Buddha
was enlightened here, under the great bodhi tree. More than two
millennia later, the tree is still here - or rather, one of its
descendants, a cutting brought back from Sri Lanka, from a tree that
was itself a cutting of the original. The great Mahabodhi temple,
built a hundred years or more after Buddha's death, is still here -
or rather, the temple that replaced and expanded emperor Ashoka's
first building, and this temple itself much restored over the
centuries. Everything remains, yet nothing remains; a striking
illustration of the Buddhist tenets of impermanence and flux.
Bodh
Gaya attracts Buddhists from everywhere. There are Americans -
Californian New Age Buddhists who combine a meditation regime with an
Instagram account full of dakini pictures and requests for everything
with avocados; serious Koreans; slight Thai ladies who circumambulate
every stupa in sight and leave flowers; clusters of white-clad
Sinhalese Buddhists with their saffron-robed Venerables; Bhutanese
monks in robes the colour of dried blood; and stateless Tibetan
refugees who fly south here for the winter and return to Dharamsala
in the spring, men in dark tunics, women with brightly striped aprons
and crooked smiles.
All
of this gives Bodh Gaya another singular attraction; there are
monasteries here from most Buddhist nations, so that effectively you
can take a tour of Buddhist Asia in a single town.
I'd
already had a foretaste when I visited the Korean monastery in
Sarnath, a wonderful cool building with polished wooden floors where
I was welcomed courteously and shown the library. Sheltering from the
dry heat of the afternoon, I read up on temple etiquette; how to eat
"without attachment," holding the food bowl up to hide your
mouth as you eat. The detailed, precise usage of the four bowls
(balugongyang, "four bowls containing food"); one for rice,
one for soup, one for kimchi, one for water. The bowls are unwrapped
and laid out; the food is served, the water is served, the diners eat
in silence. At the end, each bowl in turn is cleaned with tea and a
piece of kimchi; the water in the smallest bowl is used to rinse the
other three, then tipped out, and the bowls are placed one inside the
other, and finally wrapped up in grey cloth to be put away. It is
orderly, frugal, respectful, simple. (And very Korean.)
Here
in Bodh Gaya I stayed in the Burmese monastery; simple, clean, and
full of extravagantly coloured cockerels. Huge pots simmered in the
kitchens, and the temple was a hotchpotch of fuchsia, lime green,
acid yellow, and robin's egg blue, a typically Burmese colour scheme.
The Buddha had a rich lipstick pink mouth and gloss porcelain ivory
skin.
But
in the Japanese temple (one of two) the Buddha was golden, huge,
flat-faced, inexpressive. The statue dominated the simple space, all
air and dim light and gleaming wood that had been planed to absolute
smoothness. Zen: economy of means, lightness of spirit.
I
grew to love my Burmese monastery. Unlike many Indian temples,
everything was clean, remarkably and truly clean. The toilets were
slushed down with water every five minutes, the kitchens were
spotless, the pots scoured bright every day, plates washed down with
huge amounts of water in the garden. I only stayed there three days,
which the monastery says is the maximum allowed; but an American in
another room said he'd been there a month, and was studying the
sutras, and "You can really stay as long as you like, if they
think you're serious."
Seriousness
may be in short demand, though. Later on, when I went to Rajgir and
stayed in the Burmese monastery there, one of the monks complained
about the pilgrims, who, he said, were just tourists with a Buddhist
veneer.
"Ten
years ago it was so difficult for our people to come," he told
me. "When a pilgrim came here, you knew he had really made an
effort, that it was important for him, that he was serious-minded.
Now it's so easy for them. They buy a ticket, they fly, they come in
a bus, they buy hats with silly messages and souvenir t-shirts, they
make noise in the monastery, they eat too much, they don't get up in
the morning, they treat it as a holiday, just a holiday."
While
Japanese and Korean monasteries value calm and simplicity, Tibetans
have a very different style. In one of the Tibetan compounds, a monk
with a wrinkled face and goofy smile played football with three
little boys; in another, little yapping white dogs with curled-over
tails like ostrich plumes ran about excitedly, trying to impress a
caretaker who regarded them with tolerant amusement. The Tibetan
temples glow with colour - warm reds, bright yellows, green, blue,
primary colours taken from a five year old's poster paint box in
incredible profusion. Every mandala, every halo of flames, multiplies
and complicates outlines, introduces new richness into what's already
a rich melange of colour and form. This is a world of thousands of
Buddhas, of flames and clouds, a universe deep and full and always
changing. Wrathful deities have extra arms, extensive rows of heads,
each head with extensive rows of fangs. The simplicity of Zen is cut
loose; in the phantasmagoria, every threat, every protector, every
thought has its deity, the struggles of the mind in meditation
enacted in a world of primal drama.
Compared
to this, the Sri Lankan temple feels like an outpost of the Ambridge
Mothers' Union, innocent and respectable. Piles of biscuits are
heaped in front of the Buddha as offerings (and the brands appear to
be a Sri Lankan selection, as India's love affair with Parle G
biscuits is not in evidence here), with flower arrangements and
cellophane-wrapped hampers. There's a celebration going on to
commemorate the relic of Buddha's tooth, and there are flowers
everywhere, and everyone is in white dresses and white suits.
The
Thai temple is readily recognizable, with its upturned eaves ending
with gilded, sinuous dragons. But there's no one there when I visit.
By contrast, the Bhutanese monastery is bustling; monks are hard at
work making butter sculptures, bringing in buckets of cold water, and
- in a corner - boiling kettles and making tea. Just one of them
speaks English, and tells me the preparations are all for tomorrow:
"Come and see us tomorrow at the big stupa," he instructs
me.
So
I turn up, and they are all there, sitting on the platforms facing
the temple, with all their butter sculptures set up on an ornate
altar in front. They're chanting at breakneck speed from the
scriptures; a pair of great trumpets blasts bass harmonies which roar
and growl under the chanting, while oboes squeal and bleat, and all
the while the front row of six drummers set the pace, with a
rainstorm of red drumsticks on taut skin. The music is savage and
unrelenting. And suddenly, there is silence.
It's
break time. Monks who have sat immobile for an hour stretch, then
turn to each other to chat; two young boys carry round a teapot. The
English-speaking monk leans over and gives me tsampa, which is like
Rice Krispies rolled in butter, and motions the lads to pour me tea,
rich and buttery and oily in the mouth. A minute later, the boys are
collecting up the teacups and the drums crash into action, and here
we go again.
There's
a Bangladeshi monastery here, too. It's a big, rectangular room, with
three cusped arches at one end, and prayer mats. It feels like a
mosque, only in what might have been a mihrab there's a small Buddha.
And
there are Hindus. (In fact, the governing body of the Mahabodhi
temple has a majority of Hindus on the board.) Which may seem strange
till you remember Buddha is claimed as an avatar of Vishnu, and so he
is worshipped here in a slightly different way, and long-haired,
bearded sadhus mingle with the shaven Buddhist monks and nuns. So
even while I'm touring Asia in Bodh Gaya, I'm well aware that I'm
still in India, still within the Hindu mainstream.
***
I
missed one thing in Bodh Gaya though. My mini tour of Asia showed me
a lot of styles, a lot of ways of living, even quite a few different
cuisines. What it didn't show me, in this very poor state of Bihar,
was the immense contribution of Buddhist charitable work. One of the
Japanese temples runs a kindergarten and a free medical centre;
another Buddhist organisation treats leprosy cases. Compassion isn't
just a nice feeling but a goad to practical work. (That's why
bodhisattvas exist; beings which have deferred Buddhahood in order to
help suffering sentient beings.) I found out about all this later.
And
everywhere in India that there are Buddhists, there are Tibetans.
There are hard-as-nails Tibetan women who are the world's most expert
and persistent bargainers; no merchant in the Istanbul spice bazaar,
no insurance or double glazing salesman, would last a minute against
their skills and obstinacy. There are monks. There are wizened old
men in chubas and young men
in jeans and Ray-Bans who run momo
stalls and have grubby photos of the Dalai Lama pinned up in the
corner. These are the
Tibetans who fled their country when the Chinese took over - some
more recently - and their children and even grandchildren, all
stateless till, very recently, the High Court in Delhi ordered the
government to give those born in India full nationality. That
makes Bodh Gaya, in one of its incarnations, a huge refugee camp.
***
There
is always more to a place than you see. I started with a tour of the
picturesque that was perhaps little more than visiting 'France en
Miniature' or Legoland
Windsor; I ended up with a tour of the human heart. Bodh Gaya is at
the same time everything I had expected, and a huge surprise. I
wonder if it's like that for everyone.
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