Wanderings

I spent an entire month bustling through Burma and Yogyakarta, both with such identical histories and way of life yet different parts of Buddhism scattered across these beautiful lands. 

I begin my journey with a book on Tibet (A Journey Into Tibet, a gift by Rab Azmi), as I read it on the plane or at tea shop stops, it felt like how the author was explaining on the essence and beauty of the Potala in Lhasa, I was experiencing it Borobudur and was willingly trapped in my own trance of literature and reality.

I wished I had written down my feelings at that time. I wish I had captured more images. But these are mere captions of what we want to see and believe and I wouldn't do justice on how I would have portrayed its beauty.

I had reminded myself the night before visiting Borobudur and Prambanan that my expectations of it should be thrown out the window. It should be subjective the way it is, the way it was discovered thousands years ago and no literature should have a negative effect on it.

I reached the ruins at around 6am and the chills that experienced were not of cold but of the wanderings on how people back at that time built such a beauty, precisely and how they loved their Gautama Buddha and its branches of Siva, and co. No mere words or dictations would explain the feelings and writing about this just adds on more nostalgia.

As I ended my book on Tibet, I ended my journey on Buddhism. Sadness finally kicks in. I am not quite sure if it’s melancholy but just that tangy feeling of leaving something you dearly adored to other people to experience it for themselves.

As of present, I think I’d still like to dwell in my own sadness of my departure on the two beautiful lands until every ounce of feelings could be explored and perhaps I’ll be finally ready for Tibet and the Dalai Lama. 

(This was written on the plane, on my journey back to reality. 27th August 2013)