Rude Awakenings - Forest Sangha Publications

^0 L E AV I N G H O M E 06take around the holy places were to offer on their behalf. I felt like I wasbringing it all back home, back to the domain of the Buddha. Undertakingthe pilgrimage on behalf of others, as well as having the devotionaltheme of making offerings to the shrines, enriched the aspirationbehind the pilgrimage and elevated its perspectives. I held my deadfather in my heart, as well as my aged mother; my Sangha family werethere too.The lodging didn’t come up to the artist’s renderings of the futurepilgrims’ accommodation at Lumbini. Accommodation was a twostoreyblock of rooms—about a dozen in all, wooden floored, withscraps of mosquito screens on glassless windows, a couple of woodenplankbeds, and sporadic electricity. Mosquitoes would have to be blindand geriatric not to be able to find their way through the gaps in thescreen. The room was small and crude, but Bhante’s assistant was keenand responsive, his favourite phrase, “No problem.” Finding some bedding,he flicked a brush over the floor and even gave us a lock for whenwe left the room.I think I was trying too hard to be inspired; Nick had a much lightertime of it in Lumbini. When the afternoon cooled a little we wanderedaround the ruins behind the temple: Queen Maha Maya’s temple—fromwhich strings of Tibetan prayer flags radiated out to the trees in theimmediate vicinity—the “tank,” that is, a manmade rectangular pondfor bathing, the Ashokan pillar with the inscription from 250 C.E., andsome votive stupas from later periods. That was about it. We walkedaround it in ten minutes and then did it again more carefully to rake outwhatever inspirational gems we could. Queen Maha Maya’s temple wasa small Hindu temple presided over by a Brahmin priest wearing a dhotiand ochre and white body paint. The shrine inside the temple centreson a stone tablet from the Gupta period (say fourth century C.E.) thatdepicted Maha Maya, the Buddha’s mother, standing and holding on toa branch of a tree while her baby emerges from her side and devout heavenlybeings look on. The innards of the temple are lit by oil lamps and4 5