The Temples of Java… Part 1.

The day after our climb up Batur, we were up again at 3.00am…!! Forty five minutes later we were in a taxi heading for the airport in Denpasar to catch the 6.00am flight to Jogjakarta in Java…

Indonesia is spread far and wide across the northern reaches of the Indian Ocean, and the western part of the Pacific Ocean… The 13 667 islands it comprises of, straddle three time zones…!!

Java is an hour behind Bali, so despite flying for a little over an hour, we landed at Adisutjipto International Airport in Jogjakarta at the same time we left Bali, a little after 6.00am in the morning…!! Java seemed to be covered in mist or low lying cloud as the rising sun gave us our first glance at the landscape beneath us…

Later we discovered that the “mist” was actually smoke from hundreds of small fires that were burning in the area… Either natural bush was being burnt to make room for more agricultural pursuits, or leftover vegetation from previous crops were being burnt to fertilize the existing fields… We never did get to find out which it was, but I fervently hoped that it was the latter…!!

Our plane prescribed a wide circle as we came in to land, and we were able to see the Merapi Volcano, which had erupted rather violently just eight months ago, spewing clouds of ash almost a kilometre into the sky…!! Its crown was still covered in ash as we flew over it, and we later saw areas where lava had flowed across the main road leading north from the city, destroying homes and rice paddies as it went…

Java is almost entirely volcanic and has at least 20 volcanoes that are regarded as “active”… These volcanoes have contributed to the rich fertility of the island, as the lava flows and ash falls have covered most of the island in sediment over a period of hundreds of years…

The Manohara Hotel, the only hotel situated in the grounds of the temple itself, had arranged for a driver to meet us at the airport, and we were driven to the town of Borobudur, which takes its name from the world’s largest Buddhist temple situated there…

During the ride, we could not help but compare the wide, clean roads of Java to the narrow and cluttered roads of Bali… Java struck us as being far more prosperous and better developed than our “home island”…

This was after all the seat of the Indonesian Government, and Jakarta, the capital of Indonesia lay on the far western side of the island… Despite it being the most heavily populated island on the planet, with over 140 million people, the rule of law seemed to be strictly adhered to here…

For instance, in all the time we were there, we did not see a single scooter whose rider was not wearing a helmet, including the passengers…!! In Bali, and certainly in Ubud, barely half the riders seem to bother with helmets…!!

After a leisurely breakfast at the hotel, we checked into our room and promptly fell asleep…!! The previous day’s exertions on Batur clearly still having an effect on us both… My Achilles tendons were particularly unhappy at having to do any form of work that involved walking and climbing steps of any kind…!!

After lunch we gathered our cameras, put on our sarongs that were provided by the hotel, and are a prerequisite when visiting this holy site, and set out to walk the short distance to the entrance of the temple…

Borobudur…!!

The name had been on my mind for months, ever since I sat down in my hotel room in Dubai, and made up my “must see” list of the Indian sub-continent and South East Asia…

Along with places like the Taj Mahal and the Red Fort in India; Kathmandu in Nepal; the mountains in Northern Laos; Angkor Wat and The Killing Fields in Cambodia; the islands and sun-drenched beaches of Thailand and Malaysia; Borobudur had been right up there on my list…!!

And now I was standing before it, the largest Buddhist Temple on the face of the earth, and even more impressive than I ever dreamed it would be…!!

Building on this magnificent structure began in 750 A.D. and scientists estimate that it took between 80 and 200 years to complete… This variation in dates is due to the mystery that still surrounds its construction today… Neither the name of the ruler who ordered it to be built, nor the place where the 55 000 tons of stone it contains came from, has been discovered yet…!!

Patricia and I stood on the open area leading up to the first level of this ten level monument, awestruck by the sight and size of the temple…

It was the very same “wonder” with which I stared up at the great Pyramids of Giza in Egypt a little more than a year ago…

Borobudur is easily that special…!! I immediately knew that the effort and planning that went into getting us here had all been worthwhile…

Its construction and design are closely related to temples in Cambodia and India, but in size, it dwarfs all others…

It was built to honour the Lord Buddha and its nine visible levels represent the three spiritual phases that symbolize the levels of existence according to Buddha…

The lower level represents the different phases of everyday life as we know them; the middle layers of the temple represent the renouncement of all human desires, but still show Buddha in an earthly form; and the final layers depict Nirvana, or the state of Eternal Deliverance…

The founder of Buddhism was born in 560 B.C., and laid his cloak, eating bowl and wooden staff down for the last time, 80 years later…

He is said to have lived on earth as a human being until through meditation and enlightenment reached a condition of supernatural purity, devoid of all earthly desires…

After many years of intense meditation, during which Buddha sought to find a way to free the world from destitution, and began to extol the “Four Holy Truths”, which became the basis for his teachings:

1. All life is suffering;
2. All suffering is the result of lust and desire;
3. The removal of desire leads to the removal of suffering; and
4. The way to deliverance is through the “Holy Eightfold Path” which is righteous belief, righteous intention, righteous word, righteous conduct, righteous living, righteous effort towards self-control, righteous thinking and righteous meditation…

The story of his life and times is carved onto the walls of the different layers of the temple… The journey from the bottom to the top level, taking in all the terraces, took us the better part of three hours, covering a distance of more than two and a half kilometres…

Patti and I wandered along the galleries, from the lower level up to the seventh level, sometimes together and often on our own, taking photos, and stopping often to try and interpret the reliefs carved into the walls…

We would call to each other to take closer looks at carvings that either intrigued us or we found to be particularly beautiful…

There are 504 statues of Buddha in seven different poses at Borobudur and the majority of them are headless…

Over the last few hundred years, many of the statues were either damaged by earthquakes, or the heads were broken off and stolen to be sold to collectors around the world… Some have been recovered and returned to the site, but the vast majority has been lost forever…

On the upper three levels stand hollow, bell-like stupas, each containing a statue of Buddha, and people reach through the vents in these stupas in an effort to touch the hands or feet of the statues, believing it will bring them good luck and happiness…

At the very top of the complex stands the largest stupa of all…It is not decorated by any carvings or designs, and is said to symbolize Nirvana…

It is hollow, and it is thought that it might have once contained a statue of Buddha, or that it was intentionally left empty in order not to desecrate the sphere of Nothingness, a state from which we come and to which we must all return…

Whatever the case, this is just one of the many mysteries that have yet to be uncovered at Borobudur…

The shape of these stupas is said to be taken from the time when Buddha placed his robe on the ground, lay his eating bowl upside down on the cloak, and then added his walking staff to the top of the bundle…

We watched the sun go down over the mountains to the west of the temple, and then walked back to our hotel, hand in hand and happy that we had been able to visit this amazing and spiritual place together…

Later that evening, we enjoyed a drink at an upmarket hotel nearby and when we were presented with the menu, we were astonished to discover that the price of a meal there would cost the equivalent of what we paid for our room at the Manohara Hotel…!!

We made as graceful an exit as possible, and opted instead to have a simple meal of soup, rice and noodles at a small Warung in the village. The woman who owned the Warung cooked the meal while we watched and waited, and although no alcohol was served there in accordance with Muslim tradition, we managed to send a taxi driver to the local supermarket for a few bottles of Bintang beer which we were allowed to drink while we ate…

The price of the entire meal was less than that of a starter at the hotel we had just come from…!! The spicy sauce that was served with our meal had our sinuses cleared in no time at all, and I correctly predicted an intense bout of “Mexican Heartburn” later…!!

Back at our hotel, we discussed the wonderful day we had just had, and made plans to get back up to the temple early the next morning to watch the sunrise…

We were determined to cram as much as possible into our short stay in Java…!!

 ©GBWT 2011