The bird was obviously a male, with a blue and green iridescent tail, several feet long, trailing behind. It walked with its head bobbing as if to music that it heard on invisible headphones. I followed it till it left the path and turned around a corner of the building, and I saw a low brick wall next to the structure. The peacock flew up and landed on the wall, and in a matter of minutes it flew upward again and landed on the slanted roof of the hotel room. I took photos, meanwhile, including two of the peacock in flight. Soon the bird disappeared as it strutted away on the roof.
Walking on bare feet damp with dew, I returned to the hotel room. “I stalked the peacock,” I told Erika. She later quoted me and said I “looked like an egret creeping up on a trout.” I gargled three lids of mouthwash, due to my congestion, and coughed up some phlegm before heading out for the meditation practice. Despite my search for Sherry’s room the evening before, I hadn’t spotted the temple, and I expected the sangha to meet up in the lobby, but nobody was there. I asked at the front desk, and a woman in Nepalese dress led me to the bridge-like walkway that crosses the courtyard, and straight in front of us, on the other side of the walkway, was a little brick-walled temple where the sangha had gathered. I thanked the employee profusely, feeling silly for not noticing the temple’s location before, and sneaked in a few minutes late. I put down my mat and cushion and sat near the entrance.
The brick walls curved into a circle, and the floor was also brick. To the right was a simple shrine, a square niche in the brick wall with a black Buddha statue centered in it. Shantum had already started guiding the meditation. Between my lateness and my cough, I didn’t have the most wonderful concentration on my breath, and I had to start meditating over and over again. I self-consciously tried to suppress my cough so that it wouldn’t disturb the other meditators. When we got up, we mindfully walked from the temple, across the courtyard, and to the dining room for breakfast.
2
The sangha came to a gate leading to a long, long path; we seem to do that fairly frequently. Jagdish took care of our entrance fees at a small square building on our right, and we walked up the long path. We were out in the country and saw countless trees and bushes on either side of the path. We encountered a minimum of begging children, who as Feroza pointed out, could play in the lovely weather and in the beautiful rural setting. In addition to the trees and bushes, we espied a lake on our right, and toward the end of the trail we came to many merchants’ tents on our left and a red and white Tibetan temple on our right, partially hidden by the trees. Finally we reached a sign for the garden where Mayadevi gave birth to the Buddha on the way to her parent’s house. The sign said:MAYADEVI TEMPLE BIRTH-PLACE OF LORD BUDDHA.
An extensive grassy lawn with scattered trees lay ahead of us. We moved across the lawn to an asok tree, where Shantum posed as Mayadevi grasping a tree branch like an ancient Indian tree goddess, as legend claims she did when she gave birth to the Buddha. The asok tree has dark, long and skinny leaves with curling edges; the sakya tree has a leaf of basically the same shape but smooth, without crinkling edges. After Shantum showed us each tree and identified them, I picked up a leaf from the ground under each.
We walked from the trees to a plain brick block, I mean building, which is rather nondescript and made of red brick with a cupola-like white square centered on top; on the white surface are painted Nepali-style Buddha eyes looking out on the world. That was the only pretty thing about the facade. On a far side of this building we came to another Ashoka pillar.
As we stood looking at the Rummendei Pillar, placed in the garden by Emperor Ashoka, Shantum explained that the message carved into the pillar says that Ashoka exempted the people of Lumbini from eight percent tax, because the Buddha was born there. The pillar dates from about 200 BCE. It is broken in half and a small black metal fence surrounds the pillar, not improving its photogenic quality, although I took several pictures anyway. Behind it is a long narrow metallic stand holding burning candles as offerings.
It took me a while to notice a rough stone lying by the pillar; it was the capital that has fallen off and has also been weather-beaten over the centuries, so that I couldn’t tell what it was supposed to be. It was curved and sort of shaped like a loaf of sandwich bread. Perhaps it originally had been a lion.
Next time I’m in London, I’ll go to Trafalgar Square, look up at Nelson’s column, and say, “I didn’t know Emperor Ashoka traveled all the way to London! Does this column mark the Tube station where the Buddha delivered a powerful speech that inspired hundreds of Britons to shave their heads and don yellow robes? Or is this where the Buddha climbed onto a double-decker bus?”
The temple now looks like an archeological site. We went inside the protective red brick building and saw the ruins of the Mayadevi Temple, around which we walked on a wooden bridge or catwalk along the edges of the room and bridging out through the middle of the room. The remains consist primarily of crumbly, beige brick and some square ditches that must indicate small rooms. I had to resist walking faster and kept glancing toward the bridge in the center of the building, because lots of people stopped there to admire something important.
When I reached that focal point, I saw that a tall brick wall stands in the center of the building, and looking up at a high point of this wall, I saw a much worn red stone image of Mayadevi giving birth to the Buddha from her side. She stands in a graceful and slightly leaning pose, just as earlier tree goddess figures stood, such as the large yakshi statue we saw at the Patna Museum. Below the plaque, little squares of gold plate liberally gilded the tall brick wall.
Looking down from the walkway, I saw a stone about a foot long behind a glass plate, in the floor. While we still hovered around the pillar, Shantum had explained that this stone, found at the site, is believed to mark the location of the Buddha’s birth.
We perambulated in hushed silence indoors, and after we went back out and slipped on our shoes with an absence of hushed silence, we followed Shantum past ancient brick ruins that included some tubular shapes, no doubt the remains of small stupas. Overhead was strung a riotous burst of color in the form of countless Tibetan prayer flags; they were apparently tied at each end to trees that were very far apart, so either they were particularly long strings, or someone tied normal strings of flags together to make longer strings. We walked around a big tank of green water where Mayadevi is said to have bathed before giving birth, and where I stopped to look at turtles. The Buddha’s mother was probably somewhat anxious to get to her mom’s house and not so interested in watching amphibians.
On the far side of the tank stood a huge and impressive old bodhi tree with Tibetan prayer flags tangled in its wide-spreading branches. I let a silly smile take over my face when I looked at this enormous, gnarly tree. In an ample niche of the tree trunk was a shrine, which included some sort of square carved structure painted bright red, a great deal of red powder paint, and some marigolds and burning candles. The old tree was seemingly made of ropes of whitish-brown bark that formed dramatic nooks, like upside-down triangles, in the trunk. In another nook of the tree, Natalie sat meditating between huge roots, the way I imagine the Buddha sat under the bodhi tree at Bodh Gaya. A mass of red, yellow, blue, white, orange and turquoise prayer flags hung so near that some of them must have brushed the top of her head.
I walked past Natalie and the tree and headed in the same direction as the rest of the sangha, toward two sizable trees each surrounded by a circular wooden bench. We sat at these benches and admired the many colorful Tibetan prayer flags overhead. This is such a soothing, peaceful, and happy place. Two stray dogs, craving companionship like most of those we’ve encountered previously, hung out with us. Shantum told us stories about the Buddha, his mother Mayadevi, and Lumbini.
Shantum explained that the ruins we just explored inside the Nepalese red brick building, the construction of which, I would like to point out, was not a stellar moment in the history of architecture, are ruins of the original temple, dating back to the third to seventh century CE. The bridge crosses the center, and Shantum now reviewed the part about the stone supposedly marking where the Buddha was born: it’s down below the walkway and inside a glass cabinet, and below the worn plaque of Mayadevi giving birth.
Shantum told us about Siddhartha’s birth, which is typically described in supernatural terms, but it certainly did take place here in Lumbini Grove, where Mayadevi was traveling on her way to her parent’s house; in India it is traditional to give birth at the maternal home. However, I’m reluctant to believe that the Buddha was born out of Maya’s side or that he walked shortly after birth and lotus flowers appeared in his footsteps.
Both Shantum and Jennifer were vocal about not liking attempts to deify the Buddha, and I certainly agree. The Buddha taught that he was a human being and stressed that anyone can achieve enlightenment. Shantum said, “Supernatural birth devalues birth, and women, in general.” And I might add it comes up a lot in male hero tales, such as Cuchulain and Jesus. No doubt this is one of those things that didn’t appear in mythology until patriarchy came along about five thousand years ago.
Shantum proceeded to tell us stories about the Buddha’s childhood and early years, up to the time that he left his wife Yasodhara and his newborn son, Rahula. Meanwhile, I hear whimsical birdcalls. The trees under which we sit are full of Tibetan prayer flags and talkative birds, and the two dogs lie on the dry yellow grass.
While we still sat under the trees, a couple of Nepalese men, one of whom was extremely old, came along and spoke with Mukesh and Shantum, who smilingly gestured and said to us, “The Buddha’s grandfather.” Shantum explained to the visitors where we are from and translated that the old man, who is almost ninety years old, said, “He’s very fortunate to come into our presence.” He was an old Nepalese man in an off-white dhoti and kurta, light green scarf, and sunglasses.
Buddha’s grandfather said this was the site of a goddess shrine, where people used to sacrifice animals, according to legend. The locals believed it was a goddess here and only later found out it was the Buddha. Shantum said, “A goddess is right because it is a temple to his mother, Mayadevi.” It’s a mother goddess power place; no wonder it feels so good here!
“It is very nice that people like to come here, we bring it good karma,” the old man said, and Shantum translated again.
“The local monastery supplies employment, and the price of land goes up,” Shantum said. “The old man is from here, and the guy with him is from India, a friend, and a father of his son-in-law. He is wearing his best clothes.”
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