Borobudur Temple: Exploring Its First Impression And How Wonders Of The World Influence Us

I’ve seen so much in the last two and a half years.  Too much for my senses and memory to take.  Though overwhelming, it’s not a bad thing in the slightest.  Among these countless memories are a hefty lot of experiences that have left me dumbstruck from the very first moment of perception.  Take the Leaning Tower for instance; once I had laid my eyes upon it, I was absolutely amazed: my faculties melted away, I felt half my weight, and every ounce of my perception and attention remained fixed completely on the tower.  I think this is true for everyone; it instantly grips you in its uniqueness and spectacle, and holds you in what I would call a “fixated stupor.” 

First impressions, they say, are everything.  In the case of a wonder of the world, its first impression remains with you for the rest of your life.  The state of “fixated stupor” is caused by the enormous power of that first impression. Furthermore, I believe certain places as designated as “wonders of the world” because it is before them that this “fixated stupor” is felt most intensely.  We do not forget that first impression because it says so much.  Thus we do not forget the feeling of stupor that reinforces it.  Thus we do not forget that wonder of the world. 

The length of the state of fixated stupor can be brief or long, depending on the individual.  I remain captivated longer than the average person.  Initially, at its strongest influence, this fixated stupor—in which all of my focus becomes directed to the thing in question as quick as the crack of a whip, and I become oblivious to everything and everyone else around me such that there is only me and the thing in question—can last as long as two to three minutes.  But think about it; that’s a long time.  An ordinary period of two or three minutes is likely to be nothing significant in our everyday lives.  Yet faced with something like the Leaning Tower, those minutes stretch out as if being suddenly caught in the gravity of a black hole….  You take it all in, for what it is, from that glorious and striking instant of the first impression until eventually the fixated stupor fades away and you feel your feet land on the ground and everything and everyone else around you becomes apparent again.  But, the stupor doesn’t leave altogether; you come back to reality while the remainder of the stupor accentuates your senses.  With your senses thus enhanced you can appreciate the thing in question not just from the thing itself, but from everything else around it, too.  Like anything in the world it is related to other things around it: the ground that holds it, the sky above it, the buildings or vegetation or mountains or rivers nearby or in the distance, the other people also admiring it and who may or may not be in their own fixated states of stupor….

Now, I want to you to do something for me: keep this progression of feelings and events in mind for the rest of the blog.  In succession they are exactly what I felt from the moment I set my eyes on the Borobudur Temple, located in Java, Indonesia.  From that whip-crack first impression I was reminded of how travel can be so tremendous, revealing, and sublime.  

I fell into a profound bout of fixated stupor that lasted as long as two minutes.  It’d been a while since I’d been caught for that long….  It was in December 2014 when I’d last felt such power from a wonder of the world.  Which wonder of the world?  It was the Shwedagon Pagoda, in Myanmar: a site more than 2000 years old, it is a Mecca of Buddhism that until recently has remained hard to access for much of the world, given all of Myanmar’s political troubles.

The pagoda was undergoing a re-finishing of gold after a strong typhoon struck the area a month before.  At first I was somewhat disappointed.  However it quickly dawned on me; it wasn't so much the pagoda that holds all the grandeur.  It was the site, and all its unbelievable shrines, buildings, Buddhas, and artifacts.  Everything was part of the whole; the site, not the pagoda.  

It was there that I felt myself floating in a fixated stupor for about five minutes....  Everything in my world was the white, red, and gold of the site….  It was a dream, I could have sworn…and yet there I was.  People can overuse words like “amazing,” or “unbelievable.”  “Amazing” was truly felt here; my mind was so immediately overtaken by the outside that my surprise felt physical.  The word “unbelievable” was truly felt here; I couldn’t believe my perception.  At all.  No way was this real…and yet….  To feel these words—incredible, awesome, glorious—makes your existence transcendental.  This transcendence is permanent. 

 

After I touched the ground, I realized my friends wanted to wander off around the pagoda.  I went with them. 

See the old drum?  I believe it is ceremonial; can't remember for sure!

Taken later in the day, away from the site.

I’d like to emphasize, once again, that the stupor doesn’t fade away entirely.  After coming back down to Earth, the stupor remains.  Though in a subdued form, it remains to guide your thoughts, perception, and revelations but not to dominate you thoughts, perception, and revelations.  I spent the rest of my time at the Shwedagon Pagoda with my senses elevated and brightened by the stupor.  I could then enjoy everything and everybody else around it, and not just it. 

And so the exact same thing happened to me at Borobudur.  The initial explosion of the first impression gave me that fixated stupor, but even though the sound was fading I could still feel the stupor.  Once all my attention wasn’t on initial blast of the explosion I could then focus more clearly on everything else.  Like the good group of people I was with:

Hell, even the soldiers were friendly!  Some of us decided to pose with them; or rather,
they decided to pose with us!  

or the mountains in the background, no less a part of the site:

or the 100+F heat (which didn’t totally bother me but that I still wanted to forget!).  And, the rest of the tourists wandering around and through the levels of the temple:

SO many of the young adults here wanted to take pictures with us foreigners!  I must have taken
about five or six photos with kids wanting a picture with a big white dude.  Here, a bunch of
their friends posed with our group, and I decided to take a picture of the picture-takers!

So, the remnants of the fixated stupor followed me toward our rendezvous point, and then throughout the levels of the temple. 

  

The tree to the left was our rendevous.
Interestingly, and uniquely, the temple's construction is completely and directly symbolic of the central ideas in Buddhism.  The temple is laid out in the form of a lotus flower, a sacred symbol in Buddhism.  There are six rectangular stories, three circular terraces, and the great central stupa that all combine to give the characteristic shape of the lotus.  In its entirety the temple has nine terraces including the central stupa.  This layout therefore represents the ten steps a Bodhisattva must take in order to attain Buddhahood; the central stupa represents Buddhahood, and the nine terraces below it symbolize the nine other steps required to get there.

By the time we left the rendevous point, I felt my feet back on the ground.  But I was still gazing at the glory of the temple.  Kind of in between stupor and reality.  Once we started our trek around the temple, and then up the temple steps, I was able to see more of what makes the temple so special.

Just to give you an idea of how narrow the steps are.

And below; the reliefs:

The temple walls are full of reliefs, all hand-carved.  Around every corner were more reliefs, more artistry, more glory, more spirituality.  

The Borobudur Temple’s beginnings were in the 8^th century A.D. It is by far the largest Buddhist temple and monument in the Southern Hemisphere, and indeed—like the Shwedagon Pagoda—one of the greatest Buddhists monuments in the world.  It was built entirely out of volcanic rock.  Starting in the 1970’s great effort has been made to restore and preserve the original temple. 

Most Buddhist temples have a large stupa on their grounds.  The stupa symbolizes the Buddha’s mind.  One walks around the stupa to show respect and faith.  Because the right side of the body is considered the place of honor, one should therefore walk around the stupa clockwise so that their right side faces it at all times.  In this way one shows faith in the Buddha and his teachings. 

Three photos of the central stupa, symbolic of the mind of the Buddha.  

Vertically, the base, body, and superstructure of the temple symbolize the three “spheres” of Buddhist cosmology.  The base represents the sphere of desires (also called samsara), wherein people remain bound to attachment and ignorance; the body represents the sphere of form; and the superstructure represents the realm of formlessness. 

Two photos of different "jatakas," or
scenes from the Buddha's life.

The top level is nothing short of breathtaking.  Here, the central stupa is surrounded by many smaller stupas.  There are seventy-two in total and within each resides a statue of the Buddha.  

This guy on the bottom looks like I probably did at the time: excited, bewildered, awestruck, all of that good stuff.

It was at the top, while looking all around, when I began to perceive many other things.  My senses became gradually attuned to not only the uniqueness of the temple’s details but to the mountains in the background:

 and the tourists and young Indonesian students all around:

 and the heat:

The heavy rain clouds gathering over the hot land.

and the beautiful vegetation:

 and the random buildings poking through the surface of the vegetation:

All of it, all of those things in relation to the temple, started to rival the first impression of the temple itself…. 

Is the first impression everything? 

I don't think so.  It’s more like getting to know someone.  Yes, the first impression can tell so much about a person.  As you get to know a person, things from your first impression are often confirmed.  Nevertheless, there are always more things revealed that weren’t in that first impression.  And some contend you can’t really learn everything about a person….

This drone followed us the whole way up to the stupa.

Howdy; that's me, in front of the temple.

That’s how it is for traveling, too.  Initially, the first impression shows you so much.  Once you dig deeper, all those things reveal themselves to you even more so.  But while exploring the area around the Leaning Tower, the Grand Canyon, the Shwedagon Pagoda, Niagra Falls, the Golden Gate Bridge, or the Borobudur Temple, new things are learned and more things are perceived which both confirm that first impression and add to it.  However there is a difference in meeting a person and meeting a wonder of the world.  The latter (almost always) instantly strikes awe into the mind and suspends it in perceptual ambrosia. 

Perhaps, at times, the “traveler’s” first impression feels like everything, yet can mislead one into thinking the first impression is satisfying enough.  But no, it is not enough.  The impact from first impressions in travel is far greater than first impressions from people, but there is one aspect that is the same.  Getting to know someone and getting to know a place has exactly the same pursuits; you can’t truly know someone entirely, and you can’t truly know a place entirely.  

I believe one main reason why travel is so addicting is because of the pursuit of knowledge, of wanting to learn more and more.  What’s the history of the people, of their culture, of their politics, economics, arts, philosophy, agriculture, religion, sciences, and traditions?  And then dig deeper, so deep as to stretch the limits of what is possible: what’s the history of every street, building, park, plot of land, countryside…of every individual?  Yes; the initially awe-inspiring stupor a place like Borobodur Temple gives us is tremendous, and says so much.  And yet it might take a lifetime to learn everything about it and its locality.  Therefore, this...

...and this...

...and this...

...cannot be everything.  First impressions ultimately do not explain it all.



To conclude, I'll give you some links to learn more about Borobudur:


http://whc.unesco.org/en/list/592

http://www.buddhanet.net/boro.htm


Some great reads about the Shewdagon Pagoda:

http://www.shwedagonpagoda.com

http://www.lonelyplanet.com/myanmar-burma/yangon-rangoon/sights/religious/shwedagon-paya



And, the Leaning Tower; a great summation:

http://www.towerofpisa.org

Disclaimer: 

I do not intend to speak on behalf of Azamara Club Cruises.  As an employee of Azamara Club Cruises, I hereby state that all views and expressions of opinion I hold are solely my own, and do not reflect or represent the views, values, beliefs, opinions, or company policies of ether Azamara Club Cruises or Royal Caribbean Cruises Ltd.
Additionally I neither own nor claim any legal rights to the links provided in this post.