The One with the Missing Bodhi Tree

Ancient temple ruins.

On Sunday the group did a day trip to Sarnath, the city where Buddha gave his first teaching. First we went to see the Dhamek Stupa, the spot of deer park where Buddha gave his first sermon after enlightenment. There were groups of Buddhists doing meditation and prayer and overall it was just beautiful and green.  The environment was very peaceful and I really enjoyed looking at the ruins of ancient Buddhist and Jain temples.  The actual Stupa dates from approximately 200 BCE and is over 120 feet tall. There are no entrances into the Stupa so no one actually knows what is inside.  I decided it could be a great location for some sort of murder mystery book- Da Vinci Code -esque. On the edge of the compound there was a deer park. I was excited to see them originally but they just looked really sad and contained. I guess the standards for "zoos" must be different around the world, because the area was super small and not really set up for all of the deer. We had an interesting talk with Sanghamitra (our Indian group leader) about religious acceptance in India. I found it really interesting that many Indian Hindus really appreciate Buddhism but are very prejudiced against Muslims. She was telling us some of the history behind the religious tension but also explained how it shows up in today's society, especially in politics.

The group!

Just a bit of irony....

Inside of Sri Lankan Monastery

After Deer Park we went to the Sri Lankan monastery to see the Bodhi tree grown from the cuttling of the real Bodhi tree in Bodh Gaya. I am excited to see the real one next week on our mediation retreat! We went into the temple, which was beautifully painted of scenes from Buddha's life. After that we went into this decorated compound that had large plaques in different languages (for some reason I couldn't find English) and different golden carvings. Lillian turns to me and asks "what are we supposed to be looking at in here" and I was like "I have no idea... but I think after we are going to see the Bodhi tree". Annie then informed us that the Bodhi tree was directly in front of us, but we had just assumed it was part of the greenery. 

The "Missing" Bodhi Tree

We all laughed and then I took the obligatory photographs of the tree. It made me think about how important it is to stay informed about what I am seeing and how it is important to Indian culture and history. Often when we see so many things I let myself get complacent with just looking and taking a few pictures instead of really figuring out what the place is and its' significance. I am going to try and focus on doing some more research on Bodh Gaya before we leave for our retreat on Saturday. 

We also had a really nice home-cooked lunch and visited a really cool Thai monastery. We got to hear the monks there practice some sort of chant with all sorts of musical instruments. It was really cute because most of them were just small kids who looked adorable in their robes. At the end wen everything was silent and the sounds from the drums were echoing in the huge hall one of the little kids burped really loudly and all of the other monks started laughing really hard.  The kid's face was absolutely priceless and I loved the fact that all of these monks who present themselves as so serious were just laughing about this. It was a nice reminder that people are people regardless of how different their lives are. Overall the day trip was really fun and I appreciated the opportunity to get out of hectic Varanasi to spend time somewhere more peaceful.

Lillian, Me, and Nikki in front of a mural at the Thai monastery