Varanasi Six

This time we took Rohit’s nephew and another friend of his with us. We hopped in an auto rickshaw, which took us to a town just outside of Varanasi. Our next stop was one of the four holy places in Buddhism, the site where the Buddha give his first sermon to his disciples. It was amazing to think that I was walking on the same ground that Buddha had walked on around four thousand years ago.



There were several temples in a row. The first we visited was a large stone temple with two smaller towers in the front and a larger one in the back. Of course we had to take our shoes off and the stone paving blocks outside the temple were blisteringly hot. We quickly hopped into the main structure. It was a large rectangular room, with a high ceiling. The far end had a railing sectioning off the back portion of the hall in which a statute of the Buddha sat on a raised platform surrounded by flowers, and other ornaments. Apparently there was a silver casket involved in which were relics, but I was not quite sure where that was, or what was in it. An elaborate painting detailing the Buddha’s life covered the other three walls. It was done by a Japanese artist and it was interesting to see the combined influence of Japanese and Indian art in the painting.

We went outside, Melody and I once more hopping over the burning stones while our Indian friends walked across it coolly. There was a side structure and we initially thought we had to go there barefoot. Melody and I set out bravely. I was thinking about those people who walk over beds of hot coals. Then we passed from the shade of the temple to the stones that were being directly heated by the sun, and we both immediately hobbled back to our shoes.

Luckily for us we found out that we could go into the next area wearing shoes, we just couldn’t walk on certain raised stones. This area was a sort of courtyard surrounding a Bodhi tree. This was the exact area the Buddha apparently gave his first sermon and the tree was apparently a descendant of that original tree. We weren’t allowed to walk on the stones directly surrounding the tree but it was amazing just to be there. I feel extremely fortunate that I, not even a Buddhist, have been able to see such a holy place, while I’m sure that there are millions of Buddhists who would give anything to be there.



The next building in the row was a temple dedicated the Buddha and the Fifth Buddha. Just as Christians believe in the return of Christ, and the Jews believe in a coming messiah, the Buddhists believe in a return of Buddha know as the Fifth Buddha among other things. The temple was a small building with a slightly Japanese design and two identical gold Buddha statues, one, which was supposed to represent the original Buddha, and the other representing the Fifth Buddha.



There was one final structure that we looked at in the strip. It was a large stone tower, almost utterly unadorned, vast and mountainous, seated on a green lawn. Apparently some parts of the Buddha’s body are interred there.