Continuing from my previous entry on "Sunrise in Borobudur", we left Borobudur at about 8am to go back to Manohara Hotel for breakfast. We met a lot of Buddhist monks staying in the same hotel. Well, seems like Manohara is some sort of a monastery; USD80 per night monastery. We also spent about 30 minutes or so to watch a documentary on Borobudur to understand a little bit about Borobudur before attempting the full day templing.
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| We took the chance to take the horse carriage for a full round ride of the Borobudur Park The horse must be cursing, all four of you? |
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| The horse carriage left us in front of the entrance. This is the view of the entrance. Now that the sun has risen, we can see it from afar. |
Tourists aside, serious Buddhist pilgrims have a specific way to follow. They must enter from the East Gate and circle the temple 3 times as a sign of respect before continuing to the Level 2 to 9. As for tourist, which probably constitute about 95% of the crowd, they just came from all directions and move in all directions.
Borobudur's name originated from words 'Boro' and 'Budur', where 'Boro' means temple or shrine from sanskrit 'Byara' while 'Budur' from Balinese 'Beduhur' which means above the hill. Borobudur temple is located 269m above sea level and surrounded by several mountains.
Borobudur are divided into 3 sections to the pilgrims. The first 2 sections are about human lives that are control and not control by desires etc. The pilgrims are supposed to walk clockwise to study the story on the wall. To us tourists, it is 6 terraces full of relics, well 1460 to be precise.
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| Let us begin! |
That was only 10 of the pictures I took of the relics. I think you get the idea.
I'm here taking a breather, in fact many many breathers along my climb up the temple.
Now's, lets talk about Buddha statues. There are apparently 504 Buddha effigies around the temples. Apparently the Buddha has different poses depending which side it is facing. To me, it is just many many opportunities to take pictures of them. A lot of them has been destroyed during earthquake.
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| This is about sunset. Beautiful. |
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| The foot of the Buddha |
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| This is the 3rd section (top 3 terraces in the form of circles) of the temple. It is refers to as Arupadhatu which means nirwana. Pix taken using wide angle lens |
This final section of the temples are circular in shape and surrounded by stupas. Each stupas has a Buddha effigy inside except for the highest and largest stupa in the temple. The emptiness signifies nirvana where nothing matters.
And finally, some of my favourite tourist photos.
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| Evonne and me at Nirvana |
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| Nicely capture by Sam Hor of me with an unmistakably Borobudur stupa |
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| Meditating at Borobudur. This picture got us into trouble with the guards :) |
Defnitely one of the most breathtaking place in the world and probably in the running of one of the place to visit before you die.
Location : Jogja, Indonesia
Date of travel : June 2012
