"Life is suffering. Suffering is caused by selfish wanting and attachment. Suffering will end when selfish desires end. The way to end selfish wanting is by following the eight fold path."
-The Four Noble Truths as delivered by the newly awakened Buddha

Each religion is a reflection of the culture in which it exists. Alot of times those terms are synonynous. Religion and culture. Hinduism is a reflection of India. It is visceral, with loud bells ringing, incense burning, perambluation and prostration during puja. It is public, individual (though aided by Brahmins and participated in groups, oftentimes families) and able to handle any sort of prayer. There is a god of good fortune (Ganesha), a god of wealth (Laksmi) a god for rebirth (Shiva) and a goddess of destruction (Kali) to name a few. Each human desire is catered to by the pantheon of gods and goddesses and the culture of India is as tied to Hinduism as sunrise to sunset.

So then, I guess I shouldn't have been suprised to see that in Bodhgaya, the place where Siddhartha had reached enlightenment, there were a ton of Hindus. After all, I was in India. On the train ride from Varanasi, I had been excited to leave behind the crowded, noisy incense filled alleyways for the peaceful serenity of what I imagined Bodhgaya to be. My arrival in the city of Gaya was auspicious enough as I easily found an autorickshaw willing to take me to Bodhgaya (about 10 km away) for a rate which was reasonable. As we rode towards Bodhgaya (in the fastest, cleanest rickshaw I'd been in by far), I looked back to see the pinkred sun setting on the horizon. I smiled as I thought of the tranquility that awaited me in the place of the Buddha's birth. When we got to the city, however, I was quickly brought back to time and place. The hostel which I was planning on staying at for the first few nights was under obvious construction (as alot of places are in India right now. Not exactly peak tourist season.) and was ill attended as I had to hunt around for the "manager" for a few minutes before finding him playing cards with some friends next door. He showed me a room, which was poorly ventilated, had no windows and a somewhat functioning toilet. I took it as it was now dark and I was exhausted and I fell asleep to the soothing sounds of a full Hindu wedding, replete with bells, techno music and, well, shouting. This was not the peaceful spot I imagined it might be.

The next morning at 6:30 (my natural biorythms have been completely exposed on this trip. I usually go to bed between 9 and 10 and wake up sometime between 4:30 and 6. I guess it's no wonder I'm a teacher.) I ventured out to see if there were any Buddhists or serenity in this remote Indian locale. After wandering down the road in the wrong direction for about a half an hour (I'd left the Lonely Planet behind this time), I doubled back and saw the sign for the 80 foot Buddha statue. Sweet. Here was a place which would hold serenity and at least have some Buddhists walking around it. I followed a crowd of Hindu tourists into a few temples (in Bodhgaya there are many temples and monastaries from various Buddhist countries Thailand, Burma, Vietnam etc) before I made it to the statue. Upon arrival, I was met by the same young boys that had guarded every historical monument I'd been to in India, armed with the discolored, out of focus postcards of the very thing that I was looking at in front of me. After buying a set of particuarly out of focus cards from a really cool kid, (he didn't harrass me so much as ask me questions about America, which I always appreciate) I walked to the statue. It was impressive from a size standpoint alone and I read on the placard that the Dalai Lama himself had been at its unveiling ceremony (though I must admit I tried to look up his nose. I don't know what I expected to find, but I had to look). I was the only one there and I had yet to see a Buddhist, other than a few passing ones on bicycle on my walk over. I had to say that I was a bit discouraged as I headed back to my oppresively hot room and sat on the bed. This was not the place to find the "enlightenment" that I'd so arrogantly put on my itinerary.

Siddhartha Gautama underwent a similar dissapointment in his life (artistic liscense here people) upon leaving his palace for the first time. He had been raised in a contained world by his overprotective father, a place where no one was sick, food and revelry was plentiful, and he knew no pain. At the tender age of 20, he had demanded to his father that he be allowed outside the palace walls to see what the world had to offer. Dutifully, his father granted him his wish as he sent the palace guards to the city to clear away the old, sick and dying from Siddhartha's intended route through the city. The plan did not work and its failure planted in Siddhartha the seeds that would become Buddhism. Upon seeing sickness, old age and death, he decided to renounce his city life and attempt to find a way to end the suffering that he had seen in the world. While outside the city, he had also seen an ascetic (one who gives up all worldly things to seek spiritual gain) so he resolved to emulate his new hero. Some six years after he had begun his quest, he was given some rice by a Sujati herd girl (after hearing that famous string analogy) and he sat under the Bo tree and resolved not to move from that spot until he had found the end to suffering. The rest, as they say, is history.

How then was I to find my own Bo tree? After walking around and finding a new, much brighter (windows!) hostel room and downing my third liter of water of the morning, I decided to go to the Bo tree (very convenient) in the center of the Madhobi temple comlpex. This was not the tree that Siddhartha sat under so many years ago, but is said to be a descendant of a tree in Sri Lanka that is said to be a descendant of the Bo tree that Siddhartha sat under as he achieved enlightenment. This was as good a place as any to start my personal quest for enlightenment in earnest. It was midafternoon when I arrived and the tiles were so hot in the complex (you have to take your shoes off for everything here, which I actually kind of like) that I quickly walked around the edge of the complex, stopping briefly to see the lotus pond (muddy water infested with a zillion catfish), the outer temples and a brief jaunt inside to an airconditioned worship area full of, yup, Hindu tourists. I finally walked back out and around the temple to the other side. It was there that I caught my first glimpse of the Bo tree. There were a few scattered monks gathered around, some reading, some deep in contemplative prayer. I sat down, felt the wind and heard the rustling of leaves and began to slow my breathing in an attempt to meditate (I'd been experimenting a bit throughout the trip to be ready for this moment). To my suprise, it worked. I really did start to relax, to enjoy the environment around me and to feel some of the peace that I'd been looking for. I sat for probably 45 minutes, sometimes in meditation, sometimes just watching other monks and mostly just kind of daydreaming. I realized that though my initial success in meditation was encouraging, there was no way that on this trip (or any time in the forseeable future) would I achieve enlightenment. The path that the Buddha had laid out took a lifetime of dedication to achieve and one afternoon's worth of relaxation techniques wasn't going to get me there.

So, I went back. Four times over the next two days. The first time I went back was that evening and I realized that I hadn't seen nothing yet. The place was abuzz when I returned in the early evening darkness (there are no time zones in India so as I moved East, it kept getting darker earlier. In Calcutta it gets dark at about 6, while in Delhi it was 8:30 or so. Gotta love India). There were monks inside the temple area chanting rythmically where before there had been only tourists. There were people doing full body prostrations facing the direction of the spot of Siddhartha's enlightenment. There was a group from Thailand that had brought along a temple length golden cloth that they were wrapping around the entire temple as they chanted and walked. The place still possessed a kind of peace, but it was also alive. I sat for a long time just soaking it in and met a couple of British guys who were experiencing the same sort of pleasant vibe. We talked about it for awhile, they left, and I headed back to my hostel room for some more meditation exercises.

The rest of the time in Bodhgaya was spent in the pursuit of finding that elusive tranquility. I didn't have the six years to spend that Siddhartha had, but I tried to capture as much as his spirit as I could in that time. I did have some great encounters with the local Hindu people of Bodhgaya (including a 4 hour trek across the farmlands near Bodhgaya with a rickshaw guy to the mountains where Siddhartha had been during those six years. I left at 5:30 in the morning, ran out of water by 7, saw the amazing view from the top of the mountain by 8, started maybe hallucinating a bit on the walk back, saw a guy who weighed about ninety pounds carrying a hundred pound bundle of sticks on his head across a sandy river bed at 9 and made it back to town by 10, dehydrated and out of it. I also had the pleasure of meeting a 10 year old boy from the village who invited me into his house, showed me his school card which attested to the fact that he attended an English school in town, met his family, spent about an hour there talking, looking at his social studies books with him, laughing with his irresistably cute 5 year old sister who just kept looking at me then laughing, and giving him a few rupees so he could buy a dictionary for school.), but it was the spirit of peace at the Bo tree that I will remember best.

Buddhism seeks to end the suffering of all living creatures, yet is a sometimes very individual pursuit. How can one who spends a majority of his time in a semi conscious state of awakeness help his fellow beings? Of course, there is alot more to Buddhism than that (their humanitarian efforts are renowned), but the goal of achieving an awakeness about the reality of the suffering that is around them and striving to change that, is the tennent of Buddhism that drove Siddhartha away from his caste oriented culture. So, maybe we can create a new culture through religious ideals, or maybe we can find a more positive way to insure that our actions help to end suffering, rather than create it. I think all religions try to answer this question. They just have different ways of doing it. See, religion and culture are inextricably linked, like the twisting branches of the Bo tree. They will never be comletely separate and their combination makes up the very life force that is the world around us. So, we need to continue to acknowledge the power and presence of religion in the lives of humans in order to continue to seek our own awakenings. My time in Bodhgaya will help me to understand the best way for me to endeavor to end suffering in my own culture, in my own way...