LUMBINI


I got up in the morning and checked out of the hotel and met Raja in the lobby and we started off for Lumbini where Buddha was born. It is located in the town of Lumbini in the country north of India. On the map Nepal looks like a squashed pumkin. The last time I heard the country was run by their royal family and is not a democracy like India. Lumbini is about 173 kilometers from Kushinagar and it took about five hours to drive there. On the way it was the usual landscape; people all over the streets going about their daily activities. little boys squatting along the side of the road in the early morning snipping loafs and looking around. Men and boys cutting twigs from nim trees to clean their teeth with.





Raja honks at everything as we go along. He honks at people, sacred cows, lambs that wander in his path, cycle rickshaws, trucks, birds, and sometimes at nothing. Nothing stops him from getting to where he is going. His aim is to pass every vehicle and everything he encounters. He is a very driven man.





Late in the morning we stop for tea which has become the usual routine. After that we drove a little further and entered a little city that looked different. We found ourselves in a huge traffic jam. At first I didn't know what the reason for this was. Finally I asked Raja if we were at the India/Nepal border. He said we were. It was the border town by the name of Sonauli. The people there were the same as everyone else in India. By now it was raining lightly. Raja, the excellent driver he was weaseled his way in and out and between the large trucks at any opening he could find. We finally came to a stop at the end of a long line of Tata trucks. It seemed we were the only car there.





Suddenly there was a blondish, Nepali guy trying to help us out, or to put it truthfully he was looking for an opportunity to get some money. I couldn't understand what he and Raja were saying but I got the impression that he was telling Raja what to do next. Finally after a little search Raja found a place to park the car. I had to go to the Indian immigration office where I had to fill out two forms. Since I would be in Nepal for only one day I didn't have to pay the $35 for a three day visa. Next I had to go to the Nepali immigration office where I had to provide them with a picture of myself. Luckily when I got some pictures taken of myself back in the states the photography place provided me with some extra pictures. They came in handy. I produced a picture and they attached it to a legal document. My passport was stamped and I was on my way.





Raja also had to get his passport stamped in another building. There were many delays in the office he had to go through and it would take about an hour before we could get going so Raja suggested that I go to a nearby resturant and get some lunch. I went to the resturant but I wasn't hungry so I ordered tea. The blond headed Nepali guy helped me change some money so I wouldn't have to do it later. He was doing everything he could to try to be useful to me. Since I had some time on my hads I asked if there was an internet cafe around. I thought I could pass some time working on my blog. He took me to one which was not far away but their computers were down. Pretty soon this guy was trying to sell me brochures about Nepal. I refused to pay for them because I knew I could get things like this for free and also I had plenty of information about Nepal in my suitcase. We sat and talked for awhile longer and before we knew it the hour had gone by and we went outside to see if Raja had gotten through the line. The Nepali guy volunteered to go over and find out. He came back a few minutes later and said that he would be a few more minutes.





A few minutes later Raja emerged from the building. Lumbini is about 20 kilometers from the Indian border and about a forty minute drive. The road was much narrower then Indian roads but with just as much traffic. When two vehicles converged the smaller one had to pull over and let the larger one go by. It's one of the rules of the road.


Statue of Buddha near Lumbini After awhile we reached the outskirts of the holy site. It was all farm land with little shanty farmhouses dispersed here and there. Suddenly we turned left. Raja pointed out a statue of Buddha off the road quite a few meters away. He wanted to stop so I could take a picture. I told him to keep going that I could take a picture while we were moving. He slowed down a little and I took the picture.





He drove for a little bit more and then turned left at a crossroads where there were a couple run down buildings; a cafe and a couple other shops selling Buddhist memorabilia. Raja parked the car and we got out and went into the cafe.
The Buddha with many arms and many heads : Lumbini, Nepal

I sat down at one of the tables. Then someone came over an led me to another table where there was a ceiling fan over head. There were about five teenaged boys there. Some looked like regular Nepali people and a few were more Oriental looking. A few of them tried out their English on me.

The door of the cafe opened and in came some guy about twenty years old. He sat down next to me. I asked him if he was the guide. He said "possibly". Then Raja came in and asked him if he wanted to be the guide. The guy said "yes" so we went out and found a rickshaw driver and got on and the guy started to cycle us toward the gate across the street that led to the Buddhist site. After a quarter mile ride down a dirt road we reached the Hindu shrine where Siddartha was born who would later become the famous Buddha.

In the olden days the whole area around this place used to be a jungle made up of sal trees. The trees are gone now for the most part except for a few. Now it is a park where people from all over the world come and pay their respects to the founder of their religion.

Come to find out the guide didn't speak English too well, which was usually the case in the rural areas in this part of the world. But I was able to pick out a few key words that he was saying and figure out what he was trying to get across. I bought a ticket to get in. It was still raining slightly but the guide brought an umberella which he held over me when I took some pictures.

We had to take our shoes off before we were able to enter the shrine as is always the case in most holy shrines on this tour. Inside the building there were piles of bricks everywhere. They had been put there over the centuries by pilgrims to mark certain important places. Some of them had dates on them. We walked around to the most important spot of all. The place it is believed to be where Siddartha dropped out of his mother's womb. There is glass over the spot. I looked down and saw where the seven layers of bricks were stacked, just like the books I had read said, and the stone in the shape of a womb lay on top of them where King Asoka put it a hundred years after Buddha's death.

The guide pointed up to the base-relief stone carving of the scene that took place on this spot 2,500 years ago. It is high above the glass encased stack of bricks on a shelf leaning against a wall. It shows Siddartha's mother holding onto a branch of a sal tree and the baby Siddartha walking infront of her with attendants all around.

I noticed the bricks around the site had gold on them The guide said that when Buddhists from Thailand come to this site they bring gold leaf with them and rub it on the bricks. In time all the bricks would be gold and it would look like the shrines in their homeland.

After this we went outside to look at the pillar that King Asoka errected on the site during his lifetime. There is writing on the pillar in Sandskrit that says this is the place where Buddha was born. Then we walked around to the back of the building and took a look at the tank where Siddartha's mother took a bath just before going into labor. On the other side of the tank is an old tree that has Tibetan prayer flags streaming from it's branches. Legend says that after Siddartha became the Buddha he came back to his place of birth and meditated under this tree. Now it is a shrine and has a place cut into the trunk where people can put offerings of candles and incense.

As the story goes, when Queen Maya Devi, Saddartha's mother was almost full term with child she desired to see her parents and left her home in Kapilvastu. It was a two day journey by foot to Koshala where her parents lived. She was on her way to the Rohini River when she passed through the forest of sal trees in Lumbini. She stopped to take a bath in the nearby tank. She went into labor shortly after she got out of the tank and went over to a nearby sal tree and held onto one of its lower branches and gave birth to her child. After this event there are many stories, myths and legends that have been passed down through the ages on some of the supernatural things that happened after the birth of Siaddartha that I won't go into here.

Anyway Queen Naya Devi was one of two wives of Shuddhodan, the Skakya ruler. His other wife was her sister. She was 45 years old and this was her first child. After giving birth to the child she went back to her home in Kapilvastu. She died 9 days later. Siddartha was brought up by his aunt. This site in Lumbini is considered the holy of the holiest spot in the Buddhist world.

The birthplace of Siddartha who became Buddha After visiting the birth place of Buddha I checked into the Nirvana Hotel in the city of Lumbini which is a little distance from the holy site. While I was in Nepal I was anxious to try some of their vegaterian cuisine. This is what I ordered;

dal = thick vegatable sauce

mixed vegatables

spinach

curd = yogart

cucumbers

carrots and onions

There was regular nan and a hard bread which had the consistency of a taco shell. There was also some masala pickles that I could not aquire a taste for. It was filled with all kinds of spices that I didn't like. It rained the whole time we were in Nepal.

KAPILVASTU

Got up early at the Nirvana Hotel and went down to the dining room and had breakfast which consisted of a masala omlette, toast, butter, jam and cornflakes. After this I went out to the car and found Raja and we started off to the Indian border. When we got there we went through the regular formalities then proceeded into the interior of India for a few kilometers. We were on our way to the childhhod home of Saddartha. The name of the village where he grew up was called Kapilvastu. Later when I got home from this trip I found out there are two Kapilvastus. One in India and one in Nepal. Each claim that theirs is the place where Buddha grew up. Each has its reasons why and so forth and so on. But both will charge you money to get in and will not tell you about the other. You think you are seeing Buddha's childhood home but in the end no one really know where it is. It was destroyed off the face of the earth along time ago. As with many things now a days. Truth really means nothing, but money means everything. If you want to see Buddha's childhood home they are going to show it to you whether they know where it is or not. They will invent the place so you can go home and say you were there.

At some point we pulled off the main road and went down a regular asphalt road that looked like a side street. After awhile the road became a gravel road. Then after a few miles it became a dirt road. When we got to the area that the government of India calls Kapilvastu. We first went to a religious center where there were stupas and possibly the ruins of a monestary and other things. The guide who was there could not speak any English that I could make any sense of. There was a reader board that was written in English. One of these days I will dig out the picture I took of it and see what it says.

After looking over the area for a little while I got back in the car and we went down the road a little way and came to some more ruins. This was supposidly the actual house where Buddha grew up in and lived in til he was 29 years old. There was no guide there. Just Raja, and he couldn't answer my questions. I was looking for the eastern gate. I tried to ask Raja where north was, where east was, but he couldn't understand what I was saying. All he could do is guess at what I was asking and then give me an answer that didn't make sense.

Siddartha was brought up by his aunt and the household nursemaids since his mother died shortly after his birth. At the age of seven he started to meditate according to legend. This happened during the ceremony of the turning of the furrow which was performed annually in India and Nepal at the time. Since his father was the cheiftan of the district it was performed by him.

When Siddartha began his formal education he had to master sixty-four arts. This included spiritual disciplines as well as technical and athletic skills of war. His family was from the warrior class which is the second highest cast in the Hindu caste system. His family was Hindu so he was brought up reading and studying the Hindu scriptures such as the Vedas as well as other holy writings. He could not accept all the Hindu practices of his day and set out seeking the truth in these matters so he could eventually straighten some of these things out. He did not set out to start a new religion, but eventually that is what happened.

His father attempted to to bind Siddartha tighter to his earthly royal destiny by providing him with all things so that he could live in the lap of luxury and never desire to leave the confines of royal life.

Siddartha had other plans. One night when he was twenty-nine years old he secretly left the palace on his horse accompanied by one of his grooms. He left through the east gate and headed southeast going through three small kingdoms. After cutting his hair off he took a robe from a hunter and sent his princely clothes and horse back to the palace with his groom. The rest is history.

After looking at the ruins of Siddartha's childhood home for awhile we got in the car and started for Balrampur which was several kilometers away.