March 11-20, 2023
We continued down one road to the next, eventually arriving at Kumhrar Park in Patna, which is the location of the ancient city of Pataliputra where the third Buddhist Council was held after the Buddha entered Parinibbāna. Today, the park is open to the public and features Asokan stone pillars, broken into pieces and displayed under a protective canopy.
Currently, the Buddhist Council campus is in a state of disrepair, with broken stone pillars, 80 pillar foundations, and rotting wooden steps. However, these relics have been covered with a layer of soil by archaeologists and authorities to protect them from further damage.
The road from here to Bodhgaya is 400 kilometers long. We continued on our way to Vikramshila, one of the Buddhist universities constructed after Nalanda. The site is surrounded by various brick platforms of different sizes, with a large stupa in the center, featuring four frames facing four directions. This may have been the location where the Buddha statue was enshrined.
Unfortunately, while at this site, we lost our dog Sukho (White). He was a gentle and shy dog who would run away at the bark of a smaller dog on the road. We searched for him in the nearby village for a few hours, but we weren’t able to find him. It is likely that his kamma with us had come to an end here.
#chuahuongdao #chuahuongdaotemple #sbsstupas
#buddha #buddhism #Dhutanga #dhammajourney
Source: Dhammacetiya
