Dalai Lama arrives in Bodh Gaya

Tuesday, January 05, 2010

TNN
By Abdul Qadir
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Tibetan spiritual leader the Dalai Lama arrives at Mahabodhi temple in Bodh Gaya, about 130 kilometers (81 miles) south of Patna, India, Monday, Jan. 4, 2010. Bodh Gaya is the town where Prince Siddhartha Gautama attained enlightenment after intense meditation and became the Buddha. The Dalai Lama will visit Bodh Gaya to give a series of religious teachings from Jan. 5 to 9. (AP Photo/Rajesh Kumar Singh)

GAYA: Amid tight security and welcome by a group of Tibetan men and women attired in multi-coloured traditional robes dancing to the beating of drums and other instruments, His Holiness, the Dalai Lama arrived at Bodh Gaya, the seat of Buddha’s enlightenment in the forenoon on Monday.

Even as the Tibetans performed the welcome dance, six monks were lying virtually unnoticed some distance away on the fourth day of their indefinite hunger strike.

They were demanding total Buddhist control over the Mahabodi temple, said to be the most sacred Buddhist shrine. Much to their disappointment, the Dalai Lama has consistently avoided to join the shrine management controversy.

At the Gaya airport, the temporal and spiritual leader of the Buddhists and head of the Tibetan government-in-exile, the Dalai Lama was received by Ogyen Trinley Dorje, better known as Karmapa, the head of one of the sects of Tibetan Buddhists and Gaya DM Sanjay Kumar.

Soon after his arrival at Bodh Gaya, the Dalai retired to his suite at the Tibetan monastery, where a special lift has been installed to take him to his second-floor apartment as an apparently frail and ageing spiritual leader has difficulty climbing stairs. Lined on both sides of the road, Tibetan followers and other devotees waved and clapped to welcome the spiritual leader. And, he reciprocated with his famous smile, the spiritual leader’s USP, and even waved back once in a while.

After taking rest for an hour or so, a refreshed Dalai Lama went to the Mahabodhi temple. Once inside, his holiness offered prayers inside the sanctum before moving to the majestic and imposing Peepal tree, a direct descendant of the tree under which Gautam, a wandering prince, attained divinity to become Buddha, the enlightened one, about 2,500 years ago.

Supporters try to get a glimpse as Tibetan spiritual leader the Dalai Lama, unseen, who arrives at Mahabodhi temple in Bodh Gaya, about 130 kilometers (81 miles) south of Patna, India, Monday, Jan. 4, 2010. Bodh Gaya is the town where Prince Siddhartha Gautama attained enlightenment after intense meditation and became the Buddha. The Dalai Lama will give a series of religious teachings here from Jan. 5 to 9. (AP Photo/Rajesh Kumar Singh)

Thereafter, the spiritual leader unveiled a work of art depicting the various phases of Buddha’s life, including his birth, marriage, renunciation, enlightenment, preachings and final salvation (death). The Buddha’s life cycle has also been shown through engravings on sandstone made by a sculptor from Orissa. Thereafter, the Dalai inaugurated a prayer wheel in the shrine complex.