After walking for about an hour we reached Borobudur Buddhist Monastery. Stopping at a place on the way, Mr. Anto tried to arrange discounted tickets for us but this time he could not succeed. He dropped us near the ticket window at the entrance of the temple. Here the price of a person's ticket is 3 lakh Indonesian rupees i.e. 1.5 thousand Indian rupees. By the time we bought the tickets, Mr. Anto had come after parking his car. He again handed us two umbrellas and said that here too you can have tea, there will be no separate fee for this, it is only for foreign tourists.
We took umbrellas from his hand and thanked him and headed towards the tea counter. In no time we headed towards the Buddhist monastery with umbrellas in our hands. Even after walking for about half a kilometer, we could not see the Vihar. Then as we crossed a clump of trees and turned onto a road, suddenly he appeared. It looks like a huge mountain. There are big forts and huge temples in India, but before this we had not seen such a huge mountain-like architectural structure.
hard climb
Climbing to such a height was very difficult not only for my father but also for me. It was not possible for Deepa also to climb the summit independently. We finally reached very close to the Stupa while stepping on the road. Coming here, father's courage gave the answer. They sat on a bench. I asked Vijay and Bhanu to start the climb with Deepa and myself sat on the bench with my father. After about half an hour, my father said that I will not be able to do the whole climb but walk for one or two floors. At the age of about eighty, climbing so much was also a difficult thing, but both of us started climbing.
Dad walked with me for two floors. In the meantime he had to stop twice. Vijay and Bhanu were also waiting for us on the second floor. Dad, after seeing two floors of art and architecture, decided to go downstairs. I told him to sit on the same bench from where we had come. We will also come in a while. After my father returned, I met Mr. Using the umbrellas given by Anto as a stick, he started climbing up. This world of stones was undoubtedly full of wonder. Since the stone stairs were covered with wooden stairs, it was easy to climb. Otherwise it would have been even more difficult to climb smooth stones, worn out by shoes.
From Roop Dhatu to Nirvana Level
The Borobudur Chaitya is composed in the form of a large circular stupa surrounded by three symbolic levels of Buddhist cosmology called Kamadhyana (the world of desire), Rupadhyana (the world of forms) and Arupdhyana (the formless world). The viewer, circling these three levels, reaches its apex, that is, the state of enlightenment. The monument has an elaborate arrangement of stairs and corridors on each side. I had chikungunya last October, due to which the legs used to hurt till now, the cartilage layer located in the knees was also pressed inwards due to excessive movement, due to which the knee was hurting a lot. Still, I didn't want to miss this fortunate opportunity. I walked along with the children and made progress slowly, crossing the Rupadhatu level and passing through the Arupdhatu level and reached the level of Nirvana.
The view here was amazing. Rice fields were swaying far and wide. A gentle, pleasant and clear wind was blowing. The Sun God was also giving away his brilliance as if giving supernatural and less warm light to the atmosphere here. What is salvation, I do not know, but sitting at such a height, thousands of Buddhist monks have certainly traveled towards their great destination, unseen, unknowingly, by following the path of dependent origin, Chatvari Arya Satyani and Ashtanga as told by Mahatma Buddha. Must have been preparing, there was no doubt about it.
Return from Borobudur Chaitya
From here we had to return. This time he had to come down from the nirvana level and return to the Roop dhatu level through the Arup dhatu level. I felt that in Hindu philosophy the Jiva is considered as Akshar i.e. never perishable and this is the principle given for the repeated movement of the Jiva from the upper planes to the mortal body. Destroying desires on the strength of his penance and devotion, man reaches the alokmay loka of siddhis, enjoys supernatural pleasures there for some period and again descends to the mortal world. It was the same process! There is also a concept of salvation in Hinduism, but very few living beings can achieve that goal, for that, like the seed of plants, their ego has to be destroyed by melting it in the fertile soil of service to others and devotion to God.
About two hours after we started climbing to Borobudur Chaitya we came down from Borobudur Chaitya. The path we descended was different from the one we climbed. It was as if a soul had been reborn in some other village and the memories of his old birth were asking him to go back to the previous village. As we got down on the other side of the stupa, a new problem arose before us. Father was waiting for us sitting on the bench on the same road from where we started the climb. Finding them became a daunting task as we had to walk at least two kilometer to reach them while circling around the temple.
We asked Madhu and Bhanu to sit with Deepa on a bench there and Vijay and I headed towards the uphill route to find my father. After walking for about a kilometer, Vijay turned me back and went to pick up my father all by himself. I told him that he should not come here with his father but go straight out. There in the car parking he met Mr. Finally you will get it. I returned to the exit-way, took Madhu, Bhanu and Deepa and we proceeded to exit the Borobudur complex. A museum named Samudra Raksha is situated on this route. We were pleasantly surprised to read this pure Indian name.
International photo of Deepa
It must have been a short while that we were surrounded by a group of Indonesian girls. She seemed to be studying in the secondary and higher secondary standard and wanted to be photographed with Deepa. Bhanu gladly allowed them. It was like a lottery for Deep. One girl stood with him in her lap and the other girls stood on either side of her. Just then the teacher of those girls came running, she apologized to us and asked those girls in an angry voice that have you taken permission from the parents of this girl! She asked this question at least thrice and when all three times the answer was yes, she too stood up to pose for a photo with Deepa. Meanwhile, girls from some other countries passing by also stopped seeing Deepa. They also clicked their cameras. I too could not live without clicking a snap.
One and a half year old Deepa cannot even speak. Many of those Ananan girls in that group didn't even understand each other's language, but it was the language of love, the language of childlike attraction that they all understood very well. Know which countries' girls would have shared that photo with each other. How nice it would be if there was such a loving atmosphere all around the earth! If this had happened then surely people would not have wasted time in search of heaven, salvation and God. Because these three do not live anywhere else but only in love.
The Long Galleries of the Market
We took Deepa from those girls and proceeded again but soon that road left us after taking us to a market. It was almost the same market as the Tibetans and Nepalese people sit in in India. Here Indonesian artefacts, clothes, paintings, garlands of different types of beads were being sold. We were tired and we were not interested in any of these things. Still, we had to keep moving forward in this market. Every street in the market was ending in a new street. After walking for about one and a half kilometres, we were completely exhausted and sat down at a coconut water shop. Here too, coconut worth 20 thousand rupees was being found. We fixed the coconut for 15 thousand rupees and sorted out a large looking coconut and gave it to the girl sitting in the shop to peel it.