Lumbini, Maya Devi Temple

January 22nd, 2008

I climbed off the bus in the misty morning, unsure which way to go.

Across the road, I noticed an arch over the secondary road leading off into the thick mist. I couldn't see far enough down the road to see where it lead, but the people I saw walking down it seemed like the pilgrimage type. As I got close enough to the arch to see it clearly, I could make out the Buddha eyes on the small stūpa at the top and could read, LUMBINI: THE FOUNDATION OF WORLD PEACE. I knew I was in the right place. 

Up ahead, I could just make out the faint image of a temple and thought that must be the Maya Devi temple, but as I got up to it, I saw that it was actually the Tibetan monastery  but a very beautiful building. 

Once I made it through the ticket office and to the site of the Mahadevi Temple, I was actually disappointed by the sight of the temple. It looked more like an old, red brick school house than a temple, except it had a stūpa on top with the Buddha's eyes looking out in four directions. There are supposed to be plans for a grander monument, but for now, this humble one will have to do.

The grounds were covered in interesting brick formations and the foundations of ancient ruins. I walked around the side of the temple to see Emperor Ashoka's pillar, which marked the site as the birthplace of the Buddha with an inscription. It was with the help of this inscription that this place was discovered to be the Buddha's birthplace. There was a small assembly of monks around the pillar and a spotted a handful of grey Korean robes among the saffron and red.

I continued over to the sacred pond, where Queen Maya bathed her baby after giving birth. The pond was busy with a crowd of Koreans doing some sort of ceremony, as two women in bright hanbok carried offering bowls of water over to a monk from the pond. I waited for them to finish, then went around to explore, myself. A big Bodhi tree stands on the other side of the pond, with a smaller one beside it. Long strands of prayer flags extend form the trees to to the temple stūpa and also far out to the other Bohi trees surrounding the park. 

The prayer flags were so thick, they were like tent walls in some places, and as the sun began burning through the fog for the first time all morning, the colourful prayer flags seemed to glow where they were able to catch the sunlight. It was so calm and beautiful.

Inside the temple were the ruins of the structure where Queen Maya stayed to have her baby. A wooden boardwalk wraps around the dark, stuffy room. In one corner, a balcony lead inwards a little ways and at the edge you could look down at a stone place by Emperor Ashoka to mark the exact spot where Buddha was born, when he visit around 300 years later. Above the stone is a 14th Century sandstone carving of Queen Maya giving birth, hanging on to the branch of a sal tree, with Indra and Brahma looking over her.

Beyond the site of the Maya Devi Temple, the grounds contain monasteries from many other countries and built in the styles of their countries, so I took a rickshaw around the area and visit some of them. The Korean temple, still under construction was predictably the biggest of them all, but the Thai temple was perhaps the most elegant, painted entirely white. Close to the Thai temple was the Myanmar monastery with its huge gold stūpa, and there was also a lovely Chinese temple, as well as an elaborate looking Vietnamese temple, with giant dragons swooping over its eaves, that was closed of.

It was a beautiful, quiet, and peaceful area, with a serene lake circling the area, feeding the more mist into the air. I returned to the Maya Devi Temple, and just sat for a while under the Bodhi trees, admiring the scene and my new little Medicine Buddha.

It was still only 11am, but it was time to go. Today, I have to make my way back into India, then head into the badlands, where bandits still ride horseback, and carry bows and arrows, in search of Kushnigar, the place where Buddha enter Parinirvana, the Complete Nirvana.