crucial

Ground Zero, where Gautama aka the Buddha split the atom of human experience and realized with a deep and intrinsic wisdom that reality as we know it does not exist. It is inherently only space, and that space is indivisible from the appearances that manifest in it.

Actually that's the 2nd and 3rd turnings of the wheel of dharma. Physical and Mental Objects do not inherently exist, and furthermore the Nothingness is inseparable and identical to the Appearances that arise from that Nothingess. Which as we all now is what modern physics has determined. Eddies in the nothingess.

At Sarnath (near Varanasi/Benares), the Buddha teaches the first turning of the wheel of Dharma to Kraftwerk.

The first turning, the first lesson he decided we apes were capable of dealing with, was that all life, even the nice bits, are inherently suffering. And if we wouldn't get so hung up about it, and stop doing the wrong thing, and do the right thing, we'd be able to see clearly and make sensible decisions. But as it is, we're lost in our dreamland and our perceptions are clouded.

These lessons need to be learned first at the intellectual level, then at the social level, and then in meditation they are learned within our own experience at the physical, mental and psychic levels.

The Maha Bodhi temple itself is gorgeous. 200AD-600AD, cleaned up in 1800 and 1990s. Its very easy to go there any time of the day and just sit.

The bodhi tree is grown from a branch from a tree grown from a branch of the original. Which ahem... the muslims hacked to bits. But then Ashoka of India also had a go at it, but it grew back. Then he killed a lot of people, felt guilty, converted to buddhism and spread it all over India and Asia.

Pilgrims from all over, chanting, medtitating, prostrating. The tibettans, having no where else to go these days, spend a lot of time here. Initiation into the Vajryana path requires 100,000 prostrations, 100,000 mantras, 100,000 ritual stampings, and 100,000 mandala offerings. Some times they are down here (the laypersons in tracksuits!) putting in some extra prostrations after dusk.

Meanwhile, back here in Bihar, there are more beggars than pilgrims. Its a serious problem. Read on ... %beggar_bodh_gaya%.