From Tony Prince:
Dear friends,
Recently I noticed on the Buddhist Channel website
http://www.buddhistchannel.tv/
an item about a visit to Borobodur (婆羅浮屠) in Java by a group of Buddhist monks from a number of different countries, including Taiwan. (You can see the article on this page:
http://www.buddhistchannel.tv/index.php?id=58,8385,0,0,1,0.
If you're not familiar with Borobodur, it is perhaps the largest Buddhist monument in the world, a kind of gigantic stone mandala consisting of four walled galleries, roughly rectangular in shape, with three circular terraces above them. The walls of the galleries are covered with beautiful relief sculptures, and there are 72 stupas on the terraces, with a single, large stupa in the very centre. Everywhere there are buddha-images and figures from traditional Indian and Buddhist mythology. The idea is that the pilgrim will circumambulate the galleries, symbolically ascending level by level until the terrace of Enlightenment has been reached. If you'd like to know more, there is a brief introduction to Borobodur in Chinese on the following page:
http://indonesia.go2c.info/java/borobudur.htm
The Chinese Wikipedia also has a more comprehensive article at:
http://zh.wikipedia.org/wiki/婆羅浮屠
The reason I'm writing to you about all this, however, is because Borobodur is also a Huayen monument. The sculptures in the lowest gallery illustrate scenes from the Jatakas (本生說), stories of the Buddha's previous lives, but the three higher galleries are devoted mainly to the story of Sudhana and his quest for complete Enlightenment (善才童子五十三參). There are said to be altogether 420 panels of sculpture devoted to the "入法界品". So a visit to Borobodur is also a Huayen pilgrimage, and in ascending the monument one is symbolically following in the footsteps of Sudhana (善才童子) himself.
Considering all this, and in view of Ven. Hai Yun's current status as an official holder of the Huayen lineage, it occurred to me that it would be appropriate if Heshang himself could lead a group to Borobodur at some time. This would be a way of spiritually reclaiming this wonderful monument for Huayen and would also help to establish Huayen's claim to be a genuinely universal teaching.
Thank you.
Yours in the Dharma,
Tony 合十
--
