Tuesday, May 15 2001 In the birthplace of Buddha practicing mindfulness. That means bringing into my conscious awareness as much of the subconscious domain as possible. A Burmese nun is guiding me through this two-day experiment. Finally peeled myself away from Pokhara on Sunday morning and ended up in the stifling heat of the Terai via the long Mungling way around (vs. the much shorter Tansen route) by 4 PM. In terms of archeology there is not much to see here other than a fully dismantled stupa under a corrugated metal roof. The Maya Devi pool (they say its deep) and the impossibly new-looking Ashokan Chunkar sandstone pillar. That said, the UN World Heritage Site adjoining monastic campus offers a brilliant one-stop shopping chance for anyone wanting to see all the major Buddhist traditions represented in form and function. Lumbini was ‘rediscovered’ as the birthplace of Buddha in recent history by a Euro anthropologist. The pillar, dating from the 2nd century BC, was placed there by the Buddhist emporer Ashoka to commemorate and grant the citizens of Lumbini an 88% discount on all taxes in perpetuity. The pool is evidently the place where Buddha’s mother, queen Maya Devi stopped to have a bath (being here at about the same time of year as I am I can see why she wanted to cool down) and out popped the Light of Asia mid-dip fully verbal from the first minute. I believe the now full dismantled stupa under the metal roof represents a later structure from a period when Lumbini was a center of pilgrimage and hosted various monastic orders etc. In the present day a revival of this kind of pilgrimage and order representation is under way – each country in the process of putting up a temple that reflects their way of doing the Buddhist thing. Not surprisingly there are some politics involved with the temple of China being made in exclusively Han style and the nearby “Nepali” temple obviously representing Tibetan style & culture in all but name. There are two buildings from the people of the country now known as Myanmar – the one I am in at this moment funded by the previous government (before the coup) and the other by the military junta now in power.

Continue