Visiting Bodh Gaya in Perennial 1975

“Bodh Gaya is, in reality, little more than a shantytown.  At first visitors tend to be shocked and stunned by the dust, dirt, beggars & poverty they find there – although in recent years the situation has been slowly improving (unfortunately).

“Once you leave the madness and chaos of the town and enter the inner circle of the Mahabodhi Temple, the atmosphere suddenly becomes so potent, it’s as if you fall into a dreamlike trance.”

-Dzongsar Jamyang Khyentse

Writing about the long ago visit (I haven’t been back there since) is, despite appearances, not a trip down memory lane.  All it does, is bringing to light pure presence.  It doesn’t retell ‘something that happened years ago’; it evokes the ‘forever in’ – however which way we care to define ‘in’ (which we’d actually better not do).  From our original full vision, the past-present-future grid could very well turn out to be a much less reliable method of orientation than assumed.  It is at best provisional.  What could possibly exist or manifest outside the 'now', which itself does not even constitute a point in time.

In 1975, Bodh Gaya definitely isn’t a shantytown.  It rather presents itself as a sleepy, dreamy village, & very charming.  It’s not dirty, but fundamentally clean, in the dusty Indian way that is primordially clean, not just Mr. Clean or Mr. Proper clean.  In 1975, even the dust in India can be clean.  Mind you, this is the time before plastic packaging.  So, no garbage, none whatsoever anywhere in the country of birth of the past, present & future Buddhas!  Whatever you can throw away after you’re through with your snack or tea or meal is biodegradable.

Nothing much going on in Bodh Gaya either: no throng of elevated lamas, no other kinds of VIPs visiting, no guesthouses, no cheap hotels, no busy dharma scene, no bustling crowds, no hawkers, hardly any beggars other than the few who are wearing orange robes (and are genuine).  And this although I am here in peak pilgrimage season, around the full moon of February, arriving shortly before and leaving shortly thereafter… 

It feels wonderful to arrive in Gaya station on a madly overcrowded local train from Varanasi at around 7 or 8 in the morning, and to take my seat on a bicycle riksha to Bodh Gaya like enthroned on a throne, backpack at the feet.  In 1975, almost all of India still exudes this uniquely & alluring Indian fragrance, a mixture of dried, leaves, cow dung & a faint whiff of beedi smoke.   There must be millions of more ingredients that make the air smell the way it does, but I can’t name them.  India is so rich, too rich for words.  Anyway, this fragrance is like a promise of many other sensory pleasures that are also possible.  In 1975, in a very different way, India holds such promises and dispenses them to those willing to receive.

And thus, on a fine February morning of this very year, I am pedaled to Vajrasana on a dirt road by a dark skinned man with wiry calf muscles,… I inhale, in almost a lustful way, the fragrance of India, while exhaling the stale breath of Frankfurt & Moscow airport.  Naturally, only a kilometer or so after leaving the station, Gaya ends and we are riding through open fields, which remain open almost all the way to the stupa. Imagine!

Where to stay in Bodh Gaya?  I have no clue as no Lonely Planet guide exists to tell me.  I reach the Bodhi Tree, look around at a few monasteries (they are indeed very few & they have guest rooms or dorms).  But eventually I decide to instead take up residence on the camp bed of a tea stall, in direct view & located about 30 yards from the Bodhi Tree; that is from the place, where the Buddha (in a manner of speaking) keeps sitting and keeps discovering the Middle Path, this day as much as any other.  Yes, it is plain to see, plain as daylight that HE does, even now. 

In 1975, no outside barrier has been erected yet to separate me, or anyone, from the tree, or from the Buddha under it.  Not many people show up either.  They do come in trickles, irregular intervals. The only constant fixture is a young Tibetan man who is doing prostrations on a prostration board at a mad pace.  He himself tells me that he is doing over 3,000 per day in order to complete the 100,000 within the month he has off his job.  He starts way before sunup & finishes after sundown.  His wife brings him snacks, tea & three meals, every day.  I admire his devotion & stamina.  He looks very healthy, inside & out.

DJKR is right in what he writes, when I enter the actual temple and prostrate my way all around it, “the atmosphere is so potent, it is as if I fall into a dreamlike trance.”  But then, it also quite feels like waking up after a thousand years or more of fitful slumber, or like taking a shower under a mountain spring.  Is it life changing when I do these prostrations for more than one round, of course?  I wonder.  I am wondering…. But then, who is this that is doing such kind of wondering? And where from does the idea of merit come in, in all of this.  Pure magic must have inherent merit & radiate it outward like the sun radiates light & warmth, isn't it? 

 
The locals are all very charming & innocent, or so they seem  The tea stall charges 10 Rupees for the bed per night, & the owner keeps an eye on the bag pack when I am out exploring.  10 Rupees go a long way in 1975. Anyway, it feels like nobody would steal anything under the shadow of this tree.  Really.  These are still the perennial days.

Amusingly annoying & repetitive (from my imagined western superiority complex point of view) discussions unfold with some Indian folks my age, “Why does Jackie Kennedy marry this Mr. Onassis, which is not a nice thing to do for a widow, especially one of a President?”  “How many brothers and sisters do you have?” “How come you are not married at your age?”  “Is it really true that one can have sex in the west, without being married?”  When I answer, they seriously think I am boasting.  And when I on occasion speak broken Hindi thanks to my tutor back at Marburg University, their national pride is flattered.

But in the background, there is always the tree. 

I am not feeling so special about the tree all the time, or devotional in a fussy preoccupied way.  But the whole situation is, special, I mean, imbued with sacredness.  No reason to feel small, though.  No reason to feel big, either. Vajrasana is the most natural of places, as Shakymuni is the most natural of people, far more natural than the way we normally are.  This is the overall & lasting impression that the visit imprints in the mindstream.  Nothing can change it.  Shakyamuni is, embodies the natural state of being.  To inborn & outer naturalness, we bow.

Not too far away from my privileged residence, there is also the newly erected Japanese temple, which richly smells of the sandal, so lavishly used for the woodwork inside. The place is a feast for all the senses.  Zen doesn’t seem to be so austere after all.  But we are in India, and India can be such a sensuous place. 

The Thai monastery leaves my heart unmoved.  It is just esthetically beautiful.  The whiff of liberation appears to be off on a stroll elsewhere, however.  But such are momentary, fleeting & in a way meaningless thoughts, not judgments.  They don’t last, they don’t leave any trace.

I do many Vajra Guru mantras putting my recently acquired mala to good use.  I chant Tatyatha Om Muni Muni Maha Muni Shakyamuniye Svaha, half out loud & also silently, completely inwardly directed.  But what is inside?  What is outside?  It is not that I am pondering such questions in any ponderous way.  They reverberate from up deep in a totally open manner.  They are the ground, not just the background noise. And the ground is so fundamental, it doesn't beg for a direct answer.

I also do the 100 syllables of Vajrasattva, many times.  I invoke Manjushri, many times as Manjushri seems to resonate with me, or I with him.  Whatever practice arises and flows through, I don’t even ask myself once, “Is this the right thing to do, at this place?”  “Or should I be doing something else?”  It all seems to be doing itself, although I am also clearly the doer.  Or am I?  I do more prostrations & then get illumined by innumerable butter lamps after sunset on the full moon night. How beautifully touching in an otherworldly way, but right in this world.

Under the Bodhi Tree, I am indeed having the time of my young life even though I can have the time of my young life in many different ways & at many different places, not always permeated by holy murmur – but nevertheless pure in whatever which way it presents itself.  There is this knowingness speaking without uttering a sound that leaves no doubt.  Whence does it come?  Don't know, don't know!  This irrepressible knowingness, it is such a gift.  

One day, a slightly older & definitely more sophisticated and seasoned practitioner than I, from Argentina shares chai with me at the stall.  We connect in this carefree manner that only the young or the young at heart can spontaneously enact.  He tells me about Khamtrul Rinpoche & the Lama Dances at Tashi Jong. 

When I am hearing him speak, I am fired up.  Again, I am ‘in’ & I am ‘on’.

As Tarthang Tulku later emphatically stresses in a personal meeting in 1984, “Khamtrul Rinpoche’s bodhichitta is second to none, his bodhichitta is vast.”  Tarthang then keeps talking about Khamtrul in the present tense, and for quite a while, although ‘my’ Khamtrul VIII, the one we are talking about, is deceased by then.  Tarthang's use of the present tense despite the fact, however, is so obviously intentional that even a dull person such as myself can notice the subtle nuance.  Khamtrul's bodhichitta is ever-present.  All good heart pure intentions are ever-present.

Thanks to the Bodhi Tree, this marvelous bodhichitta can touch & suffuse this bodymind already in perennial 1975.  But this is another story.



PS: I have my own reasons not to use the HE & HH honorifics at the appropriate spaces and for the same reasons don't add the title Rinpoche every time when I write the name of a holy Guru-Lama.  Rest assured that it is not done of of disrespect, but paradoxically, very much out of respect.