Buddhist Revival

Buddha has many birthdays, Hindu ghosts in Laos, Thailand revives pagoda's in Muslim majority south, Borobudur is the greatest of Mahayana Buddhist temples in Indonesia

May 29, 2023

UPDATE: When Siddhartha Gautama was born, he was clearly no ordinary infant. According to Buddhist texts, he raised his hand to the skies and declared, “In the heavens above and below the heavens, I am the world’s most honored one. I will free all beings from birth, old age, sickness, and death.”

Vat Phou, which is near the Mekong River, was built before the advent of the Khmer Empire and predates Angkor Wat. In 2022, it’s hard to imagine that the Theravada Buddhist-majority republic of Laos, which has traditionally been a part of the Sinosphere, was once home to a civilisation and temple complex that was a major centre for Hinduism in South East Asia.

The Thai Government has set aside 80 million baht for the renovation of seventeen 100-year-old Buddhist temples, in the restive Deep South, which have fallen into disrepair. Deputy Government Spokesperson Rachada Dhnadirek, said today (Monday), that ten spiritually significant temples in Songkhla, Pattani, Yala and Narathiwat provinces will be renovated as the first priority, using a budget of about 63 million baht.

Borobudur Temple is one of the top attractions of Java and has been reclaimed after having been lost for centuries in the jungle. Borobudur is one of the top highlights in Java and a must-see for anyone visiting the island. It is a massive Mahayana Buddhist temple dating from the 9th century. Borobudur is one of the great Southeast Asian archeological sites and ranks up with Bagan in Myanmar and Angkor Wat in Cambodia.

Located within the Wuling mountain range in Guizhou Province (south-west China), Fanjingshan mountain is considered a sacred mountain in Chinese Buddhism and the Fanjingshan Temple at the top is actually two temples; the Temple of the Buddha and Maitreya Temple.

Buddha’s Birthday

Edited

When Siddhartha Gautama was born, he was clearly no ordinary infant. According to Buddhist texts, he raised his hand to the skies and declared, “In the heavens above and below the heavens, I am the world’s most honored one. I will free all beings from birth, old age, sickness, and death.”

Then the remarkable baby is believed to have received a first bath: streams of water poured by the gods Brahma and Indra – or flowing from two dragon kings’ mouths, depending on the legend. This cleansing consecrated the Buddha-to-be as holy, signaling that even the gods recognized him as worthy of veneration.

Buddhists believe that several “buddhas,” or enlightened teachers, have been born throughout history. Yet the title “the Buddha” typically refers to this historical figure, Siddhartha Gautama, who went on to found Buddhism. Each year on the Buddha’s birthday, East Asian Buddhists recreate his first bath by pouring water or sweetened tea over a statue of the infant.

The holiday has been observed in different parts of Asia for hundreds of years, but its significance varied by region. In Sri Lanka, for example, it was a religious day simply celebrated at temples, not a public celebration. In Korea, on the other hand, the Buddha’s birthday became a more commercial festival under the Choson dynasty, which frowned upon Buddhist religious practices and ended in 1910.

Buddhist reformers in the 19th and 20th centuries, however, deliberately emphasized the Buddha’s birthday in their efforts to unite Buddhist populations across countries and protect traditions from Christian missionaries. In the late 1800s, Sri Lankans successfully petitioned the British colonial government to allow celebrations for the Buddha’s birthday, which they deliberately modeled on Christmas – a model that caught on around Asia.

These efforts helped the Buddha’s birthday become a major global holiday, but celebrations still take place on different dates and with different traditions. As a scholar of Buddhism who studies the religion’s transmission from India to China, I am keenly aware of how people adapt practices and ideas to their own cultures.

In South Asia and Southeast Asia, the Buddha’s birthday is celebrated on the full moon of the second lunar month, known as Vesākha or Vaiśākha. In Sanskrit, a full moon is “Pūrṇimā,” which is why the holiday is often called Buddha Pūrṇimā, Vesak or Wesak.

Vaiśākha corresponds to April and May of the Gregorian calendar, so in 2023, people in countries like Sri Lanka, Cambodia, Laos and Burma celebrated the Buddha’s birthday on the full moon of May 5.

Buddhists in East Asia, however, mark the Buddha’s birthday on the eighth day of the fourth lunar month – and follow a different lunisolar calendar, too. In China, Vietnam and Korea, Buddha’s birthday will be celebrated in 2023 on May 26.

In Taiwan the Buddha’s birthday has been jointly celebrated with Mother’s Day, on the second Sunday in May since 1999. In Japan, meanwhile, the Buddha’s birthday is called “Flower Festival” – Hana Matsuri in Japanese – and celebrated on April 8, following the government’s decision to adopt the Gregorian calendar in 1873.

Yet another date for the Buddha’s birthday in 2023 is June 4: the full moon of the fourth lunar month in the Tibetan lunisolar calendar. The entire month, called Saga Dawa, is considered holy because it includes the Buddha’s birth, awakening and death. Tibetan Buddhists believe that good deeds generate exponentially more positive karma during Saga Dawa than at other times of the year.

The date of the Buddha’s birthday isn’t the only difference between cultures. In South Asia and Southeast Asia, including Tibetan regions, Vesak doesn’t just commemorate the Buddha’s birth, but also his attainment of nirvāṇa, or enlightenment, and his death, known as parinirvana. In East Asia, however, the Buddha’s enlightenment and passing are honored on separate days, so the spring holiday only focuses on the Buddha’s birth.

Throughout East Asia, Buddhists will bathe statues of the infant Buddha-to-be, recite Buddhist scriptures and make donations to Buddhist temples – but there will still be a lot of diversity in these celebrations.

In China, the practice of “fangsheng,” releasing animals, has been part of celebrating the Buddha’s birthday since the 11th century. Devout Buddhists purchase animals otherwise destined for slaughter and release them into the wild. Recently, some cities in China have encouraged greater consideration of local ecosystems to prevent invasive species that worshippers release from crowding out native animals.

Another way Chinese Buddhists express compassion for all living beings is by avoiding meat for three days around the Buddha’s birthday – similar to the Tibetan practice of following a vegetarian diet during the month of Saga Dawa.

Korea was under Japanese imperial rule from 1910 to 1945. During that period, the Japanese government sponsored a joint Japanese-Korean celebration of the Buddha’s birthday that revived the holiday’s religious significance. Though many Koreans opposed the Japanese occupation, some Korean Buddhists appreciated the opportunity to celebrate the Buddha’s birthday as a new pan-Buddhist holiday.

Korean celebrations of the Buddha’s birthday are distinctive for their use of lanterns, which represent the light of awakening and can also be used as vehicles for prayers and vows sent up toward the heavens. Today in South Korea, colorful lantern displays and lantern parades mark the national holiday.

The Buddha’s birthday has even been observed in North Korea since 1988. In 2018, the holiday served as an occasion for Korean unity, with Buddhists in North and South Korea jointly composing and reciting a prayer for the occasion.

In Vietnam, the celebration of the Buddha’s birthday – known as Phật Đản – was observed in the medieval period, often alongside prayers for rain. However, celebrations seem to have faded over time until the festival was reintroduced in the early 20th century, when the holiday was gaining popularity throughout the region.

The holiday still remains somewhat obscure in northern Vietnamese villages, but has gained popularity elsewhere in the country. Today, Buddha birthday celebrations in Vietnam involve lighting paper lanterns, making offerings to the Buddha and praying for health and well-being. Lotus-shaped lanterns are especially popular because they symbolize the ability to remain pure in an impure world, just like beautiful lotuses grow from murky swamps.

Buddha birthday celebrations that fall earlier in the spring are often the ones international groups focus on. In 1950, the World Fellowship of Buddhists decided to make Vesak an international Buddhist holiday, commemorated on the first full moon of May. Nearly 50 years later, the United Nations passed a resolution to recognize Vesak on the same day, in line with South Asian and Southeast Asian celebrations.

These official acts of recognition mark the importance of this holiday for Buddhists worldwide, but we should also remember the just-as-meaningful celebrations that come a few weeks later.

Read more here.

Hindu pilgrimage in southern Laos

By Ajay Kamalakaran

There is enough archaeological evidence to suggest that the first temples in the complex came up as early as the 5th century CE, almost 500 years before the founding of the Khmer Empire. The Vat Phou temple complex, which lies at the base of the Phou Khao mountain houses a series of structures that were mostly built between the 11th and 13th centuries. “The Champasak cultural landscape, including the Vat Phou Temple complex, is a remarkably well-preserved planned landscape more than 1,000 years old,” according to UNESCO. “It was shaped to express the Hindu vision of the relationship between nature and humanity, using an axis from mountain top to river bank to lay out a geometric pattern of temples, shrines and waterworks.

“A spring at the foot of one of the cliffs had undoubtedly prompted the ancient kings of the region back in the fifth century to erect a sanctuary. A few centuries later, when Vat Phou had been assimilated into a vast Khmer territory, the site was linked to the famous temples of Angkor, a few hundred kilometres to the southwest.”

Once the Khmers became a powerful force in the 11th century, they built a highly sophisticated community on the Champasak plain, from the Phou Khao to the Mekong. At the peak of its glory in the 12th century, the Vat Phou had six terraces on three levels. The main sanctuary was built on the uppermost level and contained a cell which housed the main Shiv Lingam. So advanced was the hydraulic system that the lingam was bathed using a system of sandstone pipes that carried water from a sacred spring. The lingam was later replaced with Buddha statues when the Khmer Empire converted to Buddhism.

The spring that once bathed the lingam is still considered holy by Buddhist pilgrims who visit the temple complex. “The sacred water has its source at the summit,” local tour guide Oudomsy Kevsaksith said in Dayan’s documentary. “It then passes through the Linga Parabata and flows down to the bottom. From the beginning of time, right down to the present day, people have been coming to the Vat Phou of Champasak. They take a few drops of the holy water and pour them on their heads. With this act, they express the wish for a long and healthy life. This stream, which comes from the mountain, will flow into the Mekong. The inhabitants of the region can receive all the blessings of the union of the holy spring of Vat Phou and the Mekong.”

The complex still has traces of its Hindu past, including images of Hindu gods. Another distinct feature is a Khmer-style Trimurti in the complex, depicting Brahma, Vishnu and Shiva.

The Vat Phou’s transition from a Hindu to a Theravada Buddhist temple probably happened around the same time as that of Angkor Wat, at the end of the 12th century. The Shiv Lingam was removed and replaced with statues of the Buddha. After its conversion, the temple was used for worship by warriors before battles. The children of warriors were also brought to seek the blessings of the Buddha and the Hindu deities whose statues were still widely present in the complex.

Being at the crossroads of several empires, Vat Phou was attacked numerous times by invaders from both the east and the west. In 1427, a Champa army from Vietnam occupied the complex and refrained from total pillage when the weakened Khmer Empire promised to pay the Champa Kingdom.

The Khmer Empire collapsed a few years later when it was attacked by the Siamese (Thai) Ayutthaya Kingdom. One of the most bitter events in Cambodian history is the Fall of Angkor Wat in 1431, when the Thais looted it and nearby Khmer temples. Vat Phou met a similar fate as Angkor Wat when the Thais attacked. Both temple complexes lost their prominence in mid-15th century, but were never completely abandoned.

The area housing the Vat Phou changed hands between empires and was in the possession of the Thais, the Lao Lang Xang Empire and the French, who colonised Indochina. The complex became a UNESCO World Heritage Site in 2001, with the UN body saying it exhibited “a remarkable complex of monuments and other structures over an extensive area between river and mountain, some of outstanding architecture, many containing great works of art, and all expressing intense religious conviction and commitment.”

International cultural bodies and NGOs have been working to preserve the complex that is threatened by climate change and heavy rains. The Global Heritage Fund has played an important role in preserving the main Nandi pavilion in the complex. In a 2009 report, the non-profit said, “The monument, dedicated to the Hindu god Shiva, is one of the most important examples of Khmer architecture because of its plan, its historic and religious significance and for the value of its sculptures.”

The former Hindu temple is now a popular stop on overnight Mekong River cruises. Not as well-known as the Angkor Wat, it receives a small fraction of the foreign visitors that throng the enormous complex in Cambodia. As is the case across South East Asia, Hindu traditions and rituals have been incorporated into conservative Theravada Buddhism at the Vat Phou. Many a Buddhist pilgrim climbing up the frangipani-scented path to the main shrine are happy to pray for earthly and material comforts from Hindu deities. Once they are at the top of the complex, they pay their respects to the Buddha and try to emulate his path to enlightenment through meditation.

Read more here.

Ajay Kamalakaran is a writer, primarily based in Mumbai. He is a Kalpalata Fellow for History & Heritage Writings for 2022.

Ancient Buddhist temples in Thai South

In the next step, seven temples and ancient sites in more remote areas of the four provinces will be renovated, using the balance of the budget. There are, however, 138 temples in the Muslim-predominated provinces which are in need of repair and renovation, as they have been neglected due to decades of armed conflict waged by southern insurgents seeking self-rule.

Rachada said that the renovation plan for the old temples is needed so that Buddhists, who are in the minority in the region, can perform normal religious activities to promote diversity and peaceful co-existence between peoples of various faiths.

The renovation work will be a joint effort by the Southern Border Provinces Administrative Centre, the National Office of Buddhism, the Fine Arts Department, the Fourth Army Region and other relevant agencies.

Read more here.

Borobudur Buddhist Temple, Java

Borobudur was built between CE 780 and 840 during the reign of the Sailendra Dynasty and was made to blend with the indigenous Indonesian tradition of ancestor worship with the Buddhist ideas of attaining nirvana.

The temple complex was abandoned in the 14th century as the Hindu kingdoms in Java declined and the population converted to Islam. The temple has been known to the outside world since 1814, when it was brought to the attention of the British governor (the British governed Java between 1811 and 1816).

After ten centuries of neglect, it had been reclaimed by the jungle, and its rediscovery by the British heralded a new lease of life for the impressive monument. Today it has more or less been restored to its former majesty.

Over the years, there have been numerous excavation and restoration efforts and has become Indonesia's most visited single tourist attraction. It is one of the greatest national monuments of Indonesia.

Borobudur is located in Central Java close to the ancient capital of Yogyakarta set on a hilltop overlooking the lush green tropical fields of the Kedu Valley. Borobudur temple is constructed of nine stacked platforms - six of which are square and three circular. It is topped with a central dome and originally had some 504 Buddha statues. It is decorated with thousands of relief panels and is a timeless testimony to Indonesian architecture.

Borobudur is a remarkable feat of engineering and was built without any cement or mortar. Built in three tiers it has a pyramidal base with five concentric square terraces, a cone trunk with three circular platforms, and a monumental stupa at the top. The circular platforms have 72 openwork stupas, with each containing a statue of Buddha.

There are efforts to protect and preserve the monument for future generations, and so the best way to explore the Borobudur temple is on foot. Alternatively, it is also possible to get around by a horse-drawn carriage.

Read more here.

Fanjingshan, China

The two temples are now around 500 years old having been built during the Yongle period of the Ming Dynasty. There is also a bridge linking between the two temples above the heart-stoppingly deep Gold Sword Gorge. With the Maitreya Buddha, they are considered the bodhimanda (or daochang) - a place in which one reached enlightenment - Fantian Jingtu - "Brahma's Pure Land"

"One is for worshipping Sakiymuni representing the present and the other is for Maitreya representing the future."

While Fanjingshan is not considered one of the Four Sacred Mountains of Buddhism it is ranking just below them as one of the most sacred. It was eventually listed as the “No.5 Great Buddhist Mountain in China”.

Since the 1980s (after the destructions of the Cultural Revolution and the banditry of the Republic of China era), many of the old temples in the region have been rebuilt as well as new ones constructed. These include Cheng'en Temple, Huguo Chan Temple, Great Golden Buddha Temple, and Longquan Temple.

While the site has been sacred since ancient times, many of the temples were destroyed during the 16th century in the Ming Dynasty. The later Qing Dynasty ordered the reconstruction of many of the temples and the building of new ones (including the ones up this mountain).

There is a 45-minute walk through the Forest Hiking Road. This leads to the Mushroom Rock and with another 30 minutes hike, to the Old Golden Summit. Finally, it is another 65-minute climb up to the Fanjingshan Temple. There is only one stone path up to the peak and everyone must be able to walk on the steep and narrow steps while holding onto the iron chains. Firstly one arrives at the Temple of Buddha on the south side, and then one walks across the bridge to the Maitreya Temple. The way may also be closed during periods of bad weather.

Caution: The Climb Up Is Considered Very Dangerous And Energy Intensive
Final Climb: 65 Minutes With An Iron Chain In Places
Duration: The Final Accent Requires At Least 1.5 Hours (and More In The Peak Season)

Fanjingshan National Nature Reserve is also a UNESCO Biosphere Reserve with a total of 3,724 plant species have been recorded in the property, an impressive 13% of China’s total flora. The diversity of invertebrates is also very high with 2,317 species. A total of 450 vertebrate species are found inside the property. Fanjingshan contains 64 plant and 38 animal species that are listed as Vulnerable (VU), Endangered (EN) or Critically Endangered (CR) on the IUCN Red List, most notably Guizhou Snub-nosed Monkey, Chinese Giant Salamander, Forest Musk Deer, Reeves’s Pheasant, Asiatic Black Bear, and Bretschneidera sinensis. In addition, the villages within the property and its buffer zone each have their own village regulations, which prescribe certain behaviours that respect the natural environment of the mountain.

Read more here.

Long Mekong

Discussion about this post