Symbolism: Leaves falling fr the Bodhi Tree in the sun at Lumbini, birth place of the Buddha

For my 500 hours Yoga teacher experience, I had to share a Symbolism in my life, so I am sharing this one of “Leaves falling from a Bodhi Tree in the Sun”

I’m in the birthplace of the Buddha in Lumbini, Nepal. I wasn’t even going to visit as it was a long trip from Kathmandu but an American exchange student called Stephanie whose Dad was a dot.com investment angel, arranged the whole thing. She came and got me one morning and said I agreed to go with her and she had picked up our tickets already so I went. We visited the Holy Shrines. A lot of people wanted to stay overnight inside, near the site where Maya Devi gave birth to the Buddha Gautama. I found it all interesting.

But basically I was not feeling the best from the heat and tiredness so my asthma played up a bit. I talked to the Chinese Buddhist temple and asked them if I could stay as I didn’t want to trek through the dirt roads back to the nearest bigger village.

They normally didn’t take anyone. But they let me. They also let Steph stayed too. The rooms were really dusty because they have not had any guests there for years. The meals we got were full Vegan and very minimal portions offered with just Black tea and water, nothing else. At first, we were late for our meals with the monks because we didn’t know breakfast was 5am in the morning.

On the last day, after I said goodbye to everyone, Steph was going to take a bus to travel to India and I was catching a flight back to the city….. I was glad I got a chance to pay my respect to the founding Lineage holder of Shaolin. His Portrait took center place at one of the Chinese Temple Halls.

There was a moment where I looked at the big courtyard and the big old tree …it was a last look before we got onto our motor rickshaws

….suddenly, there was  gust of gentle warm breeze in the sunshine and some leaves fell from the tree and showered everyone from up above….And that was it, I felt a connection to this sense of “Doing a holy pilgrimmage”.

Up until then, it was all forms and exotic experiences, but it was that few seconds of STILLNESS as the Leaves fell from the Tree that I felt a link to why Lumbini was a Holy site and THE birth place of the first Buddha in 623BC Nepal.

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