar and rebuilt on the site from fragments all around the area. The site had been leveled by Muslim crusaders passing through, cutting down the tree so many honored, thinking that people were praying to it in violation of their religious views. Yet, here it was. We could hardly take in the vicinity and its international air, as we focused on the area around the tree. A sanctuary is more precious for the busy-ness all around.

• TEXT: Wisdom Quarterly