HIDDEN GEM IN BIHAR, INDIA! 🇮🇳 Magical Bodh Gaya
- 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
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 |
- TEXT: Wisdom Quarterly
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