We left Kathmandu yesterday for what should have been a seven to ten hour bus ride to Lumbini. When we sat down in the little leg room, no AC or fan night bus, we didn't anticipate a sixteen hour drive, made longer by repeated stops to pick people up along the way (each lasting twenty minutes), a three hour nap for the driver, and a everal hour back up from a traffic accident.
Do I regret taking this uncomfortable means of transportation? No! Why? Because life is too short to care about that shit and get worked up, and because Lumbini is well worth it.
This small, poorly developed town is known for the Maya Devi temple, a quaint Buddhist temple built on top of the spot at which Siddhartha Gautama, better known as the Buddha, was born. Staring at the marker placed exactly where one of the world's most influential figures is believed to have entered this life, I attained nirvana. Ok, maybe not. But it did cause me to reach deep inside and think about my life... (Shut up Karen, I know this sounds corny, but it's true.)
I did a lot of soul searching in the several seconds that I stood there, and the good while in which we sat under a Bodhi tree.
One thing that I'll share was very simple, was bombarding my thoughts at the time, and relates to my recent scare about losing some really great photos *WARNING: The following is a completely insignificant rant, feel free to skip ahead to the photos.* The other day at the orphanage, my memory card told me that it wasn't formatted properly and I would have to erase the memory to format it and wouldn't be able to get my photos. I would have lost my photos from Bhaktapur and the orphanage (see the previous two posts), ones that really meant a lot to me. The idea of losing them made me so depressed that I was moping around and had zero appetite (which, if you know me at all, is a scary sign). Why was/am I so attached to the material objects that are my photos? These are the reasons I could think of: 1) They were really good; 2) They help me remember, since my memory sucks, 3) They represent by greatest passion (outside of people), and losing them would be a major blow; 4) They are the manifestation of my "only skill" and to lose even one makes me feel worthless, 5) They are the hard earned result of my one form of expression, etc etc. While these are all legitimate, I cannot help but imagine the Buddha laughing at me and saying, "Nothing lasts forever, all things are impermanent, do not be attached to the material." But what do you do when the material represents something more substantial? Represents yourself? Isn't it bad to allow a material object become that important? Yea, probably. But I love photography too much...
Oh, and as you can see, I managed to actually get the photos back! Yay! Thank you CardRecovery.
PS - A hatred of attachment to material objects... Maybe you and Buddha have more in common than you think?
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