LUMBINI (Nepal): The birthplace of the Buddha exudes peace on an autumn afternoon so hot that a lazy stroll on the meditation platform atop the birth temple quickly becomes a dance on sun-baked tiles. Metres away, in the Sacred Garden, a groundskeeper steers a lawnmower around the centuries-old brick remains of stupas while his colleagues lounge in the shade of nearby trees.
Groups of off-season tourists file quickly past the stupas, the Sacred Pond where Maya Devi bathed before giving birth to Siddhartha Gautam (the future Lord Buddha) and the Asokan Pillar, whose engraving is cited as proof of that birth 2,549 years ago in this village in Nepal’s ‘tarai’ (plains) near the border with India.
So many years in which the Buddha’s message of peace has been repeated and disregarded. Yet, nowhere does it seem more pertinent than today’s Nepal, where 12,000 people, mostly innocents, have died in a decade-long civil war launched by Maoists in the name of delivering justice to the country’s downtrodden peasants. Earlier this month, Nepal’s King Gyanendra invoked the Buddha’s teachings in a message he sent to a meeting called to revive the international committee guiding Lumbini’s development. “At a time when the world remains deeply troubled by strife and violence, Lord Buddha’s message of peace, compassion, love and tolerance assumes greater significance,” said the monarch.
On Feb 1 King Gyanendra fired his appointed prime minister for corruption and failure to control the Maoist rebellion and assumed control of the government, promising to relinquish power in three years. On Sept 3 the Maoists declared a three-month unilateral ceasefire, which the king has refused to reciprocate. Although strife has now spread across most of this small nation sandwiched between India and China, Lumbini, pilgrimage site for Buddhists from around the world, has been untouched, say locals. “Lumbini is different than other parts of Nepal. The insurgency doesn’t affect Lumbini. Not a single incident has happened. That’s a beautiful thing,” says head archaeologist Basanta Bidari. “Maoists and soldiers come to the same temples but they pray and they leave. They don’t fight here,” says rickshaw driver Babu, leaning on his pedals to push his three-wheeled vehicle up a slight incline in the long road that leads to the Monastic Zone.
According to a Master Plan finished in 1978, Lumbini is divided into three zones, each one square mile in size: Sacred Garden Zone, Monastic Zone and New Lumbini Village. The first includes the main historical sites, the second, monasteries built by countries that support Lumbini’s development and the third will include accommodation, restaurants and other amenities for visitors.
But after 27 years, only a handful of monasteries are completed and just 20 per cent of the Master Plan has been realised. That’s why, after two decades of working at Lumbini and other nearby archaeological sites, Bidari says he’s “very happy” at news of this month’s meeting at the UN in New York. “If this committee is revived we could put all our projects to the committee. They could send engineers, financial advisers and monetary support also,” he adds. Archaeological sites unearthed to date represent only a ‘pinhead’ of the history buried beneath present-day Lumbini, adds Bidari.
But in the Sacred Garden zone the head monk at one temple is wary about development plans. “This is all the modern type of development, not the spiritual and religious type,” says Vimalananda, sitting on steps that lead to the temple’s dim, cool interior. What is needed in Lumbini is more meditation and teaching of Buddhism, and one month a year devoted to prayer, he adds. Otherwise, “it will become the crowded city, not the peaceful city”.
Tourists will play a big role in Lumbini’s future, according to plans. The government has declared 2006 Visit Lumbini Year and has unveiled a 200-km ‘Buddhist Circuit’ that will take visitors to other nearby sites, including the place where Buddha first met his father after attaining enlightenment. The government has allocated 80 million rupees (1.1 million US dollars) to develop the Lumbini area this year and will restrict the opening of new industries and put pollution controls on existing ones, according to local officials. “We need tourists who can spend at least one night’ instead of just doing a day trip from Buddhist sites in India,” Bidari says.
“If we had some people who could explain the detailed history we could keep people’s interest all day. If you have the patience I could take you to the Asokan Pillar and stand there for four hours describing it to you.” According to the Lumbini Development Trust, which manages the site, tourism is growing fast. In 2004, 37,892 people visited Lumbini, compared to 28,053 the previous year (when the visitor’s centre was opened) and 9,036 in 2002. But Bidari says Lumbini won’t develop for development’s sake and will stay true to the Master Plan developed by Kenzo Tange. “He wanted to develop a place of tranquillity, to keep it as simple as it was in the 6th century BC. Tange said ‘when you enter Lumbini you enter a sacred world. “‘It’s better that you keep colourful development away’.” “We deal with belief and we have tourists of belief, who are on a spiritual quest,” added Bidari.
Nepal at large is now seeing a slight revival in tourism following a further downward slide after the king seized power and declared a state of emergency. Arrivals have grown steadily during the past couple of months and bookings for the autumn season are up, say hopeful operators. It is still early to say if this month’s news, including soldiers’ reportedly unprovoked killing of six Maoists in western Nepal and rebels’ kidnapping of hundreds of teachers for indoctrination, will halt that growth. —Dawn/Inter-Press News Service
