Pandoraspace

My initial impression of Borobudur

When I was in grade school, one of my teachers said that Borobudur is one of the seven wonders of the world and it is found in Indonesia.  Friends who saw Borobudur said that it was beautiful.  That is about all I knew of Borobudur when I decided to visit it.  On the other hand, LS seemed to know more about Borobudur and Buddhism than Aisha, our Borobudur guide.

LS and I visited  Borobudur late in the afternoon of our second day in Jogjakarta.  Since Borobudur is in Central Java, we drove two hours to get there from Jogjakarta.  During the visit, I felt like I was cramming for an exam by learning all I could about the place in so little a time. Worse, the place was crowded. It took me a long while to find quite in Borobodur. And, when I did find quite, it was time to leave. I was very disappointed.

It is early morning now and I am looking at the pictures I had taken and remembering what  Aisha told us about the place. Strangely, my pictures tell a different story. It is as if, I had a profound experience in Borobudur. Looking back, perhaps I did but had not known it at that time.

A note on the picture of buddha:  Many of the buddhas in Borobudur are headless.  This buddha seemed to have grown back its head when the bees built their hive on top of its body.

This entry was posted on Sunday, April 26th, 2009 at 12:08 am and is filed under My Indonesian Experience. You can follow any responses to this entry through the RSS 2.0 feed. You can leave a response, or trackback from your own site.