The place where the Buddha left this world

Today we stayed at Kushinagar where the temple commemorating the maha parinirvana (Sanscrit for his disappearance into nirvana) is situated.

It is again a well kept beautiful place where we could do our prayers and enjoy our meditation.

People of all countries in Asia were circumambulating the enormous stupa. We were considered a special sight I concluded by the fact that we were being photographed by many. We created again a small altar and did our prayers.

It was not only people that were interested and kind to us. Also the animals were seeking love and connection.

In the afternoon we had dinner in a small indian restaurant called Yama restaurant. Now you have to know that Yama is the god of death (he is the one that holds the wheel of life in his claws and fangs, as you can see in the preceeding blog). They were very kind and the owner knew Den Haag because his sister lived there. The food was good, but they had to goshopping first after taking our orders, so we stayed about two hours there, no arguing with Yama. After that we went to the temple commemorating Buddha’s parinirvana.

There a statue of the Buddha is lying down inthe posture he died in. We read part of the Maha Parinirvana Sutra. But we were regularly interrupted by large groupsof people carrying a large blanket. That was intended to be put over the reclining statue.

So our lama had bought also a gold embroidered blanket of the proper size and we circumambulated the temple with it to finally place it inside on top of all the other blankets.

It was almost closing time and when we were finished the monks started to collect all the offerings of the day. That turned out to be a lot. All the food and all the blankets were collected and carried out by two strong monks. At least nothing goes to waste here.

After that Eric and I went to look for some somosa’s and some fruits for our dinner. We stopped to have some real Indian Chai (tea with lots of milk and sugar). We had a discussion with an Indian tour guide who presented himself as a Doctor in Philosophy (a so called PhD). We had a short discussion on the god concept in Buddhism. He knew quite well what he was talking about. It was a gratifying meeting.