Kushinagar - other places

Hindu temple



For Hindus, the buddha was an incarnation of Vishnu. So he was the God, but no one should follow his teaching. Indeed, among the first things the buddha said after his enlightenment was that one does not becone a brahmin by the birth but by his deeds. And philosophically, Hindu religion postulates the existence of the soul whereas the buddha stated that there is no soul for everything in this world is impermanent.



I didn't manage to figure out who built and decorated this temple



Japanese zen garden in front of the museum



Japan-India brotherhood's stupa



The Mahabhan stupa is also extremely old. It is perhaps the place where the buddha has been incinerated after his death.

Kushinagar - Thai temple

Kushinagar - Sri Lanka / Japan temple

Kushinagar - Vietnamese temple

Kushinagar - Burmese temple

This is the first representation of the buddha in his old age I have ever seen

Kushinagar - actual place

This is the main place to visit in Kushinagar. The building on the left hosts the very old statue of the lying buddha. The one on the right is also a very old stupa.






This used to be a monastery about 2000 years ago






This local guy told me that this stupa is set on the very place where the buddha died



A young boy absolutely wanted to sell me these flowers, even though I wouldn't give him any money. So though I'm not used to these kinds of "poojas" but I finally bought these flowers and put them on the top of the stupa.






When he died, smilingly, the buddha reached the stage of parinibbana (or pariniravana in sanskrit). Nobody really knows what it is, but Goenka, who says he already reached the first of the four stages of enlightenment (which is a first contact with the nibbana), says that he experienced in his life what he is experiencing after his final death (that means without any following reincarnation).



His last words were perhaps his most beautiful words : "All component things in the world are impermanent and decaying. Work out your own salvation with diligence."



It is said that Ananda, the buddha's closest disciple, came here to get some water for him just before his last discourse.

Last shot from Kathmandu

After Lumbini, I went back to Kathmandu, just to get my indian visa before crossing back the border. I was happy to go back to India and felt slightly sad about the ambiance between tourists and locals in Kathmandu, and generally in Nepal. Tourists have a very selfish behavior and look down on local people, implicitly considering them as inferiors. Thus local people feed anger towards them and the relations are very bad, even though the average tourists don't care about that and therefore don't really feel it.

Jeff on Henro

Jeff and I met in Bodhgaya last December. We attended our first vipassana course together. Then we attended together a 10-days course in the Tibetan root institute also in Bodhgaya. Later on, we met again in Bodhnath, near Kathmandu :



Jeff was studying Thangka in a monastery nearby.

This is his former blog about Thangka

Here are a few pictures from there :






























Sakura flowers season in Fukuoka









Now he's gone back to Fukuoka, Japan, where he lives and started a Henro. That is a pilgrim round the island of Shikoku. It is 1200 km long, and people make it by foot. It takes about seven weeks.



This is the location of Shikoku Island


Here are a few pictures from his blog he took on the way