On Saturday, our team had the opportunity to visit the nearby city of Bodh Gaya, India where Buddha received his "enlightenment" and Buddhism was born about 2500 years ago. We were able to visit 4 of the 10 local monasteries, each one for a different country (incl. Nepal, Thailand, etc.) Each monastery had a main chapel that was open to the public– an area for worship/ prayer/ meditation with narrative murals & idols such as Buddha statues. After visiting the monasteries & the Great Buddha Statue (a 45 foot tall structure), we continued on to the main attraction Mahabodi Mahavaihara (Land of Enlightenment). This area included the bodhi tree where Buddha sat for three days before receiving his enlightenment and then for an additional week meditating. A large temple sits immediately in front of this area. Buddha apparently stayed on this site for a total of seven weeks in meditation, moving to a hill for the second week where he stared at the bodhi tree and meditated without blinking. The third week was spent walking back and forth along a small area adjacent to the bodhi tree in meditation.
While at the Land of Enlightenment, we saw many devotees who spend hours, days, and weeks on site in prayer and meditation. Some of the meditation rituals are extremely intense, consisting of routines that involve sliding on one's hands into push-up position and back into standing position– they do this in reps of 200-300 times facing the temple, believing that it will remove their sin. Many monks and devotees including young boys camp out on site for weeks at a time practicing such rituals.
I had always associated Buddhism with peace, love and happiness, but this day in Gaya definitely sent me away with a different perspective– I guess you could say I received an enlightenment of my own (a sad one). I saw and felt a side of spiritual darkeness that I didn't know existed in Buddhism; the spooky murals of demonic scenes at the monasteries, physically painful rituals, and desperation in the eyes of the devotees– so hungry for a love that I don't believe idols or repetitious physical routines will bring– left me feeling sadness in my heart for these people. I can only hope and pray that each one of those people, who I believe to all be children of the one and only God, have the opportunity to come to know him and the love that is available to them through a relationship with Jesus.
Great Buddha Statue main temple at Land of Enlightenment (inside temple)
