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

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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

Bodh Gaya: "Enlightenment Grove" (video)

Goh Ee Choo, June 14, 2015; Amber Larson, Crystal Quintero, Wisdom Quarterly

Bodh Gaya: The Sacred Land of Buddhahood has a great deal of old school wrong information, particularly that popular with Indians from India, who have their reasons for clinging to some of these views. Maverick historian Dr. Ranajit Pal sets those facts straight, but few want to go any deeper than the allegory.

• Vesak celebration Los Angeles, May 29

Terror strikes Bodh Gaya, serial blasts

Wisdom Quarterly; Law Kumar Mishra and Abdul Qadir, TNN/PTI (Times of India)

Under the Bodhi tree, Bodh Gaya, India (owlsdaughter.com)

  

(exoticindiaart.com)

GAYA, India (July 7, 2013) Terror struck the temple town of Bodh Gaya in Bihar state, as nine serial explosions rocked the Mahabodhi Temple complex [presumed site of the Buddha's great enlightenment] on Sunday morning.

Two tourists, including a monk from Burma, have been injured in the blasts. The injured are being treated at the Anugrah Narain Magadh Medical College hospital.

Union home secretary Anil Goswami confirmed that the Bodh Gaya blasts were a terror attack.

Bihar police suspect the involvement of Indian Mujahideen in the temple blasts.

 

According to Gaya Police, the blasts took place in quick succession between 5:30 am and 6:00 am in the temple complex and near the Maha-Bodhi tree. One blast was reported from a bus stand.

 

One of the blasts took place just under the enlightenment tree causing partial damage to the Buddha footprints in the shrine premises.

Four blasts took place inside the shrine premises, while another three blasts took place in the Tregar monastery premises. The Tregar monastery belongs to the Karmapa, the second most important spiritual leader [in Tibetan Vajrayana Buddhism].

One blast each took place at the great Buddha statue and a bus parked on the Sujata bypass. 

Arvind Singh, a member of Mahabodhi Temple Management Committee, said two other bombs, one near the 80 foot statue and one at bus stand, have been defused. 

Zonal IG Sushil Khopade confirmed eight blasts. 

Nitish Kumar reached Bodh Gaya to take stock of the situation. He took a round of the Mahabodhi Temple complex and held a meeting with the officials. 

BJP activists led by former minister Prem Kumar greeted Nitish Kumar with "go back" slogans outside the temple main gate. 

JD(U) workers present there raised pro-Nitish slogans and countered the protesting BJP workers. 

Cops have sealed the entry routes to the shrine.

An NIA team is expected to arrive shortly to initiate a probe. 

"A team of NIA officers is coming to Bodh Gaya from Kolkata [Calcutta]," DIG special branch Parasnath said. 

The DIG said, "The sanctum sanctorum of the Mahabodhi Temple is intact. The temple premises have been sanitized." 

The secretary of the Bodh Gaya committee Dorji said, "There were four blasts inside the temple premises. Fortunately, there was no damage to the Bodhi tree or the main temple structure." 

The same provocations as in Afghanistan

"In the first blast which took place near the Bodhi tree, a table was blown up because of which two persons were injured. The second blast, I think, was inside the enclosure where books were kept. The furniture was damaged, but there was no damage to the monuments or statues," he added. 

Asked about the nature of explosives used, S.K. Bharadwaj, ADG (Law and Order) said they were low intensity time bombs. 

He said, "We got information about six-seven months back that there may be a terror attack on the Mahabodhi temple. After that we had beefed up secuirty and deployed extra forces."

 

Bodh Gaya Buddhist temple, around 10 km from Gaya and 100 km from the capital [of Bihar state] Patna, is world famous. The Buddha had attained enlightenment here under the Mahabodhi tree in the temple premises.

Dalai Lama makes frequent trips to Bodh Gaya, and Sri Lankan President Mahinda Rajapaksa had visited six months back. A total of 52 countries have established Buddhist monasteries here.

• Watch video

Gov't to map ancient Buddhist routes in state

Pranava K. Chaudhary (TNN, April 6, 2011), edited by Wisdom Quarterly

(topnews.in)

PATNA, Bihar state, India - The Bihar government will soon begin mapping the lost and forgotten Buddhist pilgrimage routes in the state with an aim to revive its old glory and promote tourism.

The newly formed Bihar Virasat Vikas Samiti (BVVS) an non-governmental organization (NGO) working as a separate body under the guidance of department of culture and a deemed university Nava Nalanda Mahavihara (NNM) have jointly designed a multi-pronged project to develop these unknown sites.

(indiaprofile.com)

Experts would be involved to develop these unknown sites spread across the districts of Nalanda, Vaishali, Bhagalpur, Saran, and East Champaran. French archeologist Yves Guichand during his recent Bihar visit took aerial photographs of some of these sites in Nalanda [the site of the world's first Buddhist university].

"The community that has preserved the heritage stands to benefit from it while devising methods to preserve it. Tourism, and more specifically religious pilgrimage, offer a unique opportunity to local people to showcase the culture and heritage and, in the process, generate new avenues of livelihood," says amateur archeologist Deepak Anand, who has been actively engaged in this project for the last few years.

"The pilgrimage routes through villages will give pride to the culture and offer them monetary support to take care of the inheritance and generate awareness," Anand told TOI. This relationship between people and their surroundings would set an example of the Buddha's teachings in the land of its origin.

The vast heritage that is inlaid in most of the villages in Bihar was once part of the pilgrimage for Buddhists all over the world; millions of followers traced these routes for over 1,800 years that saw an unexpected decline [after being targetted internally by Hindus and externally by Arabian-Islamist invasions] around the 14th century AD.

The BVVS and NNM have designed a strategy to develop these sites for the interest of the local community and their heritage. The first phase of the plan would comprise a tour route spanning Bodh Gaya [the site of the Buddha's great enlightenment, where a descendent of the Bodhi-tree he sat under still stands], Pragbodhi, Gurpa, Jethian, Nalanda, Rajgir [a city made famous in countless sutras, the site of Vulture Peak and Jetavana], Parwati, and Checher. The strategy put in place includes a community participation plan focusing on the interdependency of community and heritage termed "[Socially-] Engaged Buddhism."

The process of revitalization of the heritage has many aspects such as field study, exploration, documentation of sites, protection, preservation, excavation, promotion, and showcasing.

The travelogues of two Chinese Buddhist monk travellers, Fa Hsein and Xuanzang, were instrumental in the rediscovery of important sites associated with the life of the Buddha and the events that followed until his final passing into nirvana (mahaparinirvana). Ancient Chinese travels in Buddhist India

Dalai Lama to open "Buddha Park" in India

Faizan Ahmad (TNN, Feb. 9, 2010)

Buddha Memorial Park is coming to India. No word yet on a rollercoaster for monks (sensitivitytothings.com).

PATNA, India - The Dalai Lama has consented to inaugurate Buddha Memorial (Smriti) Park here on May 27, 2010. The day will coincide with the auspicious occasion of Buddha Purnima (Vesak). The Tibetan spiritual head gave his consent on Monday when chief minister Nitish Kumar called on him at his government in exile headquarters at Mcleodgunj, 15 kms from Dharamshala in Himachal Pradesh.

Nitish had an hour-long meeting with the 74-year-old 14th Dalai Lama during which he extended an invitation to him to inaugurate the park. The park, which has a meditation hall, is being raised on a 22-acre plot in the heart of the city, close to Patna Junction. It is being built at a cost of 125 crore Indian rupees. And it will also have a giant size statue of the Buddha.

"The [Dalai Lama] was gracious to accept our invitation and also promised to donate Buddha relics to be kept in the park which will be an added attraction," Nitish, who returned to New Delhi en route Patna, told The Times of India. The state government is constructing this memorial park on a Buddhist model of construction to mark the 2550th year of the Buddha's Great Passing (mahaparinirvana). The Dalai Lama will also unveil the statue.

Nitish said that he also briefed the Tibetan temporal head about the proposed Nalanda International University, which is taking shape. The Nobel Peace laureate was keenly interested in the proposed university. Many South Asian countries are stakeholders interested in the development of spots related to the memory of the Buddha in Bihar, India.

Last month, the Dalai Lama was at Bodh Gaya -- the place where the Buddha reached enlightenment -- for a five-day teaching session. The chief minister, who reached Dharamshala on Sunday, attended a dinner hosted in his honor the same night by the Prime Minister of the Tibetan government-in-exile, Samdhong Rinpoche. He also visited Chamunda Devi Shaktipeeth and Brajeshwari Devi [to the] temple at Kangra. Source

• Follow the Times of India for top stories

Four Mysteries

(elfwood.com)

So a priest, a rabbi, an imam, and a monk walk into a bar...to convert Atheists. Coming soon to Turkish TV.

Religion in the Middle East is not exciting enough, so the television station Kanal T in Istanbul, Turkey, is preparing a reality game show for September release: Ten certified Atheists try to resist conversion by a Catholic priest, a Jewish rabbi, a Muslim imam, and a Buddhist monk. The exact rules have not been disclosed, but the "winning" convert will receive an all-expense-paid trip to the "holy land" of the most persuasive religion (the Vatican, Jerusalem, Mecca, or Tibet). According to a July 2009 Reuters' report, Turkey's Islamic Religious Affairs Directorate has, not surprisingly, vowed never to co-operate.

Scientist: "Finger" was neither human nor animal (AP)
BRIELLE, New Jersey–Authorities say a human finger wasn't dropped on a deck at the Jersey shore after all. A forensic anthropologist has determined the object, which resembled a decaying finger with an acrylic french-manicured nail, is neither human nor animal. Full Story»

Free radios to perk up India's "Uuntouchables" (Reuters)
PATNA, India–Authorities in eastern India are distributing free radio sets to lower-caste villagers so that they can listen to music and news after a hard day's work and improve their awareness, officials said Wednesday. Full Story»

Love potions wear away saints' tomb (Reuters)
NICOSIA, Cyprus–Unhappy lovers in Cyprus have been taking so much stone from the tomb of Saint Agapitikos to use in love potions that soon there won't be anything left. Full Story»

Protesters back woman in trousers case (Reuters)
KHARTOUM, Sudan–Police used teargas to disperse protesters rallying in support of a Sudanese woman facing 40 lashes for wearing trousers in public Tuesday, a case that has become a public test of Sudan's indecency laws. Full Story»

Boat sinks in flooded northern India

Gavin Rainowitz (AP)

Villagers wade through floodwaters on a stretch of the National Highway 106 at Veerpur, in the northern Indian state of Bihar, Friday, 8/29/08. The Indian government has made available more than US$200 million to combat monsoon flooding in the country's north that Prime Minister Manmohan Singh described Thursday as a national calamity.(AP Photo/Aftab Alam Siddiqui)

Commuters wade through a flooded road at Madhepura town in India's eastern state of Bihar, 8/29/08 (Krishna Murari Kishan/Reuters).I

Indian flood-affected villagers wade through flood water in Sitpur in the Supaul district of India's northern state of Bihar. Massive flooding in eastern India has caused a "national calamity," the prime minister said Thursday after touring the devastated region where more than a million people remain trapped (AFP/Diptendu Dutta).

Flood-affected people catch fish in flooded water in Sonbarsha village, in India's eastern state of Bihar August 28, 2008. Indian army troops helped evacuate more than 120,000 people from floods in eastern India, but more bad weather raised fears that rivers would to continue to overflow, officials said on Thursday. The flooding, which officials say are the worst in 50 years, was caused after the Kosi river broke a dam in Nepal where it originates, unleashing huge waves of water that smashed mud embankments downstream in Bihar state(Reuters/Krishna Murari Kishan, INDIA).

Children displaced from their homes by severe flooding wait for a meal at a relief camp in North Bihar, India on 8/7/08 (Photo and caption submitted by Manish sinha).

PATNA, India -- A rescue boat filled with panicked flood victims capsized and killed 20 people in northern India, where monsoon flooding grew worse because of heavy rain and water flowing from neighboring Nepal, officials said Saturday.

The boat accident happened on Friday night in Madhepura district, 95 miles northeast of Patna, the capital of impoverished Bihar state, said O.N. Bhaskar, the superintendent of police. Those killed included one army rescue worker. Eight people swam to safety and 32 were rescued by troops, he said.

"The boat was overcrowded because people panicked to be rescued and clambered on board," Bhaskar told The Associated Press.

The death toll from this year's monsoon season across India has surpassed 800. Some 1.2 million people have been marooned and about 2 million more affected in Bihar state, where the Kosi river has burst its banks and submerged all roads leading to the region.

India's Prime Minister Manmohan Singh has described the flooding as a national calamity.

Rising waters have swept away and drowned at least 75 people in Bihar state since June, the start of the monsoon season, said Prataya Amrit, secretary of the state's disaster management department.

Authorities have rescued nearly 140,000 people and put most of them in state-run relief camps, Amrit said.

The situation was getting worse because of heavy rain in the region and a Kosi river breach on the Nepalese side, Amrit said Saturday.

"We can't assess the extent of the damage. It is colossal," he said. "But we will only be able to tell the extent after the water recedes."

The Indian government has made more than $200 million available to combat monsoon flooding. Nearly 1,500 soldiers have boosted rescue efforts in Bihar state and air force helicopters were dropping food to hundreds of thousand of people stranded by the rampaging river.

India's monsoon season, which lasts from June to September, brings rain vital for the country's farmers but often also causes massive destruction.

Despite the rescue operations under way, officials in Bihar have warned that the real danger is still ahead.

When the swollen Kosi river burst its banks in Nepal just north of the Indian border, it changed course, flowing through a fresh channel 75 miles to the east that has no protective embankments.

The river traditionally swells to a flood peak in October.

In 2007, monsoon floods killed more than 2,200 people across South Asia and left 31 million others homeless, short of food or with other problems. The United Nations called last year's floods the worst in living memory.