Bodobodur at Sunrise
Visiting the largest Buddhist temple in the world
We woke up at 4:30am. It was quiet and dark, with but a few lights and footsteps on the street. We were heading out for the day to visit two of the most magnificent Buddhist and Hindu temples in Asia — Borobudur and Prabanam.
We arrived just as the sun was starting to rise. The sun rays trickled in through the trees and made beautiful, long shadows on the meadow.
Borobudur was one of the most spectacular things I’ve ever seen. It is located in an elevated area between two twin volcanoes, Sundoro-Sumbing and Merbabu-Merapi, and two rivers, the Progo and the Elo, as well as rich soil in between.
It is the world’s largest Buddhist temple and one of the greatest Buddhist monuments in the world. It has been recognized by UNESCO as a world heritage site, and huge efforts went in to restore and conserve the monument in 1975 and 1982. The monument is both a shrine to the Buddha as well as a place for Buddhist pilgrimage, which still occurs today annually, and also used for the Indonesian celebration of Vesak.
The temple was abandoned for centuries under volcanic ash and moss. The reasons for abadonment remain unclear, but superstition says that the temple was cursed with bad luck and misery, after a few volcanic eruptions.
The temple was designed in Javanese Buddhist architecture, reflecting both Indonesian practice of ancestor worship with the Buddhist belief in nirvana or moksha — “in the Buddhist context nirvana refers to the imperturbable stillness of mind after the fires of desire, aversion, and delusion have been finally extinguished. In Hindu philosophy it is the union with the divine ground of existence Brahman and the experience of blissful ego-lessness.” (Wikipedia)
As soon as I read this idea of being released from the suffering of having ego and karma. I practiced moksha during my difficult years in college in Vancouver, and found that it became a sanctuary for me to reach stillness of the mind and reach a state of bliss that was outside of my body and mind.
Visiting Borobudur gave me this similar state of being — this weightlessness, being taken out of my body and mind, this stillness and state of awe. Surrounding Borobudur was lush, wild jungle forests rumbling with birds and insects. Beyond that, were active volcanoes with smoke coming up like a steaming pot of water.
